Yellow Bellies

Yellow Bellies (or 'Yeller Bellies' – the unusual spelling deriving from the pronunciation by the 'typical Lincolnshire farmer') is the slightly comical nickname given to those born within the county of Lincolnshire, an administrative and historical region of the United Kingdom. The origins of this phrase remains unclear. However, a number of theories (some fanciful) have been proposed:

• The uniforms of the old Lincolnshire Regiment were green with yellow facings. The fastenings of the uniform tunic, which were known as frogs, were also yellow.
• Opium extracted from poppy heads and taken to relieve malaria that was prevalent in the fens in earlier centuries turned the skin a shade of yellow.
• Sheep grazing in mustard fields were dusted by pollen from the blossom that turned their undersides yellow. Alternatively, the long under wool of sheep grazing in the Lincolnshire Wolds became discoloured by the yellow clay.
• Women traders on street markets in past times are reputed to have worn a leather apron with two pockets, one for copper and silver and one for gold. At the end of a good day they would say they had 'a yellow belly' meaning they had taken a large number of gold sovereigns.
• The expression is based on the old belief that if a person born in Lincolnshire placed a shilling on their abdomen on retiring to bed and slept flat on their back all night, then the next morning the shilling would have turned into a gold sovereign.
• The stage coaches that operated in Lincolnshire in times past had yellow body work.
• The term originated from Elloe, the name of the rural deanery that serves the fen area of the Lincoln Diocese. This in turn took its name from the Saxon Wapentake which was referred to as Ye Elloe Bellie – Elloe meaning out of the morass while bel was the Celtic word for hole or hollow.