Amycus

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

Okay. alt_amycus needs his own discussion: two posts in an evening. And, omg, I'm terrified for alt_terry!

What do you suppose Amycus's "new regimen" lists mean?

I.
4L x 3D
Tx30
CCx4
results marginal

pigeons

II.
4L x 2D
2 pair trousers
5 CC but scattered.

I thought the first one was some sort of list of punishments in code, but "2 pair trousers" doesn't seem to fit. Perhaps he's trying experimental pigeon extermination strategies? But again, "2 pair trousers"? Am I making this harder than it needs to be?

Comments

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Well, the poem starts with 33 maggots protesting the killing of 3 maggots, and then having some internal squabbles, and then having a young leader stand up and talk about the brotherhood of maggots. It reads, especially given its date, like a mockery of democratic agitation, brotherhood of man, and all that. So if Sirius is trying to preach a message of equality and solidarity, the poem imagines maggots doing the same thing. Not sympathetically. :)

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

I could see the "bold leader" bit referring to Sirius. Why would Amycus say that to McG, though? I wish I knew more about the original context of the poem.

What I got from the poem was that it is ridiculous to attribute human thoughts and feelings to creatures like maggots who are so obviously worthless. It's comical that anybody would care about the murder of three maggots, even other maggots.

I was also focusing on the line:
"There are owre [=over] mony maggots in Geordie's hat." So, too many maggots.

And puzzling over the son's impudent response:
"Daddy, wha hath begotten us a'?
Tis a foul flyte for ane that's sae faur in the faut [=that's so much to blame]
If there's owre mony maggots in Geordie's hat" I don't really follow what he's saying or why it is impudent.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

And puzzling over the son's impudent response:
"Daddy, wha hath begotten us a'?
Tis a foul flyte for ane that's sae faur in the faut [=that's so much to blame]
If there's owre mony maggots in Geordie's hat" I don't really follow what he's saying or why it is impudent.

Impudent because the son's calling daddy out for saying there are too many maggots when it was daddy who ran up the population numbers. That's my spin on it. (If there're too many maggots, pops, shouldn't you have thought of that before you fathered so many of us?)

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

it is ridiculous to attribute human thoughts and feelings to creatures like maggots who are so obviously worthless

Well, exactly. Much like Muggles, in Carrow's opinion.

"Flyte" is curse, in some dialects. So the son is cursing God, maybe, as one possible response to misfortune. (The old-man maggot represents resignation or self-loathing, the mother a sort of pious submission, the son despair, and the "bold leader" political activism, all of which presumably have parallels among the Muggles, with Sirius = the bold leader.) And all of it is ridiculous and contemptible, to Carrow.

It's not necessarily a reply to Minerva, it's just a general philosophical statement of what's on his mind, as she catches him making notes about his experiments. Maybe. :)

[brimtoast.livejournal.com]

I agree with pretty much all of that. Well said.

Well, exactly. Much like Muggles, in Carrow's opinion.

Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at. And another reason why I thought pigeons wasn't literal, since I think pigeons and maggots were both used the same way; the traits that the two have in common are also traits that Carrow believes characterize Muggles.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Makes sense -- and it pretty chilling. *tips hat to Carrow's player*

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

"Flyte" is curse, in some dialects. So the son is cursing God, maybe, as one possible response to misfortune.

I don't think it is the son's curse. My take is that the son accuses Daddy of cursing (in the previous stanza, Daddy hawks and spits to punctuate his exclamation that there are too many maggots, anyway, in Geordie's hat) -- spitting in God's face, if you will -- when Daddy had everything to do with there being so many wee maggots running about.

[black-dog.livejournal.com]

Could well be. I suspect you read varieties of English dialect much better than I do.

"Daddy, wha hath begotten us a'?
"Tis a foul flyte for ane that's sae faur in the faut
If there's owre mony maggots in Geordie's hat"

Turns on a couple of key points, maybe: 1. Is "Daddy" literal or an honorific? 2. "wha hath begotten us all" -- is "wha" a relative pronoun, so that Daddy begot -- and if so, why is there a question mark at the end? Or does it begin a direct (if rhetorical) question, making it an allusion to God? (Or, I guess a sarcastic question to Daddy.) 3. If the curse is "for" the person at fault, is it "for" in the sense of "on the part of," i.e. belonging to (the person's curse, the curse that person uttered) or in the sense of being directed toward (curing whoever begat us)?

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

Up gat an auld maggot, a wonder to see,
His gnarled grey head was so silly and wee,
And he said, after ten times he hoasted and spat,
"There are owre mony maggots in Geordie's hat."

An impudent maggot sprang out of the raw,
And cried, "Daddy, wha hath begotten us a'?
"Tis a foul flyte for ane that's sae faur in the faut
If there's owre mony maggots in Geordie's hat"

I think the lines we're reading differently are the middle two in the second of the stanzas. I'd modernize it as: "Daddy, who has begotten us all? (Answer: you yourself, sir!) That's a ludicrous/wicked thing for the one who's most clearly implicated to have said." (You big baboon, you're the one who couldn't keep his seed to himself, so hush up about our overpopulation!) It may hinge on syntactic differences of 18thC Scots vs. contemporary US-speak? And I could just be wrong.

[lapin-agile.livejournal.com]

And tangentially...

I've been dying to find a context in which to remark how ironic I found it sometime ago when Lucius said (to someone... McG, maybe?) that he and Narcissa had only ever aimed to parent one child, but they'd been graciously willing to step in on an ad hoc basis to help parent Pansy and Harry. Think of all the purebloods who have few or no children. The Malfoys self-proclaimedly by choice, and others (McG; both Carrows, presumably; Sprout, Pince, Pomfrey seem to be spinsters like McG; Slughorn, for all we know; Umbridge, it would seem; Bellatrix has one child in-game, but I don't think it's canonical; Dumbledore; Sirius & Regulus, for reasons other than choice, perhaps). So it seems a bit fey to be all paranoid about the threat of Muggleborns' supposed theft of pureblood children's magic when the purebloods seem to have adopted a preference for negative birth-rate. I'm not denying that the purebloods have a (reprehensible but logical) scheme for winning the population war through extermination of the Muggle excess, but I'd say that that policy does them no good if they don't take reasonable steps to at least replace their own population from generation to generation. (And don't tell me that the Malfoys think letting the Weasleys even the averages is a reasonable scheme!)

Okay, that was truly tangential. Back to Maggots. As you were, soldier.