What billytea "All Ogle, No Cash -- It's Not Just Annoying, It's Un-American" Feb 4, 2003 10:49:02 am EST said.

The advantage of the jimmygrants-pommegrants explanation is that it does have contemporaneous evidence backing it.

The term "Jimmy grant" or "jimmie" occurs in books published in the 1845-1880 period.

The jimmygrants-pommegrants connexion is less well documented. The term pommy is documented in 1912, and there is testimony from people (although only recorded in the 1980s) that they used the rhyme as children to mock the English in the years prior to WWI.

G A Wilkes dates the origin as possibly as far back as the first (voluntary) mass immigration on the clipper ships of the 1870s.

Dun: means old fortess and Dee is the name of a river, hence Dun Dee means the castle on the river Dee.

Incidentally, to give an insight into the workings of certain freak-ass church thinking, my old church used to argue that the large number of place-names with the construction D_n in Ireland and Scotland identified these places as the home of the Israelite tribe of Dan. (Jacob prophesies about his kids on his deathbed, having nothing better to do, and says something about Dan and a serpent's trail, which said church interpreted as meaning he'd leave his name on everything. A bit like Donald Trump. ...Hey, hang on a minute! Donald? Quick, we need a rewrite!)

One of the splinter group then tried to fit in the Ancient Greeks, or the Danaans as they were sometimes known. That was quite the imaginative leap.

So, your freak-ass church wasn't much for logical history, was it?

Also, I mean, who diasporas to Scotland from Jerusalem? Gee, you know, it's nice and warm down here, but we're being persecuted a lot by these imperial Romans-- I know! Let's flee to a freezing cold, windy country, where we can get persecuted a lot by imperial Englishmen!

Zero sum, yanno?

Well, the Lost Tribes of Israel got around rather a lot. No wonder they were lost.

So, your freak-ass church wasn't much for logical history, was it?

It has been commented upon.

Also, I mean, who diasporas to Scotland from Jerusalem?

On this point, note that Dan was among the Israelites forcibly removed by the Assyrians. (Jerusalem was part of Judah's territory.) So they didn't have much choice on the leaving part at least. (Of course, that still doesn't get them to Ireland.)

Your freak-ass church is clearly related to the people who put Troy in Belgium. There are a frightening lot of such people.

I thought that the plural for grouse was grouse.

Your freak-ass church is clearly related to the people who put Troy in Belgium. There are a frightening lot of such people.

Troy featured in my Pictionary game on Saturday night. Bec drew a very attractive horse with a missing belly and a ladder leading into it to communicate "Helen of Troy".

And here I thought the plural for grouse was curmudgeons.

the Lost Tribes of Israel got around rather a lot.

They got to Jamaica. Maybe they came via Scotland.