What in the world do leaping lords, French hens, swimming swans, and especially the partridge who won’t come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas?

From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practise their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a religious reality which the children could remember.

-The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.

-Two turtledoves were the Old and New Testaments.

-Three French hens stood for faith, hope, and love.

-The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.

-The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.

-The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.

-Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit–Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.

-The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.                  

-Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit–Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and self-control.

-The ten lords a-leaping were the Ten Commandments.

-The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.

-The twelve drummers drumming symbolised the twelve points of belief in the Apostles’ Creed.

Editors untie!

• By John Rentoul
• Eagle Eye
• Tuesday, 14 June 2011 at 12:01 am

I have an article in The Independent today about the Banned List, so I reproduce the latest version here. These are the top 100 words and phrases to avoid.

Meanwhile, the Committee is working extra shifts compiling  an even longer list in secret, so that no one knows whether they have been banned or not, thus ensuring that self-discipline, originality and the avoidance of cliché is internalised.

Nominations for candidates to go on the new list in the comments, please. Or send me a #bannedlist suggestion on Twitter.

1. It’s the economy, stupid.

2. A week is a long time in politics. Or variants thereof, such as, “If a week is a long time in politics then a month seems an eternity.”

3. What part of x don’t you understand? Although this one seems to have nearly died out already.

4. Way beyond, or way more.

5. Any time soon.

6. “Events, dear boy, events.” (Except as the name of an excellent political blog, currently in abeyance.)

7. Learning curve.

8. Raising awareness.

9. Celebrating diversity.

10. In any way, shape or form.

11. Inclusive.

12. Community, especially a vibrant one.

13. Hearts and minds.

14. Celebrity.

15. Makeover.

16. Lifestyle.

17. Going forward.

18. A forward policy.

19. A big ask.

20. At this moment in time.

21. Not fit for purpose.

22. Hard-working families.

23. Apologies for lack of postings.

24. Black hole (in a financial context).

25. The elephant in the room.

26. Perfect storm.

27. Seal the deal.

28. A good election to lose.

29. Game-changer.

30. Beginning an article with “So”.

31. IMO, IMHO, LOL, ROFL and so on. I mean, whose opinion is it going to be? Genuinely witty abbreviations, however, are permitted, for example, QTWTAIN, YYSSW, IICRS (Questions to Which the Answer is No; Yeah, Yeah, Sure, Sure, Whatever; Iraq Inquiry Coverage Rebuttal Service).

32. Vibrant (when used to mean lots of non-English people).

33. Progressive.

34. Arguably, as in “arguably the most perfect village in the Siebenburgen” (Spectator, 24 July 2010).

35. Headlines beginning “Now”, as in “Now You Pay for Prison Parties.”

36. We will take no lessons on x from y.

37. Beginning a report with “They came”.

38. Iconic.

39. “Action” as a verb.

40. Parameter.

41. The level of.

42. A sense of.

43. A series of.

44. The introduction of.

45. A package of. Especially measures.

46. A basket of.

47. A raft of.

48. A range of.

49. The prospect of.

50. (All) the hallmarks of.

51. “Leverage” as a verb.

52. U-turn as a verb.

53. Dislocate as a noun. Or disconnect.

54. Toilet, storyline or any other unsuitable noun as a verb.

55. Exponential or exponentially used to mean big or a lot.

56. Incredible or incredibly as intensifiers.

57. On a daily basis.

58. It’s in his/her/their DNA.

59. Let’s be clear.

60. At the end of the day.

61. Organic, to refer to anything unrelated to farming or to the chemical science that deals with carbon-based compounds.

62. “The truth is…” before the peddling of an opinion.

63. End of.

64. Any journey not describing travel from A to B.

65. A no-brainer.

66. Pot, kettle.

67. What’s not to like?

68. Max out (in relation to credit cards only).

69. He/she gets it. They get it. He/she/it just doesn’t get it.

70. “All the evidence tells us” to mean “I’ve read something about this somewhere that confirms my prejudices”.

71. Fairly unique.

72. Paradigm shift. Or anything to do with a paradigm.

73. Quantum leap, except to mean a very small change of fixed magnitude.

74. Step change.

75. Sea change.

76. Real people and the real world. In real time.

77. Coffee, the waking up and smelling thereof.

78. Ongoing.

79. Project, except in the construction industry.

80. “No longer.” (Following a loving description of The Way We Were.)

81. Agenda, except to describe a list of things to be discussed in a meeting.

82. Out of the box (especially thinking).

83. Kick the can down the road.

84. Psychodrama. (To describe any tense political relationship.)

85. Radar, to be on someone’s, or to be under the.

86. Name and shame.

87. Does what it says on the tin.

88. Stakeholder.

89. Deliverables.

90. Key (adjective). Especially keynote speech.

91. Enough already.

92. Who knew?

93. Epic fail.

94. See what I/he/she did there?

95. Not so much.

96. Beleaguered, except of a city, town or fort with turrets.

97. Rolling out, except carpet, wallpaper or logs.

98. Forward planning (until invention of time machine allowing other kinds).

99. “And yet, and yet …”

100. The suffix -gate added to any news theme supposedly embarrassing to a government.

The original Banned List was, of course, George Orwell’s in 1946: dying metaphors (“Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles’ heel, swan song, hotbed”); verbal false limbs (“Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of”); pretentious diction (“Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilise, eliminate, liquidate”); and meaningless words (his examples included “class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality”).

And Orwell’s six rules hold good:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

Never use the passive where you can use the active.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

It should also be noted that the Committee has decreed that some phrases are compulsory.

Christopher Columbus found the New World in 1492. James Cook was the first person to cross the Antarctic Circle in 1773. Ferdinand Magellan was the first to circumnavigate the world in 1519-22 although he died along the way so it doesn’t really count. We hang our history on firsts without acknowledging that they are only the first that we know of and we make it all neat and tidy. As skulls of hominids are discovered that push our likely lineage millions of years further back in time, we need to apply the same flexibility to modern history.

Many discoveries should set our minds wandering. A large cache of Chinese bronze coins and a bronze mirror dating from 1200 BC have been found in Victoria BC. A Chinese stele (inscribed stone marker) has been reported at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Along the northwest coast, many other hoards of Chinese coins and artefacts have been found. When the first white settlers arrived in the Columbia River area, they saw that the Wishram Indians had thousands of old Chinese coins that they had received from Chinese sea traders. Chinese stone anchors of pre-Columbian origin have been discovered along the west coast down to California. Peanuts, a New World crop, have been found in Pre-Columbian sites in Zhejian (Chekiang) province in China dating from 2100 and 1811 BC.

With the ability to send photos and information worldwide in an instant these days, the number of discoveries and connections is multiplying exponentially. An Egyptian bronze disc with three pyramids and a sphinx on it was found in a cave in Cozumel in the 1950s. Egyptian hieroglyphs are carved on rocks in Australia. Japanese figurines from 500 AD were found by a peasant near Merida in the Yucatan. Frescoes in Mayan ruins depict Greek or Roman galleys. Roman amphorae are found in the Bay of Guanabara, Brazil, Greco-Roman terracotta oil lamps in pre-Inca tombs in Peru as well as Roman jewellery in six graves near Mexico City. In Pompeii, fruit that resembles pineapples and squash, both from the Americas, has been depicted in a mosaic and murals painted before AD 79. Why are Olmec heads in Venezuela so African? On Easter Island, bedrock stone is carved in the shape of a Chinese foo dog, its mouth open to catch rainwater. We don’t just read about them but see photos and can even make comments.

In his book 1421, Gavin Menzies started an explosion of interest in the Chinese diplomatic mission of the treasure ship fleet led by Zheng He (Cheng Ho) between 1405 and 1434. Menzies is well able to understand the problems of a mariner, having been a Royal Navy submarine commanding officer. His expertise together with discoveries reported to him by people around the world resulted in the second book, 1434, which describes the Chinese visiting the Mediterranean and contributing the knowledge that began the Renaissance. Leonardo’s “inventions” were modifications of Chinese ideas. Menzies’s personal journey began when studying a map dated 1424 that showed islands in the Atlantic called Antillia (Antilles), noted on many ancient maps, which might be Puerto Rico and Guadeloupe. Others, such as Paul Chiasson, author of The Island of Seven Cities, claim it is Cape Breton. Anyway, it’s there on the maps that were drawn before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. So Columbus and Pinzon had not discovered America and neither had Cabral discovered Brazil. They arrived with maps in their hands.

In his book, In Quest of the Great White Gods, Robert F. Marx, archaeologist and diver, followed up many of the discoveries mentioned above and even went to the trouble of recreating Columbus’s Niña and replicating the voyage with 15^th century equipment and conditions in an attempt to understand early voyages. He also built Viking ships to prove their seaworthiness and endured the unbearably harsh conditions of sailing to North America, which had occurred about 1,000 years ago and in a warmer climate. Finding Phoenician shipwrecks was a constant goal to provide the reverse engineering he needed to build a Phoenician ship and prove that they too could have crossed the Atlantic. Discoveries of a bronze axe head, amphorae, Greek, Roman and Egyptian artefacts in South America seem to prove the case. A Phoenician inscription on a stone reused in a church in the Yucatan provides another puzzle. The Mi’kmaq of the Maritimes have stories about white visitors and writing that echoes Chinese characters. The finds, however well documented, indicate that history is a much more complicated story than we imagine. When the inhabitants of South America have Asian DNA and Asian chickens with blue eggs well before Columbus arrived, we need to wonder.