To fly is to overcome gravity and such an unnatural feat leads to excitement, to moments of joy and happiness. Even if it happens through an inanimate object. Didn’t Toon Hermans sing cheerfully about “a balloon that dances in the wind, goes to the sun by a thread, such a nice thick beautiful, nice thick red b’lon, b’lon, b’lon”. Balloons in a bunch or one balloon in a child’s hand, and the world smiles on us, but not when those balloons are Chinese made and secretly fly over America.
Lace football
The first balloon was not an object of lightness either. The Italian balloon or pallone referred to a big ball, just like a padronas boss an enlarged version of a padrefather, or ragazzone is a big boy. The Italian word was adopted by the French, the English and also by the Dutch. And such a large, often leather ball that could be used for sports, became during those moves from solid to inflatable, as with the classic lace-up football. From there to a balloon is not a big step, although language and reality have taken three centuries. The balloon dates from the end of the 16th century, cheerful toy balloons only appear in the last quarter of the 19th.
Incidentally, it was Italian balla from which ballone is derived is not an originally Romance word. It comes from Germanic, where the shape is simply ball or sphere. This word passed through Medieval Latin into Italian and Old French, where it in turn produced new words, besides balloon, for example Baal and ballot who then found their way to the North.
Once the latex balloon had reached the child’s hand, nothing stood in the way of dreaming of escape and happiness
Once the latex balloon had reached the child’s hand, nothing stood in the way of dreaming of escape and happiness. Peaking at Le balloon rouge, the short film from 1956 by Albert Lamorisse, in which little Pascal is shown the way from one innocent adventure to another by a red balloon. Balloons symbolize excitement, cheerfulness and infinity. That’s why shop signs organized balloon competitions to mark the opening of yet another new branch: children released their balloons in the hope that their ticket would be returned from the farthest point, so that they would receive an extra prize.
Hot air balloons, the 19th century big brother of the balloon, have the same scent of adventure and vast distances. Until a disastrous fire destroyed their warehouse a few months ago, the cheerful Ballon Gezelschap from Ruigoord exuded a comparable anarchist cheerfulness. Yet balloons can also be dangerous. Bismarck wanted to bombard Paris from hot air balloons during the siege of 1870/1871. Fortunately, the Prussian king rejected the plan. Paris was so closely surrounded that Gambetta, the French defense minister, had to escape from Paris by hot air balloon. Hot air balloons were also the only way to get mail across the lines. Balloons and war have a long history. Hence the American excitement about the Chinese balloons.