Before I tell you about R*n 878 let’s take a quick detour into the history of how hashing came about.

Folklore has it that Hashing grew up in the days of the Empire in Malaya, when bored colonials passed their time following paper trails through the jungle instead of riding horses through the farmlands of old England.

But wait!

There are rumours that it actually started more than two millennia earlier. Back in the days of the second Roman invasion of Briton in 54bc, no less!

Could this be true?

A search on the Interweb, that renowned source of unfailingly accurate information, has uncovered no evidence that this is incorrect. We can therefore conclude that it must be true.

So here is the rumour of how the first ever hash came about…

It was 54bc.The Romans had just landed in Briton for the second time and an unknown Roman general was trying to suppress the Britons by capturing the Briton Queen Chulyas. He decided to track her down by sending out scouts to follow her trail and, as they did so, he ordered them to mark the trail with blobs of flour so that the main body of soldiers could follow. Once they were close, any Legionary seeing the Queen was to shout “Chulyas, seize her!” and then chase after her with the whole Legion following in hot pursuit.

But Chulyas was cunning, lithe and swift of foot, and she knew her land well. She led the Legionaries a merry chase across the English countryside, through Middlesex, over the Thames and on into Hertfordshire, always evading capture. She ran so far and so fast that she was never caught, and simply ran out of the history books into the land of long lost legend, leaving the English countryside scattered with lost Roman soldiers and echoing to the cries of “Chulyas, Seize Her”.

In time the soldiers realised they would never catch the Queen and gave up the chase, seeking instead their lost comrades. Gradually the scattered soldiers came together, forming small circles of men who gave each other abuse for getting lost and wondered which way to go to get home.

Most eventually made it back to their camp. Although they had failed to capture the Queen, they mostly agreed that it had been a great adventure running around the countryside following trails of flour and asked their general if they could do it again. He answered with a resounding “Yes, but next time don’t make quite such a hash of it”. And so the term “A Hash” was used to describe the act of making a mess of going for a run following a trail of flour.

Now, because of all the shouting, the local Britons thought that the soldiers were looking for the general and that he was called ‘Chulyas Seize Her”. So ever-after he was called by that name, although over time it has morphed into the now more familiar name Julius Caesar. Thus the custom of giving each Hasher a special hash name came to be.

Right, back to the Hash write up - and about time too, I hear you say! To celebrate two thousand years of Hashing I will paraphrase ChulyasSeizeHer:

Veni. Vidi. Cucurri. Perdidi. Cenavi. Bibi. Abii.