Your Daily Facts about Umbrellas
Brolliology! Here is a new word for you to use. And what does brolliology mean? It’s is the study of the not so humble umbrella.That one thing everyone has somwhere in their vehicle or home to protect mostly against rain. Though an umbrella is also used to protect against the sun.
Simple definition of an umbrella is a collapsible shade for protection against weather consisting of fabric stretched over hinged ribs radiating from a central pole.
The umbrella is so old that brolliologists (umbrella people) can’t agree on its origin, or decide whether it was first used for protection from the rain or the sun. They do know that it was employed as an item of religious and ceremonial regalia from the earliest days of ancient Egypt. Egyptian mythology held that the visible sky was actually the underbelly of a god stretched from one end of the earth to the other like an immense umbrella. Hence, in contemporary art, priests and Pharoahs were often placed in the shade of an umbrella to symbolize royal and religious power.
Assyrian tablets dating from 1350 B.C. depict a king leading his retinue while servants shade the royal head with a long-handled parasol.
The early Greeks used the umbrella as a symbol of productivity and sexual aggression, usually associated with the god Bacchus, and they carried umbrellas in many of their parades and festivals. In later centuries, the Greeks put the umbrella to a more utilitarian use as a sunshade, and developed sunshade hats similar to the sombrero.
The Romans, too, used parasols against the sun. Women attending chariot races in the amphitheatre sometimes dyed their parasols to denote their favorite chariot team. If you’ve ever attended a football game in drizzly weather and have been annoyed to no end by umbrellas blocking your line of vision, you may find it comforting to know that the Romans had a similar problem at their games, with a hot dispute over parasol use finally decided by the emperor Domitian, in favor of the sunshade.
Europe was introduced to the umbrella through ancient Byzantium. In the eighth century, Pope Paul I gave Frankish King Pepin the Short a jewel-handled umbrella as a token of Papal support for his reign.
In the fifteenth century, Portuguese seamen bound for the East Indies brought along umbrellas as fit gifts for native royalty. Upon landing on a strange island, the seamen immediately opened an umbrella over their captain’s head, to demonstrate his authority.
The Normans brought a twelve-ribbed umbrella to England in the eleventh century. But the first contextual use of the word “umbrella” (from umbra, Latin for “shade”) does not appear in English literature until 1609, in the work of John Donne. The spelling was not finalized until much later, and umbrellow, umbrello, and umbrillo were common as late as the nineteenth century.
You may think that at least the fold-up or transparent umbrella is a recent invention. Not true! An enterprising gentleman by the name of Gosselin of Amiens constructed a fold-up “pocket” model with four interjoined steel tubes in 17851 In fact, the construction of the umbrella hasn’t changed very much since 1760, when most umbrellas were already being built with eight ribs, a sliding brace, and a curved handle. As for the transparent umbrella, an apocryphal English tale attributes its invention to a Russian prince who wanted to keep a wary eye out for mad dogs!
Modern umbrella makers contend that today’s models are so well constructed that the average person needn’t go through more than two in his lifetime. But they make no mention of the phenomenon of the lost umbrella, which more often than not is the reason for a new purchase.
There’s the widespread superstition that opening a umbrella indoors brings bad luck. Then, of course, there’s the age-old belief that the easiest way to assure a rainy day is to leave your umbrella at home.