WHEN PIRATES WERE PYRATES

Posted by Ian CrouchMonday was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, giving everyone on Twitter the chance to shiver their timbers and direct-message their mateys all sorts of booty jokes. (Letting out a good “Yargh!,” meanwhile, is a kind of primal-scream therapy that works on any day, designated holiday or not.) Pirates, the historical caricatures that once terrorized the seas, are in that class of semi- or hybrid-human characters that occupy a position of fascination in the culture.

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