THE CAT'S PAJAMAS XVIII

Tad Tuleja

 

A collection of the (mostly) true origins of familiar phrases

 

EVEN STEVEN

 

This expression for equity or fairness goes back to an obscure British monarch, the tenth-century Saxon king, Stephen the Greedy. King Stephen taxed his people for public improvements that were never done - bridges, parks, roads - even an air tax, for the privilege of breathing their sovereign's air. But the innovative revenue boosters by which he is most remembered involved the cruel "right of first night"custom in which the king could share the bed of his vassal's bride  even before the vassal himself had done so. King Stephen suspended this practice if the vassal would hand over a fee in lieu of his wife.

 

The king collected this fee at every marriage, since technically everyone in the kingdom was his vassal. But wait, there's more. King Stephen created the "right of second night." In this custom, all bridegrooms in the kingdom were charged a fee for sleeping with Stephen's queen, the Frisian Princess Siuletta. They had to pay this second-night fee whether or not they embraced the custom. In the wording of the Saxon chronicle, "It bee not the Kinge's culpabilitie iff that the brydgroome chuse not the banquette; it hath ben prepared all the same to his expense."

 

For her part, Siuletta seemed not to resent this arrangement, and is even said to have commanded compliance in certain cases -whether out of a sense of fairness, or lust, cannot be said. In any event, the reign of this odd couple gave us two enduring expressions. King Stephen was known in his own day as "Even Stephen" because his "second night" rule offset the first. His queen's name became the Norman Siulet, and was shortened eventually to slut. [No mention of King Stephen the Pimp]