'I'd Arrived in a Rather Special Place'

Nige reports a bumper crop of conkers this year, and I wondered what he was talking about. It seems to be another word that never crossed the Atlantic. My American-made spell-check software doesn’t recognize it. I know conk (Pierce Egan’s Boxiana: “Spring however conked his opponent, when they closed”) and “conked out,” as in exhausted to the point of losing consciousness. And when I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X in 1969, I learned that conk refers to the painful chemical hair-straightening procedure some black people underwent (“my first really big step toward self-degradation,” Malcolm calls it). From context, I understood that Nige is referring to horse-chestnuts, but the folklore and etymology eluded me. Coined by English boys, the word began as a homonym of “conquers,” according to the OED:

“A boys’ game, played originally with snail-shells but now with horse-chestnuts, in which each boy has a chestnut on a string which he alternately strikes against that of his opponent and holds to be struck until one of the two is broken.”

The Dictionary cites a reference Robert Southey makes in his remembrance of schooldays in the 1780’s in Corston: “One very odd amusement, which I never saw or heard of elsewhere, was greatly in vogue at this school. It was performed with snail shells, by placing them against each other, point to point, and pressing till the one was broken in, or sometimes both. This was called conquering . . . A great conqueror was prodigiously prized and coveted.”

In Children’s Games in Street and Playground (1969), Iona and Peter Opie make conkers sound like a ritual deeply rooted in the culture of English children:

“For a brief spell in early autumn this game is as much a part of the English scene as garden bonfires, and hounds cubbing at break of day. The boys are out searching for conkers, throwing sticks and stones up into the chestnut trees (the best conkers are believed to be at the top of the tree) and, with or without permission, invading people’s gardens. They meet with little opposition. The youthful pleasure of prising a mahogany-smooth chestnut from its prickly casing is not easily forgotten; and when a vicar wrote to The Times complaining about the depredations of small enthusiasts, readers’ sentiment was clearly against him.”

Compare the Opies’ account with Nige’s:

“It was at just this time of year that I first arrived, at the age of nine, in the suburban demiparadise I still call home. After the first day of school, I joined a gang of boys heading straight to the park to climb trees and harvest conkers. We had to throw sticks – there was nothing like this year’s easy largesse – but that only made it more fun. I looked around me at the park, lit by a mellow September sun, and knew I'd arrived in a rather special place.”

I note that the fun police are as vigilant in England as they are in the U.S. See “School bans ‘nut allergy’ conkers.”