Sunday 3 July 1664

Annotations

• N Robert Gertz on Tue 3 Jul 2007, 10:50pm

  Hopefully it was the feathers of our brave avian pair and not their meat that was green…

  “More, sweetheart?” Bess offers the heaping platter.

  Arghh… “Pray Heavens, no, Bess. I shall explode.”

  And here I was hoping for a little afternoon’s romp through Cupid’s grove. I shall barely manage to roll out to the office.

  ***
  Sounds like a nice, romantic evening’s stroll.

  
  

• N Patricia on Tue 3 Jul 2007, 10:56pm

  Green geese:
  http://www.infoplease.com/dictionary/brewers/green-goose.html

• N Terry on Tue 3 Jul 2007, 11:29pm

  Green Geese
  In the early summer, young fattened goslings known as green geese were a popular food.

• N cape henry on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 12:45am

  “After dinner I close to my business…”So at least for now, work and family have replaced church.No mention of that today.But he was as good as his promise the previous night to finish what we may assume were his studies of the Brampton papers.

• N Terry F on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 03:14am

  Patricia, thanks for the Green Goose link. I.a., it provides a passage from Shakespeare on breaking oaths and what flesh demands — a commentary of a sort on today’s Diary entry and yesterday’s.

  Love’s Labor’s Lost, Act IV, Scene III

  Longaville

  This same shall go.

  Reads

  Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
  ‘Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,
  Persuade my heart to this false perjury?
  Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.
  A woman I forswore; but I will prove,
  Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:
  My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;
  Thy grace being gain’d cures all disgrace in me.
  Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is:
  Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,
  Exhalest this vapour-vow; in thee it is:
  If broken then, it is no fault of mine:
  If by me broke, what fool is not so wise
  To lose an oath to win a paradise?

  Biron

  This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity,
  A green goose a goddess: pure, pure idolatry.
  God amend us, God amend! we are much out o’ the way.

• N Firenze on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 07:34am

  ‘it thundering and lightning all the evening, and this yeare have had the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man’s memory’ - not much climate change there, then. This last couple of weeks in Britain have been marked by violent storms and flooding. Last evening, sitting in humid, thundery Edinburgh, watching rain stopping play at Wimbleton in humid, thundery London.

• N Firenze on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 07:34am

  ‘it thundering and lightning all the evening, and this yeare have had the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man’s memory’ - not much climate change there, then. This last couple of weeks in Britain have been marked by violent storms and flooding. Last evening, sitting in humid, thundery Edinburgh, watching rain stopping play at Wimbledon in humid, thundery London.

• N djc on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 11:45am

  this yeare have had the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man’s memory, and so it is, it seems, in France and everywhere else.

  Nothing changes then,just back from a month in Italy with two weeks of continual rain, and here in England things continue as they apparently were in 1664

• N Bradford on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 03:16pm

  Anyone else have a vague recollection of folk belief that thundery weather will cause food to spoil faster? Maybe they could work their way through both geese by means of goose fritters, goose tart, and goose morsels (healthy snacking division).

• N JWB on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 03:57pm

  “Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky…”

  But I do know that it’s bad luck, and has been since Roman times, to draw attention to the thunder & lightning.

• N Mary on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 04:20pm

  food in thundery weather.

  Thundery weather was certainly supposed to sour the milk when I was a child.

• N JWB on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 05:20pm

  food in thundery weather

  Beer! Thor’s hammering on Midgard ‘ll put off the brew every time. Being a great beer drinker Himself, you’d think He’d have more consideration, but no, He’s got His hammer & He’s gonn’a use it.

  Happy Fourth!

• N Andrew Hamilton on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 05:35pm

  Then up and spent the evening walking with my wife talking

  Touching domestic scene. There is a real bond between Sam & Elizabeth, an insight into why Uncle Wight’s plot failed.

• N Andrew Hamilton on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 05:37pm

  the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man’s memory

  “Well it thundered and lightninged, and the rain began to fall.”
  Bessie Smith

• N Pedro on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 06:37pm

  THUNDER AND THE DAYS OF THE WEEK

  ‘Some write (their ground I see not) that Sunday’s thunder should bring the death of learned men, judges, and others; Monday’s thunder the death of women; Tuesday’s thunder plenty of grain; Wednesday’s thunder the death of harlots; Thursday’s thunder plenty of sheep and corn; Friday’s thunder, the slaughter of a great man, and other horrible murders; Saturday’s thunder a general plague and great dearth.’

  LEONARD DIGGES’s Prognostication Everlasting of right good Effect, Loud. 1556.

  
  

• N Cumsalisgrano on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 08:25pm

  Sam would have a version of this :

  
  “They hang the man and flog the woman

  Who steals the goose from off the Common;

  But let the greater criminal loose

  Who steals the Common from the goose”.

  http://www.jubileeresearch.org/opinion/radical_economics_sept_01.htm

  
  The law locks up the man or woman
  Who steals the goose from off the common
  But leaves the greater villain loose
  Who steals the common from off the goose.

  http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/pvg/goose.htm

• N Cumsalisgrano on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 08:39pm

  Goose silly I be, did take a gander,
  did hear of a blue goose and grey too,
  never the green goose
  only about the geese on the green.

  then there be the black, then tame too.
  did play with a goosling or two,
  then I ‘member a common saying

  there was some sauce for the goose,
  was good enough for the gander too
  there be the local gander,
  who be out to grass,
  then there be others that wander
  that would take a gander too.
  then there be those that kill
  the one that laid the goldern egg
  others be trying to shoe his goose too
  others that would nae say boo to a goose.
  then there be others that look for
  the winchester geese when out and about.
  while others would steal a goose
  then give the giblets away.
  then thee must never deny
  thy neighbor your gander
  for he may get up his dander.

  
  {1622 BRETON Str. Newes (Grosart) 7/1 No man must denie his neighbours Goose his Gander, for feare of wanting Goslings at *Goose Faire.}

  { 1601 SHAKES. Twel. N. III. ii. 53 Let there bee gaulle enough in thy inke, though thou write with a *Goose-pen.}
  Goose sayings galore.

  
  sauce OED:

  [Common Teut.: OE. gós (pl. gés) = Fris. gôs, gôz, MDu. (and Du.) gans, OHG. (MHG. and G.) gans, ON. gás (Sw. gås, Da. gaas):OTeut. *gans- (cons.-stem):OAryan *ghans-, whence L. anser (for *hanser), Gr. , Skr. hasá masc., has fem., Lith. sìs, and OIr. géis swan. Connexion with GANDER is doubtful.]

• N Pedro on Wed 4 Jul 2007, 09:57pm

  “and a couple of brave green geese,”

  What a pity that they lost the race…

  WILD GOOSE CHASE — “Englishmen in the late 16th century invented a new kind of horse race called the wild-goose chase in which the lead horse could go off in any direction and the succeeding horses had to follow accurately the course of the leader at precise intervals, like wild geese following the leader in formation. At first the phrase ‘wild-goose chase’ figuratively meant an erratic course taken by one person and followed by another; Shakespeare used it in this sense. But later the common term’s origins were forgotten and a ‘wild-goose chase’ came to mean ‘a pursuit of anything as unlikely to be caught as a wild goose,’ any foolish, fruitless, or hopeless quest.” From the “Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins” by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).

  http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/15/messages/448.html
  

• N tonyt on Thu 5 Jul 2007, 08:42am

  djc. ‘..here in England things continue as they apparently were in 1664’. In 1664 there seems to have been plenty of thunderstorms but also a lot of very hot dry weather. In 2007 we are having the thunderstorms but no signs of the upside of the coin.