Excogitate

The Atlantic has put up its original review of Darwin's On the Origin of Species. My favourite thing about it comes in the second paragraph:

Wherefore, in Galileo's time, we might have helped to proscribe, or to burn had he been stubborn enough to warrant cremation-even the great pioneer of inductive research; although, when we had fairly recovered our composure, and had leisurely excogitated the matter, we might have come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one, after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn.

Excogitated! Wondrous! I suppose it means to think out  - excogito ergo summarise.

Indeed, the OED says that it does mean think out, and moreover contains the wonderful adjective excogitous, used only once in 1646 in the sentence "Impatience is very excogitous."

An excogitous statue

William the Conqueror

I was casting about in my tiny mind for something about regal nuptials, and couldn't think of anything. However, I did remember a story about a previous King William. The following is a piece of gossip noted down by a Londoner called Manningham in 1602. You'll need to know that Richard Burbage was the lead actor in Shakespeare's company. He was the first Hamlet, the first Macbeth, and the first Richard III. Now read on:

Upon a time when Burbage played Richard III there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night with her by the name of Richard III. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained, and at his game ere Burbage came. Then message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard III, Shakespeare’s name William.

You old dog, you.

Lethologica

There is, dear reader, a precise word for not being able to remember the precise word: lethologica. This was sometime a paradox, but next time you misplace the mot juste, comfort yourself with the fact that you are simply having a lethological moment.

Lethologica was invented by Carl Jung and is simply a combination of lethe - forgetfulness - and logica- wordy. In Greek mythology there was a river of forgetfulness in the underworld called Lethe. When you bathed in Lethe you forgot everything and were washed in sweet oblivion. That's why Keats opens Ode to a Nightingale with:

My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains
My senses, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past and Lethewards had sunk.

Similarly, when Hamlet's dead daddy reveals that he's been murdered, he's pleased to see that Hamlet gets antsy:

...duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed
That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf,
Wouldst thou not stir in this.

There's also some poem where Time sits on the banks of Lethe throwing people's names in to the water, but I can't remember what it is. Perhaps it's Dante. It sounds like Dante. Anybody know? I just can't remember.

Jung tries to remember that splendid word he thought up.

Hore-Hound

There aren't nearly enough disparaging word for libidinous men. There are plenty for women. Language, in this way, is quite ungentlemanly. However, leafing through Nathan Bailey's Dictionarium Domesticum (1736) I came across a wonderful phrase: hore-hound.

Admittedly, hore-hound, as Bailey used it, has nothing to do with sex. In fact, it's just a recipe with an amusing name. Yet with its pleasant alliteration and doggy implications I feel it could be usefully carried over as a modern synonym for a coney-chaser.

In case you were wondering, and I'm sure you weren't, the Hore-Hound recipe goes like this:

The leaves of this being roasted in a cabbage under hot ashes and pounded with some salt will cure the stinging of serpents and biting dogs: they are also good for humours and chaps in the fundament; being apply'd  with some honey they will clease foul ulcers: the decoction of it is good for a cough and difficulty of breathing by its cleansing the lungs and promoting spitting.

So if you find a chap in your fundament, get yourself a hore-hound.

Supply your own caption

The Dream of the Rood

Over on McSweeney's they have a little comedy piece about possible Easter films, including:

Good, Better, Best Friday


Musical comedy about the crucifixion of Christ—but from the point of view of the cross. Think Happy Feet meets Passion of the Christ with a dash of Showboat.

It's a ridiculous idea, it would be like doing a version of the Crucifixion as an Anglo-Saxon warrior-poem—but from the point of view of the cross. Think Beowulf meets Passion of the Christ with a dash of The Book of the Duchess.

That, of course, has already been done. It's called The Dream of the Rood. Here's a taster:

Ealle ic mihte
feondas gefyllan, hwæðre ic fæste stod.
Ongyrede hine þa geong hæleð, (þæt wæs god ælmihtig),
strang ond stiðmod. Gestah he on gealgan heanne,
modig on manigra gesyhðe, þa he wolde mancyn lysan.
Bifode ic þa me se beorn ymbclypte.

And here's a translation:

I might have
felled all the fiends; even so, I stood fast.
He stripped himself then, young hero - that was God almighty -
strong and resolute; he ascended on the high gallows,
brave in the sight of many, when he wanted to ransom mankind.
I trembled when the warrior embraced me;

Rood was the Old English word for cross. Cross is the Celtic version and was only introduced by Irish missionaries in the tenth century. Incidentally, the phrase criss-cross is only a garbling of Christ's cross, which is therefore blasphemous.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some tearful gardening to do.

And I thought my front door was unwieldy.

Birthdays

Today is, traditionally, Shakespeare's birthday. So here is Shakespeare on the subject of getting old. He wrote a lot of sonnets about ageing, but I've always suspected that he wrote this one on his birthday:

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end,
Each changing place with that which goes before
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith, being crowned,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight
And Time that gave, doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of Nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow;
And yet, to times in hope, my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Cry God for Shakespeare, England and Saint George.

Why has nobody ever Photoshopped™ some hair back onto this?

And a merry Easter to you, Mr Eliot.

The dripping blood our only drink,
The bloody flesh our only food:
In spite of which we like to think
That we are sound, substantial flesh and blood—
Again, in spite of that, we call this Friday good.

- East Coker

An oddity of this little fragment is that it contains a double eye-rhyme: food, blood and good - ude, udd and... I don't know the phonetic alphabet well enough, but you see what I mean: good rhymes with hood, blood rhymes with mud and food rhymes with nude.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough
And blow it in one fiery cough
To kingdom come! More bombs! Although
One nuke's enough.

Other such non-rhymes in the comments, please.