Clare Bucknell’s LRB review of Louise Kennedy’s novel Trespasses (archived) begins thus:
Every morning, between reciting the Hail Mary and beginning their lessons, the children at St Dallan’s Catholic primary school near Belfast do ‘The News’. News, in this community, might mean many things: that someone’s father, perennially out of work for ‘kicking with the wrong foot’, has managed to find a job; that the pop group Mud has gone to number one with ‘Oh Boy’; or, more likely, that there’s been a murder, a beating, a car bomb, a riot, a high-profile trial.
I was puzzled by the unexplained idiom “kicking with the wrong foot,” so of course I googled, and Collins explained:
kick with the wrong foot
[…]
Scottish and Irish
to be of the opposite religion to that which is regarded as acceptable or to that of the person who is speaking
So I had learned something, but I also found this Notes and Queries page:
Why are Catholics sometimes called ‘left-footers’?
THE answer lies in the rich folklore of the humble spade – and provides a good illustration of the inadequacy of calling a spade ‘a spade’. The saying turns on a traditional distinction between left- and right-handed spades in Irish agriculture. It has been used as a figure of speech and often, sadly, as a term of abuse to distinguish Protestants from Catholics: ‘He digs with the wrong foot.’ Most types of digging spade in Britain and Ireland have foot-rests at the top of their blades; two-sided spades have foot-rests on each side of the shaft and socket, while an older style of one-sided spade had only one. Two-sided spades may well have been introduced by the Protestant ‘planters’ in the sixteenth century. By the early nineteenth century specialised spade and shovel mills in the north of Ireland were producing vast numbers of two-sided spades which came to be universally used in Ulster and strongly identified with the province. One-sided spades with narrow blades and a foot-rest cut out of the side of the relatively larger wooden shaft continued in use in the south and west. The rural population of Gaelic Ireland retained the Catholic faith and tended also to retain the one-sided spade and ‘dig with the wrong foot’. In fact, the two-sided spade of Ulster was generally used with the left foot whereas the one-sided spade tended to be used with the right foot. Instinctively, the ‘wrong foot’ of the Catholics has come to be thought of as the left foot. The figure of speech has now been extended to kicking with the wrong foot.
Hugh Cheape, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh.
Is there any truth to that quaint tale?
I don’t know about the story overall, but a quick google confirms my thought that it is not normal to call that part of a spade the “foot rest”, since it’s not for resting, but for pushing the spade into the ground with your foot. Instead, it’s typically labeled the “step.” Which does have me wondering about the reliability of the rest of the account.
[edited – using different terms in google suggests some people do call it a footrest. So now I just think people who do that are daft.]
Just to figure out the chronological setting that’s being suggested: the wonders of the internet are sufficient to give me grounds for believing it was in or about May of 1975 when Mud’s cover* of “Oh Boy” went to #1 on the charts in both the U.K. and the Republic of Ireland. Presumably many British/Irish readers of the novel, if of a certain age, wouldn’t need to google to know that.
*Americans will be more likely to know the original Buddy Holly version, since Mud never achieved commercial success on this side of the ocean.
As an addendum to the prior comment, here in the interests of Kultur is some vintage footage of the lads lip-synching their hit on West German tv in August ’75, wearing extremely naff stage outfits and trying some stage moves that seem either underchoreographed or underrehearsed or both.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsSN_Dvcfzk
It’s true that people can be described as kicking or digging with the wrong foot, that different styles of digging implement were used in different areas, some of which could only be used with a particular foot (e.g. https://www.faclair.com/ViewDictionaryEntry.aspx?ID=2FE559D80597E397B06F9120550322F8), and that more/less fertile (and therefore cultivated in different ways) probably roughly maps onto more Protestant/Catholic in Ireland.
Whether any of these things actually have to do with each other I don’t know – although I’ve heard that explanation before.
Thanks!
it’s typically labeled the “step.”
The names for the spade and the parts of the spade in Irish are discussed by Caoimhín Ó Danachair on p. 113–114 in this article. (Cluas ‘ear (of a spade)’ is already in Aodhagán Ó Rathaille, but I wonder if it is calqued on English.)
I knew “left-footer” = “Roman Catholic” as a child, but always assumed that it was something to do with football (in a Glaswegian context, not an unreasonable assumption), with the “left” just part of the usual sinister/unlucky/bad complex. (I didn’t actually know any Catholics; at our school you could be Presbyterian or – at a pinch – Jewish, and that was it, really.)
In Ireland the expression is well known, the putative explanation perhaps a little less so but probably widely believed. In the south, Catholics say the Protestants are the lefties — “lucht na coise clé” as I once overheard from someone underestimating my hearing and/or command of Irish. Perhaps spade preferences varied geographically as well as denominationally, but I suspect everyone would rather be right than left. “Digging with the wrong foot” is liable to opposite interpretations. A black cat can be good or bad luck depending on your superstition of choice.
Frank McNally of The Irish Times has been cited at LH before; a 2016 column has more information, citing some supporting observations from Emyr Estyn Evans’ Irish Folk Ways.
Over here, where people play football by using their foot to kick a ball, it is common knowledge that people are right- or left-footed the same way they’re right- or left-handed, and that most people are, uh, same-sided for both, meaning that most people are right-footed. So… I didn’t know one-sided spades even existed, but I expect them to be right-sided by default, with left-sided ones being custom exceptions, and “the two-sided spade of Ulster was generally used with the left foot” is not believable.
In the south, Catholics say the Protestants are the lefties
That seems to me to make the spade explanation something between untenable and superfluous (why bring spades into it at all, if there was never any real practical right/left correlation with the sectarian divide anyway?)
I must say that the whole thing reeks of folk etymologising to me.
To me as well.
The spades used to dig ‘turf’ (peat) are necessarily narrow. A (not very visible) demo here. The first thing you have to do is put the peat to dry, for which you need a narrow cross-section.
Then there’s not width to put two ‘shoulders’/steps on the spade: they have to operate with one foot. And I suppose manufacturers make them one way round only (like scissors).
I must say that the whole thing reeks of folk etymologising to me.
Yeah. Peat-cutting in Ireland would be more associated with the rural/Catholic South. So some slur about one-footed spades?
I would be modestly surprised (perhaps there’s a literature and perhaps I’m wrong) if those who prefer to kick a soccer ball with their right foot can actually kick the ball harder* with that foot versus just with more precision/control. That’s how it generally works with hands. I have no intuition as to which foot I would use to press down on a spade with, that being a task where precision/aim/fine-motor-control are not particularly relevant.
Note btw the long tradition (back to Greco-Roman times?) in military contexts like marching of stepping off with your left foot first. Explanations for why this is are varied and often sound akin to folk etymologies, but the practice is in some tension with “left = unlucky” as an exceptionless axiom.
*Or at least “harder” in a way that isn’t just an artifact of habit/practice, esp when there’s a several-step run before the actual kick where doing the set-up part with the sequence of legs switched may feel comparatively awkward without practice.
“the ‘wing’ or the ‘sail’ on the left or the right” about 5:10. “… never cut them too big”.
@JWB that being a task where precision/aim/fine-motor-control are not particularly relevant.
Not true for the turf: watch the vid, after 5:30 they go on at some length.
In cricket, there is a phenomenon where many of the best batters bat with their “wrong” hand – the opposite to what they write with. Of course, this is as much to do with the conventions of how batting is described, since you use both hands to hold the bat. The usual explanation as far as I understand is that what’s conventionally called your batting hand provides most of the power, while the leading hand (conventionally the less dominant hand) mainly provides direction. Those who have ended up batting the “wrong” way for whatever reason and are good enough to make it to a high level are generally the ones who are strong enough in their less dominant hand to get a lot of benefit from having their dominant hand in the leading position.
I am particular non-expert in shovelling, and use whichever foot seems convenient at the time.
Emyr Estyn Evans’ Irish Folk Ways
Thanks @mollymolly, behold the ‘loy’, a non-symmetric digging tool with a step for one foot only ” traditionally used for cultivating the potato.”
“anyone who still thinks that “calling a spade a spade” is synonymous with verbal simplicity should read Irish Folk Ways. ” says Frank McNally.
Llwy is “spoon” in Welsh.
Doesn’t seem to be cognate, unfortunately.
(“Spade” is rhaw, which seems to be cognate with Latin remus “oar”, which was borrowed into Brythonic and ended up as Welsh rhwyf. Life is confusing.)
i agree that the folk etymology is dubious on its face, but i don’t think DM’s point about footedness holds up too well as a critical lens on it. i’ve done a decent amount of digging with a spade, but not nearly as much as a 20-year-old farmer or peat-cutter, so i wouldn’t want to guess at whether a genuinely experienced person would rather use their dominant foot on the spade or on the ground. they’re different functions, but neither seems to me obviously more in need of strength or control than the other. i also wouldn’t rely too much on handed/footedness as a single character. autoanecdotally (and perhaps echoing JD) i can say that while i’m fairly righthanded, for one-handed bicycling i’m very much the opposite – i can confidently ride on anything short of deeply rutted turf or badly patchy cobblestone with my left hand alone, but with just my right hand i tend to waver even on smooth asphalt.
(I didn’t actually know any Catholics; at our school you could be Presbyterian or – at a pinch – Jewish, and that was it, really.)
I met my first Catholic in September, when I was 16. Her hair was long and black as [i won’t spoil it by listing the metaphors for black] and I fell in love with her.
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
The following has little, if anything, to do with linguistic wrong-footedness. Or does it?
I’ve been hybridizing daylilies for about half a century. That requires lots of spade work, to lift and line out clumps of cultivars. It’s also a necessity to give plants away. Why would one spoil a fine hobby by introducing commerce into its sharing?
Most of my many spades are quite narrow. They have lips, or shoulders, or whatever you like to call the part where the foot is placed to drive the implement into the soil. Aim is critical if one doesn’t want to destroy precious plants.
I am strongly rigt handed. Throws right, bats right, catches speeding fruit flies in his bare right hand. But, for reasons unexplored by medical science, digging is done with the left leg and foot. I can, in a pinch, drive a spade with my right foot, but it feels awkward.
If one were to say of me, ‘He digs with the wrong foot,’ I would smile agreeably.
Addendum- As to the name of the part where the foot goes, a posh UK garden tool purveyor has the following for a transplanting spade:
“ The mirror-polished stainless steel head gives rust resistance and clean movement through the soil. Wide comfort treads at the top of the blade prevent any discomfort for feet, allowing you to really dig deep – but without disturbing neighboring planting.”
Beware yuppies in the seedling beds.
Further to Jonathan D.’s comment, there’s a parallel phenomenon in baseball, where a number of good players who are otherwise right-handed are “left-handed” batters (as in cricket, both “right-handed” and “left-handed” batters have both hands on the bat and both hands/arms are used to make the swing effective). Some rather nerdy/technical speculation about why that might be here: https://www.theswingmechanic.com/blogs/baseball-swing/how-to-use-front-arm-dominance-to-rewire-your-swing
It seems intuitive to me to use the foot opposite to the hand which applies most of the force.
The rural population of Gaelic Ireland retained the Catholic faith and tended also to retain the one-sided spade and ‘dig with the wrong foot’. In fact, the two-sided spade of Ulster was generally used with the left foot whereas the one-sided spade tended to be used with the right foot. Instinctively, the ‘wrong foot’ of the Catholics has come to be thought of as the left foot.
So Catholics dig with the right foot, and Protestants dig with the left foot and as result Protestants think that Catholics dig with the left foot?:-/
Or it is rather Catholics dig with the right foot, so they approach salvation with the left one?
I like DM’s objections, but I, my freind and her husband take off our t-shirts in three different ways.
In related news, I learned from watching the winter Olympics that snowboarders who put their right foot in front are known as ‘goofy-footed.’ The same applies to surfboarders. I don’t know whether there is any correlation of goofiness with being left-handed or left-footed in other contexts.
And in other sports news, there are many switch hitters in baseball but AFAIK no equivalent in cricket. Is there are a law that says you have to bat the same way all the time? Most switch hitters are more effective from one side than the other, but gain an advantage when facing a pitcher of the opposite handedness. I would think the same principal would apply in cricket.
And in other other sports news, both Rafa Nadal and Phil Mickelson are naturally right-handed but adopted (for reasons I don’t know) a left-handed swing.
And now for the latest weather…
I would be modestly surprised (perhaps there’s a literature and perhaps I’m wrong) if those who prefer to kick a soccer ball with their right foot can actually kick the ball harder* with that foot versus just with more precision/control.
I am pretty sure that I can kick a ball harder (in the sense that the ball goes faster) with my right foot than with my left one, be it in a run or from a steady position.
*Or at least “harder” in a way that isn’t just an artifact of habit/practice, esp when there’s a several-step run before the actual kick where doing the set-up part with the sequence of legs switched may feel comparatively awkward without practice.
Well, there is always an element of practice in these things. The more we use a muscle, the stronger it gets. To abstract from habit or practice here makes sense perhaps for someone who never plays football so that the practice is zero. Otherwise there will always be some interference between more practice on the dominant side and therefore better coordination, but also probably more brute strength.
I play football with both my feet and am more balanced than most people, but still far from being symmetric. Also my right hand / arm is a bit stronger than my left one and even visibly a bit bigger (although not as much as to look like a crab). I thought that this was pretty normal.
Well, if the force is equal, people will generally prefer the side that gives them more precision & control. I haven’t kicked anything enough for asymmetric exercise effects to, uh, kick in, but I do all sorts of kicking with my right foot by default, and the right foot is also my default for a spade.
Oh, that depends on the soil.
I don’t use a spade every year, but when I do, it’s in loamy soil with stones in it. When one foot gets tired, I use the other; when neither is enough, I climb on the spade and jump up & down on it with both feet like I’m in a comic strip; but the default is the right one.
Links, zwo, drei, vier!
Yes, the left foot… and the right hand.
Unfortunately I don’t have a bike here in obscenely flat Berlin (I live too far from the museum), so I haven’t biked in a while, but I think it’s just the same for me. Right now, my left wrist feels more stable than the right one – perhaps precisely because the right one is used for (precise) movements and the left generally isn’t.
Only? 🙂 I take mine off in two different ways, and I’m aware of three others.
I climb on the spade and jump up & down on it with both feet like I’m in a comic strip
I have been there and done that!
“Only? 🙂 I take mine off in two different ways, ” – 1:0
“and I’m aware of three others.” – If your sample is larger than three, 1:1.
I have been there and done that!
Ah! Lutherans are (of course) both-footers!
…is that a consubstantiation joke?
I think it’s a joke about my people being stuck between the Catholicism they abandoned and the Reformation they couldn’t bring themselves to join. A foot in both camps, as it were.
A foot in both camps, as it were.
Entrambasaguas, as it were.
Entrambasaguas as it is.
Ah. Culture shock – in German-speaking lands the Reformation is almost equated with Luther. (Even though “Reformed Church” does mean “Calvinist”.)
@DavidL switch hitters in baseball but AFAIK no equivalent in cricket. Is there are a law that says you have to bat the same way all the time?
No there aren’t. And indeed there is a stroke called ‘reverse sweep’ (Ian Botham was noted for it in one sticky situation) where even as the ball is coming down the wicket you dance your feet, twist your hips, swizzle the bat in hand and play a mirror image of your usual sweep.
When one foot gets tired, I use the other; when neither is enough, I climb on the spade and jump up & down on it with both feet.
I alternate feet too, but if I can’t get through with one foot, it’s because the stones are too close to the surface of the glacial soil of eastern New York and New England, and if I used both feet I’d fall over. In that case I use one foot and carefully pry the stones loose.
Links, zwo, drei, vier
Various things, ranging from basic Hut, hoo, hree, hore to Léft … Léft … Hád a good jòb and I léft, where acute means “left foot” and grave means “right foot”.
As an undergrad at Marshall, I’d hear the ROTC cadets out the window: “Y’lailf! Y’lailf! Y’lailf raht lailf! Hunt, hoont, hreent, hornt, y’lailf raht lailf!”
My sheer guess is that one steps off with the left because the right leg is in control of the motion.
Rodger C says: “My sheer guess is that one steps off with the left because the right leg is in control of the motion.”
Apparently marching off with the left foot comes to us from the Romans. The left foot or the left side was associated with the god of war Mars.
Everywhere else the Romans entered with their right foot for good luck (through doors, over threshholds etc) except when marching off to war.
Also, I seem to remember that left was good when taking auspices (observing the flight of birds).
Long ago, in a military school, I was target-shooting with a 22 rifle with a scope. I am extremely right-handed; my left eye did better for this task. The instructor insisted I use only my right eye.
The right way, the wrong way, and the army way…
I paused at the last sentence of the following passage, from a book originally published in 1950:
Bare feet…
The instructor insisted I use only my right eye.
Here’s an 11-minute YouTube video explaining how to shoot a pistol or a rifle (with or with a red dot) if you are part of the 1/3 of the population who are cross-eye dominant, as you are. Apparently not a lot of firearms instructors know this; this guy is cross-eye dominant himself and presents several methods for each case.
On page 10 of the Louise Kennedy book being reviewed, which I happened to buy yesterday:
Where do you teach? he said. It was one of those questions that people asked when they wanted to know what foot you kicked with. What’s your name? What’s your surname? Where did you go to school? Where do you live?
And as I heard long ago from the Firesign Theater:
You ain’t got no friends on your left, that’s right
You ain’t got friends on your right, that’s left
Houngdog, one, two
Coondog, three, four