Extraordinary Master and Servant Case

From time to time I delve into the antics of my ancestors and their kin, as a form of distraction from writing scholarly articles about people I'm not related to, I suppose. This evening I chanced upon the following article in the Dundee Courier, one of many therein regarding the misadventures of my kinsman the farmer at Fithie.

Extraordinary Master and Servant Case, Cross-Swearing.
In the Forfar Small Debt Court yesterday--Sheriff Robertson presiding--an action was brought at the instance of Annie Smollet, some time domestic servant at Fithie, against David Lamb, farmer, Fithie, for £6 10s, as wages for the six months from Martinmas to Whitsunday last. Mr Thomson, Brechin, appeared for pursuer, and Mr Walter Oswald, Arbroath, for defender. The defence was justifiable dismissal. Pursuer, who is about 20 years of age, said she entered defender's service at Whitsunday, 1883, and was dismissed from her place on 3d May last for "speaking to a man." The Sheriff--That was very hard. (Laughter.) Mrs Lamb, however, took her back on condition that she did not take men into the house, and also that she kept away from the bothy, but she was again dismissed before the term. She denied that she had been in the practice of taking John Anderson, one of the farm servants, into her bedroom almost every night; nor had she, about two o'clock in the morning, left her room and gone to the bothy. She had no recollection of having been found in one of the bothy beds by her mistress. Asked if she had ever let the cattle out of the courts one night through malice towards her employer, she replied in the negative. She likewise swore that she never gave the pigs a dose of cayenne pepper, and she blamed a fellow-servant for having put burning cayenne pepper under Mrs Donald's door to smoke her out of the house. She denied stealing whisky or anything else from her mistress. Witness stated that she was last dismissed for having gone to the bothy to put a mustard plaster on Anderson, who was bad with inflammation. Mrs Lamb deponed that pursuer was a very bad woman, that she stole whisky, sugar, beef, and bread, and in fact everything that she could lay her hands on. She knew that Smollet had been in the habit of taking men into her bedroom, and on one occasion she saw John Anderson there. Witness taxed pursuer with dosing the pigs with cayenne pepper, and she did not deny it. On a Sunday evening witness found Smollet hiding in one of the bothy beds, and at another time she saw her leaving the bothy about three o'clock in the morning. Pursuer was dismissed for going to the bothy, which she had been forbidden to enter. [illegible] Colville, domestic servant, Fithie, gave evidence to the effect that Anderson had been in pursuer's bedroom almost every night during the past six months, and that she let the cattle out of the courts one night, and by scouring about one of their number got a broken leg. Pursuer was again recalled, and the Sheriff having warned her as to the consequence of committing perjury, she adhered to her former evidence, and signed the notes which had been taken by his Lordship. The Sheriff--I feel myself bound to go into this case, because it is scandalous to a Court of Justice. I don't know who is committing perjury. John Anderson, examined, denied that he had ever visited pursuer in her bedroom. This witness's statement was also taken down by the Sheriff. William Lamb, farm servant, Fithie, corroborated Mrs Lamb's assertion in regard to pursuer having been in the bothy on a Sunday night. Defender stated that he dismissed pursuer because she was making his house a brothel. After other evidence had been led, the Sheriff said he was satisfied that there was no cause for his interference, as dismissal had been proved to be justifiable. Every farmer was entitled to have a pure household, and if he insisted on its purity, the law would back him up. Having commented on pursuer's character, he granted decree of absolvitor, and said he would place the statements which Smollet and Anderson had made in the hands of the Fiscal.

Local news ain't what it used to be.

On Modern Life

More of those howlers:

...he may not be able to transgress his accumulation of knowledge...
Our overpopulation is a result of our indiscretion in spending.
The acceleration of progression is creeping along.
In economics, we hear a lot about planned adolescence.
They let their filth from our factories impregnate our lakes and rivers.
We live in a period of restless tranquillity.
Of course, everyone likes to see some blood split.
After all, we live in this doggy-dog world.
In the rat race of life, no one wants to be the ugly duckling

On Love and Sex

More from the "howlers" folder:

Women are one of the habits man has learned to enjoy.
A man must sell insurance different from the way he sells his love.
He satirizes a virgin wrench.
I like to go steady, because then I am always ready if anything big comes up.
When a boy is deeply involved with a girl, it becomes necessary to motivate her.
We are plagued by the eroticism of the soil.
"I am newly married and the question that confronts me now is 'Should I wear my rah-rahs to school?'"
Pepys and his wife often enjoyed erotic dishes and often dined out.
How much fun will a housewife be on her second honeymoon if all she does is worry about her children.
Marriage consoling organizations are established by churches and cities in order to save marriages 'on the rocks'

The (Un)reasonable Man

More from the "Howlers" folder:

The reasonable man goes through life in a comma.
An unreasonable man is one who fertilizes the world.
Self-scented is the name for the unreasonable man.
An unreasonable man is always a temtuous lover.
Society, a group of unreasonable men, let minority groups be scrapecoats.
The unreasonable man spends his money wisely before he earns it.

Howlers

My Sibling and I have been going through our father's papers with the intention of preparing them for archiving at his various universities. A folder entitled "Howlers" has surfaced. On literature:

The Rape of the Pope by Locke
Peachum is a downright scongrel.
Don Whan was a great lover.
Catch Her in the Rye
As the story opens, the heroin is seen...
Stephen discovers that Absalom has fathered an illegitimate child by the woman he married.
English took into its whore-house bed of words...
Life here can, as Shakespeare said, be compared to a baseball game.
I would agree with the author if he would only define is terms with my train of thought.
If it weren't for crime and violence, even the Bible would be reduced to a small pamphlet.
Stories of crime and violence take us away from the harsh realities of life.
The poem is a good example of the old carpet diem theme.
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales would have been dull if he had left out the stories.
Hamlet helps me to cathart.

Such Dreams as These

I have always tried to remember my dreams. Sometimes I'm good at it, other times not. Sometimes I only remember when I realize that a particular dream is familiar and that I've been in that dream or dream-territory before.
Sometimes, however, I simply wonder what on earth is going on in my head. The other night, for example, I began by dreaming that I had succeeded in flying to Sydney for what was evidently to be a vacation. Fine, I've always wanted to go to Australia and New Zealand. But rather than do anything particularly interesting, the said dream took me first to some kind of mall where I attempted to find food (!) and then next thing I knew I was asking a class of students how many of them knew that historically, artists usually originated in artist families.
If I get to Sydney before reaching my dotage, these are not activities that are truly high on my list of must-dos.
As if that weren't enough of the absurdly mundane, last night I awakened (not for the only time, I regret to say) from a not-very-sound sleep from sheer astonishment at what I had just dreamt. And what had I dreamt? That the University of Pittsburgh Slavic Department had 6000 graduate students!
The Slavic Department, while a very good one, actually has somewhere in the low two digits when it comes to grad students. No wonder I was incredulous at what I had dreamt.

More Silly Titles

A friend and I were perusing the "bizarre things" section of this blog the other day, and I was reminded of my various forays into the invention of book titles (for books no one is likely ever to write). In the interest of putting off completion of my taxes, I offer some more of these:

Horatio Alger Smiles at the Apocalypse
Rhythms and Rampages
The Good Plight
Mordants and Their Uses
Enjoying Your Hot Flashes
Table-Rapping for Beginners
Ectoplasm in My Soup
Prior Complaints
Witchcraft and Banana Splits
Night Falls on Three Ladies
Niagara Falls on Crocodile Rock
A Gentle Paranoia
Poisons I Have Known
The Architecture of Modern Kennebunkport
Dick and Jane File Their Income Tax

Translations

In the course of mining Angelo Ripellino's Magic Prague (in English translation) for writers' descriptions of Prague streets, I came across the following passage about Zlatá ulička (Golden Lane), which rather took my fancy:

“A narrow, winding lane with crenels, a snail’s path barely wide enough for one’s shoulders to pass. I am standing in front of a row of small houses, none of which is taller than myself. Were I to stretch out my arm I could touch the roofs. Here during the Middle Ages disciples set the philosophers’ stone aglow and poisoned moon beams.”

While I had to think a moment to identify "crenels," this seemed worth hunting down in the original, Gustav Meyrink's Golem.
With considerable difficulty (earlier I had intended to blog about my struggles with the endnotes to Magic Prague, which use a lot of op. cit. and are not aided by a bibliography) I determined that the edition of Golem used was from 1976. I proceeded to order the 1976 Dover edition from a library in this state, which proved to have an emendation of Madge Pemberton's 1928 translation.
The text there, however, read:

“A little twisty, twirly alley, broken here and there by arbitrary loopholes--it might almost be called a spiral passage, scarce broad enough to admit the width of a man--and I stood before a row of diminutive houses, not one of which exceeded my own height. I had only to stretch up my arm to touch their roofs.
It was the Street of the Alchemists, where the so-called ‘wise men’ of the past had evolved their formulas for the philosopher’s stone, brewing their concoctions in the watches of the night, poisoning with their noxious fumes the sweet rays of the moon.”

I had to examine these for awhile to feel certain that it was indeed the same passage, but had to conclude that it was. Not, however, the same translation! And which of these was more faithful to the original German, pray tell?
A little digging around in Internet Archive brought forth the original edition published by Kurt Wolff in 1915. The said text is on 226 and reads:

“Ein schmales, gewundenes Gässchen mit Schiessscharten, ein Schneckengang, kaum breit genug, die Schultern durchzulassen--und ich stand vor einer Reihe von Häuschen, keines höher als ich.
Wenn ich den Arm ausstreckte, konnte ich auf die Dächer greifen.
Ich war in die ‘Goldmachergasse’ geraten, wo im Mittelalter die alchimistischen Adepten den Stein der Weisen geglüht und die Mondstrahlen vergiftet haben.”

Well, even though it was written in Fraktur, the font was quite legible and indeed despite my limited German I could understand it pretty well without resorting to the dictionary. But for the heck of it I decided (given the divergent translations above) to plug it into Google Translate. Google Translate actually did a pretty good job on its own, but it now also lets you see if you'd prefer a different meaning or synonym for a given word, so I touched up a few things--"streets" to "alleys" ("alley" in the singular wasn't on the list), "worm gear" to "snail passage," "more" to "higher," "which" to "where," "adept" to "adepts" and "poisoning" to "poisoned":

"A narrow, winding alleys with gun ports, a snail passage, barely wide enough to admit the shoulders -. And I stood in front of a row of houses, none higher than me.
If I stretched out my arm, I could access the roof.
I had fallen into the 'Goldmacher street', where have in the middle Ages, the alchemical adepts annealed the philosopher's stone, and poisoned the moonbeams."

While there are still a few edits I'd choose to make on this (for example "crenels" is decidedly more suitable than "gun ports" since crenellation can be purely decorative, or meant for arrows rather than guns), it's obvious that the translation in Magic Prague is much more faithful than the Pemberton translation. I have no clue who did that translation, though, so I suppose that if I quote this passage, I'll combine the one from Magic Prague with my editing of Google Translate's version.
Life ain't simple around here.

End of World Missed By Some

"There wasn't all that much news coverage of those Millennial types who thought the world was going to end on May 21," remarked My Sibling the other night.
"Didn't it?" inquired my father.
"Apparently I didn't notice," said I.

Unfortunate Associations

My Mother: I'm cooking stew.
My Father: You're cooking stool?
My Sibling: I'm not eating anyone's stool sample no matter how you cook it.

How Stories Transmogrify

"Mabel used to cook some strange things," reminisced my father about his aunt. "What was her specialty again?"
"Pudding," said I (I have no clue what else Mabel ever cooked).
"Oh yeah, that's right. What was it she put in the pudding anyway, gopher tails?"

It had always been my understanding that it was roast beef that she put in the chocolate pudding, but maybe they had an excess of gophers on the farm that year. You never know. Maybe the gopher tails were a garnish.

How Writing Groups Go Astray

Every writing group has its own peculiar character.

Bart turns into a bat and comes to the writing group at Alexis’s. Everyone but Stephanie realizes who the bat is; he perches on the back of the couch and squeaks. Later, Steve turns into a skunk and hides under the couch in embarrassment. Alexis tries to lure him out with a piece of cheese, but Bart eats the cheese. Bart insists on staying, hanging from the ceiling and sitting on the TV while Alexis watches, trying to persuade her to turn the channel to ‘Devil Girl from Mars’. Finally Stephanie brings lentil soup and he vanishes, leaving the apartment deep in guano.

Steve will leap out from under the couch and grab hold of Karla’s leg, refusing to let go until she lets him sleep in the bilge.

Some writing groups are more peculiar than others, of course. This was my third writing group. We often laughed uncontrollably about something called The Kitty Picture; just what The Kitty Picture was, I can no longer quite recall. I imagine it was a work of sentimental art retrieved from a garage sale, but perhaps I am mistaken and it appeared suddenly on a tortilla like a votive image of Elvis or the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Dragon Fails

For the most part, I have Dragon rather well trained to take dictation, but it does require proofreading, especially on people's names and on words like "suppurating" which have a way of appearing as more common words like "separating." Every now and then, however, something truly perverse emerges, like "we behave with unusual incompetence sadistically yet without to obviously changing our outward habits."

That was supposed to be "we behave with unusual and complicitous decorum yet without too obviously changing our outward habits."

Ancient Limericks

A lady who looked like a cat
Used to go out and sit on a mat.
She wondered quite soon
"Should I bay at the moon?"
And her neighbors all wondered at that.

A boy who resembled a dog
Used to play he was dead as a log,
Until one day his dad
Quite enough of him had
And made him get up and go jog.

There once was a monstrous big tanker
Who when pulled by a tug did not thank her,
So the tug said "You bitch!
You belong in a ditch!"
And straightaway stove her and sank her.

A beggar asked me for a dime;
I said "Here, go and have a good time!"
He said "Not on your life,
This all goes to my wife,
Who's locked up for committing a crime!"

Titles from Hell

It being near the end of the school year, my students and I would all like to be let loose. That and the hot weather are probably responsible for my spewing forth yet more book titles that do not correspond to any book I ever hope to write. (It's so much harder coming up with titles for books one actually does want to see in print.)

Downcast and Dreary
The Damned are Among Us
Saints and Their Specialties
Does Your Dog Talk?
Why Do Fish Sing?
Clouds Over the Hill Fort
Sands of Destruction
James and the Salubrious Bat
How to Build Your Own Ziggurat
The Big Book of Interfaith Baptismal Rituals
Cannibals for Supper
The Land that Freud Forgot
You Will Go to the South Pole
Of Dreams and Dadaists
Rodchenko Photographs a Dam
Why Is Your Child Deranged?
Insignificant Others
Love in the Age of Big Oil
Of Monopolies and Mutants
Raising Vipers in Your Own Home

Further Perverse Titles

Some of us can never let well enough alone, so after my rediscovery of so many silly imaginary titles from so long ago, I could not rest without inventing more.
I do not claim that they are actually any good. In fact, I am sure they are not. Some of them, however, were inspired by actual titles on my shelf. (Special bonus points to readers who can point out those inspired by Roman Jakobson titles.)

Land of Oblivion
Oblivion for Fun and Profit
Profit Will make You Fat
The Joy of Fat
File Clerks of the French Revolution
Significant Chasms
What Is Sex For?
The Meaning and Wonder of Modernism
Symbolic Slovakia
Balkanization for Medical Practitioners
Decades of Doom
Recognizing Global Catastrophes
Tears in Literature
My Futurist Anxieties
Utopian Territories
The Power of Euphemism
Aircraft Carriers I Have Known

Perverse New Titles

Rummaging through a very, very old folder, I ran across a list of titles for imaginary books. I'm not sure what was on my mind when I invented them, but they include the following:

Geese Before the Tide
Depression in the Andes
Foxtails in My Heart
Buzzards in the Snow
Fame and Loathing in Xanadu
The Magic Eraser
Shards of Tranquility
Cathedrals In Space
Arachnid Enteritis
Forgotten Are the Fallen Few
Fewmets in my Tea
Martine Goes Shopping
Famine Comes on Wednesday
Meditation for Money
The Menhir in the Moon
No Time for Noodles
Tantalus in Turkey

...and a boxed set:

Good Titles I Have Known
Good Titles I Have Written
Good Titles I Have Forgotten

And Still Too Busy to Blog...

From a take-home final exam:

"Popular entertainment of this period were drinking and prostitution according to Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergere."

"...it is unbalanced in a very traditional manner instead of all the figures and buildings being sporadic."

"The painting depicts free love in a classless and harmonious society. [...] I also admire Renoir for fanaticizing the typical scene at the Galette."

Re Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party: "Maybe this is a luncheon after a funeral..."

The Bellelli Family by Degas: "Though the girl sitting on the chair looks like she only has one leg. Which could make her mother not pay attention to her."

"As for Cassatt’s little girl, she is placed in a dress showing her lacy undergarments, which is a great capturing of what little girls do. Or, the exposure could be a foreshadowing of what path this girl may meet later on in her endeavors."

"...the cobblestone street that continues back into the depths of the painting with the larger masculine buildings in the background as well."

Re Caillebotte's Pont de l'Europe: "Is the woman approaching the man as some sort of constituent? [...] While one asks themselves these questions they can most certainly wonder weather the dog is feral or the middle right man is the object of the previous man's gaze?"

"While the focus is arguable, I find the railroad often my priority."

"The girl at least is still fixated on the railroad..."

"Manet’s piece contains a loom of steam created by a train’s engine."

"Caillebotte is also sure to include the railroad system which was popular during this time..."

"The statement seems to be that whatever your class or gender, you were controlled by the railroad system."

"...whether your fighting a war, or sticking rocks in your shoe, I suppose you won't know if your great 'till a historian tells you!"

And when you're writing complete crap on your exam, I suppose you won't know till you get your grade. Question for self: should I not have discussed railroads as a sign of 19th-century modernity?

More Distractions from Blogging

The survey exams were for the most part encouraging, but revealed some evidence of confusion. There were also some surprising observations.

On the Etruscan She-Wolf: "Though the mother is presented as a dog and the children are human, it still is betrayed as nursing the young."

The Parthenon "was one of the first and only structures to be completed before the Peloponesian War." (One hopes the student meant "after the Persian wars, atop the Acropolis," not ever in human history.)

The Hagia Sophia "is based on a Gothic style church." (As a prophecy, perhaps?)

From a student who has no facts at her command about any image seen: "The Roman building on the left [the Parthenon] is meant to be more decorative than useful since there are no walls... This buidling may have been used for meetings or gatherings when it was still used. [The Hagia Sophia] definitely has church qualities on the inside because of the apse in the center..."

"This was the orignal partheon. Found in athen's the romans highly regarded this building. It was built during the Peosipanian War. Queen Athena was found inside the partheon. She was later removed by we only have pictures of what we think she looked like, and remodeled statues."

The Pompeiian "Portrait of Menander" and an early Medieval St. Matthew "are of males dressed in togas with olive tree head dresses... One man is bearing part of his chest while the other is cloted but has the front of his toga open so women can see his chest while he relaxes and reads a book."

St. Matthew (painted 816-835) "looks as if Picasso had a hand in this."

Menander, on the other hand, "is mellow, as if he is lounging on the beach soaking up the rays."

"The painting is three dimensional." (I suppose this is meant as a tribute to the skill of medieval Islamic book illustrators...)

Complete misidentification of the Bayeux Tapestry: the Tapestry "is pretty self explanitory by the title, A poor man is being refused to enter a mosque ... Both pieces [Bayeux Tapestry & Arch of Titus] tell us a story it is trying to figure out what that story is, is the hard part." (Not if you read the textbook and came to class...)

"The top is sculpted, and the bottom is a tapastry. Both images are battle scenes." (And this is a complete essay?)

The Bayeux Tapestry "depicts the story of Moses..."

"The 'tapestry' tells the story of how the Norman ruler swims across the channel to claim the thrown of King Edward the Confessor."

"This is not quite a textile because it was knitted."

The Primaporta Augustus "could have been created by the Gods or they just loved him."

Re the Primaporta Augustus: "With cupid on his heels it makes me thing that he did not have a love, until cupid stepped in. Maybe Cupid is sending/helping him find his love."

Well, now I know what to do for Valentine's Day. I'll send cards of the Primaporta Augustus. Be Mine!

Why I Have No Time to Blog

From a recent paper assignment:

"Big patches of color are lying on their canvases like a blanket of stars on the night sky and like most art movements, comes heavy criticism. "

"It is rather more importantly the distinction from anything else, rather than conglomerating to a particular niche with the same status or mindset."

Degas "loved to paint moving bodies that were sent into peculiar angels."

"When attempting to paint an image of the modern time, artist have trouble with people staying still and remaining still."

"Dandyism is a state of idleness with an indispensable amount of money in terms of finding a sense of individuality and contentment."

Rulers "had to be perfected in a beautiful manner or the artist would have suffered severe consequences. The artist may have been jailed or even put to death because of his inability to incorporate the impressionist style into their painting. "

"Behind her is the second woman who is holding a bushel of flowers, lying on her side with her head probed up by her hand." (Courbet's Young Ladies on the Banks of the Seine)

"Art historians look back into the future and try to capture their responses to paintings, sculptures, or even photos." (Back into the future?)

Baudelaire "proved he was well informed and a prurient art critic earning respect from the art community."

"Baudelaire does not digress that painters from the past should be all together ignored..."

"I gain the sense that [T.J.] Clark is the type of guy that tells you that the young teenagers kissing are going to die first in the horror flick."

And we slog on.