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

[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.