Ahoy Me Readers!!! September is Pirates Month in the Youth Department

Pirate Fun in the Youth Department!!

Avast ye readers and prepare to drop anchor! The Youth Department at the Birmingham Public Library is hosting a month long celebration of pirates in honor of "Talk Like A Pirate Day" September 19th. Disembark at your local library to find some real treasures, Aaarrr!!!

Books

• For tales of pirates and pirate stories, click here: 
   
• For pirate history, click here:
   
• For more pirate stories click here:
   

• The Original "Talk Like A Pirate Day" web site
• National Geographic's Pirates!
• Expedition Whydah, the hunt for pirate Sam Bellamy's ship
• The Wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge; Blackbeard's ship!
• New England Pirate Museum
• If you want to dress up like a pirate- check out No Quarter Given
• For more pirate links, check out Pirates of the Spanish Main
• Visit Mystic Seaport, a living museum of America's nautical history
• Also visit the Mariner's Museum to learn about seafaring
• The official web site for the "Pirates of the Caribbean:
  Dead Man's Chestl" movie
• Fan based web site Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean
  ride, Tell No Tales!!

How to Talk Like A Pirate, Aaarrr!

Below are some key words to help expand your Pirate vocabulary:

• Aarrr!: Pirate exclamation. Done with a growl and used to emphasize the pirate's current feelings.

• Ahoy: Hello

• Avast: Stop and pay attention

• Beauty: a lovely woman,

• Belaying Pin: a small wooden pin used to hold rigging in place. Sometimes used as a bludgeoning weapon.

• Cutlass: Popular sword among pirates

• Davy Jones' Locker: The bottom of the sea. The final resting place for many pirates and their ships. As far as anyone knows, there was no real person named Davy Jones. It’s just the sprit of the ocean, firmly a part of pirate mythology since at least the middle of the 18th century.

• Disembark: To leave the ship

• Embark: To enter the ship in order to go on a journey

• Foul: Turned bad or done badly, as in ‘Foul Weather’ or ‘Foul Dealings’

• Grog: A drink that pirates enjoyed

• Hornpipe: a single reed instrument, also a dance.

• Keelhaul: Punishment. Usually tying the sailor to a rope and dragging him under the ship from stem to stern.

• Lubber: Land lover. Someone who doesn't want to go to sea.

• Matey: Friend or comrade

• Ne’er-do-well: A scoundrel or rascal

• Pieces of eight: Spanish silver coins that could actually be broken into eight pieces, or bits. Two of these bits were a quarter of the coin, and that’s where we get the expression "two bits" for a quarter of a dollar, as in the cheer, "Two bits, four bits, six bits a dollar …" (Do we feel a math lesson coming on?)

• Plunder: Treasure taken from others

• Rigging: Ropes that hold the sails in place

• Saucy Wench: A wild woman

• Tankard: A large mug, for ale

• Wastrel: A useless man

• Weigh anchor: Prepare to leave

• Yardarm: Extended from the mast and used to hang criminals or mutineers or, more prosaically, to hoist cargo on board ship

Here are some nautical directions

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