tidbits cross time
Oct. 23rd, 2018 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliThe Royalists' most reliable way to transmit documents was to sew them into books and then give them to women who managed to escape notice by the meanness of their condition.
Nomadic peoples, regardless of their theoretical beliefs on the practice of witchcraft, generally (but not universally) do not accuse people of being witches or specifically witching anyone.
Medieval convents would call to meals by ring a bell -- a hundred times. (So you could finish up what you were in the middle of.)
A Roman work on astrology from the fourth century recounts seven cases of a horoscope being drawn in order to determine whether to charge someone with practicing magic.
In Hinduism, giving charity means your sins are transmitted to those you give you -- the "poison of the gift." A worthy priest can purify this.
The first intelligence efforts on the Roundhead side was very clumsy, opening all letters meant for Whitehall, without distinguishing what was likely to be useful. Given the way they were folded to be delivered -- you often had to cut things to open them -- this revealed all.
The lilith demon of Mesopotamia was dangerous to women and children because she regarded herself as the true lover of the man she preyed on, and so reacted with jealousy toward the actual wife and her children.
The European notion of a fairy kingdom and court (unlike the beings) appears to have been a late medieval innovation.
In Cameroon, one tribe practiced executions for witchcraft so often that every village had its witch-hanging tree.
In Elizabethan England, being a doctor or apothecary was a good job for a spy. Gave you an excuse to about at all hours, and put in you in the way of secrets.
For a long time, it was thought that the Labyrinth was a cave complex in the south of Crete.
In medieval Livonia, werewolves heroically fought against witches.
The Secret Knot, the first Royalist conspiracy in Commonwealth Britain, was lead by younger sons, so their families would not be so implicated.
A king of France, being excommunicated because of an illicit marriage, prevented any services being held in a town he visited. Hence, his departure was heralded by the peal of church bells as the services resumed.
In India, witchcraft accusations were made within the same caste. Nevertheless, the British estimates of executions for witchcraft would indicate that it was a far greater killer than suttee. (The rebellion in 1857, and resultant lack of British authority, unleashed savage witch hunts in northern tribes.)
Queen Eleanor once, writing to the Pope, described herself as "by the wrath of God, Queen of England."
The Hampton Court maze was originally of hornbeam, but in replacing dead plants, gardeners frequently slapped in what they had: privet, holly, yew, hawthorn, sycamore.
Nomadic peoples, regardless of their theoretical beliefs on the practice of witchcraft, generally (but not universally) do not accuse people of being witches or specifically witching anyone.
Medieval convents would call to meals by ring a bell -- a hundred times. (So you could finish up what you were in the middle of.)
A Roman work on astrology from the fourth century recounts seven cases of a horoscope being drawn in order to determine whether to charge someone with practicing magic.
In Hinduism, giving charity means your sins are transmitted to those you give you -- the "poison of the gift." A worthy priest can purify this.
The first intelligence efforts on the Roundhead side was very clumsy, opening all letters meant for Whitehall, without distinguishing what was likely to be useful. Given the way they were folded to be delivered -- you often had to cut things to open them -- this revealed all.
The lilith demon of Mesopotamia was dangerous to women and children because she regarded herself as the true lover of the man she preyed on, and so reacted with jealousy toward the actual wife and her children.
The European notion of a fairy kingdom and court (unlike the beings) appears to have been a late medieval innovation.
In Cameroon, one tribe practiced executions for witchcraft so often that every village had its witch-hanging tree.
In Elizabethan England, being a doctor or apothecary was a good job for a spy. Gave you an excuse to about at all hours, and put in you in the way of secrets.
For a long time, it was thought that the Labyrinth was a cave complex in the south of Crete.
In medieval Livonia, werewolves heroically fought against witches.
The Secret Knot, the first Royalist conspiracy in Commonwealth Britain, was lead by younger sons, so their families would not be so implicated.
A king of France, being excommunicated because of an illicit marriage, prevented any services being held in a town he visited. Hence, his departure was heralded by the peal of church bells as the services resumed.
In India, witchcraft accusations were made within the same caste. Nevertheless, the British estimates of executions for witchcraft would indicate that it was a far greater killer than suttee. (The rebellion in 1857, and resultant lack of British authority, unleashed savage witch hunts in northern tribes.)
Queen Eleanor once, writing to the Pope, described herself as "by the wrath of God, Queen of England."
The Hampton Court maze was originally of hornbeam, but in replacing dead plants, gardeners frequently slapped in what they had: privet, holly, yew, hawthorn, sycamore.
no subject
Date: 2018-10-27 09:15 am (UTC)So what happens if Mr Preyed-upon prefers Lilith also?
[Far beyond retrieval in my archives, I talked about a Chinese fairy tale wherein a young man whose Girl Next Door was denied to him by her parents, so a thousand-year-old fox fairy took her form and lived with him instead, until the astonished parents relented and allowed the marriage to happen, and so the fox fairy split… And I said, "Wait a minute." You talk about bait and switch! The purdah-bound Doorstop Next Door was a poor consolation prize for a fun-loving, convention-defying, thousand-year-young spirit! And she'd never even MET him! This was going to be a horrible disaster! O well…
no subject
Date: 2018-10-27 04:16 pm (UTC)Anyways, your fox fairy was playing at being the girl next door. The whole point of the game was to stick to the character. If you're playing a dragon, what's the point of suddenly deciding that you're railway engineer in the middle of it?
no subject
Date: 2018-11-01 12:40 pm (UTC)I Dream of Jeannie is an
American fantasy sitcom starring Barbara
Eden as a 2,000-year-old genie and Larry
Hagman as an astronaut who becomes her
master, with whom she falls in love and
eventually marries…
A vaguely similar idea appeared in Mannequin (1987). This is a thing, what I mean to say.
[Moore & Kuttner's famous 1946 SF story "Vintage Season" sounded a similar theme, where the woman from another time, another culture, was far more attractive than his own brittle waspish fiancé, who was thus losing him to this game changer and didn't like it one bit…]
no subject
Date: 2018-11-01 02:21 pm (UTC)If you're playing a dragon, what's the point of suddenly deciding that you're railway engineer in the middle -
Well, if it's G R Dickson's The Dragon & the George (1976) and the American who is in a dragon's body is flying through pea-soup fog, knowing Hindenburg-style echo-location is very useful to avoid smacking into a hillside! [They used a compressed-air 'gunshot,' he just yelled “HEY!” and listened for the reverb…]
no subject
Date: 2018-11-01 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-01 11:38 pm (UTC)The Girl Next Door
Date: 2018-11-02 01:12 am (UTC)Actually, yes she literally was. [And Barbara E rocked a minidress, I should hope to tell you!]
http://www.conelrad.com/mutatedtelevision/
http://www.conelrad.com/mutatedtelevision/mutv_4.html
Jeannie was a metaphor for Atomic Energy, which Disney's “Our Friend the Atom” indeed depicted the djinn escaping from the bottle but being outsmarted and contained. Well, maybe…
Speaking of blondes, at one time I thought a present-day sequel to Xanadu (1980) could have been unexpectedly interesting… but then, Max Headroom using actual CGI could work too!
Re: The Girl Next Door
Date: 2018-11-02 11:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-11-04 10:28 am (UTC)Oh, hey, here it is.
https://nodrog.dreamwidth.org/164432.html
- and there's a quote from you there, and that reminded me that I did share this with you at the time.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-04 10:07 pm (UTC)