Re: Interesting Brain/Language Nugget of Info

Raymond A. Brown scripsit:

> Simple - you drove on the left so that if the person coming towards you
> looked suspicious you could get your hand to your sword pretty sharpish.
The explanation I have heard is more indirect: driving on the left <
riding on the left < mounting your horse at the road's edge < not
mounting horse on the "off" side < not stabbing horse with sword
< cross-drawing left-mounted sword with right hand.

I note that in Dante's *Inferno* (1320 or thereabouts) the rule of
the road (8th circle, Bolgia 1) is already "keep to the right",
and this is analogized to a similar rule imposed in Rome for the
jubilee year of 1300, when heavy pedestrian traffic made some rule
necessary.

> Aparently the left was a common side to drive on.  Napoleon marched his
> armies on the right, so that they would not be hindered by traffic moving
> in the same direction!  But those who followed in Boney's wake found it
> more convenient to keep on the right behind the armies.  Or so the story
> goes  :)
Right driving was also efficient for drivers of teams, a fact
(independently?) rediscovered here in the late 18th or early 19th
century.

> Convention, I guess.  I understand that in many countries the trains do go
> on the left as in Brit fashion - but in the UK canal traffic always keeps
> to the right  :)
Water traffic keeps to the right everywhere, by international agreement.
See "Rumpelheimer v. Haddock [Port to Port]" by A. P. Herbert
(http://www.kmoser.com/herb06.htm) for a truly hilarous take on this point.
(What is the rule of the road on a flooded roadway in England, when
a motorcar and a rowboat meet?)

--
John Cowan                                   cowan@ccil.org
       I am a member of a civilization. --David Brin