'Basalonies pig as ponies!'
-
njgill — 11 years ago(September 13, 2014 12:01 AM)
You know, it wouldn't hurt to put the link in the FAQ section for the series under the question, "Can the original books be read online?"
If I had the faintest idea what you are talking about, I would be happy to do it. -
Hecate-3 — 11 years ago(September 13, 2014 01:47 PM)
On the main page for the show, between the sections titled "Did You Know?" and "User Reviews" there is a section called "Frequently Asked Questions". It's a way to answer questions that people might ask multiple times without cluttering the message boards with new topics asking and answering the same questions over and over again.
"Can the original books be read online?" was my suggestion for the question. -
Hecate-3 — 11 years ago(September 14, 2014 02:58 PM)
Thanks for posting the FAQ link!
You never know how many people have wondered but were too shy to ask or didn't have an IMDB account. It could also introduce people to the books who otherwise would not have thought about whether there were books. -
TaraDeS — 11 years ago(September 12, 2014 03:05 PM)
SkillyWiggler89 Wed Sep 3 2014 21:59:34
Does anyone know what this means? Twister had me cracking up when he was selling the bags of nuts, but I'm very curious about the meaning of what he was saying. Any help is appreciated.
There's a digitized book of 1886 about the town Morley in Yorkshire:
Then, to refresh us, we were asked to buy a "stick and a glass for a ha'p'ny" and, if not tempted by these, we had the succulent brandysnap and real "
Bassalony nuts
" to fall back upon.
https://archive.org/stream/morleyancientan00smitgoog/morleyancientan00 smitgoog_djvu.txt
Seems Twister Turrill sold the biggest and best Bassalony nuts.
Leastwise in his opinion.
As big as poniesnot turtles. -
Hecate-3 — 11 years ago(September 12, 2014 10:02 PM)
Thanks for the additional reference.
It still seems odd that I couldn't find the term in my Oxford English Dictionary unless it is a colloquialism. I checked for basa-, baso-, bassa-, and basso- spellings. Leeds and Oxford are approximately 290 km apart (180 miles) which seems pretty widespread usage for a regional term. Perhaps it was widely used in England back in the day but was only used by country folk. -
Camargue — 11 years ago(October 18, 2014 11:58 PM)
I'm just about positive that he was referring to Barcelona nuts, which are large filberts; BUT this was such a backwoods area, and "getting stuff" was difficult, so I'm wondering how he got them, since they grow in Spain.
It must have been an off shipment (a one time event) OR he was just "gilding the lily" as he enjoyed doing.
Perhaps he found some "large" filberts and was selling them as "Barcelonas."
"Truth" (as a concept) was never high on his list. -
Helena727 — 11 years ago(November 26, 2014 10:52 PM)
He's referring to "Barcelona nuts" a type of hazelnut and calling them "Barcelonies." His pronunciation renders it "Bah-suh-loh-nees." The person or persons who created the subtitles erred in rendering "Barcelonies" as "basalonies"; I'm re-watching Series 1 on DVD, with the subtitles, and there are several small errors (ex: Mr. Rushton says it's unappealing for a woman always to be the "fount" of wisdom, but that is rendered "font").
Also, I doubt that the nuts for sale were true Barcelona nuts but were instead wild hazelnuts (which grow all over the UK, according to
The Guardian
newspaper) gathered by Queenie.
"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people." -
Hecate-3 — 11 years ago(November 27, 2014 07:39 PM)
This is not an error in the subtitles. User njgill already posted the original text by Flora Thompson which had Twister saying Bassalonies big as ponies! and another poster found another reference to
bassalonies
in a different work by a different author. You can find these posts in the previous page for this thread.
njgill also explained that
bassalonies
was probably a corruption of
barcelonas
, as in barcelona nuts. Four people have repeated this since it was originally posted by njgill. The fact that
bassalonies
is not listed in the OED lends credence to the theory that it is either a very limited regional colloquialism or a mispronunciation. And unless someone can contribute
new
information, that's as close to a definitive answer as we are ever likely to get. -
ARoggen — 9 years ago(May 24, 2016 04:40 AM)
I agree with the outcome of this thread, but did my own searches before I came here.
It is interesting that Bassalon was a type of French bread and was regulated. http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2015/07/french-bread-history-late-medieval.html
In Bordeaux, a number of different statutes exist from different periods. In all, the standard white bread is called choyne. The second quality is typically called amassa, though it sometime is called bread with all its bran (ab tot son cot). The third is called bassalon or barsalor (probably a variant of bassalon). The statute from 1336 (the oldest) also lists fogassa; that is, a white bread even whiter than the standard white bread. This is clear from the respective weights: fogassa, twelve ounces; choyne, fourteen; amassa, sixteen; barsalor, eighteen. In 1407, the weights were: choyne, sixteen; bread with all its bran, twenty-one; bassalon, twenty-four. In 1421, these were: choyne, ten; massa, thirteen; bassalon, seventeen.
Also, later in American Bassalon was a raggedy man in the 1950s, though I have never heard that term. http://www.wordsandphrasesfromthepast.com/word-list-bpg-2.html