NICKNAMES OF BRITISH REGIMENTS.

Kumara Times, Issue 925, 17 September 1879, Page 4

NICKNAMES OF BRITISH REGIMENTS.

Says a Home paper :—The brave but luckless Twenty-fourth are known as Howard's Greens, from their grass green facings and the name of an officer who led them for 20 years in the last century. It is popular fallacy to imagine that the 28th borrow their designation of the Old Braggs from the exhibition of a spirit of boasting or braggadocio. Bragg was their Colonel from 1734 to 1751, whence the Bobriquet. They are also known as the Slashers, but wherefore is uncertain. Some authorities believe they get their title from the dash at the passage of the River Brunx, in the American War of Independence; others say it arose from a party of the officers having disguised themselves as Indians, and having cut off the ears of a magistrate who had refused quarters to the women of the regiment during the trying winter. The 31st are denominated the Young Buffs, having been mistaken for the third at the battle of Dettingen. The whimsical cognomen of the Havercake Lads is conferred on the 33rd, from a habit of the Sergeant Snaps of the corps to entice recruits by displaying an oat-cake spitted on their swords. The 35th used to be termed the Orange Lilies ; the 36th, the Saucy Greens ; the 38th, the Pump and Tortoise, on account of their sobriety and the slowness of their movements when stationed once at Malta, and the 39th, Sankey's Horse, from the circumstance of their having been onca mounted on mules on a forced march, when commanded by Colonel Sankey ; They are also called the Green Linnets, from their pea-grean facings. A puneing version of its number, XL, namely, the Excellers, is fixed on the 40th. The renowned 42nd retains its designation of the Black Watch, the independent Scotch companies from which it was formed having been so called on account of their dark tartans. The phrase Light Bobs marks out the 43rd, albeit it is claimed by all light infantry soldiers, The 44th swell with natural vanity over their distinctions as the old Stubborns, gained in the Peninsula. The classical epithet of Lacedemonians was an alias of the 46th, a pedantic officer having harangued his brave boys on the beauties of Spartan discipline while shot and shell were flying round. It would be hard to discover the 47th under its cognomen of the Cauliflowers ; and assuredly no friend of the gallant 50th would ever dream of referring to either as the Blind or the Dirty Half Hundred. Similar to the Excellers'in the mode of origin of their sobriquet are the Kolis, as the 51st are called from the initials of the title, King's Own Light Infantry. "Die hard, my men, die hard," cried the heroic Inglis to the 57th at Albuera, and ever since the plucky West Middlesex is the Die Hards.