Thread by @WhoresofYore

Did you ever wonder where the tradition of putting two fingers behind someone’s head in a photograph came from?

(François Bunel, “Actors of the Commedia Dell'Arte”, c.1590s)

They represent the horns of the cuckold. The word 'cuckold' derives from the Old French cucuault. The root of this is from cucu ‘cuckoo’, a bird that lays its egg in someone else’s nest. A cuckold is the husband of an adulterous wife. (“The Contented Cuckold”, 1673)

The devil horn gesture beloved by metal heads, is also thought to descend from the cuckold horns. In this image by Frederick van Hulsen from 1628 shows a wife, embraced by her lover, making the sign at her husband.

The horns have obvious associations with the devil, but no one is quite sure how they came to mean a cuckold. Here, De Silva argues that they represent sexual virility - not of the husband, but of the man who is now satisfying his wife.
academia.edu/225306/Sexual_…

The “capon theory” suggests it comes from “the old custom of cutting the spurs from cockerels when they were castrated and implant in the comb, where they would grow into hornlike members”

(From Graber, et al., 1987) jstor.org/stable/5399

Other historians suggest the gesture comes from Ancient Rome where returning soldiers were given horns, symbolising success on the battlefield. But the horns also came to imply failure in the bedroom, and that it was never a good idea to leave a Roman wife alone for too long.

Another explanation is that a horned beast cannot see its own horns. And husbands are often the last to know about their partner's infidelities. Everyone else can see it but him.

It’s also been suggested the horns come from the legend of the Minotaur who was born from queen Pasiphae's infidelity with a white bull. A lasting mark of the Queen’s betrayal, was horned offspring.

Scholar Claire McEachern argues the horns may reflect "the practices of the Greek emperor Andronicus, who was known to place horns on the houses of his [erotic] conquests in order to signify his grant of compensatory hunting privileges to their husbands".

But no one really knows for sure.

Shakespeare makes many cuckold references - many of his characters suspected they had become one. In Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice says “There will the Devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head.”

The Charlton Horn Fair was once one of the most popular events in London & lasted for three days. It was a rowdy & drunken affair & said to have started when King John granted a man considerable land for not killing him after having sex with his wife englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2017/02/a-hist…

The gesture of cuckold horns appears in numerous languages & cultures around the world. The italian word is “cornuto", in most Spanish speaking countries the term is “cornudo”, and the Greek term is 'κερατάς'.

German has many horn idioms, such as “jemanden die Hörner aufsetzen" (put horns on somebody). In France, “Avoir des cornes" (to have horns) means to be cuckolded. In Yiddish, “ba’al-karnayim” means, literally, “a man with horns.”

The fingers behind is head gesture is considered hugely offensive in many counties. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/eur…

So now you know. When you are doing the fingers behind someone’s head - you’re saying they can’t sexually satisfy their wife. #RockOn