< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
While walking the dog around town a few days ago, I saw
someone tying a yellow ribbon around a tree (it looked like
an elm, and it certainly wasn't an old oak tree
) in
his front yard, and I inquired as to the occasion. Don't
you know there's a war on?
was the reply, and This
is the traditional way to show that we support our
soldiers.
When you think about it, yellow seems a strange color
for such symbolism, since yellow is usually associated with
cowardice, as in he got yellow-bellied, so he ran from
the fight.
Even though it's a bright and cheerful
color, yellow has few favorable associations: yellow fever,
yellow jack, yellow journalism, yellow-dog contract -- none
of these enjoys a stellar reputation.
Despite these connotations, displaying a yellow ribbon in this way has become a tradition, but it does not come from antiquity. It goes back only to 1980, according to some research conducted by the late Gerald E. Parsons, a folklorist who worked for the U.S. Library of Congress.
That seems to jibe with my own memories. During the Vietnam War, one would see signs or posters that announced support for the troops or POWs, but nary a yellow ribbon, which seemed to spring to life after Americans were taken hostage in Iran in 1979.
Even so, the yellow ribbon has antecedents which go far into the past. Think of a man going off to war, and think of his wife at home wanting to show that she will remain faithful to him and that he will be welcome on his anticipated return.
In Homer's Odyssey, faithful Penelope kept weaving to discourage suitors and to remain true to Odysseus. But in other old tales, a white cloth might make the announcement (the white symbolizing purity) or a green sprig (green standing for young love).
So, there's the tradition of a symbol of fidelity and support on the home front. One tale dating from the 1950s or 60s, perhaps based on a real event, had a convict finishing his prison term, and writing home. If she would still have him after his release, she should tie a white kerchief to the tree. He would see it as his bus passed by, and thus know whether to get off or just keep moving on.
Parsons called that a modern urban oral
tradition.
How did it turn into a yellow ribbon?
There are some who say that women wore yellow ribbons at
home while their husbands were off fighting the Civil War
140 years ago, but Parsons found no evidence of it. He did
find a 1917 song by one George A. Norton, entitled Round
Her Neck She Wears a Yeller Ribbon (For her Lover Who Is
Fur, Fur Away)
, and there was the 1949 movie She
Wore a Yellow Ribbon,
starring John Wayne and Joanne
Dru.
But if these had inspired a yellow-ribbon tradition, there would have been yellow ribbons on domestic display during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, at least, and there weren't.
In 1972, song-writers Irwin Levine and L. Russell Brown
took the old white handkerchief story about the returning
prisoner, and tried to make a song from it. They couldn't
make white kerchief
fit with any kind of musical
rhythm, so they changed it to a yellow ribbon.
Dozens of different artists recorded the song; the most popular version was issued in 1973 by Tony Orlando and Dawn.
So we've gone from white kerchief to yellow ribbon; how did we get from ex-cons to soldiers?
One Penelope Laingen made the transition. Her husband, Bruce, worked in the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and was one of those taken hostage in 1979. On a CBS news broadcast in early 1980, she was shown outside her home in Bethesda, Md., and there were yellow ribbons.
It just came to me,
she said, to give people
something to do, rather than throw dog food at Iranians. I
said `Why don't they tie a yellow ribbon around an old oak
tree?' That's how it started.
One can see a connection between hostages and prisoners, as well as the feeling that there isn't much one can do about the situation, except to announce that the captives will be welcome upon their release, and that they remain in our thoughts until then.
During the Iran-hostage days of 1979-80, then, it wasn't a big stretch. But during the Gulf War of 1990-91, yellow ribbons again began to sprout, even though there weren't any Americans in captivity, except a few prisoners of war, and they were released at the cession of active hostilities.
This means that the yellow ribbon had morphed again, this time become a general message of support and solidarity. That appears to be a big change, since there's a big difference between captives and warriors.
And now we see yellow ribbons again, used for the same message as a dozen years ago. Perhaps that means that this symbol has stabilized; it's about time, given all the strange permutations in its history.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2003 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >