The Ramble

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Latin phrase of the day #14

Today’s entry is a line from a poem by Catullus, the Roman poet.  The poem laments the “Death of a Pet Sparrow.”

Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque
et quantum est hominum venustiorum.

Lugete (lugeo, lugere, luxi, luctum) – verb; mourn, grieve

O – Oh!

Veneres Cupidinesque – Venuses and Cupids

et – and, even, however

quantum – adverb; how much, the most, the greater

est (sum, esse, fui, futurus) – verb; be, is

hominum –  noun; fellow, fellow creature, man, person, mortal

venustiorum – more charming

I grieve, oh Vensuses and Cupids
even of all the people it is one more charming than ordinary men!

Now, this translation is probably wrong because translations of Catullus hate me.  That is all.

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Latin phrase of the day #13

I found today’s phrase in Lesley Coote’s Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England.  It is a fragment of “Sicut rubeum draconem,” a prophecy inspired by and reworked from the Prophecia Merlini.

In ultimis diebus albi drachonis semen ejus trifarium spergetur.[1]

In – prep.; in, on, into, at, among

ultimis – adj.; far, farther, farthest, latest, last, highest, greatest

diebus – noun; day, daylight

In ultimis diebus – In the last days

albi – white

drachonis – noun; dragon

albi drachonis – of the white dragon

semen – noun; seed

ejus – pronoun; his

trifarium – adj.; three-fold

spergetur -> dispergetur (dispergo, dispergere, dispersi, dispersus) – verb; to scatter

In the last days of the white dragon, his seed will be scattered about threefold.

Now…this translation was dicey because of “spergetur,” which doesn’t appear in any of my dictionaries and such.  Dispergetur, however, is a known word meaning “to scatter.”  I actually had to go back into my dictionary in English looking for a word that meant something that would fit into the phrase (in this case, I was looking for “to seed” or “to scatter (seeds).”  And that’s what I found.

1. “Sicut rubeum draconem” in Lesley Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2000), 61.

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Latin phrase of the day #12

Today, we have a selection from something very near and dear to my heart, the Historia of Geoffrey of Monmouth.  The History of the Kings of Britain contains the Prophecia Merlini, which is where this selection is drawn from.

Sextus hybernie menia subuertet

Menia is actually moenia.  I really don’t think that they’re talking about overthrowing a small fish of Ireland.

 Sextus – proper noun in this case, translated simply as Sextus

hybernie – proper noun; Ireland

moenia – noun; walls, ramparts, defenses (all of a town or other area)

subuertet – verb; overturn, cause to topple, overthrow, destroy, subvert

Sextus will overthrow the defenses of Ireland

And now, back to our regularly scheduled thesis.

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Ah, the joys of freewriting (or how it took me 14 pages to figure out who I was talking about)

So for the past week or so I’ve been feeling the need to put pen to paper (literally) and do some freewriting.  I don’t do it often and so when the mood strikes, it’s strange.  So between thesis and cleaning, I’ve been freewriting.  I’m up to fourteen handwritten pages (almost fourteen pages, there’s only a few lines left on page 14 to write).  Freewriting is a strange thing…you never know what’s going to happen.

So I started with a first person point of view and rambled.  My narrator told me pretty quickly that her name was Julia (Julia Rhiannon, no less) and that she’d been living in this creepy little midwestern town for a few months because she’d been taking care of a sick (now deceased) relative that she’d been visiting there since she was eight.  Most of the town, especially the good Reverend at the local evangelical chapel, give her the heebie-jeebies.

Then there was this boy–maybe about her age, maybe a little younger, a mysterious, broken thing that on the surface looked crazy, “special,” or drugged.  He kept popping up, kept looking for her.  She found out his name was Darien fairly early on.  He came to her in moments of almost-lucidity and asked for her help.

Now…I knew by this point (heck, I knew by a few lines into the first page) that this story is in the same universe as my first Nanowrimo project ever, When All’s Said and Done, which has been on my mind in between thinking about Edward I and III because it’s about time I finally gutted the thing, revised it, polished it, and started sending it to publishers.  It’s a strangely disturbing piece, probably because there’s elements of it that are just maybe a little too real to not be creepy.  The freewriting ramble I’ve been working on was very clearly very intimately connected to the story of the Insitute, given Darien’s whisperings about the end and the Institute and how he’s very clearly reluctant to tell Julia the whole truth for fear she’ll either think he’s crazy or get herself into trouble with the sprawling installation just outside of the village of Andover Commonwealth.

I’m writing page 13 and 14 today, where Darien is giving up some of the secrets he knows about the place…and it hits me.  Bam.  Right between the eyes.

Darien isn’t Darien at all.

Darien is Ridley.

Now that revelation isn’t going to mean anything to anyone except for me and maybe one or two other people who may happen to stumble across this.  And if Miss Jen reads it, she’s going to blink and ask me who Ridley is and I’ll tell her.  And her eyes will get big and wide and she’ll be all “Ooh.”

And then she’ll ask if she can read the ramble.  And I’ll let her, because she’s Reece, and maybe someday Reece’ll actually meet up with this broken soul who feels like he’s betrayed people he cared about, people who cared about him in return.

All depends on what the redrafting process brings.  Either way, this ramble…fantastic background and yet another layer added into what was originally a lot less complex than it’s going to become.

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Latin Phrase of the day #11

More medieval Latin today, this one from the Cartularium Prioratus de Gyseburne, the salutation to a letter, to be exact.

Willelmus etc. dilecto filio, Abbati de Whiteby, salutem, gratiam et benedictionem.

Willelmus – William

etc. – et cetera; and so forth

dilecto – adj.; beloved, dear

filio – noun; son

Abbati de Whiteby – Abbot of Whiteby

salutem – greetings

gratiam – noun; thanks

et – and

benedictionem – noun; blessings

William and so forth, beloved son, Abbot of Whiteby, greetings, thanks and blessing.

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Latin phrase of the day #10

Good god, I’ve made it to #10?  I think I’m shocked.

Today’s Latin phrase is from the medieval Prophecy of the Bull, which dates to around 1327 — right around the beginning of Edward III’s reign as King of England.

Ad bona non tardus, audax veluti leopardus

ad – to, toward, until, almost

bona – good, honest, brave, noble, kind, pleasant, right, useful, valid/correct, healthy

non – no, not, [negative]

tardus – adj.; slow, limping, deliberate, late

audax – adj.; bold, daring, courageous, reckless, rash, audacious, presumptuous, desperate

veluti – adv.; just as, as if

leopardus – noun; leopard

[He] is never slow to [do] good, just as the courageous leopard

Yay for medieval Latin prophecies containing animal imagery!  And poetry.  Yikes.

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Lion passant guardant vs. leopard in Medieval heraldry and symbolism

In researching my graduate thesis on the uses of the Arthurian legend by Edward I and Edward III (I can’t rightfully say it’s about Edward II’s use of the legend because he failed to do so), I’m doing some research regarding heraldry, since it’s so intimately linked to symbolism, chivalry, and medieval noble identity.  There was a problem tugging at the back of my brain for several weeks now, regarding leopard symbolism in the case of both men.

Now, my research had shown that when Edward I was referred to as the leopard when he was young and a pain in everyone’s ass (often especially in his father’s ass), it was a bad thing.  And yet much later, when his grandson Edward III was called the leopard, it was a good thing.  So why the dichotomy?  How did the image of the leopard shift?  Turns out that there’s a pretty simple answer.

The following is from my scribbles for my thesis:

The heraldric device of the leopard was an accepted symbol of the English crown by the age of Edward III.  The heraldric leopard, however, should not be confused with the actual animal: a heraldric leopard was a lion.  The “leopard” device, a lion passant or lion passant guardant, is in fact a form of lion, shortened to leopard from leo pardes and is referred to by the French as a leopard.  The image of the leoprard is thus a sticky problem.  Beastiaries painted the leopard in a negative light–thus it was a grave invictive when Edward I was called the leopard in his youth–but with the rise fo chivalry and the increase in the importance of heraldry, the image of the leopard, in these cases a reference to the lion passant guardant, began to shift and take on a mmore positive connotation.  The English “leopard” is thus a lion, a strong symbol of royal authority as the king of beasts.

So, if sources such as Caroline Shenton’s article in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England (eds. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen) are to be believed…heraldry played a large part in forming positive images of monarchs, at least in the minds of their own people.  It’s an interesting thing to note, however, that the very people that the English were fighting throughout the reign of Edward III are the ones that insist that the lion passant guardant is in fact a leopard, not a lion.

Interesting indeed…considering that the leopard was a symbol of the Antichrist.[1]  Who would have thought that, huh?  Very interesting indeed….

1. Caroline Shenton, “Edward III and the Symbol of the Leopard” in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, Peter Coss and Maurice Keen, eds. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2002), p. 73.