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Does a black ball make you a black sheep or lucky?
Back in the days when Rome ruled supreme over an empire, paper was not as commonly and relatively cheaply available as today. Instead of supplying voters with ballot (from the Italian ballotta, meaning small ball) papers they were given the choice between small white (for yes) and black (for no) balls, which they then dropped into a ballot box to register their vote on whatever issue had to be decided.
The use of this kind of method to register votes however precedes even the Romans. It goes back to ancient Greece, where light- and dark coloured seashells were used to cast votes. Both the Roman and the Hellenic traditions in one way or another live on in modern times.
The Greek name for those shells used for voting by the ancient Hellenic society is ostrakon, which is the root of the modern word ostracise – the literal shunning of undesirable members of a society.
Likewise during Roman times individuals or groups of people could be blackballed, which often meant a complete stripping of all rights and privileges and the indignity of being exiled from the community.
On that score not much has changed for some groups and/or societies over time. Many clubs and societies to this day use the ballot-system of voting with white and black balls, especially to decide whether a particular person should be allowed membership of the club or society. More often than not a single black ball is all that is needed to blackball a prospective new member – shunning him or her from the exclusive club or society.
Sometimes this method is also used to vote on prospective incoming members as a group. If the group as a whole is blackballed there might be another round of voting where each member of the group is voted on individually.
This method of course implies that each of the existing members of the club has a veto over the admittance of new members. The word veto in turn comes from the Latin word vetō meaning I forbid and the French word vetare meaning to forbid.
When someone is blackballed or vetoed from becoming a member of a club or society it also effectively implies that he or she is regarded as of lesser worth than the in-group. In a way that person is regarded as a black sheep.
The black sheep- idiom, used to describe an odd or disreputable member of a group (especially within a family), derives its meaning from the historically lesser monetary value of black sheep. The idiom is also found in most other modern languages.
The oldest known recording of the expression black sheep in a derogatory sense dates back to 1786 in Charles Macklin's The man of the world, a comedy, where he writes:
"O, ye villain! you - you - you are a black sheep; and I'll mark you."
Over the centuries, due to a biological or genetic process, very occasionally black-fleeced sheep would be born into a flock of normally white-fleeced sheep. Farmers found the black sheep to be economically undesirable because their wool was not easy to dry.
But, in this era of political correctness, to be fair to the black sheep maybe one should also mention that there is a long-standing English country tradition that black sheep are omens of good fortune.
The Folk-Lore Record, 1878, included this piece: "We speak figuratively of the one black sheep that is the cause of sorrow in a family; but in its reality it is regarded by the Sussex shepherd as an omen of good luck to his flock."
Maybe those who get blackballed from some club or society should take it as a turn of good fortune that they did not get sucked into the pressures of a stuffy snobbish establishment. Sometimes it might be better to remain part of the simple world of the plebs.
Perhaps we should take a look at the origins of the words snobs and plebs?
