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.”
Thomas Wright’s 1857 Dictionary of obsolete and provincial English says it is an inferior alicant wine, and used as a general term for all Spanish reds (ie from tinto), which seems somewhat at odds with his quote from Ward’s diary (16×2): “I drank tent with Mr. Hartman. It is a very sweet and a luscious…
Amusing that Stanley Payne believes that “the Left has had a super-legitimacy complex, as if it had the right to govern… In this way the Spanish Left does not accept the fact that it might lose, it does not accept any adversaries.” I had understood that since the 2004 elections this belief was the property…
From a piece by Cecil Eby on the not particularly lovely time had by the Abraham Lincoln Battalion in the Civil War: In their time off, the recruits prowled the city; they sampled the local conac [sic], said to have been blended from equal parts of rancid olive oil and low-octane gasoline; and they bought…
An amusing and completely credible post from Avui. Meanwhile Tío Lele has confirmed via a spokesman that he is completely happy with this, the final version of his corporate website. Apparently its brutal emptiness is a metaphor for the intangible aspects of making do without the brand. It would have been nice to include at…
Last night reading Josep Rondissoni’s Classes de cuina for the 1930-1 season I came across an illustration of the packaging of one of the various foreign ingredients he uses, Royal Baking Powder. It’s actually called the Droste effect, of course–or at least in Holland. José Rondissoni was a Swiss cook who taught a blend of…
Another strange French trial: Following his master’s death in 1371, Aubry de Montdidier’s dog showed unremitting hostility to his master’s comrade, Richard de Macaire. Charles V ordered the two to fight, and the dog won, thus proving de Macaire’s guilt. (Cyclopedia of Universal Biography, via Google Books)
Down due to mailbombing of the domain and what appear to be DoS assaults on this blog. Host says I may have to move. Watch this space (I hope I’m not being too literal).
In German. I know about various definitions of doublet in English, many of which also work in languages, but in German it also seems to be used by book collectors in a way I don’t understand. I’d be particularly interested if it referred to sharp practices analogous to those in the jewellery trade: “A form…
If the ruling Galician national socialists want to redefine the region in their statute of autonomy as the “nation of Breogan” (their leader says their identity is in their genes), does that mean that, like their mythical hero, they’re going to spend all their money building a great big tower and then take the whole…