I have been annoying various language experts for years on the origin of the word (words?) Tory Top.
As far as I am concerned it was the only word I knew for the pine cone, it was the word used by my mother when she painted them silver for Christmas, it is even the name of a road in Ballyphehane in Cork which must have had a grove of pine trees at one stage.
I have met blank walls all the way.
I have established that the Tory bit comes from the Irish toraidh or pursued which went on to mean an outlaw, or renegade and from there by various routes to something wild or savage or any member of the British Conservative Party.
(I joke not)
It was just by actually looking at one when walking in the Haute Languedoc forests recently that the penny suddenly dropped.
Pine cones are remarkably like spinning tops in shape and the name surely comes from that conceit; that they were wild or savage spinning tops.
Simple.
And staring me in the face all the time.
Comments
Rita
on October 1, 2010My mother used to call a cheeky small child a tory top. I had actually forgotten this until i read your piece.
martine
on October 1, 2010I asked the collegues in a translation forum and I got this answer :
Regarding “Tories”: The following is an extract from “The Oxford Companion to Irish History.”
“The word ‘tory’ from the Irish ‘toraidhe'(raider) has been traced back to 1646…..The original tories of the Restoration period were perceived as dispossessed Catholics waging a war of revenge against the new social order created by the land confiscations of the 1640 and 1650s. Yet it remains unclear how far all toryism, even in the Restoration period, was of this character, and how far some at least of what was so described should be seen as representing banditry of the kind found in remote and underpoliced regions throughout early modern Europe.
The use of ‘Tory’ in English politics goes back to the exclusion crisis of 1679-81. The Whigs who sought to exclude the future James II, as a Catholic, from the throne, applied the term derisively to James’ supporters. After the revolution of 1688 ‘Tory’ re-emerged as the generally accepted name for one of the two sides in an increasingly bitter party conflict.”
As a kid growing up in Ireland, pine cones were called “tory tops.” Don’t know where the term arose and can only suramise that it meant the dried heads of executed individuals in early times and over the years the meaning was lost. Canon O’Leary in his autobiography “Mo Sgeal Fein” describes what he thought were three black balls over Macroom castle. Later he learned that they were three skulls on spikes. He was born in 1839 and if he was in his teens when he saw them, the habit must have continued well into the 19th century.
Hope it can be of any help for you.
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