Blue

I thought blue always meant blue. No, I didn't. It started out as meaning "yellow" and evolved into "white" and hence in Old English to “pale” and “the colour of bruised skin”. It was actually re-borrowed in its modern sense from French.

Some didn't even have a proper word for blue. Ancient Greeks for example. Poor Homer had to call the colour of the sea "Wine Coloured" ;)

Why do we sometimes feel blue? Because of Zeus! Blue was related to rain or storms, and Zeus would make rain when he was sad or crying, and a storm when he was angry.

What about the Blue Moon? It used to have a meaning of something that was absurd. The origin of Blue Moon is steeped in folklore and it suggests something that, in fact, never happens, as in this pamphlet from 1528:
Yf they say the mone is blewe,
We must beleve that it is true.

A kind of "at the Greek calends" :)) Anyway, good news: It used to be "never", and today it is "very rarely"! Impossible things do happen!


Oh, I nearly forgot... It also has a meaning bordering on indelicacy: blue as "obscene, indecent" (and therefore a blue joke, a blue movie, a secret stash of blue mags even); it is recorded from the 19th century, and the sense connection is unclear... I am very curious, but nowdays much etymological research is done ;) I might even give a hand one day...

Still many interesting things to be said about blue, but I'll be back!

King's College Chapel

Every time I see King's College Chapel I remember the "never end a sentence with a preposition" rule. :)) Let me tell you why!

One young American tourist was walking around Cambridge. He approached a couple of young English socialites.
"Hey, y'all, where's King's College Chapel at?"
They sniggered among themselves and one replied haughtily:
"At Cambridge we prefer not to end a sentence with a preposition"
The young redneck thought for a moment and said:
"O.K. Excuse me, where is King's College Chapel at, asshole?"

This rule is a sort of early urban myth. One funny guy said (in the 18th century) that we should avoid ending a sentence with a preposition. Some people fancied this prohibition, as English can't be inferior to Latin ("Preposition" translates from Latin as "a putting before")

The story has a happy ending: "Today, happily, it is universally condemned as a ridiculous affectation"!

Deirdre's kiss

When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;

-W.B. Yeats-

This sculpture is based on a carving on an Irish high Cross erected in the 9th century and on a sculpture of Brancusi. That's why I have changed its name into "Deirdre's kiss". Deirdre is the most tragic heroine in all of Irish legend. Many retellings of her story (including Yeats dramatisation) made her the best-known figure from Celtic mythology in the world. The kiss is a sculpture of Brancusi depicting an embracing couple as a single block of stone.

We'll use Deirdre's name and Brancusi's story, as hers is too sad:

Deirdre was the most beautiful woman in the world, but she bore the curse that only sorrow would come from her beauty. Chosen to be the wife of a king, she was kept in solitude. One day, though, she saw blood on the snowy ground and a raven nearby. Instantly she remembered a dream she had, of a young man with the same colouring: black hair, white skin, and red lips [Snow White ?!? :)) ]. Her nurse told her of Naoise, they secretly met, instantly fell in love and fled to Scotland, where they lived a rugged but happy life, until rumor reached them that the king would welcome them back into Ireland.

Deirdre knew by intuition that if they returned to Ireland, tragedy would follow. While sailing across to Ireland Deirdre continued to see gloomy portents, including a blood red cloud, but Naoise continued to ignore her warnings. Deirdre's premonitions proved correct, Naoise and his brothers were murdered and Deirdre herself was taken captive. She committed suicide by leaning out of her chariot.

I believe in Brancusi's story, I'll call it a real life fairytale. A couple as a single block of stone, two as one. We've been told that the story is real:

"The people who call my work 'abstract' are imbeciles; what they call 'abstract' is in fact the purest realism, the reality of which is not represented by external form but by the idea behind it, the essence of the work."

Which came first, the prose or the poetry?

I assumed that prose was older than poetry. But today I learned that poetry is almost certainly a more primitive and historically an earlier development that prose.

It makes sense when we think more carefully about it. Poetry arises (when writing was not yet practised) not only because it is easier to remember and hand on, but because it helps the people with their common rituals. Poetry is thus linked to magic...

Prose arises later as science gradually supersedes magic. And prose is said to be a more sophisticated use of language than primitive poetry because it presupposes a more objective, conscious view of reality. :))

I assumed wrong. I should have known it: poetry is magic!

From my sphere hardly I come to
Follow thy voice, thy sight;
The bright sun is my father and
My mother is the night.

The quirkest attraction Cambridge has to offer

Trinity College, which was founded in 1546, has a statue of Henry VIII on the Gatehouse. He is holding in one hand an orb and in the other a chair leg. The original sceptre was replaced a long time ago with a chair leg as a student prank. When the College gate house was cleaned some years ago Henry was given a brand new chair leg!

The pranks didn't stop with a poor chair leg: it is said that there once were a van on the roof of the Senate House and a car suspended beneath the Bridge of Sighs!