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If you can fit a double elephant in a folio, how many elephants can you fit in a Volkswagen?
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Joined: Oct 2001
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Sesquepedalian. BTW, does anyone else think Boise is "fun"? Just kidding .. never been there. Now "Idaho", that's fun. For instance, who would want to eat a potato from Montana? (Or a steak from Idaho?)
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Joined: Oct 2001
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Congratulations, Wordwind. You were a "newbie" when you started this thread. Now you are a "journeyman". trophy
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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AdventuriteWhat I wear when I start getting itchy feet, the travelin' kind, and start callin' myself by my middle name.  I think I feel the itchy feet coming on. 
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Mentions of gemstones and butterflies bring to mind the song
"Errantry" written by J R R Tolkien and set to music by Donald Swann as part of his song cycle "The road goes ever on". I've been fascinated by the song cycle since I first heard the tape many years ago (sung by William Elvin!). The text pleads to be spoken (or sung!) not just read.
There was a merry passenger, a messenger, a mariner:
he built a gilded gondola to wander in, and had in her
a load of yellow oranges and porridge for his provender;
he perfumed her with marjoram and cardamon and lavender.
He called the winds of argosies with cargoes in to carry him
across the rivers seventeen that lay between to tarry him.
He landed all in loneliness where stonily the pebbles on
the running river Derrilyn go merrily for ever on.
He journeyed then through meadowlands to Shadowland that dreary lay,
and under hill and over hill went roving still a weary way.
He sat and sang a melody, his errantry a-tarrying;
he begged a pretty butterfly that fluttered by to marry him.
She scorned him and she scoffed at him, she laughed at him unpitying;
so long he studied wizardry and sigaldry and smithying.
He wove a tissue airy thin to snare her in; to follow her
he made him beetle leather wing and feather wing of swallowhair.
He caught her in bewilderment with filament of spiderthread;
he made her soft pavilions of lilies, and a bridal bed
of flowers and of thistledown to nestle down and rest her in;
and silken webs of filmy white and silver light he dressed her in.
He threaded gems in necklaces, but recklessly she squandered
them and fell to bitter quarreling; then sorrowing he wandered
on, and there he left her withering, as shivering he fled away;
with windy weather following on swallow-wing he sped away.
He passed the archipelagoes where yellow grows the marigold,
where countless silver fountains are, and mountains are of fairy-gold.
He took to war and foraying, a-harrying beyond the sea,
and roaming over Belmarie and Thellamie and Fantasie.
He made a shield and morion of coral and of ivory,
a sword he made of emerald, and terrible his rivalry
with elven knights of Aerie and Faerie, with paladins
that golden-haired and shining-eyed came riding by and challenged him.
Of crystal was his habergeon, his scabbard of chalcedony;
with silver-tipped at plenilune his spear was hewn of ebony.
His javelins were of malachite and stalactite he brandished them,
and went and fought the dragonflies of Paradise, and vanquished them.
He battled with the Dumbledors, the Hummerhorns, and Honey-bees,
and won the Golden Honeycomb; and running home
on sunny seas in ship of leaves and gossamer
with blossom for a canopy, he sat and sang
and furbished up and burnished up his panoply.
He tarried for a little while in little isles that lonely lay,
and found there naught but blowing grass;
and so at last the only way he took, and turned,
and coming home with honeycomb,
to memory his message came, and errand too!
In derring-do and glamoury he had forgot them,
journeying and tourneying, a wanderer.
So now he must depart again and start again his gondola,
for ever still a messenger, a passenger, a tarrier,
a-roving as a feather does, a weather-driven mariner.
copyright: George Allen & Unwin Ltd 1962/J R R Tolkien 1967/Donald Swann 1967
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
Poor, poor butterfly[sob]! Doesn't no mean no?
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Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 10,852 Likes: 2
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Aug 2001
Posts: 10,852 Likes: 2 |
At the risk of cross-threading: Did you say "Dumbledors" in that fourth verse from the end? "He battled with the Dumbledors..."? So Tolkien foresaw Hogwarts and Harry Potter ("real" or USAmerican) and all the rest? Maybe this whole poem is about Voldemort?  On a slightly less (only slightly) frivolous note, is there any other literary reference to a Voldemort, perhaps from years back, that we don't think of readily?
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Yes, Wofa, Dumbledors is correct (I checked the sheet music again). The poem comes from Tolkien's "The adventures of Tom Bombadil".
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 1,773 |
I suppose the most famous book in the double elphant size is Audubon's Birds of North America. A complete examplar in good condition would fetch a good-sized fortune, as there are only a few known to be still in existence (it was a very expensive book when originally published).
As I understand it, the expurgated version is even harder to obtain.
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Posts: 6,511
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 6,511 |
... and how do you pronounce it? Some of the words already mentioned also make me smile. And as for generics, 'most anything mainstream Yiddish or regional Brit makes me smile. Oh, OK, and U.S. Southern, too.... 
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