Re: Reactions to the secret vice (was: Steg's wonderful sig.)

Patrick Dunn wrote:
>
> On Tue, 9 Nov 1999, Sally Caves wrote:
>
> > Heh heh heh... there is that dimension to it!  I prefer arguing over
> > Old English phrases that yield richer fruit... like whether or not
> > "swifeth" in _swifeth me geond sweartne_ could possibly have meant
> > "fuck" to some Old English monk.  Riddle 12, Codex Exoniensis.  :D
>
> *digs J. R. Clark Hall out of mess of a desk*  "Sweep me through
> darkness"?  Hmm.  That's one thing I didn't like about OE -- no sex,
> anywhere but the riddles.  Very boring.  There's only so much pleasure in
> "thaes ofereode, thisses swa maeg" and "EAdmund se Eadiga Eastengla cyning
> waes snotor and wurthful and wurthode symble mid aethelum theawum thone
> aelmihtigan God."  A young man needs a little spice in his literature.
Well, check out Riddle 12.  Drunken woman doing something with something
else
in front of a late night fire in which the word "swifeth" is involved.
Alas,
Clark Hall is of no help, and neither is the Bosworth and Toller.  DOE
not
up to s yet, and there are six occurances of the s word in the OE
concordance,
all of them with bland meanings that have something to do with motion.
Chaucer unequivocal but that's four hundred years later.

Heh heh heh... I like to think that your J.R. Clark Hall was so readily
available, or do you, like me, keep your library on your desk?
Maddening
system of organizing and you can hardly see the computer.  Diving in
here,
she pulls out:   oh eck:  _Difference in Translation_, by Joseph F.
Graham.
Containing that famous inscrutable essay by Derrida, Tours de Babel.
What's that doing here?

Sally

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SALLY CAVES
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves (bragpage)
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http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/contents.html (all else)
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Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."
                                from _The Gospel of Bastet_
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