‘Are they all gay too?’ asked my husband, waving the Sunday Telegraph with its headline ‘Pride of Lions’. He had been delayed in traffic in the sun during the Pride in London rally the day before and was still showing signs of confusion.
The headline was referring, through a play on words, to the British and Irish Lions’ unexpected draw against the All Blacks. But I was then surprised to discover that pride for a group of lions is the resurrection, accomplished in the late 19th century, of a medieval term (deriving from lions as symbols of the sin of pride). It disappeared from English for 400 years, after being listed in the Book of St Albans, a sort of sporting gentlemen’s handbook printed in 1486.
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People are still fascinated by group terms — a murmuration of starlings, and so on — and many are found in this book, reprinted by Caxton’s associate Wynkyn de Worde in 1496 and others in the 16th century.
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