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Onion Johnnies are Breton farmers and agricultural labourers on bicycles who sell distinctive pink onions door to door in Great Britain. They have adapted this nickname for themselves in Breton as ''ar Johniged'' or ''ar Johnniged''. Declining since the 1950s to only a few, the Onion Johnny was once very common. With renewed interest since the late 1990s by farmers and the public in small-scale agriculture, their numbers have recently made a small recovery. Dressed in striped shirt and beret, riding a bicycle hung with onions, the Onion Johnny became the stereotypical image of the Frenchman〔Which is quite a contradiction, because they (at least those born before World War II) could not really speak French well or only with difficulty (Breton being a Celtic language related to Cornish and Welsh), so that in Wales they often used Breton to converse with the Welsh. "Non parlé au pays et a fortiori en Grande-Bretagne, le français était mal maîtrisé. Son usage ne c'est introduit dans les familles qu’après 1930, et cela par l’entremise des enfants scolarisés. Il était alors étrange et émouvant de voir les aînés, les Johnnies, conduits à parler – difficilement – le français quand leurs cousins de Normandie ou de Paris venaient en visite l’été." (Not spoken at home and even less in Great Britain, French was ill known. Its use began to extend in the families after 1930, because the children learnt it at regular schools. It was quite odd and moving to see the elders, the Johnnies, trying to speak French - with difficulty - when their cousins living in Normandy or in Paris visited them in summer) in ''La saga des « Johnnies » de Roscoff'' by Marie-Thérèse Chapalain. ()〕 and may have been the only contact that the ordinary British had with France. ==History== From the area around Roscoff in Brittany known as ''Bro Rosko'', Johnnies found a more profitable market in Britain than at home, and typically brought their harvest across the English Channel in July to store in rented barns, returning home in December or January. They could have sold their produce in Paris, but the roads and the railways were bad in the 19th century and going there was a long and difficult trip; crossing the channel was shorter and easier. The trade apparently began in 1828 when the first successful trip was made by Henri Ollivier. Journeys are now made by ferry but small sailing ships and steamers were used previously, and the crossing could be hazardous. Seventy Johnnies died when the steamer SS ''Hilda'' sank at Saint-Malo in 1905.〔(passenger list )〕 The golden age was during the 1920s; in 1929 nearly 1,400 Johnnies imported over 9,000 tonnes of onions to the UK. The Great Depression, followed by the devaluation of the Pound in the early 1930s, ended the era as trade suddenly fell, reaching a low in 1934, when fewer than 400 people imported under 3,000 tonnes. In the aftermath of World War II, onions in common with other goods were subject to import restrictions, and were obliged to be traded through a single company. By 1973 the number of Johnnies had dropped to 160, trading 1,100 tonnes, and had fallen again to around 20 by the end of the 20th century. The legend of their transporting their produce to Britain inspired farmers in Brittany to set up Brittany Ferries in the 1970s. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Onion Johnny」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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