James Howell, Epistolae Ho-Elianae: Familiar Letters, Domestic and Forren (1688, on GBS): There is a Tradition, that there were divers Mines of Gold in Ages pass’d amongst those Mountains; and the Shepherds kept Goats then, having made a small Fire of Rosemary-Shrubs with other combustible stuff, to warm themselves, this Fire grew along, and grew…
MM has kindly mailed the story of an illegal from Mali found climbing one of the Sierra Nevada’s major peaks in flipflops. Jorge Rodríguez’z story in El País, plagiarised by Elizabeth Nash for The Independent, has Anthony Braxton Tony Brascons making the same journey in reverse undertaken in sandals by Judar Pasha, who they describe…
The action sometimes turned a shade Bulgarian during the Granada Wars–at least that’s what one infers from Diego Hurtado de Mendoza in this extract from Guerra de Granada (paras introduced for legibility): Wounded by two poisoned arrows, Don Alonso [de Aguilar] fought until he fell, disabled by the poison used among hunters since ancient times.…
Lovely phrase, something along the lines of “lavish in life, eager in death”, used here to describe the Spanish, although you will doubtless recall similar elsewhere. It’s from the discourse by the Count of Portalegre which rounds off the BBG edition of Guerra de Granada, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza‘s chronicle of the disastrous rural uprisings…
Found whilst hunting help for a tiny bit of Judæo-Spanish/Sefardi/Dzhudezmo/Judezmo/Spanyol/Spanyolit/Ladino-English translation I did for someone. The book is The Lives of the Right Hon. Francis North …, The Hon. Sir Dudley North …, and The Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North (Roger North, 1826, available on GBS), the year is 1680, and the great English…
Zazie@Cocanha has scanned extracts from two versions of the highly amusing Cartas d’el Rei D. Fernando, O Catholico, a varios reis e principes do mundo, e suas respostas: colligidas e commentadas por Fr. Antonio Tarfan de los Godos, Commendador na Ordem de S. João de Jerusalem: the first bunch from a manuscript in the collection…
Check the curious items and documents starting p591, including payments to “blak Margaret” and the precept granting “the Earl and Lord of Little Egypt” the power “to hang and punish all Egyptians within the Kingdome of Scotland.”
I’ve been merrily dilettanting away recently with a couple of literary robberies and forgeries, so it’s good to see that Zazie over at cocanha found a really great one. What he has are extracts from a book published in 1842 in Porto, Portugal under the promising title, Cartas d’el Rei Don Fernando, O Catholico, a…
Account of a murder trial at the Old Bailey on January 17 1676: There were two men drinking, and there arose a dispute between them concerning a Spanish word, one affirmed that it was not properly exprest, the other gave him provoking language for saying so, he reply’d, Sir I know not how to bear…
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