In Canada, they like to take facts that they can't understand and make them pornographic, as with the fact known as "cold enough to freeze the balls off brass monkeys".
The actual fact is as follows.
There was in the eighteen hundreds a Duke of Rilon. His castle was located in Yorkshire, Northern England near Manchester and Leeds. Rilon is a small country town. When this story took place, it was being affected by the Industrial Revolution. The Duke of Rilon was always known for his greed and unjust treatment of the townspeople and the farmers who rented his fields. There were those who said, behind his back, that he would come to a sticky end, someday. A sticky end in those days was a tar and feathering and some of them were ready to administer it. The Dukes motto in life was displayed on the big iron gates in the form of three brass monkeys and under the monkeys were the words, "Eat all, drink all, pay nowt. Hear all, see all, say nowt and if ever thar does out for nowt, then do it for thyself."
The farmers and their workers were tired of the heavy taxes and so they moved into the big industrial towns and cities and left the Duke with no one to tax. The Duke continued to live in his big castle and entertained his friends with lavish parties until there was nothing left in his treasury. For a while he lived by selling the family jewels, though his wife had something to say on the matter. It is believed that she hid some of her own valuables by having them painted to look like cheap beads.
Of course it was just a matter of time before the disgrace of bankruptcy fell upon the Duke. The King decreed that everything left in the castle would be sold at auction on the last day of June. Word was sent to all the towns in England and Scotland so that all that were interested would attend and the most money would be raised to offset the debt that was owed to the crown.
In a small town called Inverness on the East Coast of Scotland, where it gets very cold in winter, a pawnbroker by the name of McTavish ran his business. He read the proclamation and decided to make the trip to Rilon to make some purchases at the auction. McTavish started out with his dray, pulled by two elderly horses about the first day of June. He travelled the long dusty roads down to the border between England and Scotland and then another sixty miles south to Rilon. He had plenty of time and thought he would make a holiday out of the trip.
Murphy's law traveled with him and it wasn't long before unexpected things began to happen. First the wheel on the dray started to squeak. He hadn't brought grease with him so he left the dray and walked into the next village to buy some from the blacksmith. Then one of his horses became lame and he was obliged to rest it for a couple of days. All these delays made him late arriving at the castle and when he did arrive there, the only item left for sale were the three brass monkeys on the gate. McTavish didn't want to go home with nothing, so he bid on them and bought them. He loaded them on his dray and started on the return journey to Inverness. The weather at that time of the year was hot and dry so he stopped frequently at the inns along the way. It was early in September when he finally drove into town.
The townsfolk gathered to see what he had purchased. Some elders shook their heads in dismay at the only item on board. The younger boys were thrilled to see such a bold artifact and they made a lot of suggestions as to what he could do with them. One idea was to hang them on the Mayor's door, as they thought the saying befitted him. But the business of the pawnbroker is selling and so he set them up in his window hoping someone would be interested enough to buy them. Unfortunately, they were still unsold in the spring. Business was quite brisk and he needed the window space to display the better moving items that he had purchased from the fishermen at Ardesea, who had not been able to fish because of the cold winter.
It struck him as a good idea to hang the monkeys on the front of the shop where his three brass balls were hanging and to hang the balls on the curled up tails of the monkeys. It looked very impressive. The summer passed and autumn settled on the town. The monkeys supported their load and were often the topic of conversation. Boys passing under them would jump up and hit them and make the balls swing to impress their girl friends and to take their attention off the wedding rings displayed in the window.
Brass is a mixture of copper and zinc and its strength is affected by temperature. As the winter came on the temperatures dropped until it reached eight degrees Fahrenheit. This happened late one night in December and the only person on the street was Constable Mackintosh who said in his report the next morning that he had just checked the thermometer on the wall of the apothecary and it was eight degrees. To his surprise, as he looked down the street the tails of the monkeys straightened out and the balls fell to the pavement. He investigated to see if it was caused by mischief. He soon was satisfied that it wasn't. No one was hurt by the incident and the balls were just a little bent. He waited till morning to complete the police report. That report is proof positive that eight degrees Fahrenheit is cold enough to freeze the balls off brass monkeys.
This story is entirely fictitious and any similarity to any person living or dead is purely impossible.
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