And it's been a while, but I've finally figured it out. Turns out that I HAD notated my discovery sufficiently. I just wasn't reading the copy/pasted material carefully enough to catch it, overlooking what I'd always taken for granted. You see, it all has to do with Ancient Roman practices of eating pork n' beans.
Yes, really.
i'll eat my candy with the pork and beans
Ovid breaks down the practice as follows:
...There are some greedy birds, not those that cheated
Phineus of his meal, though descended from that race:
Their heads are large, their eyes stick out, their beaks
Fit for tearing, their feathers are grey, their claws hooked.
They fly by night, attacking children with absent nurses,
And defiling their bodies, snatched from the cradle.
They’re said to rend the flesh of infants with their beaks,
And their throats are full of the blood they drink.
They’re called screech-owls, and the reason for the name
Is the horrible screeching they usually make at night.
Whether they’re born as birds, or whether they’re made so
By spells, old women transformed to birds by Marsian magic,
They still entered Proca’s bedroom. Proca was fresh
Prey for the birds, a child of five days old.
They sucked at the infant’s chest, with greedy tongues:
And the wretched child screamed for help.
Scared at his cry, the nurse ran to her ward,
And found his cheeks slashed by their sharp claws.
What could she do? The colour of the child’s face
Was that of late leaves nipped by an early frost.
She went to Cranaë and told her: Cranaë said:
‘Don’t be afraid: your little ward will be safe.’
She approached the cradle: the parents wept:
‘Restrain your tears,’ she said, ‘I’ll heal him.’
Quickly she touched the doorposts, one after the other,
Three times, with arbutus leaves, three times with arbutus
Marked the threshold: sprinkled the entrance with water,
Medicinal water, while holding the entrails of a two-month sow:
And said: ‘Birds of night, spare his entrails:
A small victim’s offered here for a small child.
Take a heart for a heart, I beg, flesh for flesh,
This life we give you for a dearer life.’
When she’d sacrificed, she placed the severed flesh
In the open air, and forbade those there to look at it.
A ‘rod of Janus’, taken from a whitethorn, was set
Where a little window shed light into the room.
After that, they say, the birds avoided the cradle,
And the boy recovered the colour he’d had before.
You ask why we eat greasy bacon-fat on the Kalends,
And why we mix beans with parched grain?
She’s an ancient goddess, nourished by familiar food,
No epicure to seek out alien dainties.
In ancient times the fish still swam unharmed,
And the oysters were safe in their shells.
Italy was unaware of Ionian heath-cocks,
And the cranes that enjoy Pigmy blood:
Only the feathers of the peacock pleased,
And the nations didn’t send us captive creatures.
Pigs were prized: men feasted on slaughtered swine:
The earth only yielded beans and hard grains.
They say that whoever eats these two foods together
At the Kalends, in this sixth month, will have sweet digestion...
- From Ovid's Fasti, book VI (June). Trans. A. S. Kline (Original copyright notice: Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2004 All Rights Reserved. This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.)Phineus of his meal, though descended from that race:
Their heads are large, their eyes stick out, their beaks
Fit for tearing, their feathers are grey, their claws hooked.
They fly by night, attacking children with absent nurses,
And defiling their bodies, snatched from the cradle.
They’re said to rend the flesh of infants with their beaks,
And their throats are full of the blood they drink.
They’re called screech-owls, and the reason for the name
Is the horrible screeching they usually make at night.
Whether they’re born as birds, or whether they’re made so
By spells, old women transformed to birds by Marsian magic,
They still entered Proca’s bedroom. Proca was fresh
Prey for the birds, a child of five days old.
They sucked at the infant’s chest, with greedy tongues:
And the wretched child screamed for help.
Scared at his cry, the nurse ran to her ward,
And found his cheeks slashed by their sharp claws.
What could she do? The colour of the child’s face
Was that of late leaves nipped by an early frost.
She went to Cranaë and told her: Cranaë said:
‘Don’t be afraid: your little ward will be safe.’
She approached the cradle: the parents wept:
‘Restrain your tears,’ she said, ‘I’ll heal him.’
Quickly she touched the doorposts, one after the other,
Three times, with arbutus leaves, three times with arbutus
Marked the threshold: sprinkled the entrance with water,
Medicinal water, while holding the entrails of a two-month sow:
And said: ‘Birds of night, spare his entrails:
A small victim’s offered here for a small child.
Take a heart for a heart, I beg, flesh for flesh,
This life we give you for a dearer life.’
When she’d sacrificed, she placed the severed flesh
In the open air, and forbade those there to look at it.
A ‘rod of Janus’, taken from a whitethorn, was set
Where a little window shed light into the room.
After that, they say, the birds avoided the cradle,
And the boy recovered the colour he’d had before.
You ask why we eat greasy bacon-fat on the Kalends,
And why we mix beans with parched grain?
She’s an ancient goddess, nourished by familiar food,
No epicure to seek out alien dainties.
In ancient times the fish still swam unharmed,
And the oysters were safe in their shells.
Italy was unaware of Ionian heath-cocks,
And the cranes that enjoy Pigmy blood:
Only the feathers of the peacock pleased,
And the nations didn’t send us captive creatures.
Pigs were prized: men feasted on slaughtered swine:
The earth only yielded beans and hard grains.
They say that whoever eats these two foods together
At the Kalends, in this sixth month, will have sweet digestion...
pork n' beans come in a can; they were put there by a man
So there are these birds, not the harpies that tormented the blind seer Phineus but descended from that race, making a big problem, right? Screech owls, and in the original Latin, the plural nominative of the word used is striges, or strix in the singular (which will be important.) These screech owls are attacking little Prince Procras, who is one day going to be the grandfather of Rhea Silvia, mother of founders of Rome Romulus and Remus. Big problem, right?
Cranaë the nymph (identified by Ovid as a form of the goddess Cardea (goddess of, door hinges (yes)) although that's probably a conflation on his part,) has an idea, though: ward the fiends off by rubbing the doorposts with leaves of the arbutus tree (which is also going to be important.) It makes sense in context, and all has to do with the boon that was the "hinge" that turned the nymph into the goddess, which we're not getting into here because that part's not important. (It does have to do with Janus, though, in case you were wondering whether the goddess of door hinges and the god of doorways are affiliated in anyway.)
The doorways rubbed down with some good arbutus leaves and sprinkled with some good holy water, Cranaë sacrifices a pig for the striges to eat instead of little baby Procras. And, since she's an ancient goddess, we gotta eat that pork with some simple peasant-y food like beans, right? And so pork and beans are food for the Calends of June. Because, screech owls. And they hate arbutus. And so, door hinge.
...Makes sense to me.
what in the world does that have to do with anything though!?
Glad you asked. The story about the origins of pork and beans was the part I'd always overlooked, and that little story is the key that connects the two strings I'd been having so much trouble piecing together.
The first string is the story of Polyphonte, who, through no coincidence, is the subject of yesterday's Mythology Wednesday story over at Disney Villain Death this week. Polyphonte is the first strix, changed into that form from human by her grandfather Ares (you can read about it over there.) Her two sons are also transformed into birds. They were half-bear before that. Because that's what you get when you mate with bears (that's the last important thing that you need to remember.)
The second string is the city of Madrid, Spain. I'd been thinking of it as a potential setting for an urban fantasy type deal, with no other information beyond that; this was before the supernatural espionage adventures of Finn Moone were conceived, and so that was about it. Madrid, Spain, specifically, all for the city's coat of arms, which depicts... well, hold on, I could just show you a picture.
_Madrid_05.jpg) |
This. It depict this. (Tomás Fano, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.) |
That statue is called El Oso y el Madroño, and it depicts the heraldic symbol of the capital of Spain. There's a bear, such as the kind that might, I don't know, mate with Polyphonte or something, and el oso is trying to get at the fruit in that madroño there. In English, the word for that is Strawberry Tree, whose Latin name refers in general to a genus that, perhaps, you've heard of?
Arbutus.
check... and mate.
Arbutus.
check... and mate.
Alright, remember the first thing I told you would be important, the Latin word for screech owl? Strix, right? Mythological Greek screechy strigine thing? Strigine means owllike, the same way ursine means bearlike, yes? And yes, it does come from strix. Strix itself came to mean witch, and its derivative striga to mean that, or hag, or evil spirit, or whatever. Vampire, yes, that too. Even today, in Romanian (the international language of vampires, doncha know) strigă is not only their name for barn owl, but evil spirit. And Death's Head Hawkmoth, Acherontia atropos. Because everything's cooler with those.
And it's still their word for screams. As in the verb, like, he screams, not like, more than one scream, or anything.
Strigoi is also another word for vampir, with a slightly broader meaning, being any vampire-like evil spirit (once again, see the strigă thing.) So, perhaps... strigoi are striges? The bear, either the son or the lover of Polyphonte, isn't after the fruit of the strawberry tree; he's after its leaves.
And, perhaps, well this is just speculation, but a can of pork n' beans.
And it's still their word for screams. As in the verb, like, he screams, not like, more than one scream, or anything.
Strigoi is also another word for vampir, with a slightly broader meaning, being any vampire-like evil spirit (once again, see the strigă thing.) So, perhaps... strigoi are striges? The bear, either the son or the lover of Polyphonte, isn't after the fruit of the strawberry tree; he's after its leaves.
And, perhaps, well this is just speculation, but a can of pork n' beans.
No comments:
Post a Comment