Actis Temporibus

For a few years I’ve had a Latin version of “Auld Lang Syne” on my Latin-for-the-holidays handout, but I’ve never been crazy about it.

For one thing, it erases the repetitions in the original. For another, references to drinking have been prissily expunged. To translate “we’ll take a cup of kindness yet” the translator writes manūs iungāmus “we’ll join hands”.

I get that not everything has to be about drinking. I especially get it today, since someone spent a chunk of the early morning hours blowing chunks into the yard of the house next door to the fortress of Engitude. I listened with a mixture of sympathy for the sufferer and relief that I don’t do that to myself anymore.

But a drink doesn’t have to be alcoholic, and I strongly feel that you should translate a text accurately or leave it alone.

Today it occurred to me that you could render the first stanza and refrain of the song (which is all that anyone ever sings) this way:

image: Father Time (Chronos) welcomes Baby New Year, as brought by a stork; artist unknown

text:

Auld Lang Syne
(traditional)
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne ?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

Actis Temporibus
(vortitur Latīnē
ab Jacobō Angustō)

Num amīcitiae altae
nōs obliviscāmur?-
amīcitiae altae et
actōrum temporum?

Actīs temporibus, nostrī,
actīs temporibus,
adhūc bibāmus amīcē,
actīs temporibus!

I think that’s fairly singable, if you ignore elisions and vowel quantities (which is usually the case with sung neo-Latin).

Obviously, this occurred to me a month too late, as it’s already (as I write) after sunset on January 1st. But I prefer to think of it as eleven months early.

Posted in academia, Adventures in the Public Domain, Christmas, language, music, writing | Tagged , | Comments Off on Actis Temporibus

Fair or Unfair?

In the course of an ultimately frustrating and pointless conversation online today, I found myself thinking of the multiple meanings of fair in English–at once, “light-skinned/light-haired”, “beautiful”, and “just, even-handed”.

The meanings are so different that I wondered if they actually had distinct etymological sources that ended up in homophones/homographs. But it seems not: anyway the AHD and OED derive them all from Old English fæger; Orel (Handbook of Germanic Etymology) derives fæger from Proto-Germanic *fagraz. The online OED goes as far as to connect the Germanic form to PIE *peh₂ḱ– “join, connect, agree”, making it cognate with Latin pax (loaned into English by way of French as peace), also page, pale (as in “stake”), the –pinge in impinge, and pagan.

It makes sense that things that fit together would be considered beautiful, and that fairness is a way for people to fit together. But I didn’t find an etymological explanation for how fair means “pale”, as well as “beautiful” and “moral character”; the three things don’t obviously go together. (Except in the minds of racists.) I wonder if the well-attested association between femaleness and paleness in the classical world might be part of the process. I’m not sure I have a resolution to this question; I’m still walking around the ideas and kicking their tires.

Greek has a similar deal with καλός which means both “beautiful”, and “morally good; noble”. And people still tend to map goodness (along with intelligence and other irrelevant qualities) on beauty, and evil (along with stupidity, etc.) on ugliness.

The other English fair (“festival”) comes into English (via French) from Latin feriae (“holidays”) and seems to be unrelated to the word meaning “just, even-handed”. If you’ve ever been cheated at a fair, now you know why. They’re not supposed to be fair.

The lion as ringmaster in a circus of animals.
Mary Brown, “Carnival of the Animals” (after Saint-Saens)
Posted in art, fantasy art, language, politics, words | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Fair or Unfair?

The Shadow Nose

Steranko's cover for the first book in Pyramid's reprint series of  novels from the pulp magazine THE SHADOW.

image shows a man's face, partly concealed by the brim of his hat and the red-lined collar of a black cape; he has a pretty sizeable schnozz on him

I’m reading Ǫrvar Odds saga at odd moments when I should be working, lately. I was looking up útnes which C&V (un)helpfully gloss as “an outer ness”. The AHD more helpfully told me that a ness is a cape or headland, and also that the word comes from PIE *nas- “nose”, which I thought was kind of funny. 

The AHD’s etymological entry for *nas- also mentioned nark “informer”, which floored me. I always thought that nark was an abbreviation of narcotics, as an undercover cop trying to infiltrate the drug trade. But apparently nark is older than that (attested in 1846 according to the OED). It may, as AHD suggests, derive from Romani nak “nose”. English nose as “police informer” is attested in the late 18th century and is probably older still.

The OED throws some shade on the idea that nark derives from Romani, pointing its nose toward knark (roughly: “a jerk”), attested 1851. But there’s no reason to prefer knark over nak as the source of nark, particularly as knark does not appear earlier and the OED doesn’t know the source of knark either.

Eric Partridge suggested French narquois as a source, which means “cunning, deceitful; crook” as early as the 1600s. But I think I incline towards Romani nak “nose”, if only because it’s funnier.

Posted in language, words | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Shadow Nose

Ear Ye! Ear Ye!

Typo of the day resulted from a cut-and-paste error. It started its journey as Dear editors and ended up as ear editors.

Ear editors: some kind of digital plastic surgeon, I guess?

“Have you run this lobe past the ear editor yet? Looks a little… bulgy.”

“I LIKE A BULGY LOBE!”

Posted in Typo of the Day, writing | Comments Off on Ear Ye! Ear Ye!

Wearing the Mask

I’m rereading Seneca’s De Beneficiis, using Kaster’s shiny new OCT edition, and came across this crunchy line:

hanc personam induisti: agenda est.
—Seneca, De Beneficiis 2.17.2
“You’ve put on this mask; you have to act out the part.”

relief carvings of Roman theatrical masks: two comic, two possibly tragic
relief carvings of Roman theatrical masks;
currently in the Vatican Museums;
photo © 2008 by James Enge

Seneca’s line is almost a baseball conditional. Although, since I don’t keep track of baseball, my favorite examples aren’t from sportswriters.

For instance, in Kornbluth and Pohl’s Gladiator-at-Law (a minor work of midcentury satire, but nonetheless on my “always reread” list). In it a minor character tells the main character, “You mess with the big boys, they punish you.”

the cover painting depicts an indistinct city in the background, with a large globular building in the foreground which may be intended to represent a GML home, but looks more like some kind of arcology or bio-dome.
John Berkey provided the art for the 1960s Ballantine edition of Gladiator-at-Law.
If you’re going to read the book, avoid the 1980s reprint which was mutilated by Pohl’s rewriting.
Posted in ancient art, art, language, Rome, sff | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Wearing the Mask

Creepypasta

Seen on Bluesky: Gustaw Gwozdecki’s “Evening Melancholy”, c.1905.

I didn’t know it on sight, but somehow it felt familiar. I wonder if I saw it a long time ago and it re-surfaced from my subconscious when I needed a creepy scene for the “Festival of Furies” section of “Three Festivals” (in Tales from the Magician’s Skull 9).

Posted in art, fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, writing | Comments Off on Creepypasta

Age of Aequarius

A Happy Equinox to my fellow Tellurians. To all visitors: proceed at your own risk. Earth is a little weird these days.

https://claudionuez.bandcamp.com/track/equinox-coltrane-2

Posted in astronomy, music | Comments Off on Age of Aequarius

The End of the Beginning

By the power vested in me, I declare this rough draft COMPLETE. Now to knock off some of the rough edges. I will need my largest and most abrasive rasp.

The cover of Philip MacDonald's THE RASP in the "Avon Crime Classics" edition. The illustration features a large wood-rasp with skull-features superimposed.
Posted in fantasy, Myth & Legend, sword-and-sorcery, writing | Comments Off on The End of the Beginning

Vale!

Whenever I see a news item about Romney, I think it’s about the English artist who did such great drawings of Orpheus and Eurydice. I am always disappointed. This is made even worse by the fact that the artist’s first name is George (the same as Mitt Romney’s father–the guy who incautiously said he had been brainwashed about Vietnam).

Political Romneys come and go. But Eurydice will be vanishing forever.

Orpheus attempts to embrace Eurydice as she vanishes in a puff of logic; weird deathy figures in the upper right corner.
Posted in art, language, Myth & Legend | Tagged | Comments Off on Vale!

Decisions, Decisions

It’s a three-day weekend (thanks, Organized Labor!) and I was figuring on catching up with some writing projects. But then I saw Criterion had added Duel and Donnie Darko and a bunch of good stuff. So… maybe yes; maybe no.

A still from DUEL; Dennis Weaver, wearing 70s-style aviator glasses gives the camera an open-mouthed scream.
Posted in review or meta-review, sff, writing | Comments Off on Decisions, Decisions