(no subject)

[tree_and_leaf]

I have just read two seperate thirteenth century Middle High German poems which refer to Mary as the weasel who bore the ermine (Christ) who killed the snake (Satan). I can't help thinking a mongoose would be somehow more impressive. Worryingly, I also find myself musing over an exegesis of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi as Christian allegory (only I can't work out where to fit in Darzi - John the Baptist? - or Chundra, who never came out into the corner of the room).

My brain is evidently on crack. Incense-scented crack. Or maybe it's too much batshit mediaeval poetry. Either way, not good.

I can see why the cult of Our Lady The Blessed Weasel never caught on, though.†

† Hey, maybe this proves that Voldemort will actually be destroyed by a Weasley? Somebody kill me now....

Comments

[prelud.livejournal.com]

"exegesis of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi as Christian allegory"
*giggle*
why not, after all?

[tree_and_leaf]

Well, quite. It makes a welcome change from the thirteenth century, anyway.

[grondfic.livejournal.com]

You have the MUSIC of Darzi's song??? Tell me instantly how to get it!

[tree_and_leaf]

Alas, no; it was a joke. It's a shame: someone really ought to set some of Kipling's stuff to music...

[zanesfriend.livejournal.com]

Quite of it has been. "Danny Deever" and "The Road to Mandalay" at least.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

This is the weasel that bore the ermine that killed the snake that offered the apple that tempted Eve who overruled Adam who lived in the garden that God built...

Also, I am not a stalker, honest, but I used to be in the German sub-faculty at Oxford, so I am very intrigued to see that you are a medievalist there and was wondering if your supervisor was Almut, Annette or Nigel? (No need to answer if this is getting too close to your private life)

[tree_and_leaf]

Afraid I'd rather not share that information with the whole internet (not that it's of great interest to it, probably)

I think 'This is the garden that God built' could be the ideal Sunday School prize book, though.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

I rather thought you might feel like that and I apologise for being nosey!

[maeve-rigan.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering if weasels were looked on--if not more favorably--at least somewhat differently in medieval times. Consider Alisoun of "The Miller's Tale," a sort of anti-BVM?:

"Fair was this yonge wyf, and therwithal
As any wezele hir body gent and smal." (3233-3234)

Still, I would bet on Rikki-Tikki-Tavi as a heroic Christ-figure any day!

[tree_and_leaf]

I think they may well have been - although, of course, mediaeval bestiary lore, and exegesis generally, tended to sieze on one point of similarity and run with it. A bit like metaphysical poetry, really.

All the same, I'm not sure when and where weasels acquired their bad rep - which seems very undeserved!

[themolesmother.livejournal.com]

Our Lady of the Blessed Weasel?

Sounds like something out of Jasper Fforde!

MM

[tree_and_leaf]

It's not quite as surreal as lobsters... but it's getting that way.

*ponders the spiritual significance of lobsters*

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Weasels are nice. Sleek. It's just that Grahame fellow ruined it.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons I have never read the full version of "The Wind in the Willows" is that I just could not see what was wrong with the weasels in the illustrated children's one.

That is My Lovely Horse in your icon, isn't it?

[lilliburlero.livejournal.com]

Yup. I didn't make it though. Credit is on userinfo. It's my "posting about animals" one, which disturbed me rather a lot when I carelessly used it to comment on something oursin had written about bestiality. It seemed a bit close to the bone. Here, I seem to have done you an inadvertent homage (points to icon).

[tree_and_leaf]

But despite the weasel hate, it's a fine book...

[tree_and_leaf]

I really like weasels, actually (when I was little I wanted a pet ferret, but my mother wouldn't let me).

After consulting the OED, though, I'm blaming Shakespeare.

transf. and fig. 1599 SHAKES. Hen. V, I. ii. 170 For once the Eagle (England) being in prey, To her vnguarded Nest, the Weazell (Scot) Comes sneaking, and so sucks her Princely Egges. 1632 CHAPMAN & SHIRLEY Ball I. (1639) A4, Co. Dee not know him, tis the Court dancing Weesill. Ma. A Dancer, and so gay. 1633 B. JONSON Tale Tub I. vi, Wherefore did I, Sir, bid him Be call'd, you Weazell, Vermin of a Huisher? 1638 FORD Fancies II. ii, Whoreson, lecherous weazle! 1790 WOLCOT (P. Pindar) Advice to Future Laureat II. 39 Brudenell, thou stinkest! weasel, polecat, fly! 1886 P. ROBINSON Teetotum Trees 39 A thin little weasel of a Bengalee Baboo.

I also note that in the middle ages, weasels were held to kill not just snakes, but basilisks (this explains a line in one of the poems I was reading yesterday, where Satan was refered to as Hellebasileus, which I connected with Gk basileos, king, and idiotically forgot the basilisk).

[tree_and_leaf]

The verb, on the other hand (to weasel (out) ) seems to have first appeared in America at the turn of last century. I am not sure what conclusion, if any, can be drawn from this.

'Weasel words' or 'weasel sentences' or 'to weasel' seems, judging by the citations, to have been a favourite usage of Teddy Roosevelt, and to have been inspired by the movement of the animal. Daft, in a way, because they're ferocious little beasts....

[zanesfriend.livejournal.com]

There is a story that a weasel can make a tiny hole in an eggshell and suck the insides out, leaving only an empty, but relatively intact, shell. That's what TR was referring to when he spoke of 'weasel words' or sentences--words that sucked the meaning out of adjacent words, like "universal voluntary registration" or sentences that sounded grand but didn't mean anything.

[tree_and_leaf]

I didn't know that - how interesting!

[m-nivalis.livejournal.com]

I saw your post while friendsfriendslist-browsing, and I wonder if you would mind posting the source for the poems? (now I want an Our Lady The Blessed Weasel icon...)

[tree_and_leaf]

They're both Middle High German: the older is Konrad von Würzburg's Goldene Schmied, and the newer 'Frauenlob' (also known as Heinrich von Meissen)'s Marienleich, where, however, it just gets one line.

Konrad von Würzburg. Die Goldene Schmiede. Ed Edward Schröder. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1926.
Frauenlob (Heinrich von Meissen) Leichs, Sangsrpüche, Lieder. 1 Teil Einleitung, Texte, 2. Teil Apparate, Erläuterungen. Ed and introduced by Karl Stackmann and Karl Bertau, based on work by Helmuth Thomas. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1981.

[m-nivalis.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[sammee42.livejournal.com]

You are wonderful!!!!

[tree_and_leaf]

Or unhinged. One or the other.....

[sammee42.livejournal.com]

Well, if you are unhinged, then so am I!!