“I’m learning terms like puntum, liquiescent clivis, and bistropha. I know why solfege is so important.”

Christine at Mirabilis.ca deploys some exciting words.

It’s the fifth of December, which means it’s time to get that hamper out of the cupboard and take out your rusty chain and bells and birch branch and fur and big black sack and roam the streets terrifying tiny children. Krampus has work to do!

 

As a rider, his attempts ended frequently in disaster: “Within this week I have been thrown three times from my Horse, and run away with to no small pertubation of my nervous system.” He developed saddle sores, “dreadfully troublesome eruptions, which so grimly constellated my Posteriors.” 

An amusing account of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s military career from Bill Peschel.

Glyn Webster writes to alert me, belatedly, to a splendid headline from the New Scientist two years ago:

Moths drink the tears of sleeping birds

Read the story here.

A dandy was the Black Prince of Elegance, the demigod of boredom who looked at the world with an eye as glassy as his pince-nez, suffering because his disarranged cravat had a crease, like the ancient Sybarite who suffered because his rose was crushed. He is indifferent about the horse he rides, the woman he greets, and the man he encounters and at whom he gazes a while before recognizing him. He bears, written on his forehead – in English – this insolent inscription: What do you and I have in common? – Paul de Saint-Victor, 1859

Via The Victorian Era

 

In Diaries Of The Dead, I mentioned that George Orwell’s diaries are being posted online as a daily blog. They are magnificent, in a quite unexpected way. Here are some – unedited – entries for seventy years ago:

16.11.38 One egg.

17.11.38 One egg.

19.11.38 Two eggs.

21.11.38 Two eggs.

22.11.38 Two eggs.

25.11.38 Two eggs.

27.11.38 One egg.

28.11.38 Two eggs.

Clearly, Orwell’s diary would have been the most terrifying book Alfred Hitchcock could imagine.

I am also reminded that I once bought a picture postcard in Prague which included a quotation from “The Dairies Of Franz Kafka”.

EXCITING UPDATE! : 29.11.38 One egg.

There’s nothing quite like a bit of eye-popping religious frenzy, is there? Bear in mind, as you consider the spiritual wisdom that follows, that Allah is routinely described by his adherents as “merciful”. I’d hate to come across him in a bad mood…

The hellfire is a place of the most extreme suffering, the most extreme pain of every level that you can imagine – physical, mental, and spiritual pain and suffering and torment. It is a place where Allah will burn the skins of the people, and then he will recreate their skins, and burn the skins again, so that the people in there will taste the punishment. It is a place of heat, a place of pain, a place of suffering. The people will cry in agony for water. They will cry for a drink – something to cool them – and they will be given water, they will be given a drink, but it is boiling water that will scald their faces and burn their insides.

They will drink from a river, a river that is made from the pus that flows out of the wounds of the people of the hellfire. The wounds of the people of the hellfire will ooze pus, and this pus will gather together to form a river, and this is all they will have to drink. And their food will be the tree of Zakum, a tree the fruits of which are like the heads of devils. This tree is so bitter that if the people try to eat it, they can’t eat it. But they will force themselves, because there is nothing else to eat in the hellfire – a place where the people will neither live, nor will they die, a place where the people will fall into despair, arguing with each other, admonishing each other, criticizing each other. The fire will surround them in every place. The smallest punishment of the hellfire is that a person will wear a pair of sandals of fire, and their brain will boil….

Thus Anthony Abdul Rahim Green, spouting on Peace TV, amusingly dubbed the “24 Hour Islamic Spiritual Edutainment Satellite TV Channel”. Thanks to Mick Hartley. 

I haven’t read it (yet), but the title alone is enough to whet my appetite. The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York by Matthew Goodman is reviewed here. If you act quickly you have a chance to win a signed copy by visiting the excellent Wonders And Marvels blog.

Eared. Earless. Horned. Saw-whet. Eagle. Mindanao eagle. Fish. Pygmy. Bare-legged. Maned. Crested. Elf. Scops. Giant scops. Jamaican. Caribbean giant. Australasian hawk. Papuan hawk. Northern hawk. Palau. Mascarene. Long-whiskered. Laughing. White-faced. Spectacled. Striped. Stilt. Fearful. Screech. Cuban screech. Tawny. Barn.

Memorise, and repeat.

It was the month of January, 1516.

The night was dark and tempestuous; the thunder growled around; the lightning flashed at short intervals: and the wind swept furiously along in sudden and fitful gusts.

The streams of the great Black Forest of Germany babbled in playful melody no more, but rushed on with deafening din, mingling their torrent roar with the wild creaking of the huge oaks, the rustling of the firs, the howling of the affrighted wolves, and the hollow voices of the storm.

The dense black clouds were driving restlessly athwart the sky; and when the vivid lightning gleamed forth with rapid and eccentric glare, it seemed as if the dark jaws of some hideous monster, floating high above, opened to vomit flame.

And as the abrupt but furious gusts of wind swept through the forest, they raised strange echoes—as if the impervious mazes of that mighty wood were the abode of hideous fiends and evil spirits, who responded in shrieks, moans, and lamentations to the fearful din of the tempest.

It was, indeed, an appalling night!

An old – old man sat in his cottage on the verge of the Black Forest.

He had numbered ninety years; his head was completely bald – his mouth was toothless – his long beard was white as snow, and his limbs were feeble and trembling.

from Wagner, The Wehr-Wolf by George W M Reynolds

The Fire Wire has an amusing list of Secret Service codenames for American presidents and their nearest and dearest. Naturally, I am disappointed that neither “Broadsword” nor “Danny Boy” has been used, these of course being the codenames spectacularly en-un-cia-ted by Richard Burton (for himself and the great Michael Hordern) in Where Eagles Dare (1968). Still, at least I now know to refer to Richard Milhous Nixon as “Searchlight” in future.

Above is a detail from a literally marvellous cabinet of curiosities picture from the Musei Wormiani Historia of 1655, brought to my attention by the redoubtable Peacay of BibliOdysssey. Go to this link, and click on the image for a huge version.

Quite apart from anything else, the dimwits and barbarians have clearly overlooked the fact that “Latin and Greek are the only tongues in which departed spirits can be addressed, for this reason they are denominated the dead languages. The nonappearance of these supernatural beings in the present day, may be fairly ascribed to the decay of the learned languages.” The anonymous contributor to The Mirror Of Taste, And Dramatic Censor, Volume I, Number 5 knew this much in May 1810, so the elected representatives of Bournemouth and Salisbury Councils and the unelected dullards at the Plain English Campaign ought to know it too. Perhaps if they wander down to their local Andy Burnham Chat ‘n’ Snack Zone before all the books disappear they might learn something.

“They might mistake eg for egg and little things like that can confuse people.”

Words fail me this time. Read it and weep.