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By Golly! Bye Golly
'By golly!': used to express surprise, or emphasize what you were saying. Bye Golly! goodbye golly.
The sweet manufacture, Cloetta Fazer (I love Fazer Blue) recently announced that they intend to update the wrapping design of their popular liquorice. For 80 years, Fazer liquorice sticks have been wrapped in paper adorned by a Golly - the caricatured face of a black person.
Growing up in England this announcement is very much déjà vu. Originally called the Golliwog, the Golly first appeared on Robertson’s jam jars in 1910, the character eventually featuring in one of the UK's longest running consumer loyalty schemes. However, in the 1980s Golly began to hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, and as recently as 2001 Robertson’s denied that there was any link between Golliwogs and black people, although they did remove the controversial character from their jars after 91 years, replacing it with drawings from Roald Dahl stories.
In a company statement Robertsons said the decision was taken after research found that children were not familiar with the character, although it still appealed to the older generations. It was denied the Golliwog symbol was being ‘retired’ because it was an offensive or racist image.
Originally, the Gollywog was a rag doll, children's literary character created by American novelist Kate Upton in the 1890s and illustrated by her daughter Florence. The mother and daughter worked together on twelve illustrated books, all featuring the gallant little character and his exciting adventures to Africa and the North Pole, accompanied by his friends, the Dutch Dolls.
The original Golliwog character was friendly and kind, always lending a hand to those in trouble. However, later authors portrayed him very differently. Over the years he became a rascal, was often up to no good and even portrayed as a mean-spirited character. In Britain and its colonies, the word ‘wog’ became an ethnic slur applied to dark-skinned peoples worldwide, including Africans, Italians and other Mediterranean people, Native Americans, Middle Easterners, Hispanics, Aborigines, and Indians.
In the early 1980s, even Enid Blyton’s Noddy books had to be revised. Previously adorned with a friendly Golliwog the owner of Toytown garage, the updated books have a picture of Mr Sparks. At the time, this caused outrage among many parents of a generation who thought that was retrograde and political correctness taken to the extreme. The original cover of Agatha Christie’s novel Ten Little Nigger Boys showed a Golliwog lynched and hanging from a noose. This picture has long since been replaced and the book renamed Ten Little Indian Boys, although this still sounds racist to me!
There is little doubt that the words associated with Golliwog - Golly, Golli, Wog, and Golliwog, itself - are often used as racial slurs. It is even claimed that workers ‘employed’ to build the Suez Canal had to wear shirts indicating that they were 'Working On Government Service' (WOGS). I have no idea if this is true or not?
However, despite Golly’s negative connotations, there has been a recent resurgence of interest in the Golliwog memorabilia among adults. The golly brooch, which was once produced to promote sales of jam and marmalade, is now a collectors’ item and can fetch up to €1,500 at auction. Other collectable Golly items include: postcards, jam jars, paperweights, wallets, perfume bottles, wooden puzzles, sheet music, wall paper, pottery, jewellery, greeting cards, and clocks. But, the most, collectable item of all are the original Golliwog dolls which sell for between €10,000 and €15,000. Finally, I wonder how long it will be before Fazer liquorice wrappers become collectable?
Mike Bangle is the owner of Talking English language consultancy and can be contacted at mike.bangle(at)phnet.fi
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