A blow to your confidence in English language?

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In the link below, you are probably lost in the mysterious words (dialects?).

Does "The Maunder’s Praise Of His Strowling Mort" mean " The Maunder’s Praise Of His Lewd Lady?"

http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Farmer-MusaPedestris/the-maunders-praise-of-his-strowling-mort.html

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Type: Question • Score: 4 • Views: 2,569 • Replies: 20

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@oristarA,

Strowling Mort is hisorical slang from around the 1600's and not in common usage.
defined by a dictionary of historical slang as...
A pretended-widow beggar roaming the country , making laces, tape, etc., and stealing as chance favours her: c.(–1673) often with a RUFFLER (A beggar pretending to be a maimed soldier or sailor:)

a lewd lady would be a satisfactory definition

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@oristarA,

i had no idea what it meant but it sounds like something, i should say

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@laughoutlood,

laughoutlood wrote:

i had no idea what it meant but it sounds like something, i should say

I failed to understand the poem:

Quote:

White thy fambles, red thy gan,
And thy quarrons dainty is;
Couch a hogshead with me then,
And in the darkmans clip and kiss.

And so did you. LOL.

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@dadpad,

Thank you.

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Clip (clep and clept are variants) means to hold someone closely, and by extension, it means sexual intercourse. The verse you have here is four or five hundred years old. Most modern native speakers of English could not decipher it. So this should not be a blow to your confidence. However, "A blow to your confidence in English language?" should be--you forgot the definite article: the English language.

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I studied Anglo-Saxon (or Old English) and middle English in universtity, but that was 40 years ago and more. Still, i can decipher some of this:

Couch a hogshead with me then,
And in the darkmans clip and kiss.

Couch means to hold something close to one's body--it means an inanitmate object, whereas clip, clep, clept or yclept means to hold another person closely. Modern speakers of English might recognize this from "to couch a lance," which means to grasp a lance by the handle, and then to press it closely to one's body in order to steady it. A hogshead of ale or beer is about 50 gallons (a little less for ale, considerably more for beer), which is 190 liters. So this is a joke, an intentional hyperbole. No two people are going to drink a hogshead of ale or beer. The author is saying they should get outrageously drunk and then **** one another. Or, to put it in the lines of a popular song of a few decades ago:

Why don't we get drunk, and screw . . .

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@oristarA,

Wash your hands might be what "White thy fambles" means.

"red thy gan" might be a reference to the flushing of certain parts of the female when sexually excited. The ears for example and other delicate organs. Showing being "ready to go". As in "she's a goer".

Quarrons is the female body.

1922: Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons dainty is. Language no whit worse than his. — James Joyce, Ulysses.

I would guess "darkmans" means unmentionable sexual perversions.

Telling her to wash her hands has two explanations.

The rest is obvious.

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@spendius,

PS. In the context I would guess "clip" means to stop, to cut off, the male orgasm. To keep him on the edge.

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@spendius,

One might be being impolite if one addressed such words to any of the ladies we have seen promoting the teaching of evolution in schools.

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

Wash your hands might be what "White thy fambles" means.

"red thy gan" might be a reference to the flushing of certain parts of the female when sexually excited.

[...]

I would guess "darkmans" means unmentionable sexual perversions.

The page linked to by Oristar in the first post actually explains what these words mean. I wonder why neither he, nor, apparently, anybody else read the notes?

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p29/badoit/Maunders.jpg

Do you see the words in red?

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p29/badoit/Clip-kiss.jpg

The piece is written using words from 'Cant', a private or secret language used by the London criminal underworld roughly from the 14th to 19th centuries.

1 Reply

@contrex,

It just proves how right Derrida was eh?

The point of English creative language is to take something that makes a certain point and play around with it to make another point which is intended to surprise and educate the reader. And have a laugh.

The words in red make no point. Why is she being told to wash her hands. White means clean as well as pure. And it must be a she because men don't get those red patches when sexually excited.

And "night" symbolises dark and underground and thus unmentionable sexual perversions.

Pedantic considerations are for pedants. My post was for artists. And it's easy to see that a real poet wrote the lines.

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@spendius,

spendius wrote:

The words in red make no point. Why is she being told to wash her hands. White means clean as well as pure. And it must be a she because men don't get those red patches when sexually excited.

I don't know if English is your first language, but I suspect you have not read much poetry from before the 20th century.

She isn't being "told to wash her hands". The lines

White thy fambles, red thy gan,
And thy quarrons dainty is

mean

White your hands [are], red your mouth [is]
And your body dainty is

This type of construction and word ordering is absolutely typical of poetry of that era.

The words whose explanations appear in red were not made up by the author of the poem (as you appear to think) - they are words from a dialect whose usage and meaning are well documented.

Quote:

Pedantic considerations are for pedants. My post was for artists.

You got caught out having written, essentially, a load of bollocks, and no amount of prating about "pedants" and "artists" will obscure that fact, as you appear to hope.

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@contrex,

That's unanswerable. Just as my interpretation is. But I didn't insert any words of my own.

I have read reams of pre 20th century poetry. Loads and loads of it. And very little of the 20th century stuff except for Larkin.

And I didn't make any snotty nosed, sarcastic remarks either.

1 Reply

@spendius,

And it never entered my head that the words in red were the author's words.

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

And it never entered my head that the words in red were the author's words.

Yet you appear to think that those words are open to interpretation of an imaginative or guessing type.

You have totally misunderstood what I wrote, either that, or you are deliberately trolling.

I wrote

Quote:

The words whose explanations appear in red were not made up by the author of the poem

1 Reply

@contrex,

Another accusation of trolling. It's everywhere. Put me on Ignore for ****'s sake if you can't carry an argument without recourse to that shite.

All I said was that I didn't need telling that "The words whose explanations appear in red were not made up by the author of the poem." I don't see them as the necessary explanations. I don't give a damn about somebody's explanations. "Darkmans= Nightime!! Good gracious. That wouldn't even be poetic.

I don't see "clip and kiss" meaning copulate. And if clip means up close it is a wasted word with kiss in the line because a kiss is up close. And that guy didn't waste words. It hinges on "dainty".

1 Reply

@spendius,

spendius wrote:

I don't see "clip and kiss" meaning copulate.

You seem to think that the meanings of these words is up for debate. Why? Don't you accept that they are 17th century English dialect words with documented etymology?

1 Reply

@contrex,

Quote:

You got caught out having written, essentially, a load of bollocks, and no amount of prating about "pedants" and "artists" will obscure that fact, as you appear to hope.

This conjures up in my mind images of glass or houses made of glass or something like that and stones or rocks, maybe boulders. Weird, eh?

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@contrex,

Quote:

Don't you accept that they are 17th century English dialect words with documented etymology?

No I don't. But I recognise that you might think of "documented etymology" in terms of those documented etymologies you have read.

1 Reply

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