The bluebottle (Calliphora vomitoria) is a buzzing nuisance in summer - this picture is by JJ Harrison
Lately I have been “running around like a blue-arsed fly”, a lovely phrase I picked up from my parents during my childhood.
I don’t think there is any doubt about it, the saying must surely come from the buzzing behaviour of the bluebottle, an annoying fly (Calliphora vomitoria) found in many parts of the world.
It’s very much a fly of hot summer weather and rotting food, rubbish and excrement. Even its stop-start buzzing is annoying. Which is all a shame, as it has a pretty metallic blue colour. Here’s a lovely website all about iridescence, featuring the bluebottle and other lustrous marvels.
The bluebottle has a lustrous behind...
Why do we call it a bluebottle? My dictionary has no idea. Although I suspect it may come from the old word bot or bott, meaning the larva (maggot) of a botfly, which infests the skin of various mammals, producing warbles (painful, hard swellings). This particularly affects the stomachs of horses or the noses of sheep.
Bott probably comes from the Scots Gaelic word boiteag, which means a maggot. The word maggot itself may come from a Middle English word maddok/mathek from Old Norse mathkr, all meaning “maggot” and related to that other word mawkish, meaning “maggoty”.
My memories of the bluebottle come from the days before fridges, when we kept food in a larder or metal-meshed meat-safe. Our constant fear was maggots from bluebottles. We had roast shoulder of lamb (a cheap, fatty cut) for Sunday dinner (in the middle of the day, we didn’t call it lunch).
The leftover meat was placed on a high shelf and many was the time it was retrieved only to find the white fat moving with cream-coloured maggots. A bit offputting!
But flies are not the only bluebottles. In Britain bluebottle is also a name for the common cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) – not that I would ever have called it that. Another nickname I wouldn’t have used is “bachelor’s button”. Pretty flower, anyway.
Bluebottle is also a name for the common cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) - this picture is by Adrian198cm
Then there are the policemen…
A cartoon by John Leech from 1855 shows a policeman - a 'peeler' or 'bluebottle' - on the right
Bluebottle and Eccles (shown here as puppets) were characters in the Goon Show...
No doubt because of their long blue coats, the early London policemen, known as Peelers after their founder Robert Peel, were also called bluebottles. Perhaps they were rushing around a lot, too…
Fans of the Goons comedy show on radio will recall the Peter Sellers character Bluebottle, not a policeman but a young boy scout who was blown up in every episode.
Wherever English-speaking people have spread in the world, the bluebottle idea has gone with them. In Australia it is a name for a Portuguese man-o’-war jellyfish (Physalia physalis) – not a true jellyfish but a collection of other organisms. Here’s a good blog post on the subject. You can see why they might be called bluebottles…
A bluebottle jellyfish or Portuguese man-o'-war by Pappito
Although I can’t see why this beautiful tropical butterfly (Graphium sarpedon teredon) is known as a common bluebottle. What a place it must be in Australia and South East Asia, where this is a common sight!
The common bluebottle butterfly (Graphium sarpedon teredon) by K Mohan Raj
The Australians also have another bluebottle, the blue ant (Diamma bicolor) – which actually isn’t an ant at all but a solitary parasitic wasp.
The bluebottle or blue ant (Diamma bicolor) - actually a solitary parasitic wasp - from Australia
Finally, and gratuitously, there are blue bottles – and here are some lovely cobalt blue glass apothecary bottles from a South African antiques website. Click on the picture to visit that site and see more images of antique glass bottles.
Some real blue bottles - cobalt glass apothecary containers
If you like these bottles, you may like my post A certain shade of blue…
Morning Pat,
I suspect, though even the ODE has nothing to say on the subject, that bluebottle is an elision of blue bot fly (to differentiate from the green version, called, obviously enough, the greenbottle which, in the countryside, has a fondness for cow-pats).
Bot-flies cause a huge amount of damage, and doubtless suffering, to sheep. by laying their eggs in the faeces-coated wool at the rear end, the maggots eating not just the faeces but the living sheep as well.
The bot, by the way, is the boil-like home the maggot makes for itself in the flesh of its victim while it feeds, until it emerges as yet another blow-fly (an alternative name). Hope you’re not having breakfast!
And talking of food, I was intrigued to find, in hospital recently, that dinner had once more moved to midday.
Ooh, right, lots of good thoughts there, as usual.
And no, I’m not eating!
I always think creamed rice pudding looks a bit maggoty, except it’s sweet. Of course, maggots may be sweet as well, I’ve never tried them.
I do put dried meal-worms out for the birds, which I suppose is the closest I come to maggots these days…
Best wishes
x
“. . . maggots may be sweet as well, I’ve never tried them.”
Ask an old angler. It used to be traditional for coarse anglers, when fishing in winter with maggots (meal-worms?), to keep a few in their mouth so they stay warm and active (though I suspect less icky methods are used these days).
Great bluebottle photos, though I’ve never heard of the cornflower being called that. Maybe it’s a southern thing.
Neither have I – but we aren’t in an arable area so we don’t have that many cornfields and wild cornflowers anyway…
Best wishes
x