Davy Jones's Locker

________________________________________________
Title:     Davy Jones's Locker
Author: Benjamin Taylor [More Titles by Taylor]

This expression of what may be called nautical slang has now become almost classic. At all events, everybody knows it; and most people may be presumed to know that to 'go to Davy Jones's Locker' is equivalent to 'losing the number of your mess,' or, as the Californian miners say, 'passing in your checks.' Being especially a sea-phrase, it means, of course, to be drowned. But how did the phrase originate? And who was Davy Jones? These questions must have frequently occurred to many, and it is worth while seeking an answer to them. There is an explanation for everything, if one only knows how to look for it.

This saying about Davy Jones is a very old one--so old, that it cannot possibly have any reference to the famous Paul Jones. In fact, one hears very often of 'Davy's Locker' without any reference to 'Jones' at all. Then 'Davy,' again, is a vulgar slang expression for affidavit, but it is also used in thief-parlance by way of an oath. 'So help me Davy!' is the slang equivalent for the concluding sentence of the oath administered in the police-courts with which these gentry are familiar. It has thus been inferred that 'Davy' is a slang expression of somewhat blasphemous import; but this is by no means certain.

It is much more likely to be associated with, or to have the same origin as, the 'Duffy' of the West Indian negroes. Among them Duffy means a ghost; and in the vocabulary of the gutter it may easily have been taken as the equivalent of soul. The transition from Duffy to Davy is by no means difficult.

But how, then, did the vagabond users of 'flash' language get hold of this word? It is probable enough that it was brought home by the sailors from the West Indies, and picked up at the docks by the waifs and strays of our vast vagrant population. On the other hand, it is just as likely that the West Indian negroes picked up 'Duffy' from our own sailors; and that, in fact, Duffy is just the nigger contraction of Davy Jones. There is certainly a very close connection, both in sound and meaning, between the two expressions.

We must go further back and further away, however, to get to the root of this matter. And, if we inquire diligently, we shall find our Davy in the Deva of the Indian mythology. The original Sanskrit meaning of Deva was 'The Shining One,' but in the operation of what has been called 'the degradation of Deities' in the Oriental religions, it became synonymous with our devil. In fact, we owe the word 'devil' to this same Sanskrit root; and it is noteworthy that while Deva meant the Good Spirit to the Brahmans, it meant the Evil Spirit to the Parsees. In this root we may also find the explanation of the gipsy word for God, which, curiously enough, is Devel.

While it is easy to trace the transition from Deva to the sailor's Davy, one may note another curious thing. The name of the fabulous Welshman, Taffy, the thief, is a corruption of Dyved, which, as signifying an evil spirit, is the Cymric form of Deva. This would almost suggest that the addition of the apparent surname, Jones, was a Welsh performance. But this is only an amusing conjecture, not without a certain aptness.

For the origin of Jones we must look to Jonah, who in nautical history is regarded as the embodiment of malevolence at sea. The prophet Jonah is not the only one who has been committed to the deep to appease the storm-fiends, whose anger his presence was supposed to have aroused. It is easy to account for this from the Bible narrative. 'The mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his God. And they said, every one to his fellow, "Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us." So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. So they took up Jonah and cast him forth into the sea, and the sea ceased from her raging.'

The superstition of sailors is proverbial, and to this day they believe in good or ill luck being brought to a vessel by persons and things. In olden times there were many sacrifices to this Jonah superstition; and even in comparatively recent times, Holcroft, the actor, on a voyage to Scotland, narrowly escaped a watery grave, because the men took him for 'the Jonas.' And to this day 'He's a Jonah' is an expression often enough heard on ship-board applied to some unwelcome passenger.

Here, then, we have the Sanskrit origin of Davy, and the Biblical origin of Jones, both words embodying much the same idea to the mind of the primitive seamen.

But what of the 'locker'?

This, of course, is a familiar piece of ship-furniture which it was not difficult to transfer to the mythical demon of the deep. Lieutenant Bassett thought that the locker might be the whale's belly in which Jonah found refuge; but this is hardly in harmony with the meaning of the phrase. In the sense in which it is thus used, locker does not mean a temporary resting-place or submarine harbour of refuge, but a place of final deposit. It is possible, indeed, to find the origin of the word locker as here applied in Loki, the personification of evil in the Scandinavian mythology. Loki, like Deva, was not always an evil spirit, but he became eventually identified with Satan. He became a flame-demon, a sort of incarnate spirit of fire.

There is good reason for believing in this theory of the Scandinavian origin of the word 'locker' as used in the connection we are considering. It is to be remembered that, in olden times, death by drowning was even more dreaded than now, because drowned bodies were supposed to be debarred from the Resurrection. Going far back, we find that the sea was the abode of Typhoeus, who, besides being a hurricane-raising, was also a fire-breathing, demon, and was feared as the quencher of the sun, who sank at night into his bosom. The legend of St. Brandan and his burning islands preserved the idea that Hades was very near to the bottom of the ocean. Thus, then, we may readily perceive the conception of Loki having his receptacle for drowned mariners in the bed of the sea. A belief prevailed long into the Middle Ages that the sea-bottom was the abode of many demons, who lay in wait for passengers, to drag them down to the infernal depths.

Thus, then, Davy Jones's Locker became, by a mixture of theogonies, 'the ocean, the deep sea-bottom, the place to which the body was committed, and to which the souls of the wicked fled.'

This meaning is now somewhat modified. Sailors do not, as Smollett says they did in his day, regard Davy Jones as the fiend who presides over all the evil spirits of the deep, and who is seen in various shapes, warning the devoted wretches of death and woe. In fact, it is not Davy Jones they think of at all now, but his Locker; for to go to Davy's Locker is to be lost at sea and to find a watery grave.

There is, however, a curious survival of the personal element still to be traced in some of the sailors' chanties. Take, for instance, that remarkable one about 'Burying the Dead Horse,' which still puzzles the passengers on board the packets sailing to the Antipodes. Without going into the question of the song and its attendant ceremonies just now, the following lines may be quoted as bearing on our subject:

'You poor old horse, what brought you here,
After carrying turf for many a year?
From Bantry Bay to Ballyack,
When you fell down and broke your back?
You died from blows and sore abuse,
And were salted down for the sailors' use.
The sailors they the meat despise;
They turned you over and ---- your eyes;
They ate the meat and picked the bones,
And gave the rest to Davy Jones.'

All the offal of a ship is thrown over to Davy Jones--doubtless because there is nothing else to be done with it.

The favourite demon, if one may use the expression, of British sailors is now Old Nick, and one may trace his origin even more easily than that of Davy Jones. We can follow him through Saxon, German, Danish and Norwegian transitions to one of the names of Odin--Hnickar--for even All-father Odin shared the fate of his Oriental predecessors, and became demonized. Others, again, have carried the name Hnickar back still further to the Egyptian Nika, the serpent of the lower world, 'the Typhonic enemy of the Sun in his night-journey.'

It is to the same root that we owe the Necken of the Baltic, and the Nixies--the water-fays--of the German legends. It is to the Norwegian Noekke, also, that we owe the Wild Huntsman of the Sea, on which the story of the Flying Dutchman and a host of other legends of demon vessels and demon mariners are founded.

There is, however, some confusion in the nautical mythology between the original Old Nick and the popular Saint Nicholas. This saint became the Christian successor of Neptune, as the protector of seamen. 'This saintly Poseidon,' says Mr. Conway, 'the patron of fishermen, in time became associated with the demon whom the British sailor feared if he feared nothing else. He was also of old the patron of pirates; and robbers were called "St. Nicholas' clerks."'

It is certainly one of the curiosities of plutology that the patron saint of children who is still honoured at Christmas as Santa Claus should be the same as the dreaded Old Nick of the seafarers.

These investigations are extremely interesting, and may lead us far; but our present purpose is merely to find an explanation of a popular phrase.

It is more difficult to explain a number of other marine personalities, who are as lively to-day on shipboard as they were generations ago. There is, for instance, old Mister Storm-Along, of whom the chanty-man sings:

'When Stormy died, I dug his grave--
I dug his grave with a silver spade;
I hove him up with an iron crane,
And lowered him down with a golden chain.'

Who was he? And who was the famous Captain Cottington, of whom it is related, in stentorian tones and with tireless repetition, that:

'Captain Cottington, he went to sea,
Captain Cottington, he went to sea-e-e-e,
Captain Cottington, he went to sea,
Captain Cottington, he went to sea-e!'

Who, also, was 'Uncle Peleg,' of whom a somewhat similarly exhaustive history is chanted? And, still more, who was the mysterious Reuben Ranzo, with whose name every fo'cs'le of every outward-bound British or American ship is constantly resounding?

'Pity Reuben Ranzo--
Ranzo, boys, a Ranzo!
Oh, pity Reuben Ranzo--
Ranzo, boys, a Ranzo!'

He had a remarkable career, this Reuben, according to the song. He was a tailor by trade; went to school on the Monday, learnt to read on Tuesday, and by Friday he had thrashed the master. Then he went to sea, and, after some ignominious experiences, married the captain's daughter, and became himself the captain of a whaler. But who was he? And how does he come to exercise such a fascination over all mariners, even unto this day?

This is one of the mysteries of the ocean. The sea is covered with mystery, and with phantom shapes. Every ship that sails is peopled with a crew of dim shadows of the past that none can explain.

[The end]
Benjamin Taylor's essay: Davy Jones's Locker

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN