Happy Birthday, mistahbojangles!

[the_gneech]

For your present, here's today's Forgotten English!

with squirrel
Pregnancy is seldom mentioned when both men and women are present. ... If no women are about, a hillman may remark to a comparative stranger that his wife is ketched, or ... too big for her clothes, or comin' fresh ... or with squirrel. ... When a man's wife was about to be delivered of a child, a friend said to the husband, "Well, Tom, it looks like your bees are a-swarmin'."

--Vance Randolph's Down in the Holler: A Gallery of Ozark Folk Speech, 1953

Feast Eve of St. Raymond,
a patron of pregnant and delivering women, midwives, and obstetricians. Eleanor Hull's Folklore of the British Isles (1928) explained why women were often anxious to return to church after a pregnancy: "Perils to soul and body accumulate about the great moments of birth, marriage and death. A woman after childbirth is the most dangerous thing on earth; demons are round about her, and if she goes to a river to wash, the fish will all go away. ... Until she is churched after the child's birth, and, in the infant's case, until it is baptized, both are specially open to fairy influences."

Wow, bubonic plague sucks -- but at least it's not a woman after childbirth. ¬.¬

I wonder about people sometimes, I really do.

-The Gneech

Comments

[stilghar.livejournal.com]

"Humans can be a very depressing people."
--Satai Delenn, Minbari ambassador to Babylon 5

[azhdragon.livejournal.com]

my mother was churched after I was born.

the priest had to look up the procedure, because he'd never been asked to do it before.

:-)

I still wonder about the "fairy influences". it would explain so much :-)

[stilghar.livejournal.com]

*grin* ;)

[azhdragon.livejournal.com]

One of my favourite B5 quotes is this:

Londo Mollari: But this... this, this, this is like... being nibbled to death by, uh... Pah! What are those Earth creatures called? Feathers, long bill, webbed feet... go "quack".

Vir Cotto: Cats.

Londo Mollari: Cats! I'm being nibbled to death by cats.

(Chrysalis, Season 1)

:-)

[stilghar.livejournal.com]

My favorite Londo line ever:

"If you see something about this big with eight legs running towards you, let me know. I need to kill it before it develops language skills."

[stilghar.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I have to Friend you now. Hope ye don't mind. ;)

[azhdragon.livejournal.com]

not at all :-)

/me has a feeling I friended you after your first comment ... will have to look.

[stilghar.livejournal.com]

You did. ^,^

[beetlebomb.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a spiritual explanation of post-partum depression...

Oh, how I long for a grapefruit...

[excess-ego.livejournal.com]

I sorely hope "with squirrel" is due for a re-discovery one of these days.