Irish recruits [Was: French Academy ...]

[Mark Mandel]

On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 7:03 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> Thanks, Mark -- I had forgotten "hay-foot,
> straw-foot".  But what did they do with untaught
> raw city recruits, who might not know hay from straw?
>
> (And what happened to the undecipherable parts of
> your message?  I can't imagine that the "turn
> toward bread or cheese instead of" gave trouble.)
>
> Joel


I haven't the foggiest idea. I thought I'd sent it in Plain Text
instead of "rich formatting", but now I *know* I am. Maybe something
in the platform chain did something cute with a URL. Hereunder is the
whole previous post, with apologies for redundancy.

m a m



On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 3:45 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > There is what might be called today an Irish joke:  John Dunton,
> > describing his service in the militia while residing in Massachusetts
> > in 1696, wrote that he was "as unacquainted with the Terms of
> > Military Discipline, as a wild Irish Man", who would be given bread
> > for one pocket and cheese for the other, and then be commanded to
> > turn toward bread or cheese instead of left or right.
> >
> > John Dunton, The Life and Errors of John Dunton Late Citizen of
> > London ... (London: Printed for S. Malthus, 1705), 155--156.
>
> "Hay-foot, straw-foot!"
>
> 1.
> From an article "Hayfoot, Strawfoot!" by Bruce Catton about Civil War
> soldiers, American Heritage Magazine, April 1957, Volume 8, Issue 3
> (http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1957/3/1957_3_30.shtml):
>
> Similarly, the drill sergeants repeatedly found that among the raw
> recruits there were men so abysmally untaught that they did not know
> left from right, and hence could not step off on the left foot as all
> soldiers should. To teach these lads how to march, the sergeants would
> tie a wisp of hay to the left foot and a wisp of straw to the right;
> then, setting the men to march, they would chant, "Hay-foot,
> straw-foot, hay-foot, straw-foot"—and so on, until everybody had
> caught on. A common name for a green recruit in those days was
> "strawfoot."
>
> On the drill field, when a squad was getting basic training, the men
> were as likely as not to intone a little rhythmic chant as they
> tramped across the sod—thus:
>
> March! March.! March old soldier march!
> Hayfoot, strawfoot,
> Belly-full of bean soup—
> March old soldier march!
>
>
> 2.
> OED, "hay-foot":
>
> hay-foot, straw-foot: with right and left foot alternately (at the
> word of command). Also as v.
>  In allusion to the alleged use of hay and straw to enable a rustic
> recruit to distinguish the right foot from the left.
>
> First cite:
> 1851 Knickerbocker XXXVIII. 79 At company-training and
> general-training..it was all 'hay-foot, straw-foot' with him.
>
> --
> Mark Mandel

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