teezie mithy katra hornie dick bumfit
One of the neat things about our area, all the little towns around have historical societies and art clubs and so on which sponsor lecturers on a regular basis. If you like that sort of thing. And we do.
Tonight, we went out to hear a microbiologist deliver a talk on the origin of nursery rhymes. And very interesting it was, too. They’re all tragedy, gossip and porn. Apparently.
About a third of English nursery rhymes go back a thousand years or more, in one form or other. Some of the very earliest go right back to proto-Indo-European, way pre-historical times. A version of “ladybird, ladybird” was written on the side of an ancient building in India.
“Rain, rain go away” is another one that goes back that far and crops up all across Europe in a variety of languages. The German version, for example, goes “Rain, rain go away. Go rain on Poland.” No shit.
“Eeny meeny miney moe” is another ancient one, part of a genre of counting nursery rhymes. (Yes, America contributed the line about the person of color and his toe, quite recently. It’s universal now. We should be so proud).
I checked it out online when I got back, and stumbled across this delightful page describing the various ways sheep are (or were) counted all around Britain:
Counting to 1 2 3 4 5
Keswick yan tyan tethera methera pimp.
Westmorland yan tyan tetherie peddera gip.
Eskdale yaena taena teddera meddera pimp.
Millom aina peina para pedera pimp.
High Furness yan taen tedderte medderte pimp
Wasdale yan taen tudder anudder nimph
Teesdale yan tean tetherma metherma pip
Swaledale yahn tayhn tether mether mimp(h)
Wensleydale yan tean tither mither pip
Ayrshire yinty tinty tetheri metheri bamf
Counting to 6 7 8 9 0 15
Keswick sethera lethera hovera dovera dick bumfit
Westmorland teezie mithy katra hornie dick bumfit
Eskdale hofa lofa seckera leckera dec bumfit
Millom ithy mithy owera lowera dig bumfit
High Furness haata slaata lowera dowra dick mimph
Teesdale lezar azar catrah horna dick bumfit
Swaledale hith-her lith-her anver danver dic mimphit
Wensleydale teaser leaser catra horna dick bumper
Ayrshire leetera seetera over dover di
Children’s counting games:
[Edinburgh]“Inty, tinty, tethery, methery; Bank for over, dover, ding ..”
[London] “Eena, deena, dus; cattala, wheela, wheila, wus; spit, spot, must be done.
[Cincinnati] een, teen, tother, feather, fib, soter, oter, poter, debber, dick
[Vermont] eeni, teni, tudheri, fedheri, fip, saidher, taidher, koadher, daidher, dik
NB: those are last year’s lambs. We’re about two weeks away from the first of this year’s crop.
February 9, 2010 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 27
Well, that’s weird
I was on the phone to my old man the other day, reminiscing about the time he shot a huge rat in the family hunting cabin and all the little rats went screaming insane around us for a day. I had it in my head that a master rat was known as a rat king, but it turns out these are rat kings — a bunch of rats that somehow get tangled at the tails and live out their days as a big traveling clump o’ rats.
First reported in 1564, they may or may not be for real — despite several found in museums and sightings well into the 20th C. The Rucphen rat king (above) shows what looks like damage and healing of the knotted tail bones on x-ray, so if it’s a fake, it’s a clever one.
Surviving rat kings are made up of black rats, Rattus rattus, which have been almost completely displaced in Europe by the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus. So that explains why there aren’t any more. That, or because the whole thing was bullshit.
Rat kings were believed to bring plague — which I suppose they could do as well as any other kind of rat.
Have some Alta Vista translations: the Dutch rat king a Rutphen, the German rat king of Altenburger and the French rat king of Nantes.
Now, does anybody know what a rat patriarch is called?
February 3, 2010 — 7:48 pm
Comments: 20
Captions?
Hmmm. I don’t know. My best so far is:
Only YOU can prevent Muslim crotch fires!
December 28, 2009 — 5:48 pm
Comments: 64
Happy Guy Fawkes Night! Don’t burn anybody I wouldn’t burn…
I mentioned a while back that Sussex makes a Very Big Deal out of Bonfire Night, holding parades and fireworks and bonfires in one village or another most weekends between late September and late November.
Well, tonight — November 5 — is the real Guy Fawkes Night. By Sussex tradition, Lewes holds this one, the biggest one. That’s because Mary Tudor burned 17 Protestants in Lewes High Street while she was on the throne, so they kind of earned the right to a party. Yeah. It’s a whole sectarian thing.
Lewes has been trying to put people off recently. It’s getting big and out of hand, with Londoners coming down and all. So instead we went to one in the ancient tiny village of Icklesham tonight.
And a damn fine firework display they put on, too. They charge £3 a head and put it all toward next year’s fireworks. And they roast a pig (a heartbroken Uncle B was put off by the queue) and serve booze and dance about in ancient costumes and bang drums and burn a honking great huge pile of wood pallets with a Guy on.
You know, the nannies have been trying to shut this thing down for years. The fires and the crowds are both very big and very dangerous. Some bonfire societies drag their explosives through town carrying torches(!). Some Guys are rigged with dynamite(!). Some of the fireworks are homemade(!).
There was a sign saying “no sparklers — they will be confiscated!” under which a group of drunk people were happily waving sparklers. There’s lots of booze involved. This afternoon, we bought a whole big box of fireworks (for our own personal bonfire night) in the grocery store.
I wouldn’t count these people out just yet.
November 5, 2009 — 7:32 pm
Comments: 11
‘Tis the season…
I’m sure you’ve heard of Guy Fawkes Night in the UK, which is celebrated on November 5 with fireworks and the burning of Fawkes in effigy (or, more traditionally, the Pope in effigy, since the conspirators were Catholic). It commemorates the foiling of a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
Which doesn’t look like such a very bad idea these days.
But I digress.
The holiday is a bit different in Sussex. There is a GIGANTIC November 5 celebration in Lewes, a kind of Mardi Gras with more fire, less nudity. Most of the major towns in the county (and parts of Kent) have bonfire societies which come to march through the town for the big one.
In return, each of the towns and villages has its own Bonfire Night and everyone comes to march in their celebrations, too. So they have to stagger them. Between late September and November 5, there’s a bonfire somewhere in the county pretty much every weekend.
And very pagan-y affairs they are, too. There are elaborate and spooky costumes, and torches and fireworks, and they pull the guy (the various guys, which are effigies of people in the news. I believe Dubya got immolated a time or two) through the town. At the end, there’s a HUGE bonfire (usually made of hundreds of wood pallets) and they blow up the Guy and several kzillions of pounds (in weight and/or money) of fireworks.
The first big one is tomorrow night, in Hastings. I don’t think we’ll go this year, but we’ve gone before. It’s most impressive. Last year, they saw it in France and sent out the lifeboats.
Oh, and the tiny village of Icklesham insists on defying local custom and having theirs on November 5 each year, so none of the other villages will show up or advertise for them. Go Icklesham!
October 16, 2009 — 8:31 pm
Comments: 18
Cracked…
Well, well. Looks like ACORN is well on the way to getting itself defunded after a series of embarrassing hidden camera revelations. I know you know this. I have to give all the background in the first graph, otherwise I come back in a year or two and think what the holy poo was I talking about? This stuff fades fast.
Now, ACORN is chock full of villains and bad actors, all of them up to their nipples in duff mortgages and voter fraud. So, you know, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. But I confess having just…just a little teeny tiny touch of sympathy with them over the actual sting.
I flipping hate hidden camera stuff. And that thing Dan Rather used to do on 60 Minutes, where he’d run across the employee parking lot at seven in the morning, shove a microphone in some dude’s face and scream, “do you eat babies?!” And that confused, hasn’t-had-his-coffee-yet moment you can see the man thinking, “Wait! Aw, shit! Do I?”
Fluffy baby bunnies look shifty on shaky-cam.
And the people who work in urban help centers are not fluffy baby bunnies. Pretty much nobody but down-and-outs really want to spend their days working with down-and-outs. Just the way it is.
I know, I know. They thought they were helping set up a child sex ring.
Maybe. I’m not sure.
If I’m a grizzled inner-city aid worker, and these two skinny goofy-ass middle-class white kids come in asking for help getting a start in organized crime…I am SO TOTALLY going to play along and screw with their heads.
Or is it just me?
September 17, 2009 — 6:17 pm
Comments: 37
Not going to do a September 11 post this time
I remember. You bet I do. But the date just makes me feel sullen and angry, and too many of the memorials only make that worse.
We let those poor bastards down terribly, and it all feels unresolved and unavenged. Too much hand-wringing, not enough smiting.
Unfinished.
September 11, 2009 — 5:38 pm
Comments: 20
Rot in hell, monster
For once in my miserable life, I wasn’t going to go there. Though there are so very many things to dislike about Ted Kennedy, I knew other people would mention them all today, and I don’t need the karma. But nobody’s quite nailed the thing that bugs me.
It’s the way Mary Jo Kopechne died. I mean her literal, actual last moments on earth. She almost certainly lived for some time on air trapped in the car. Maybe hours. The diver who recovered her body found her kneeling with her hands against the seat and her head in an air pocket.
Hours. In the pitch dark and cold and wet, breathing up her last, stale, warming scraps of air. Waiting for help to come. Help would surely come, wouldn’t it?
Ach. Makes sweat prickle along my hairline. I got stuck under an overturned canoe once, trapped (ironically) by my life preserver. I had an air pocket, too. It started to taste very bad very fast. My breath sounded like it was blaring out of a PA system into a high school gymnasium. I was under there five minutes, max, and I still have dreams.
No, I doubt Kennedy left knowing she was trapped alive. But I don’t see any evidence that he was particularly troubled by the idea, then or ever. He walked away from the accident and never reported it. Pulled a few strings, observed a few formalities and got off with a six-month suspension of his driver’s license.
Not five years later, Kennedy was screaming “is there one system of justice for the average citizen and another system for the high and mighty?” over Richard Nixon’s pardon for…whatever it was Nixon was supposed to have done. Without, apparently, feeling the slightest twinge of irony or embarrassment. Or anguish. Or self-awareness.
He named his dog Splash and wrote a book about him. He didn’t seem to have any idea there were subjects he should avoid. Or remorse he ought to feel. And nobody around him saw fit to tell him. Not that you can order someone to feel shame.
To them, Chappaquiddick was an unfortunate accident that happened to Ted Kennedy’s presidential hopes.
That’s monstrous, and all the good-deed-doing in the world can’t make it anything else.
August 27, 2009 — 7:25 pm
Comments: 36
One small step…
Couldn’t let yesterday’s anniversary pass unblogged. I think the Onion captured the wondrous spirit of that first moon landing better than I could hope to:
HOLY SHIT
Man Walks On Fucking MoonJuly 21, 1969—The distant, lonely, mysterious satellite that has fascinated mankind since the dawn of time is distant and lonely no more. At 4:17 p.m. on July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. touched down on the Sea of Tranquility in the lunar module Eagle and radioed back to Earth the historic report: “Jesus fucking Christ, Houston. We’re on the fucking moon.”
Yeah. It felt exactly like that.
The latest version of Google Earth includes the moon, with all kinds of special features, hi-res and video clips relating to the Apollo missions. If you love the fucking moon as much as I do, I totally recommend it.
I remember watching the landing with my dad, who also completely loved the fucking moon. I was nine. He let out a breath and said, “by the time you’re in your twenties, you’ll vacation up there.” I am still inexpressibly pissed that he was wrong and we blew the whole species escaping into outer space thing.
On the other hand, I never guessed I’d have my own personal supercomputer that fits on a tv tray and lets me explore the fucking moon and demonstrate my potty mouth for strangers all over the world in realtime. So, you know, that’s pretty sweet.
July 21, 2009 — 7:02 pm
Comments: 23
Who is Melba that she should have a toast?
When I was in art school, my best friend and I spraypainted the Oscar Wilde aphorism, “who is art that he should have a sake?” in bright yellow on the outside wall of our dormitory. That’s it. My one and only act of vandalism.
Uncle B is feeling a little poorly today, and so his fancies turned inevitably to toast. Melba toast. I did not know there was an actual Melba for whom there was a toast, and it worries me that he did.
She was Aussie opera singer Dame Nellie Melba (1861 – 1931), born Helen Porter Mitchell and a Very Big Deal in her day. In 1897, she fell ill and twice-toasted toast became a staple of her diet, invented especially for her by chef Auguste Escoffier. He also came up with peach Melba. He was, I think, awfully lucky her name wasn’t Snotrag McShitbucket.
I found a recipe for homemade Melba toast (which sounds very nice, actually). Also, I discovered Wikipedia has a whole page on toast, which includes a useful side-by-side split-screen photographic comparison of toasted and untoasted white bread that should enable the alert student to discriminate between the two easily.
It is wholesome when we learn together.
July 17, 2009 — 7:22 pm
Comments: 29