Occitan language – Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder

Sugar daddies

Struggling with weariness and reading bits of Ricardo Palma’s Tradiciones peruanas (1883). There was no sugar cane in Peru at the time of its conquest, he writes, and the first plantations were not established until 1570. The first Peruvian refiner suffered from the abundance and cheapness of Mexican sugar until he hit upon the smart…

Oiquipedià

There’s still no article on Chistabín in the Oiquipedià, the Occitan version of Wikipedia, believed to have around 1,832 legitimate pages (Arabic = 11,824).

Moorish Scheherazades

I had an interesting chat (ie I listened) with someone the other night about the social position of musicians in the Middle Ages. I didn’t really buy his idea of the musician as The Other–at least not in Spain–but what he told me about Moorish and Jewish musicians in Christian society (as opposed to, for…

Donations

I’d like to thank all (OK, both) of you who clicked on the beer graphic and ended up donating last month. I spent many hours pondering how to spend your probably not particularly hard-earned dollars. Was it to be Paden’s Introduction to Old Occitan? Or should I indulge a life-long ambition and purchase a season…