Personal Blogs

Little Willie, for a lark

Fed the baby to a shark.

Saying as he watched it swallow, 

“Stomach ache is sure to follow”.

Contactless cards? I wouldn’t touch them.

Jest in time!

Today I had to go out early and arrived back home to witness this sunrise, that made me think of "Rosy-fingered dawn", a kind of catch phrase in Homer's Odyssey. Homer was writing something originally passed down by recitation in front of an audience and it would have acted as a kind of anchor: "A new day dawned: our heroes arose and..."

The transcribed Greek is

emos d' erigéneia pháne rhododáktulos Eos

which means I think something like "when the new-born appeared, the rosy-fingered dawn". We can recognise some fragments,  even though we don't know Homeric Greek. géneia must mean born (as in genetics), rhodo rosy (and it's possible that's how Rhodes got its name), dáktulos finger (think pterodactyl, "wingfinger"), Eos dawn (as in eohippus, "dawnhorse", a small prehistoric mammal related to modern-day horses. Many paleontogists have a poetic streak.

This set me to browsing "Rosy-fingered dawn" and I found a marvellous new translation by Emily Wilson. "Dawn appeared and touched the sky with roses" is her simple, uncluttered version of that famous line, and I think it's a really beautiful translation.

Traveller: Please purchase me a rail ticket from Mousecow to Lemmingrad.

Agent: Of course Sir.

Traveller: How fur is it?

Agent: 713.9 kilometres Sir. Shall I put it on jerbil?

I started reading this famous book that has no proper ending. I've not finished it yet.

I've changed my door locks. They're all Harvard now.

Recent I opened a business selling china and stoneware containers for hot drinks: tea, coffee, hot chocolate, etc.

It's a mug's game though.

A regrettable accident. The plane went down. Don't look like that and wear that frown.

I think I first became aware of the work of Gustave Verbeek from Martin Gardener's long running column in Scientific American.

In the early 20 century Verbeek drew strip cartoons with a unique selling point. Each cartoon had just six frames, but the story had 12 pictures, because each picture, when turned upside down, was transformed into a different picture! Here's an example, probably the most famous. I got this animated GIF from Wikipedia *. Wait a few seconds and it will invert and you'll see what I mean.

I've look at this many times, but still find it astonishing. Conceiving and drawing it must have been very difficult and time-consuming, and as far as I know no one since Verbeek has tried to emulate what he did, at least as a way of earning a living.

* From The Upside Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo "A Fish Story", by Gustave Verbeek.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Verbeek

Neyther mayst thou ryse, cough, spyt, or nese

A. Barclay, Egloges, ca. 1530

The word 'sneeze' was originally 'fneeze' and is related to Old Norse fnaesa = snort or sneeze. But it lost its initial 'f', and became  'nese', probably because 'fn' is such a rare word beginning in English (I can't find any examples in modern English). But later it acquired an 's'. Perhaps people thought the 'f' was a long s, ƒneeze, or possibly as the Oxford English Dictionary suggests adding an initial 's' to 'nese' made it sound sneezier. The word 'cough' sounds like a cough (it's echoic) and 'sneeze' sounds like a sneeze.

Going further back, 'fneeze, is probably from the same older root as Greek πνευ (pneu) = breath, as in pneumonia. 

This change from p to f, going from Greek/Latin to Germanic languages, is a regular feature, first articulated by Schlegel in 1806. Other examples are pyr->fire, pod->foot, pater->father, penta->five, pulo->fowl, and (more surprisingly) port -> ford. (So a ford is a gateway/door (or port)). 

See here for more discussion about this sound change, part of Grimm's (one of the fairy tale brothers) law.

When a cat rubs a licked paw over its eyes

As it must have done many times before;

Why does it always then look surprised?

Can anyone elucidate for me the why, or the wherefore?