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It's a strange thing to me, as an Englishman over here, but it seems that deep down inside almost all Americans is a longing for somewhere else.
It seems to be the absolute bedrock of American identity and though it is sometimes barely articulated at other times it is terrifyingly hyphenated.
And, as I say, this is strange to me as an Englishman because as far as I'm concerned I'm just English and any associations with anywhere else (like sub-Roman Germania or tenth century Scandinavia) that my putative ancestors might have called home have been completely subsumed into my Anglicity1--to such an extent that even my genuine claim to otherness and otherwhereishness and other-longing as a half-Scot (or, as I've argued elsewhere, since both of my parents have always stoutly maintained that one of their race is equal to any two of the other--making me either a Scot and a half or an Englishman and a half, I am obviously, for the shear euphony of the thing, a sesqui-Scot )---even this potential sesqi-Scotishness has been subsumed. Like George Formby 's little stick of Blackpool Rock , if you cut me you'll find "A PRESENT FROM ENGLAND" written all the way through me---though if we look at it at all seriously I'm not that much like Formby's little stick of Blackpool Rock, because his presumably claimed, with more precision than I can muster, to be a present from "BLACKPOOL" rather than from "ENGLAND".
But enough about me.
Though, you know, in spite of the fact that, among all those desperately longing Italian-hyphen-, Irish-hyphen-, African-hyphen-, (and for all I know hypothetical Serbo-hyphen-Croatian-hyphen-) Americans, there are no English-hyphen-Americans; I find that just as soon as any of you figures out where I'm from (usually by the second or third word I utter) they immediately join the ranks of those non-existent English-hyphen-Americans as honorary members and evidence a longing for our green and pleasant English hills not to mention our dark Satanic mills ---even if their last name happens to be O'Toole or Soprano or in extreme cases Chen or Wu.
You see I firmly believe that secretly most Americans don't feel they really, truly belong here: indeed I suspect that they suspect that they definitely don't deserve to be here at all. And I suspect further that all the kerfuffle2 that ...um ...fuffles3 from time to time the general American attitude towards illegal immigrants over here (or as we are now meant to call them 'The Undocumented"---and when you consider the holy dread and weave-a-circle-round-him-thrice-ishness in which Americans hold documents, from the Constitution way on down to hall passes, that term, and the lack that it implies, becomes a searing indictment of ... something or other) and so perhaps it's by comparison with these undocumented unfortunates that the holders of that general American attitude hope to gain a measure of comfort with their own estimate of their undeserved if documented good fortune.
Of course, until relatively recently (recently by my Ancient English Standards i.e. 1790) there were no legal American immigrants at all; and it is interesting how it emerges, once you start to investigate this, that it's the most extremely illegal immigrants (though I suppose I should call them PRE-legal immigrants, but I won't), the so-called Native-hyphen-Americans and even so-er-called Pilgrim-Father-hyphen-Americans who seem to have a reputation for having the greatest justification for being here---though from my personal experience I know for a fact that at least one of those groups (and to avoid possible legal action I won't say which) delights in tracing its ancestry beyond these shores.
So, there most of you are, stuck in the middle, languishing between the illegals on the one hand and the illegals on the other---or rather (and I'm only doing this, in quivering abject fear, to avoid possible legal action) between the pre-legal and the undocumented.
No wonder you all lust after your ancestor's old-hyphen-sod.
Cheerio for now
from
Richard Howland-hyphen-Bolton
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Notes:
1[ad. mod.L. Anglicitāt-em, f. Anglic-us, after Latinus, Latinitāt-em, Latinity: see -ITY.]
English quality, as of speech or style; English idiom. 2[Variant of the Scots CURFUFFLE n. (perh. influenced by KER-?), now the general form in colloquial use.]
1946 F. SARGESON That Summer 94, I bet it [sc. the domestic row] ended up in a good old kafuffle. 1959 J. FLEMING Miss Bones xiv. 150 The kerfuffle over the stolen jewels last week. 1960 E. W. HILDICK Jim Starling & Colonel viii. 62 Butcher said he didn't know what all the kerfuffle was about. 1960 A. WYKES Snake Man iii. 38 After this kufuffle was over and we were on our way again. 1965 New Statesman 30 Apr. 693/3 After..some abortive backstage kerfuffles at the National Theatre, Wedekind's Spring Awakening has scraped past the Lord Chamberlain. 1968 'B. MATHER' Springers xii. 130 In the kerfuffle of the last half hour I had forgotten the poor soul's personal needs. 1973 K. AMIS Riverside Villas Murder ii. 40 A lot of our readers are going to think all this kerfuffle over an old skeleton being snatched is..a bit of a joke. 3 Sc. rare. [onomatopœic.]
trans. To throw into disorder; to jerk about; to hustle, treat with contumely. Hence fuffled ppl. a. Also fuffle n., violent exertion, fuss.
1536 LYNDESAY Answ. Kingis Flyting 54 That feynd, with fuffilling of hir roistit hoch, Caist doun the fat. 1635 D. DICKSON Pract. Writ. (1845) I. 177 Thou must be content instead of favour to be fuffled. 1801 HOGG Sc. Pastorals 14 When muckle Pate, wi' desp'rate fuffle, Had at Poltowa won the scuffle. 1819 W. TENNANT Papistry Storm'd (1827) 66 He saw the Vicar..In fuffel'd garb, and plicht ungainly.
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