One of My "Cheez Frends"

told me she is from the "Black Country" and "half Brummie" (Birmingham native).

And she sent me to this charming little video to "help me along."

The Black Country.

Okay, it was already familiar to me through novels like D.H. Lawrence's Sons & Lovers.

And his poetry.

I just forgot it was called that.

And when she said "Brummie," it made me remember brummagem.

And the story of that word is...

Origin:1630–40; local variant of Birmingham, England (Compare Bromwichham, Bromecham (17th century), Middle English Burmingeham ); orig. in allusion to counterfeit coins produced there in the 17th cent.



The Black Country is a loosely defined area of the English West Midlands conurbation, to the north and west of (but not inclusive of) Birmingham, and to the south and east of Wolverhampton. During the industrial revolution in the 19th century this area had become one of the most intensely industrialised in the nation. The South Staffordshire coal mines, the coal coking operations, and the iron foundries and steel mills that used the local coal to fire their furnaces, produced a level of air pollution that had few equals anywhere in the world.

The Black Country is relatively recent as a concept and identity, the expression deriving from the 1840s. It is popularly believed that the area got its name because of pollution from these heavy industries that covered the area in black soot.

There is an anecdote (of dubious authenticity) about Queen Victoria ordering the blinds lowered on her carriage as the royal train passed through[citation needed]. However, historians suggest that it is more likely that the name existed even before the Industrial Revolution; outcroppings of black coal scarred the surface of the local heath, and the presence of coal so near the surface rendered the local soil very black.