Why Do Russians Flick the Neck?
A short historical investigation into Peter the Great, an English royal ritual, and how an idea might have changed while traveling
Working hypothesis — September 2026
The question began with a painting. While examining William Hogarth’s 1740s Marriage A-la-Mode, we noticed the conspicuous mark on the young aristocrat’s neck. That led to an old Russian gesture: a man flicks or taps the side of his neck to mean drinking, often accompanied by something like “davai.” A familiar folk explanation says the gesture goes back to Peter the Great.
The Russian story, in its common form, is simple: a craftsman or shipbuilder performs a great service for Peter. As a reward, he asks for the right to drink without paying. Peter grants the privilege, but written proof is repeatedly lost, so the Tsar has the authorization permanently marked on the man’s neck. Thereafter he only has to point to, tap, or flick his neck to claim his drink.
Recorded
1. The neck-flick story really exists as Russian folklore. It has been collected in modern folklore archives in versions involving a carpenter or shipbuilder, Peter the Great, a drinking privilege, a lost certificate, and a mark or tattoo on the neck. This does not prove the story is historically true, but it does show that the legend is not a recent invention.
2. England had an older royal ceremony centered on the neck. For centuries English monarchs were believed capable of curing scrofula, a disease of the lymph glands of the neck known as the “King’s Evil.” During the ceremony the monarch touched the sufferer, and the patient received a gold “Angel” or touch-piece. The coin was pierced, put on a ribbon, and hung around the patient’s neck. The act visibly connected an ordinary subject, the sovereign, and a royal object worn at the neck.
3. Charles II revived this ceremony on a very large scale after 1660. Royal College of Physicians material describes thousands of patients being touched each year. A 1662 royal proclamation even regulated the seasons when sufferers should come to court for the King’s Evil.
4. A very large Russian embassy was in London at exactly this period. In 1662–1663, more than one hundred Muscovite envoys and attendants traveled to England under Prince Pyotr Prozorovsky and Ivan Zhelyabuzhsky. They arrived in England in October 1662, entered London about a month later, and were formally received by Charles II on 29 December. Their stay therefore overlapped the very period in which royal touching was publicly practiced and officially regulated.
5. Peter later used physical tokens as proof of a state-granted exemption. Peter’s beard-tax system is an unusually relevant parallel. Men who paid to retain their beards carried a copper token proving that they had paid. A surviving British Museum example is dated 1705. The principle is simple: a sovereign rule is modified for a particular person, and a portable object proves the entitlement.
The possible bridge
The interesting possibility is not that Peter personally stood in London and watched the English king perform the ceremony. Peter was not even born when the 1662 embassy visited Charles II. The better model is administrative transmission.
observer in England -> diplomatic report -> translator -> Moscow chancery -> institutional memory -> later reinterpretation under Peter
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A Russian observer did not need to understand the English theology correctly. He only had to notice the visible sequence: ordinary people approach the king -> the king touches or recognizes them -> they receive a special royal object -> the object is worn at the neck.
Once reported through another language and another bureaucracy, the subtle distinction between healing amulet, religious ritual, royal gift, and proof of participation could easily collapse. The receiving culture might retain only the administrative-looking core: “the sovereign grants something, and the bearer carries a visible sign of it.”
That is where the Russian legend becomes intriguing. In folklore, the sacred English object could be reimagined as a practical Russian credential. The gold neck-piece becomes a royal mark; healing becomes privilege; the privilege becomes free drink; and because a paper certificate can be lost, the mark becomes permanent. The final surviving gesture is no longer the object itself, but the act of indicating the place where the royal authorization supposedly once existed.
What would have to be found to strengthen the theory?
The hypothesis is not proven. The missing document would be a Russian report, diary, diplomatic memorandum, translation, or chancery summary from the seventeenth century describing the English King’s Evil ceremony, the gold Angel, or the placement of the token around the neck. The most promising archival target is material connected with the 1662–1663 embassy of Prozorovsky and Zhelyabuzhsky, together with Muscovite foreign-news digests and diplomatic correspondence from the reign of Charles II.
In other words, we do not yet have the bridge, but we have found both riverbanks — an English royal custom in which the sovereign gave ordinary subjects a gold object worn at the neck, and a Russian folk tradition in which Peter grants a privilege that is proved by a mark on the neck. Between them lies a real Russian embassy, a functioning diplomatic information system, and Peter’s later habit of turning permissions and exemptions into physical tokens.
Working conclusion
The safest conclusion is that the Russian neck-flick legend remains folklore. There is no evidence yet that Peter actually branded or tattooed a favored drinker, or that the gesture directly descended from the English royal touch. But the comparison is historically plausible enough to investigate seriously. The chronology works, the intermediary institution existed, the Russian embassy was present in London during Charles II’s touching era, and Peter demonstrably understood the usefulness of physical tokens as proof of privilege.
The question for a Russian historian is therefore very specific: did Muscovite observers ever record the English practice of placing a royal gold token around the neck of a person personally received by the king?
Sources:
• A. A. Kiselev & E. F. Parubochaya, “The Russian Embassy in England in 1662–1663,” Tomsk State University Journal 437 (2018), pp. 118–123.
• Royal College of Physicians Museum, “Touching for ‘the King’s evil’: a short history.”
• British Museum, beard-tax token of Peter I, dated 1705, museum no. 1906,1103.5152.
• USC Digital Folklore Archives, “Flick your neck when you’re drunk” (recorded Russian folklore account).
• Charles II, 1662 proclamation regulating attendance at court for the cure of the King’s Evil (Royal Collection / contemporary printed proclamation).
