What tidying throws us
Oct. 23rd, 2009 08:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyofastolatMuch to the disgust of my cats, I was suddenly bitten by the tidying bug as soon as I got up today, and spent half an hour tidying my desk, going through the piles of paper that have accumulated in its nooks and crannies. Most of them were notes for fanfics long-since finished, so could be thrown away, but I found a few things that interested me, at least.
This was a notebook I started keeping at Oxford, in which I noted down things that amused me, as and when I discovered them during my studies. I kept losing the book, so didn't note down very much at all, but here is what I got. All is exactly as written in c. 1991:
Parricides were to be sewn up in a sack with a dog, a cock, a snake and a monkey, and thrown into the sea or the river. (Augustus Emp.)
Francois I had a favourite who was killed in a snowball fight when someone accidentally dropped a laundry basket on his head.
Incompetent French Knights (see elsewhere)
Death of Henry of Champagne (K of Jer) - 10 Sep 1197 - stood in window to review troops in courtyard. Then Pisan envoys came in and H turned to meet them, then stepped back and fell. His dwarf, Scarlet, tried to catch him but was too light to rescue them, so they both died.
Interesting etys:
Amethyst = proof against alcohol
Sycophant = bearer of figs
Tragedy = goat song
Wierd news
Yorkshire Police reported a UFO. People flocked to see it, and were arrested for listening in on police radio.
__
Then, a few years later, I found the note book and started noting down my favourite typos encountered in fanfic. (I'm pleased to discover this, by the way, since I thought I'd lost it, and typos never cease to amuse me. I wrote a few mini-stories (Stargate Atlantis themed) around some of my favourites a few months ago, including some of these ones. I'd forgotten some of the others, though.)
"Have you noticed that you can read his eyes? They're very expressive. Each of them is fiercely protective of each other."
"Staring Mitch Pileggi"
"Deep Throat gave Mulder a secret massage"
"Mulder held a gin to Cancerman's head"
"Stop fuzzing over me, Scully!"
"Scully felt a serge of emotion"
"If Mulder doesn't get the anecdote by tonight, he'll die."
"Mulder was acting in a strange manor."
"Mulder took it as his queue to leave."
"... the poison fondu in the autopsy."
Other typos I like (many of which I've already mentioned here)
"he was mauled by savage breasts."
The Ancient Geeks
Naive Americans (previously known as Red Indians)
Parliamentarinas (I always imagine them in tutus)
"The Romans destroyed the scared shrines of Anglesey"
And the book that stayed on our library catalogue for several years before I noticed it: "Pervy the Park-keeper"
I also started noting down some of my mum's best spoonerisms, but the only one I remembered to actually write down was:
"You're watching me like a hoggle-eyed eek."
__
The incompetent French knights are indeed elaborated elsewhere:
"In 1346 the French knights began the battle of Crecy with their time-honoured cavalry charge. Unfortunately, on the way they bumped into their own Genoese crossbowmen, placed by some bright commander in front of the knights, who were them in the act was running away in disarray. When the French knights eventually hacked through, they discovered whey the bowmen were fleeing away, as they came face to face with the English longbowmen.
Ten years after this defeat, they proceeded to lose Poitiers in much the same way. By now, the French were getting worried, so Charles V decided that if they couldn't win battles, the only answer was to avoid them, so for years the English were most annoyed to find that they were followed across France by a French army which stayed close enough to stop their usual dispersal for pillages, but which most unsportingly refused to be beaten in a battle.
This restored the French confidence so end, so in the 1396 Crusade, undertaken in a brief truce in the Hundred Years War, they were back to their old tricks. The King of Bohemia politely pointed out that his troops of dubious loyalty should be placed in the front. "No, no!" cried the French knights. "We must have the glory of leading the charge!" So they charged up the hill, got to the top... and panicked at the sight of the massed Turks. In their flight, they crashed into the rest of the crusading army, and meanhile the Bohemian king's troops had deserted.
And then, of course, the results of the next battle, at Agincourt, are well known. The French only managed to win the war by giving up on battles and going over to taking towns piecemeal when no-one was looking. It also required monumental incompetence on the part of Henry VI, but that's another story...
And speaking of that other story, we come to my (tongue in cheek) theory that Henry VI was actually a woman. I haven't got time to type up the entire reasoning, but it went something like:
- He never went near his subjects. Lots of sources say how invisible he was as a king. He left the entertaining of ambassadors to other people. After 1457, chroniclers stop mentioning the king at all, and call the army "Queen Margaret's men." In 1471, Georges Chastellain called him "a stuffed woolsack lifted by the ears, a shadow on the wall, bandied about as in a game of blind man's buff... submissive and mute like a crowned calf." Clearly all this was the result of someone who didn't dare show themselves much in public in case their secret was revealed.
- He banned nude bathing at bath and topless dancing at court, clearly afraid that revealing fashions would catch on and reveal his secret. He wore loose and shapeless gowns. Blacman, his biographer and hagiographer, cited this as evidence of his piety, but Londoners complained about it and thought it costume unbefitting of a king.
- Blacman says that he treated his wife with the utmost respect and that he never showed any interest in any other woman. Yes, he did supposedly have a son, but lots of people said that he wasn't Henry's, but "a bastard gotten in avoutry."
So obviously Henry VI was a man. You see, in the treaty of Troyes, Henry V became heir of Charles VI of France, so desperately needed an heir to support this claim. When his first child was girl, he decided to pass her off as a boy until a proper boy came along, whereupon the first child would conveniently disappear. Unfortunately he died before this could happen, so poor Henrietta was forced to pretend to be a king all her life.
One day, of course, I will write an international best-selling novel in which some modern person uncovers this shocking truth. Templars will come into it somehow, too.
__
I also found my Song of the Dutch Revolt (written to the tune of the British Grenadiers) and my Ballad of the French Wars of Religion (tune: Matty Groves) which so helped me with revision for Finals.
And, finally, I've found a half-written song that I will try to finish on the journey to see Bellowhead later today. It's all about a pair of lovers torn apart when the boy announces that he wants to travel to that far-off, terrible, dangerous place: the mainland.
This was a notebook I started keeping at Oxford, in which I noted down things that amused me, as and when I discovered them during my studies. I kept losing the book, so didn't note down very much at all, but here is what I got. All is exactly as written in c. 1991:
Parricides were to be sewn up in a sack with a dog, a cock, a snake and a monkey, and thrown into the sea or the river. (Augustus Emp.)
Francois I had a favourite who was killed in a snowball fight when someone accidentally dropped a laundry basket on his head.
Incompetent French Knights (see elsewhere)
Death of Henry of Champagne (K of Jer) - 10 Sep 1197 - stood in window to review troops in courtyard. Then Pisan envoys came in and H turned to meet them, then stepped back and fell. His dwarf, Scarlet, tried to catch him but was too light to rescue them, so they both died.
Interesting etys:
Amethyst = proof against alcohol
Sycophant = bearer of figs
Tragedy = goat song
Wierd news
Yorkshire Police reported a UFO. People flocked to see it, and were arrested for listening in on police radio.
__
Then, a few years later, I found the note book and started noting down my favourite typos encountered in fanfic. (I'm pleased to discover this, by the way, since I thought I'd lost it, and typos never cease to amuse me. I wrote a few mini-stories (Stargate Atlantis themed) around some of my favourites a few months ago, including some of these ones. I'd forgotten some of the others, though.)
"Have you noticed that you can read his eyes? They're very expressive. Each of them is fiercely protective of each other."
"Staring Mitch Pileggi"
"Deep Throat gave Mulder a secret massage"
"Mulder held a gin to Cancerman's head"
"Stop fuzzing over me, Scully!"
"Scully felt a serge of emotion"
"If Mulder doesn't get the anecdote by tonight, he'll die."
"Mulder was acting in a strange manor."
"Mulder took it as his queue to leave."
"... the poison fondu in the autopsy."
Other typos I like (many of which I've already mentioned here)
"he was mauled by savage breasts."
The Ancient Geeks
Naive Americans (previously known as Red Indians)
Parliamentarinas (I always imagine them in tutus)
"The Romans destroyed the scared shrines of Anglesey"
And the book that stayed on our library catalogue for several years before I noticed it: "Pervy the Park-keeper"
I also started noting down some of my mum's best spoonerisms, but the only one I remembered to actually write down was:
"You're watching me like a hoggle-eyed eek."
__
The incompetent French knights are indeed elaborated elsewhere:
"In 1346 the French knights began the battle of Crecy with their time-honoured cavalry charge. Unfortunately, on the way they bumped into their own Genoese crossbowmen, placed by some bright commander in front of the knights, who were them in the act was running away in disarray. When the French knights eventually hacked through, they discovered whey the bowmen were fleeing away, as they came face to face with the English longbowmen.
Ten years after this defeat, they proceeded to lose Poitiers in much the same way. By now, the French were getting worried, so Charles V decided that if they couldn't win battles, the only answer was to avoid them, so for years the English were most annoyed to find that they were followed across France by a French army which stayed close enough to stop their usual dispersal for pillages, but which most unsportingly refused to be beaten in a battle.
This restored the French confidence so end, so in the 1396 Crusade, undertaken in a brief truce in the Hundred Years War, they were back to their old tricks. The King of Bohemia politely pointed out that his troops of dubious loyalty should be placed in the front. "No, no!" cried the French knights. "We must have the glory of leading the charge!" So they charged up the hill, got to the top... and panicked at the sight of the massed Turks. In their flight, they crashed into the rest of the crusading army, and meanhile the Bohemian king's troops had deserted.
And then, of course, the results of the next battle, at Agincourt, are well known. The French only managed to win the war by giving up on battles and going over to taking towns piecemeal when no-one was looking. It also required monumental incompetence on the part of Henry VI, but that's another story...
And speaking of that other story, we come to my (tongue in cheek) theory that Henry VI was actually a woman. I haven't got time to type up the entire reasoning, but it went something like:
- He never went near his subjects. Lots of sources say how invisible he was as a king. He left the entertaining of ambassadors to other people. After 1457, chroniclers stop mentioning the king at all, and call the army "Queen Margaret's men." In 1471, Georges Chastellain called him "a stuffed woolsack lifted by the ears, a shadow on the wall, bandied about as in a game of blind man's buff... submissive and mute like a crowned calf." Clearly all this was the result of someone who didn't dare show themselves much in public in case their secret was revealed.
- He banned nude bathing at bath and topless dancing at court, clearly afraid that revealing fashions would catch on and reveal his secret. He wore loose and shapeless gowns. Blacman, his biographer and hagiographer, cited this as evidence of his piety, but Londoners complained about it and thought it costume unbefitting of a king.
- Blacman says that he treated his wife with the utmost respect and that he never showed any interest in any other woman. Yes, he did supposedly have a son, but lots of people said that he wasn't Henry's, but "a bastard gotten in avoutry."
So obviously Henry VI was a man. You see, in the treaty of Troyes, Henry V became heir of Charles VI of France, so desperately needed an heir to support this claim. When his first child was girl, he decided to pass her off as a boy until a proper boy came along, whereupon the first child would conveniently disappear. Unfortunately he died before this could happen, so poor Henrietta was forced to pretend to be a king all her life.
One day, of course, I will write an international best-selling novel in which some modern person uncovers this shocking truth. Templars will come into it somehow, too.
__
I also found my Song of the Dutch Revolt (written to the tune of the British Grenadiers) and my Ballad of the French Wars of Religion (tune: Matty Groves) which so helped me with revision for Finals.
And, finally, I've found a half-written song that I will try to finish on the journey to see Bellowhead later today. It's all about a pair of lovers torn apart when the boy announces that he wants to travel to that far-off, terrible, dangerous place: the mainland.
