nordmann wrote:

"Dracon" in ancient Greek was used to infer "seeing clearly". The Athenian lawgiver's name may have been assigned to him on the basis of his political career and his ability to simplify what had been a very convoluted and often contradictory set of inherited laws into one all-purpose charter, so in fact had they used the term "Draconian" in those days it would likely have been intended as a huge compliment.

His main innovation - besides actually writing laws down for the first time - was to set up a tribunal that met in the open air on the Areios Pagos (the Hill of Ares) where people could petition publicly for justice, especially if they reckoned his laws and punishments as written down didn't quite fit their particular cases - the first "Supreme Court" that we know of. Dracon however limited the scope of this tribunal only to those cases which, in a very Greek manner, reflected the most deadly serious issues as understood generally at the time and all of which carried a potential death penalty or enforced slavery as punishment for the guilty. These were:

Homicide
Personal injury
Blasphemy
Arson
Olive trees

His laws lasted two centuries before they were revised. Interestingly the revised version deleted homicide from the tribunal's scope. Crimes against olive trees remained however.

 
nordmann, now I see there is the link. Now I understand.

nordmann I think that you have many times a lot of trouble to descend to these rather dummies of the board to explain it all. I thank you for doing the exercise.
And yes as usual coherent and to the point. I suppose that you have a "background", of which we have not the faintest idea...

Kind regards, Paul.

Thinking of the Spanish word upthread, 'boicatear al orador' from context meant to drown out the speaker.  With Zoom meetings cutting out and my computer working somewhat slowly (sometimes it takes a long time to enter the Zoom meeting) I've missed things and I did the wrong homework this week.

Thinking of long words upthread, where it was mentioned that medical words could be long, one I had fun trying to think of the shorthand outline for was sphygmomanometer - it's an instument for measuring blood pressure but you probably already know that.  I never worked as a medical secretary per se but I did 'temp' a few times in some more general departments of hospitals.

Of course if you want long words, you only need to look to the "agglutinating" languages such as German and Turkish. I seem to remember encountering one which, translated into English, equated to "The Brotherhood of retired commodores of the Danube Steam Packet Line".

I have no knowledge of Turkish, Gilgamesh, and an extremely limited knowledge of German from a night class getting on for 50 years ago.  I might be able to do some revision on the German but right now I need to work on my Spanish - reading not so bad but aural (unless the Spanish voice is very slow) is difficult for me.

nordmann, you do know some interesting facts about legal history.  I only worked on the administrative/secretarial side in legal firms.  I thought about training up to be a paralegal at one time but thought perhaps I was at the upper end of my working life to change direction.  I suppose olive trees played an important part in peoples' (some of them anyway) livelihood.  It wasn't ancient Greece and it wasn't even the real American west, but I remember watching one (can't remember which) of the many 'cowboy' series that used to be on TV in my childhood.  In one episode someone was sentenced to death for stealing a horse and I said something about the punishment seemed far too severe and one of my parents (I think my Dad) said well if someone took someone's horse, especially in a very lonely part of the range, the thief could be condemning the owner of the horse to death by hunger and thirst.  However, the possibility that offences against olive trees could be of equal severity to abandoning somebody on the range is my surmising.

PETRICHOR

A fairly new word, coined in the 1960s by Isabel Bear and RG Thomas to describe the smell of rain falling on dry, scorched earth. Raindrops that fall after a prolonged period of dry weather release more geosmin into the air, so "I can smell rain" is based on a scientific fact. Geosmin is a molecule made from decaying organic matter.
The word is derived from the Greek petr, rock and ichor, a fluid said to flow through the veins of the gods.

"Patronising" is a word doing the rounds at the moment especially by the politically orientated. What exactly is meant by it? It seems to get tangled up with empathy, sympathy, good humour, reaching out and snobbery. To me it is more likely to define something about someone who refers to it in a whinge  than the person  accused of using it. 

All very confusing. We need  a sort of verbal litmus before addressing  many people these days. Have people always been this sensitive?

HELLION

Originally "hallion" in Northumbria and the Borders whence it apparently originated, the word seems to have begun life denoting a person of low worth who worked deep in the bowels of large houses, normally within subterranean kitchens, and whose main job was the extremely menial, but obviously necessary, task of stirring broth (a 24/7 occupation in some houses). Within these dialects it gradually evolved therefore to mean someone of base status and even baser morals, and it was in this form that it successfully migrated further afield, notably to the Americas where it acquired its new spelling and in addition an even newer meaning ironically redolent of its true origins, though now someone who stirs something rather more pungent and less edible than the broth to which it once alluded. It also regained its original near-subterranean status on the part of the subject, who best agitates the excrement while retaining as low a profile as possible or, more typically, by attempting to disguise their true intentions.

Hellions, despite their obviously destructive potential when it comes to disruption of any society from within are, by definition since they obviously must first be identified to be so labelled, not very good at the task they have set themselves. They do tend however to achieve rather more sustained "success" in simply destroying any chance of enjoyment or maintaining a good atmosphere for everyone else.

Priscilla wrote:

"Patronising" is a word doing the rounds at the moment especially by the politically orientated. What exactly is meant by it? It seems to get tangled up with empathy, sympathy, good humour, reaching out and snobbery. To me it is more likely to define something about someone who refers to it in a whinge  than the person  accused of using it. 

All very confusing. We need  a sort of verbal litmus before addressing  many people these days. Have people always been this sensitive?

Priscilla, 

for me the word "patronising" has a "bittere" (bitter, dire?) connotation...no good humour...but an attitude of "we are the upperclass, who look in denigration to some underlings, who has to be guided to not run in their misfortune...

For instance here in Belgium in my childhood...
The French speaking upper class, who had that patronising word use about the "Flemings"  I was only a short time a "Flamingant"  ...but after a short time I saw where it was all about...

But that is what I understand by "patronising"...
They would someone "het bloed van onder de nagels halen" (get the blood from under the nails) (they translate by "get in his hair"?)
And nowadays some!! Flemings do just the same to the Walloons as in my childhood, but now in the other sense...

Kind regards from Paul.

Thank you Paul but I  don't think that clarifies too much for me...….a noodle in a linguistic soup, am I -  and well stirred at that by nordman's contribution. Whether that is related I have no idea, either; probably, she wrote with a grin.

Priscilla wrote:

Thank you Paul but I  don't think that clarifies too much for me...….a noodle in a linguistic soup, am I -  and well stirred at that by nordman's contribution. Whether that is related I have no idea, either; probably, she wrote with a grin.

 
Yes, yes, Priscilla, perhaps no clarification for you, but as you pull our nordmann in the circle, I hope he don't see my clarification as...
As I said: " I was only a short time a "Flamingant"  ...but after a short time I saw where it was all about... " (during my childhood)

Kind regards from Paul.

GASLIGHTING


The word has seemingly recently been used for people who are trying to make others feel they are going mad. What I don't understand is why this word is being used now. I remember seeing the film Gaslight when I was at university 50 years ago - it was so terrifying I never forgot it. People call these movies horror movies but I always think of them as terror movies. 
But why has the term just come into being now? Or has it always been around?

I wondered exactly the same thing, Caro, when the idiom suddenly started to pop up everywhere a short time ago. It had apparently been doing the rounds for decades within American psychology jargon, though even then it is difficult to find any use of it in more reputable or academic publications - its use even by the experts was mainly colloquial and the same authors, when expecting to be taken more seriously, were more inclined to employ the much more precise and relevant terminology that already existed and which far better defines the behaviour in question.

Its sudden adoption within general parlance appears to have coincided with widely circulated press reports related to Trump's election campaign where, incidentally, it was actually used incorrectly. Various commentators - it is difficult to see who said it first - latched onto the term to describe Trump's then "novel" trait of simply ignoring or refusing to address criticism of his character based on factual evidence, or when pressed on the matter simply adopting his now familiar tactic of dismissing any such allegation as "fake news".

This crude but apparently effective tactic on Trump's part to avoid admission of culpability, not only through direct denial of an allegation but to deny the validity of the right for the question to be asked of him at all, is indeed one trait that psychologists had colloquially included in those that together constitute "gaslighting", though in Trump's case the phrase was more difficult to make applicable the more one then tried to include the other traits - especially the presence of sufficient intelligence to have devised a long-term strategy of manipulation with a distinct goal, part of which is that the gaslighter ends up in complete control over their chosen victim and that this position carries tangible reward. In Trump's case narcissism alone apparently accounts for the motivation, and in fact it is a very grey area indeed regarding the extent to which the alleged gaslighter himself in this case is knowingly causing his victim(s) to believe that which isn't true versus that which is patently false but which he has actually convinced himself is true anyway.

However from this point on one can review internet-recorded instances and see the phrase, with increasing accuracy regarding its use, being adopted by social commentators when addressing the nature of personal relationships. Its popularity, though possibly kick-started through initial misapplication, may have been fuelled primarily by the fact that it, in itself, is not self-explanatory but its first widely publicised use carried sufficient context for it to be implicitly understood, albeit initially within the narrow field of political and social commentary (maybe today not so "narrow" at all given that social media has admitted so many into its ranks). This is often how arcane jargon makes the leap into the vernacular, usage of which is even more attractive to the user precisely because of its apparently arcane quality combined with its function to relay complex concepts succinctly. While achieving the primary goal of relaying fact or opinion, it also has the added benefit in terms of prestige of inferring the user is more knowledgeable than they may in fact be or at least sufficiently acquainted with psychological jargon to throw it casually into conversation, and if the jargon in question has an appeal based on its quaintness and intrigue then all the better.

The jury is still out regarding whether its current popularity (to the point already of becoming prematurely hackneyed) can be sustained or whether, as with much jargon, slang and quaint euphemisms, it will be seen in a few years time as just another "buzz word" that came and went in popular discourse.

Thanks for that elaboration, nordmann. I hadn't heard about Trump's possible involvement.

On the other side of the coin, I often wonder why the word 'cool' has retained its popularity from the 60s when so many other words of that era have not been heard for decades. Cool seems to used just as much as ever, if not more so. And by children as young as three or four. Usually those sort of words go out of fashion as fast as they are in. Is 'wicked' meaning good still used? I am not sure. I am forever having to ask what modern words mean, though in the case of gaslighting I knew from the film what it must mean and was actually able to explain it to others!

Trump, or more precisely the commentary that surrounds him, has introduced quite a few words into common parlance (none of them positive) that hitherto were the preserve of psychologists and psychiatrists. Our general ability to distinguish between a sociopath and a psychopath, for example, has improved tremendously in recent years, so much so that we can throw the former term into casual conversation these days with reasonable confidence in the belief that we have used it correctly and that it is understood by whoever we are talking to.

"Cool" has indeed proved a sturdy beast. In fact the old "jazz" milieu from which it sprang has proven to have been a fertile argot indeed for words entering common vocabulary that subsequently prove to be very durable. A huge factor in why any "new" expression gains traction is normally that the word carries a nuanced meaning not properly matched by any other available at the time for a concept that requires expression nonetheless. And in fact it has been posited by linguists and sociologists in the past that the peculiar success of words from this source may be fundamentally linked to black Americans' sensibilities and concerns actually being listened to by their white counterparts for the first time with a degree of empathy - albeit an empathy grounded primarily in a shared like of a musical style that also had been adopted as a cultural distinguisher between a younger generation and their older compatriots. Words that themselves had been forged and popularised within a community who needed many more ways to acknowledge and express cultural and social distinction than white people lent themselves readily to common use when such a distinction was applied to a perceived "generation gap" by younger people of any colour. It was no guarantee that any of these words would then achieve universal popularity, but it certainly gave quite a few of them a flying start.

A catalogue arrived today splashing an item as  a "versatile hero," and @ £19.99 thus a bargain I ought not miss, so thumbing the page and wondering if he did the dishes too, it turned out to be an empty pair of trousers with nothing to commend itself.
The local paper now has 'super heroes.' These turn out to be children who raised £19.99 to save the planet. NHS, pernicious weeds or maybe even to have  finished reading a book.

My new duvet set arrived - jade, of course with reversible grey side.  Regardless of what nordmann says, there really has to be life after death...….. book ahead, perhaps..... despite the insurance paragraph seeming a tad woolly, go for it.

Priscilla wrote:

My new duvet set arrived - jade, of course with reversible grey side.  Regardless of what nordmann says, there really has to be life after death...….. book ahead, perhaps..... despite the insurance paragraph seeming a tad woolly, go for it.

 
That's the right attitude Priscilla.
You are my "super hero"...

Paul.

PS: I hope it is the same "duvet" as the French one. I wonder how in English they pronounce the French "duvè" with the "u" that LiR has trouble to pronounce... perhaps "djouvut"? with the "u" as in the English "put"? and the "e" as in the French l"e" héro or in the English "duck"?

Oh no dovet word people manage duvet sort of as in France  and without saying the 't' which is a major breakthrough in England……. I cannot speak  for the other areas.  of course we cannot manage the French 'Buffet '- I was startled to hear it called buffet ny a caterer in a way which rhymes with Miss Muffett…. the one who sat of a fuffet - a Nursery Rhyme,  Paul...….. I   once had a cat  called herself Moffat so we used that; a very dictatorial cat, she lived for 26 years, hated most people and her own kittens but stole anything sweet and sugary without even attempting finesse or discretion.

Now I     have gone cross threaded and Mr Nord might be annoyed by that...…. nothing new......heigh ho. Pinning fresh hope on an afterlife there is apparently, a lock out position

As     for overworked words, 'Amazing'  has surely had a good enough run. We are running out of words. I bet the Ancient Greeks never ran out of words, they invented new ones - the Germans amalgamate words, I think. They do that sort of thing, amalgamate. We  had a  good language once.

Whenever the English language runs short of words it steals them from another language. There are plenty of underused ones, too - perhaps you need to start popularising and using those?

Priscilla wrote:

Now I     have gone cross threaded and Mr Nord might be annoyed by that...…. nothing new......heigh ho. Pinning fresh hope on an afterlife there is apparently, a lock out position

As     for overworked words, 'Amazing'  has surely had a good enough run. We are running out of words. I bet the Ancient Greeks never ran out of words, they invented new ones - the Germans amalgamate words, I think. They do that sort of thing, amalgamate. We  had a  good language once.

"amazing". I think you was already there on the BBC messageboard, with the Greek from Thessaloniki (I don't now instantly remember his name. nordmann will remember) He was a building engineer, if I remember well. I had endless discussions with him about Greece, the same as with his counterpart the Macedonian, I guess from Bulgarian affiliated Macedonians (now after years of mudling now offically recognized as "North Macedonia".
And nearly every sentence he used came the word "amazing"...
You don't believe it...he was once on the French Passion Histoire with, I have to say, correct and fluently French, but after some days already difficulties with the moderators...and although he wrote under another name and about other subjects, I recognized him by his "style"...and when asking he agreed...
As we are on the language board, you see that it are not only the words that are important, but also the manner how one uses them...
I guess, that with "my" English and French one would also recognize the style...

You said:
"Now I  have gone cross threaded and Mr Nord might be annoyed by that...…."

I find that Mr Nord is very tolerant...at least to me...I certainly can't write and even don't dare, on the French Passion Histoire what I all write overhere...

You said:
"Pinning fresh hope on an afterlife there is apparently, a lock out position"

You know that I respect your and Temp's believings and I know that you both aren't that "old fashioned" Christians with relics, processions and all that, but are focused as Temperance explained on the real values of the Christian belief...

But I suppose that you can't blame me and nordmann, when I, as this evening again, see on the national television something as a new relic added to a West-Flemish basilica of Dadizele. And all in the greatest earnestness.
Namely some "hairs" of Pope John-Paul II, who is canonized...
Yes you are right: that pope that let fall the Iron Curtain...at least partly or by a great deal of his actions...
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2020/07/02/relikwie-van-paus-johannes-paulus-officieel-ingehuldigd-in-basil/
You wouldn't believe it if you don't saw it yourself in the newscast...

But perhaps there is already from the Middle Ages a link between the worldly and religious power.
That Polish pope the hero of the Polish Nationalists...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II



Religion used by nationalists and vice versa...
As for instance the new Czar Putin has a close relationship with the Patriarch of Moscow
https://reshistorica.forumotion.com/t1293-russia-marriage-of-church-and-state
The film isn't available anymore but I found it here again:



Paul.

PS: Nowadays you don't know it anymore ...I hope that no religious fervents or Polish nationalists come to knock at my door this evening...I am not so much afraid of the Russians...

Paul wrote:

You know that I respect your and Temp's believings and I know that you both aren't that "old fashioned" Christians with relics, processions and all that, but are focused as Temperance explained on the real values of the Christian belief...

Me? I love a nice procession, Paul. Has to be done properly though - the Theatre of Religion and all that. Those Greeks understood all that - such clever chaps, those ancient dramatists/priests! It's all been thrown away. I blame the Puritans - miserable lot - no imagination whatsoever - no feel for the wonderful drama of it all!  

I don't do relics though - they really are a tad silly, aren't they?  

PS That Mr Nord is very tolerant so long as we behave ourselves and don't get too uppity!  

PPS Re gaslighting - a rose (or dung) by any other name still is what it is. Gaslighting as a manipulation technique is as old as the hills. Call it what you like - use a "buzz" word, or a suitably difficult/impressive term from an academic journal - it still describes a nasty behaviour pattern used by those who are driven by a pathological need to control. Gaslighters are bullies - and yes, are usually narcissists who are incapable of "the examined life". Never mind Trump - our very own Mr Cummings gaslighted the entire UK last month. We are all still bewildered. Remember R. D. Laing: "Do not adjust your mind; there is a fault in reality." Laing was yer proper psychiatrist type, by the way - not some purveyor of dodgy psychobabble on YouTube...

Méfiez-vous des gens du Nord ... n'ont pas la tolérance des gens normaux.

As Voltaire famously put it. Speaking of Voltaire, I have noticed a very recent resurgence in the UK of:

PANGLOSSIAN

It's popping up all over the place - most recently I saw it applied even to a football team who start every game blissfully unaware of the fact they're crap and have learnt nothing even by the end of each encounter in which they lose by a wide margin.

Voltaire's professor in Candide however was not meant to be funny simply because he was fatally over-optimistic (which he was), or just because he failed to adjust his attitude even as the blatant evidence against its justification mounted (which it did). Instead, as Voltaire has him stumblng from sacking to penury, abandonment by friends, through plague, syphilis, loss of limb, loss of an eye, only to end up caught in a war and then an earthquake before finally being hanged for heresy, it becomes obvious to the reader of the day that he wasn't only very unfortunate but was in essence a magnet for huge general misfortunes that had famously blighted that epoch - a bit like a cross between the 18th century version of Forrest Gump and Jonah. Any reader aware of recent current affairs could predict the man's story in advance - which made it all the more hilarious.

I would express a wish that such wilful bowdlerisation of what was once a perfectly nuanced word might be a one-off and I have therefore no real reason to fear for the future of spoken English, but I am pretty sure this would (incorrectly) leave me subject to the charge of being too "Panglossian".

UNPERSON

George Orwell's 1984 was published in June 1949 and included the word UNPERSON to mean an individual who has been erased from history because their actions have been officially denied. In short, History is what the State says it is.

Temperance wrote:

Me? I love a nice procession, Paul. Has to be done properly though - the Theatre of Religion and all that. Those Greeks understood all that - such clever chaps, those ancient dramatists/priests! It's all been thrown away. I blame the Puritans - miserable lot - no imagination whatsoever - no feel for the wonderful drama of it all!  

 
Yes Temperance, I understand you and if you think about it that seems quite logical...
Here not the Puritans but those Calvinists...not that exuberance anymore...no colours...no "brandramen" (stained glass windows)("brandramen" seems not to exist in Dutch anymore, only Flemish Dutch? "vitraux" in French)...
No processions anymore, no village fair anymore...austerity everywhere...and don't forget in Catholicism you had always an escape in the confession and some penitence...so only the "purgatory"?...
No, not those vigorous Jesuits (I read this evening Temp, that you had them in the "Tower" too) had won the Counter-Reformation, but more that "joie de vivre" (joy of life?) feeling that seems to be inherent to Catholic countries and that you still find in especially the Catholic Southern countries, including England and Belgium, Southern Germany and I suppose Ireland too...if you look to the North...I don't want to stereotype... ...

Kind regards from Paul.

nordmann wrote:

Méfiez-vous des gens du Nord ... n'ont pas la tolérance des gens normaux.
As Voltaire famously put it. 

 
nordmann, you know I have never questioned your quotes...but you know me...had to check it in the mighty google...and perhaps because it is not the actuality of the moment nothing found in the first pages...
and I was never disappointed in every text of you you mentioned overhere...

but I only found something from a perhaps stupid French singer...a certain "Vaillard
https://dicocitations.lemonde.fr/citations/citation-11652.php

and of course also: des gens du Nord...oui, du "Nord"



Excuses nordmann, for derailing again a serious thread...

Kind regards, Paul.

BLOVIATE

This is a lovely, fat, pompous sort of word which describes "the art of speaking for as long as the occasion warrants, and saying nothing". The trick is to sound very educated: to be a really good bloviator you should use lots of dead hard words, throw in Latin tags where possible, and occasionally refer, with a knowing smirk, to something Homer (the Greek one) or Virgil possibly said in some old poem. Impressive! Bloviate has been used recently of the UK Prime Minister's style of rhetoric. Trained (i.e. Oxford-educated) bloviators can sound very grand (sort of), and can fool most of the people most of the time, but, like the naked emperor, they end up exposed sooner or later for what they are: complete and utter - er - bloviators.


PS It has been unkindly suggested that men have a tendency to bloviate more than women. They can't help it, it is claimed. This is a horribly unfair and sexist comment, as not all brainy men lapse into bloviation when cornered. Professor Chris Whitty, the impressively intelligent, but unassuming, Chief Medical Officer for England (the man who has tried to guide the UK through the pandemic), regularly looks at Boris Johnson in disbelief and despair when our funny old Bloviator-in-Chief shows up as star guest on the BBC Covid -19 information sessions, and immediately starts bloviating away for England. Private Eye, in obvious sympathy for Whitty, a real expert who never bloviates, but who, rather, always speaks clearly and to the point, has taken to referring to the unfortunate medical adviser as Professor Chris At-His-Wits'-End...

!, the exclamation mark

Believed to originate with the Latin word io, meaning joy, which was once represented by a capital I and a lower case o, the exclamation mark made its' first appearance in English in the 16th century.
It has, or had, a number of nicknames. John Hart in 1551 called it the "wonderer", while Ben Johnson called it the admiration mark. Johnson's contemporaries also used "shriek" and "screamer" and at various times since has been known as "boing", "pling", "bang", "gasper", "startler" and "slammer"

Fascinating stuff.

In Norwegian, and I assume all associated northern Germanic languages, it goes by the brilliant moniker of "the shout out symbol" (utropstegn). Strangely for such a conservative language its Nordic history seems to long predate English use, at least if the OED and the SNO are both correct. In Sturlusen's sagas, for example, when first committed to script back in the 13th century in the Nørren tongue (before complete divergence into Icelandic and Norwegian), sentences were literally and liberally littered with the symbol - sometimes even several times within a word whose every syllable, it seems, was deemed to merit its own exclamation. An example is that from Sturluson's citing of the classic Edda "freestyle poem" detailing Ragnarok (itself often suffixed by a "shout out") and the mythical wolf-beast (and technically grand-nephew of Odin) who has it in for his great-uncle - Fen!Ris!Úlfr! Despite all the exclamation marks however the Norse warrior Vidar is totally unimpressed with the regicidal monster and promptly dispatches him in the last heroic act before the end of time.

Speaking of Ragnarok, if you ever do a Cummings and make it up to Gosforth in Cumbria before our new version of Ragnarok descends fully upon us have a look at the magnificent early 10th century "Christian" cross in St Mary's church there. Traditionally it is said to depict the Day of Judgement from Revelations - but bring some opera glasses or a mobile cherry-picker for easy elevation and have a close look at the "Jesus killing Satan" motif on its eastern side. In the picture JC, with his wild coiffure, shaggy beard and neat little helmet, looks suspiciously like a certain Vidar, while old Nick himself with his peculiarly half-human half-lupine features lacks only the odd utropstegn or three to properly confirm his true identity.

Interesting stuff about the exclamation mark Trike and nordmann.  Does "io" in this context have anything to do with what I thought was one of the daftest lines ever in a Christmas Carol, "and io, io, io, io by priest and people sungen" in fake ye olde Englysshe in Ding Dong Merrily?  If "io" means joy it would make more sense than "io" as two random syllables.  I always thought of joy in Latin as "gaudium" but of course there could be more than one word with the same meaning in Latin just as there are in other languages.  I loved Ding Dong Merrily when I was at primary school and I wouldn't say I hate it now but as I've grown older I've deemed some aspects of it to be trite.

I've heard of the Fenris wolf legend - or one version, where he bites off the hand of Tyr.  I hadn't picked up (or else I have forgotten) about Fenris Wolf's involvement with Vidar or being Odin's nephew.

I'd only ever heard of 'the slammer' as being a slang expression for jail.

The words of the Christmas Carol 'Ding, Dong Merrily on High' probably sound a bit trite as they were written by the English composer George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848–1934) and first published only in 1924, so they aren't particularly "traditional". The tune however has a longer history being a 16th century dance tune recorded under the name 'Branle de l'Official' in the dance book 'Orchésographie' (publ. 1589) written by Jehan Tabourot, also known by his pen-name Thoinot Arbeau (1519–1593). A branle (or bransle or brawle) was a French dance in rapid 4:4 time in which couples danced either in a line or a circle and takes its name from the French branler meaning to shake, wave, sway, wobble etc. (it does have other, modern, rather more sordid slang meanings, but I'll leave you to guess at those while we quickly move on). Originally a branle was a rustic peasant dance but by the time Tabourot recorded the music to several branle dance tunes they had become popular as a style of formal court dance.



Similarly another tune for a branle dance, the 'Branle Coupé de Cassandre', also had words added to make it a loyal anthem. Around 1600 the master of the French Royal Chapel, Eustache du Caurroy, took the popular dance tune and added some accompanying words of praise for King Henri IV. Although specifically about Henri IV, Caurroy's 'Marche Henri IV', or 'Vive Henri IV' as it was also known, became associated with the monarchy in general and so effectively became the national anthem of the Kingdom of France right up until the revolution.





Mind you the tune of 'God Save the Queen' was also originally a French dance tune, in this case a galliard. And while the the modern version with the words 'God Save the King' was first published in England in 1744 and popularised the following year during the Jacobite invasion of England, the same tune with the words 'Grand Dieu sauvre le Roi' had been composed/arranged in 1686 by the French court composer, Jean-Baptiste Lully, as a royal anthem in celebration for Louis XIV having survived surgery on an anal fistula.

I recall mention of (was it one of your comments, MM?) 'God Save the Queen' or at least the tune being shared with other countries earlier this year.  I didn't know about 'Ding Dong Merrily' having taken its tune from the air to an old French dance though.  It is a catchy tune.  Probably the tune has as much (if not more than) to do with keeping the carol popular as the words.

In a similar way the Christmas Carol 'Masters in This Hall' or 'Nowell sing we clear' was written around 1860 by the English poet and artist William Morris (he of the British Arts and Crafts Movement) to a dance tune originally composed by the French composer Marin Marais for his opera 'Alcyone' of 1706, in which it was called 'Marche pour les Matelots' (Sailors' March). The tune was subsequently included in Raoul Auger Feuillet's 1706 dance manual, 'Recueil de contredanse' where he called it 'La Matelotte', along with the steps which Feuillet had devised to go with the tune. In 1710 the English theatre choreographer John Essex published an English translation of Feuillet's work called 'For the Further Improvement of Dancing' in which the dance is given as 'The Female Saylor'. William Morris was prompted to compose the words to this dance tune in 1860, then aged 26, when he was working as an apprentice in the London office of the architect Edmund Street, probably under the persuasion of his fellow apprentices who at that time had a taste for part-song. The architect and musician Edmund Sedding included the carol in his collection of 'Nine Antient [sic] and Goodly Carols for the Merry Tide of Christmas' (1860) after he had encountered it during a business meeting in the office of Edmund Street, where presumably he had heard it being sung by William Morris and his fellow apprentices.





But I'm rather digressing as this thread is about words and not the music.

Gosh! Thank you, MM in spades doubled. The Sailors March has made the day worth getting up for.  Loved the story, the orchestration, the singing - and even the art work. Could we perhaps have  a thread on appropriated themes? Always enjoyed singing that carol in choir but the original setting is a delight. French lends itself to being sung - or so I always found it. Along with the percussion bash, I thought  made out assorted recorders- I used to be able to play all four - along with other daft friends we used to take assorted instruments to play at a holiday cottage high in the foothills. Kick started  memory will get me through the drudge of the day. Thank you.

Glad you enjoyed that, I only knew it all because the 'Marche pour les Matelots' recently cropped up on the radio station 'France Musique' as I was driving back from the shops and, noting the similarity to 'Masters in this hall', I was prompted to find out the history. The accompanying painting, by the way, is "Dutch Ships Ramming Spanish Galleys off the Flemish Coast in October 1602" by Vroom Hendrick Cornelis.

Re. recorder ensembles ... when I was active in caving, over several years we spent six weeks or so each summer camped on top of a mountain in Slovenia while exploring the deep cave system underneath. Everything had to be labouriously carried up, and so nothing un-necessary or frivoulous was possible: food (dried), camping stuff, caving equipment and rope (kms of that) always took precedence. But recorders are fairly small and lightweight, and robust, and so together with a few sheets of music we managed to form a recorder ensemble to happily tootle away the evenings playing rennaissance aires and dance tunes, while camped on a barren mountain in the middle of nowhere. I'd previously always only played the descant recorder, or descant crummhorn which has the same fingering, but on that mountain I was sometimes required to play the tenor recorder. Transposing by sight - up or down, by a third or fifth, to get into the correct key - was certainly useful in keeping the brain alert.

We also did some acappella part-singing as well, but being mostly - although by no means exclusively - males, our choral efforts were rather lacking from the upper registers. Thankfully one of our number had been a choirboy at an exclusive cathedral school. As an adult he naturally sang baritone in the university choir, but having had his voice professionally trained from a young age, he had an impressive vocal range and could readily sing as a falsetto soprano.

And we were all crusty 'uncultured' scientists and engineers to boot!. Ah, happy memories.

Aye, mountains and empty remote places seem to lend themselves to pipe music. I recall many nights in wild places in the subcontinent hearing the plaintive rills of an unseen piper in poignant reflection.. When we played in the foothills - circa 10,000 ft up - sometimes sudden cloud drifts would obscure the music sheets and so dense we must move away very carefully...… no fences around the plateau clearing.

Actually, MM, I think you were probably playing Alto not Tenor. Soprano (aka Descant) and Tenor are both normally in C (though 6th flute in D was once common). Sopranino and Alto (aka Treble) are in F. Sopranino and Soprano are written using "musica ficta" - they play an octave above the written note.

The solo instrument in this is 6th flute in D.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jovOnO4FbNs

Aye, GG, in truth one only has to learn two sets of fingering for the suite of four  that I have - and of which  I have no idea what to do with  now. Those along with he such stuffaps of other stuff such as Welsh and Cornish dictionaries.... the latter being a  somewhat slim volume will make for an  odd rummage for the local skip hounds when I go.

I only ever managed to pick out very gingerly notes on the descant recorder (which I still have though I seldom touch it now).  I can only play at it not really play it. I did try the next one down and was thrown by the different fingering but that recorder was on loan so of course was returned whence it came.  MM's mention of singing falsetto made me think of a consort I occasionally heard on the radio or saw on TV in the late 1960s/early 1970s, The Early Music Consort of London.  I never saw them 'live'.  I remember they had a singer (can't remember his name offhand) who could 'throw' his voice.  I think it was called countertenor.  The group must have broken up or gone on to other things because I stopped hearing of them after a time.

The Early Music Consort of London was the creation of Christopher Hogwood and David Munrow. The group disbanded in 1976 following Munrow's suicide. The countertenor you mentioned was probably James Bowman who often performed with them, for example this, 'Guarda, donna, el mio tormente' from the album 'Music for Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain' (1972) by David Munrow, James Bowman and the Early Music Consort of London.

MM, how tragic.  I may have heard something about it at the time but with the passing of the years had forgotten.  I would have thought DM had a lot to live for.  He was extremely talented.  I may have forgotten the names but wasn't DM the one who was a multi-instrumentalist.  Thank you for the video.

Yes David Munrow was a very talented and enthusiastic performer and presenter:

If you can get hold of it, there are two pieces on Michael Praetorius: Dances from Terpsichore / Motets from Musae Sioniae (1973) - "Resonet in laudibus" with 3 choirs (each led by a counter-tenor) and "Erhalt uns Herr" which, to me, show one side of Munrow's genius. As a performer, though, this is the one I remember best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCJBsuxRWeQ (from memory, the nakerer was James Blades, one of the truly great percussionists) btw - this is a sopranino recorder in f", an octave above the alto/treble.

Found this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-flbSceuxg

Talking about countertenors, I think this rendering of 'Va tacito e nascosto' from Handel's opera 'Giulio Cesare' (Julius Cesar) performed by Andreas Scholl, is sublime. Handel wrote the lead role of Cesar specifically for the celebrated Italian castrato, Senesino (born Francesco Bernardi), but Scholl certainly does it justice in this piece. The horn player gives a virtuoso performance too - note that this is a completely period-authentic 'natural' horn, without any slides, keys or valves, so the pitch of the chromatic notes between the instrument's fundamental harmonics is entirely down to the players lip control.

Va tacito starts at 4:30

The Praetorius music is magnificent but should an old Catholic lass like me be listening to music with a Lutheran connection!!!

If I can listen to the 1610 Vespers, you certainly can listen to Praetorius!

Or you could try Thomas Tallis - he composed a lot of religious music for Elizabeth I's protestant Church of England, yet remained a loyal, yet unreformed Roman Catholic, up until his death at the respectable age of eighty.



I'd apologise to the original poster for leading everyone astray, but it was Priscilla, and she's been equally bad at luring us away from the OP. Nevertheless sorry an' all that.

As a contrast, here's a bit of Purcell featuring a basso profundo as well as a male alto/counter tenor  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssyPAUfj2V0 written at the request of the original bass singer after he and Charles II survived a shipwreck.

The story is that towards the end of his life, King Charles II commissioned a yacht which he named 'Fubbs', the nickname he had given to his mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth. Sir John Hawkins (courtier, historian and gossip) and always a good embroiderer of a story, recounted that on the first voyage the famous bass singer, John Gostling, was invited on board, but he did not much enjoy the experience, which was beset by a storm during which Gostling was violently sea-sick and so he was fervently glad once he'd got back on shore. On his return to London, at least so Hawkins says, Gostling selected some verses from the Psalms which he thought were particularly apposite to his 'near-death' experience, which Purcell then set to music for him ... or perhaps, as is equally likely, Purcell composed the piece as a musical in-joke to amuse the king, who had of course been there onboard the yacht and so exactly knew the truth of the matter. Whether the circumstances as recounted by Hawkins are entirely true is debatable, but 'They that go down to the sea in ships' does appear to have been composed around 1685 immediately after the events occurred (and shortly before Charles II's death) and the music certainly seems to have been specifically written for Gostling’s splendid bass voice.

Thank you, Res Historians for a joyful feast of music, anecdote and information. So we strayed from the path - my own path, I think. Great. When I was an educator I saw my role as opening doors and windows on the glories of the world and knowledge - and most well beyond my     own capacity. it is how I have  learned also. Sadly the Nar Curriculum  curbed the inventiveness of  those of similar ilk; those who explored the diverse paths of red herrings with serious intent. 

So the words of the day are Thank you.....recently revived in UK with a Thursday night clap for the NHS during crisis..... in the good ol' days they used to build statues .... on with the weave then.

When discussing Kingsley Amis' "The Alteration" I was told that this voice was once common, but apparently only in Spain, and when it disappeared, it was replaced by the castrati. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOHnJZHiM9s

This is a better example - he is singing in his "modal" voice, not utilising "falsetto".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYKEqsxDnV8

True about Tallis, MM - and I think William Byrd died of natural causes despite changing from Protestantism to Catholicism.

Edited.