David E Vassberg (Land and Society in Golden Age Castile) writes: There exists also an old proverb (of unknown vintage): En tierra de señorío, almendro o guindo; en tierra real, noguera o moral (In seigneurial lands, almond or cherry; in royal lands, walnut or mulberry), which the editor of the collection of proverbs [Bergua, Refranero…
Someone has been trying recently & kindly to hammer into my thick skull the nature and depth of early Irish ties with Iberia. Here’s a bleeding chunk from a piece called The City of the Tribes: Italian Memories in an Irish Port in a recently cited James Joyce anthology (Occasional, Critical, and Political Writings): The…
Where arse turns up regularly in jokes, proverbs and stories, bollocks–cojones–in CORDE’s version of sixteenth century Spain seem to be confined to medical treatises and to a verse novel of quite extraordinary and possibly unsurpassed filth. The anonymous Carajicomedia (1519) consists of the adventures of the noble Diego Fajardo’s one-eyed trouser snake, which is said…
José Antonio Martínez Torres, Prisionero de los infieles. Vida y rescate de los cautivos cristianos en el Mediterráneo musulmán (siglos XVI-XVII), says (PDF) that Christians captive in Oran and Algiers could go to the pub and church, as long as they paid.
The BBC says (background info here) that Researchers in the US believe they have come closer to solving a centuries-old mystery – by deciphering knotted string used by the ancient Incas. Experts say one bunch of knots appears to identify a city, marking the first intelligible word from the extinct South American civilisation. The coloured,…
Zapatero is biding his time, is the premonitory drift of Quarrell betweene the Dutch & English by Anon (via Polly Curtis@Guardian): The Belgick Frogge, out of the bogge, with Brittish mouse doth strive: The Iberian Kite meane while by slight, surprizeth both alive. While for their shares, of Indian wares, English & Dutch doe brawle;…
If you thought Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa was unlucky, try Pedro Fernandez De Quirós, who didn’t discover Australia and thus wasn’t an Afghan Muslim. Fortunately he was nuts.
Here’s another l/r swap: loro comes from the Carib roro and was used to designate both (reddish) parrots and (again on the basis of colour) native American slaves, as in “vos fasemos merced de toda manera desclavos negros o loros o otros de los que en españa son tenidos por esclavos e que por razon…