Don't cry over spilt milk

You may have noticed my fascination with language, in particular the origins of strange childhood aphorisms. "Don't cry over spilt milk" was not invented by my mother, or yours. No. it's down to James Howell in his Paramoigraphy of 1659.

I'm not even sure that paramoigraphy is a real word. But Howell used it to describe his book of proverbs, so that's good enough for me. There's a suggestion that the original (which sadly I couldn't find) read "no weeping for shed milk".

Also in 1659, Henry Purcell was born. He died in 1695, which is a numerical anagram of his birth year.

My birthday, in DDMM format, which is 1601, is a numerical anagram of 0611, which was the DDMM birthday of Suleiman The Magnificent in 1494.

Suleiman, as the Ottoman Sultan, conquered the island of Rhodes in 1523. Cecil Rhodes, former Prime Minister of the Cape Colony and after whom Rhodesia was named, founded the Rhodes Scholarship scheme in his will. The most recent Rhodes Scholar is Madison Tung, first female wrestler and wrestling national champion at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

Another USAF Academy graduate Heather Wilson was a Rhodes Scholar at Jesus College, Oxford in 1982. Which was where James Howell was elected to a Fellowship in 1623, 36 years before he wrote his Paramoigraphy.

It's a small world.

Code of Hammurabi

Hammurabi was King of Babylon from 1792 to 1750 B.C. He is best known for issuing the Code of Hammurabi. This code of laws is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. A partial copy exists on a 2.25-metre-tall (7.4 ft) stone stele, which is today in the Louvre.

The code contains 282 laws. You can see a list of all of them in the Avalon Project of the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University. For those of you without that much time, here are a few pertinent examples.

3. If any one bring an accusation of any crime before the elders, and does not prove what he has charged, he shall, if it be a capital offense charged, be put to death.

I guess that gives you a flavour of what is to come. However:

2. If any one bring an accusation against a man, and the accused go to the river and leap into the river, if he sink in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house. But if the river prove that the accused is not guilty, and he escape unhurt, then he who had brought the accusation shall be put to death, while he who leaped into the river shall take possession of the house that had belonged to his accuser.

So what's so special about a river?

I guess rivers were important in ancient Babylon.

5. If a judge try a case, reach a decision, and present his judgment in writing; if later error shall appear in his decision, and it be through his own fault, then he shall pay twelve times the fine set by him in the case, and he shall be publicly removed from the judge's bench, and never again shall he sit there to render judgement.

Now there's a thing. Judges are accountable for their actions. I can think of a few authoritarian leaders who would love that.

21. If any one break a hole into a house (break in to steal), he shall be put to death before that hole and be buried.

Harsh.

65. If the gardener do not work in the garden and the product fall off, the gardener shall pay in proportion to other neighboring gardens.

That reminds me of my getting warned off because I allowed my allotment to grow an impressive array of weeds.

109. If conspirators meet in the house of a tavern-keeper, and these conspirators are not captured and delivered to the court, the tavern-keeper shall be put to death.

That's one for lockdown rules.

195. If a son strike his father, his hands shall be hewn off.

196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out.

197. If he break another man's bone, his bone shall be broken.

200. If a man knock out the teeth of his equal, his teeth shall be knocked out.

You get the message.

226. If a barber, without the knowledge of his master, cut the sign of a slave on a slave not to be sold, the hands of this barber shall be cut off.

There's a lot more about slaves, tenant farming and adultery.

Nice chap, Hammurabi. Good job there are no statues of him around. However, it should be remembered that he was - as we all are - a man of his time, and this codification of the rule of law is remarkable.

I wonder whether students are taught this as part of the history of laws in a law degree course. I have a son who could answer that.........

Rudolph won't be coming

But Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner (or Dunder) and Blitzen will.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
with a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call'd them by name:
"Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen!
"On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Dunder and Blitzen!

[A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement C. Moore, 1823]

Rudolph is a fake, invented in 1939 as a marketing gimmick for the Montgomery Ward chain of department stores in America. Shame.

But it did spawn the famous song. Nobody ever sang "Dasher, the prancing reindeer". To my knowledge.

There's more. L. Frank Baum's story The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) includes a list of ten reindeer: Flossie and Glossie, Racer and Pacer, Fearless and Peerless, Ready and Steady, Feckless and Speckless.

St. Nicholas himself was a real person of course, a monk supposedly in (what is now) Turkey in the 3rd century A.D. (or C.E. as we woke people say). I could find no record of reindeer sightings in Turkey. Or turkeys in Lapland, for that matter.

The first known reference to Santa Claus coming down a chimney is in a version of Knickerbocker’s History of New York by Washington Irvine in 1812: "St. Nicholas rattl[ing] down the chimney”.

Americans, have you nothing better to write about? And are Americans that gullible?

So kids, please stop singing about Rudolph and memorise Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. I'll test you!

A very merry Christmas everyone.

A shout-out for Premier Inn

I had booked four nights at the Premier Inn in Whistable for Christmas, when the government announced the relaxation of the Covid-19 restrictions (at the time Tier Three in Kent). I chose the cheapest rate, which did not allow cancellation or amendment, because it was significantly lower than the more flexible rates.

Then the Christmas rules were changed. Kent went into a new Tier Four, not allowing mixing of households or travel into or out of the Tier Four region (Cornwall is in Tier One). So I am resigned to losing my £150; no worries, I always  knew it was a possibility. BUT - I received an email from Premier Inn, saying that, as a "goodwill gesture", they would allow me to cancel without penalty. Which I did.

Well done Premier Inn! Thank you.

I will still miss Dan, Gabby, Elias and Isaac but we'll have a kind of Christmas in a few months, hopefully.

There are good people in the world.

Initials quiz - answers

IKB Isambard Kingdom Brunel

HRC Hillary Rodham Clinton

LBJ Lyndon Baines Johnson

DLG David Lloyd George

ALW Andrew Lloyd Webber

CZJ Catherine Zeta Jones

EAP Edgar Allan Poe

GBS George Bernard Shaw

MLK Martin Luther King

UBL (or OBL) Usama (Osama) bin Laden

A more humorous take on faithless electors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COmW6r23zas&ab_channel=CGPGrey