What Is The Origin Of (196)?…
Get the upper hand
If I was pressed to name my ten favourite tracks of all time, high up there would be Matty Groves from Fairport Convention’s seminal 1969 album, Liege and Lief. The interplay between Richard Thompson’s guitar and Dave Swarbrick’s violin together with Sandy Denny’s majestic vocals meant that folk rock had truly arrived.
The song is a reworking of a traditional ballad, Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard, which appeared in Francis Child’s collection of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, published in 1882. Childs dated the ballad in question to around 1600. This dating is important in determining the origin of our phrase, get the upper hand, which is used to signify that someone or something has taken a dominant position or gained an advantage.
The ballad, a tragic tale of marital deception and its consequences, contains the following stanza; “A grave, a grave, Lord Barnard cryd/ To put these lovers in;/ But bury my lady on the upper hand,/ For she came of the better kin.” The Fairport’s version has the final couplet as “but bury my lady at the top/ for she was of noble kin.”
If Childs’ dating of the ballad is anywhere near the mark, then we can dispose of some of the more fanciful theories behind the origin of the phrase. One of those is a method used to choose teams for games of playground baseball in the States, a selection process which was always a trial for the unathletic the world over. Apparently one captain would grab the bottom of the handle of a baseball bat and the other captain would hold it immediately above their opponent’s hand and so on until they reached the top. The one whose hand was at the top would have the upper hand and get first pick.
But baseball wasn’t invented until Abner Doubleday had the bright idea in 1839. Its precursor, rounders, is believed to have been played since the 16th century, the first reference to the game, interestingly referred to as baseball, appearing in A Little Pretty Pocketbook, published in 1744. It is highly unlikely that this is the origin.
Nor is it likely to relate to the charming custom of holding hands. Whilst most of us do it automatically, one of the pair’s hand is above the other’s and it may signify some kind of dominance. Thomas Macaulay seems to suggest this sense in his History of England, published in 1848, when discussing some areas of dispute which included “who should take the upper hand in public walks..”
The usage in the Little Musgrave ballad revolves around status. Lady Barnard is to be buried above Musgrave because she had a higher social status. In Roman times a marriage cum manu (literally, with hand) was one where the wife came under the legal control of her hubby, contrasting with a marriage sine manu (without hand) where control remained with the bride’s father. Is Lord Barnard simply exercising his right over his wife in determining where she is buried?
Or, alternatively, is it something to do with wrestling? The term, get the over hand, relating to an opponent taking control of their opponent, has been around since the 14th century and wrestling was an extremely popular pastime in medieval and later times. But this sense doesn’t quite gel with its usage in the Little Musgrave ballad, unless, of course, it is being used in a figurative sense.
It is all a bit puzzling.
Its antonym, get the lower hand, has been around since at least the 1690s, although its usage is very rare.
