Soccer nicknames – thereby hangs a tale
How Boddam monkey incident may have been usurped by Hartlepool
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A FOLK SONG which describes the brutal public execution of a monkey in a north-east village may be behind the nickname given to an English Football League club over 300 miles away.
Researchers at Aberdeen University believe that tales about the hanging of a monkey in Hartlepool during the Napoleonic Wars may actually refer to an incident almost 100 years earlier at Boddam, near Peterhead.
According to legend, the Hartlepool monkey was the only survivor of a shipwrecked French warship during the Napoleonic Wars. It was dressed in full military uniform, presumably for the amusement of the crew.
Thinking it must be a Frenchman, the fishermen hanged the unlucky simian seafarer. The story made its way down the generations and today fans of English League One side Hartlepool United, whose squad includes ex-Dundee United and Ross County defender Jamie McCunnie, are nicknamed The Monkey Hangers.
A new study looking at the cultural identity of British fishing communities has found whole lines of The Hartlepool Monkey song were lifted from a song written 80 years earlier on the hanging of the Boddam monkey.
The Boddamers hung the Monkey-O describes how a monkey survived a shipwreck off the Aberdeenshire village. The villagers could claim salvage rights only if there were no survivors from the wreck, so they allegedly hanged the monkey.
Fiona-Jane Brown, a folklorist at the university’s Elphinstone Institute, knew of the link between the two songs and decided to delve deeper.
She said: “The first mention of the Boddam legend can be dated back to 1772 when the shipwreck of the Annie is said to have taken place on the Buchan coast, which is recalled in one version of The Boddamers’ Hung the Monkey-O song.”
The core of the song appeared to travel south and in 1827 a song about a baboon dressed in uniform appeared in Thomas Armstrong’s Newcastle Song Book.
Historians have suggested that the tale inspired Tyneside music hall star Ned Corvan to pen The Hartlepool Monkey song as part of his act around 1854.
According to Ms Brown, Corvan’s song also retained whole lines from the original Boddam version and used the same tune, The Tinkers’ Waddin’.
She added: “The evolution of the song remains an intriguing story in itself but it’s also interesting how each community relates to it now.
“In the north-east of England, the legend has been generally adopted as a positive marker of social identity which survived on the football field.
“In the north-east of Scotland, the Boddamers, who have a longstanding rivalry with nearby Burnhaven, have refused to accept what they see as a slur against their community, a bad memory of bitter rivalries of the past.”
