Beer, yes, primo Erdinger Weissbier. For thinly sliced cucumber I'd have to check the fridge, slice it (thinly), and then repeat the experiment.

I've been happily following his newer writings since you pointed them out a while back. The Battlestar Ecclesiastica is his finest work since the Ocks Menne.

If he doesn't stop all this blogging, he'll never finish "Canterbury Tales".

On the other hand, after just reading about "Kalamazoo" of "The Ocks Menne" ... Geoffrey, forget about those pilgrims.

Does anyone know how to unaspirate a milkshake? A little help here, please.

BSL, I love Chaucer, and his brilliant blog posts, and his litel woolen hatte, with al myn herte. ;)

I do wish he'd get back to the Parlement Journale though! Oh, the suspense!

(I love Mandeville's contributions, too. He is downright cuddly.)

Not thinly-sliced cucumber, but a chunk of very fine aged Gouda. Ow, ow, ow.

Well, let's see:

Chavcer his uuritinges myn herte and minde impresse,
farre fro the uuorlde in holie sothfastenesse,
bot ich uuolde asken alle ye gentille folke
uuho clamovren for ease fro hethene ioke
uuether tis trewe thatte euille-sovning uuorde
thatte swich rhyming ben nat worthe an torde?
For myn parte it ben trewe that Chavcer bin
Ovre greetest rhymer, to saie else war sinne.

In the immortal words of Doctor Johnson, cucumber should be thinly sliced, soaked in vinegar and then thrown away as good for nothing.

Involuntary laughter and a desire to email all the medievalists I know (and they are legion), but no cucumber.

My Shift key was stuck for two days until the keyboard dried out after I read this: Ther shal be a child, cleped Henri le Potier. [...] He then recyves worde forto scoleye so he maye lernen the wayes of wicches. [...] There be two childeren, Hermesie who hath muchel wit, so myche that she is to be taughten with the menn, and a melancholic felawe named Rinaldo delle Donole. Henri le Potier cwelleth hem al for being wicches, and then atte fin he becometh a prest.

And hendy happe ichabbe ihent
Ichot from hevene it is me sent
From alle wommen my love is lent
And licht on Alisoun!

I'll never read that the same way again. Hee. (No cucumber here, but chocolate hurts.)

Argh. Could somebody please explain "hendy happe ichabbe hent", and where the heck "waxen woode" comes from? I feel so dense.

And hendy happe ichabbe ihent is Middle English, and it means, crudely, "I'm about to get lucky" more politely "a lucky chance I have received".

Waxen, means "grows," as in a waxing moon; wood means "mad," as in mad with love.

Colin, #13: The lyrics are a Middle English semi-filk of Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild". If you had already clocked that, sorry to belabor the obvious; if not, don't feel bad -- I didn't get it until the 3rd time I looked, and I like that song!

The last verse may not make you pass thinly-sliced cucumber through your nose if you read it while eating lunch, the way it did me; but that’s your loss.

It didn't, but that's mainly because I was smart enough to put the coffee down before I got that far...

(If you see strangely accented letters where there should be none, that's because this computer I'm using is locked down to provide a $%^&* Dutch keyboard, which does Strange Things with ' and " keys.)

Niall, can you get the Erdinger Schneeweisse ("Das Winterbier!") where you are? It's particularly tasty. My local Dublin off-licence gets it every year but last night I saw it in a pub/venue in Camden St. so it must be fairly widely distributed now.

Oops, name all messed up there.

Eimear: No, I've seen their Oktoberfest special brew but no Winterbier. Maybe the new O'Brien's has it, I must check.

The big trend around here has been all the Polish beer, but I'm not impressed so far.

#9: In the immortal words of Doctor Johnson, cucumber should be thinly sliced, soaked in vinegar and then thrown away as good for nothing. So true! I can't abide the stuff.

As for that delightful filk, my subconscious started supplying the accompanying tune before my forebrain had quite picked up on what he was doing. (I guess my brief acquaintance with Middle English back in college helped.)

Such doings seem like an offshoot of the "mash up" thread elsewhere, and coincidentally they also relate to some CDs I got yesterday. While I expect to be sneered at for this purchase, I went for Sting's Dowland lute music CD "Songs From the Labyrinth" -- though uneven, it's also a lot of fun, and part of that fun is seeing how an Elizabethan/Jacobean songster could have lyrics just as mopey and quasi-suicidal as the last few decades of emo bands (with some flashes of wit thrown in for good measure). And dissonant lute, thank's to Sting's collaborator Edin Karamazov [I kid you not] ... cool!

Then there's Richard Thompson's "1000 Years of Popular Music". Haven't watched the DVD yet, but he starts with a rowdy "Sumer is Icumen In", and towards the end transfigures Britney's "Oops! I Did it Again" so it not only sounds great but briefly diverges into an instrumental that Dowland fans could dance to. While he lets one of the ladies in the band sing "Night and Day" and "Cry Me a River", he makes "Shenandoah" all his own, and roars to a finish with "Sam Hall" (which used to be a pirate song till it took that later form). Of course, none of this will come as any surprise to rabid RT fans who bought the thing months ago....

Lisa, #14: thanks! i couldn't figure out how he got from "being wild" to surf-waxing.

Lee, #15: thanks as well, though I had that part.

Oh, genius. And once again I vow not to read this blog while consuming heated beverages...

ycleped? ... Oh.

(spent a while trying to see if it was some kind of fingers--wrongly-positioned keyboard thing.)

The whole poem brought me _this_ close to forcefully expelling a mouthful of rice, does that count?
Simply beautiful.

Alisoun, the Middle English version, is frequently sung and read aloud in Midddle English. I started to post links, but honestly, Google it. It's dead easy.

Faren #20

Between this and some stuff on the latest Open Thread, I may have to buy *more* CDs for gifts. Oh, drat.

Those who are in gift mode may also want to peruse Geoffrey's t-shirt offerings. Beverage and thinly-sliced cucumber warnings apply.

Faren Miller wrote:

While I expect to be sneered at for this purchase, I went for Sting's Dowland lute music CD "Songs From the Labyrinth" -- though uneven, it's also a lot of fun

I for one not going to sneer at you: I thought I was the only person in the entire world who actually likes this album! And I have a huge collection of early music, so I probably have no excuse. But that's the only recording I've heard of "In Darkness Let Me Dwell" that actually sounds like it's about depression rather than just being Sad and Pretty.

I also love 1000 Years of Popular Music, but I don't think that will earn as many sneers. ;) (My favorite track on that one is "Remember O Thou Man." Guh.)

Lea: according to the Amazon reviews, the audience is fairly evenly divided between lovers and haters of that Sting CD (though with enough raves to give it a pretty good rating overall). I didn't scroll through everything, but between the negative rants there were others who gave it three or four stars. One of the things I like is a more natural voice, as opposed to classically trained -- probably more like what the composers of that day would have sounded like when they peddled their own wares, though court musicians may have had a lot more polish.

I was particularly taken with Chaucer's take on my favourite pass-time, "Ich pwne noobs!" Being a hard-core fan of "Auriole" myself, despite not having an "Eccebochs CCCLX" (making do with the aulden model at least until the new year), I found his observations profound.

Now to take a peek at his review of "Serpentes on a Shippe". I wonder if Chaucer's a fan of Samuel, son of Jack?

-- Steve

Or maybe I should have used "Ecce Bacchus CCCLX", considering how closely the online environment resembles a bacchanalia sometimes.

-- Steve

Sting was on a MusicCares tribute to James Taylor the other night on PBS (recorded in February 2006, I think), playing a Taylor song on lute. It sounded just fine. He played a hurdy gurdy at the 2004 Academy Awards, too.

I've heard Richard Thompson's version of that Britney Spears song (on Fresh Air) and I was amazed at how he reclaimed it from its former place in a dustbin of stupid pop music.

Lea: you've found the musical accompaniment to your next excursion into the exciting realm of Finger-Puppet Shakespeare?

OK, I found Erdinger Schneeweiss (Das Winterbier!) over the weekend, but wasn't impressed. Chritmassy labels and top, a warmer, slightly darker amber colour, but rather less flavoursome than the regular stuff, and a lot less than their Dunkelwiess. I'll stick to their regular offerings.

Ok, it's one of those personal preference things so, the beer guy in my off-licence and I both like it better than the Hefeweissen (I don't go for the Dunkelweissen). The Oktoberfest stuff OTOH I've always found bland.
These days I drink more Czech and Belgian beers, too.

Erdinger Dunkel-Weiss is my favorite beverage on earth.

The regular Erdinger Weissbier is my second favorite beverage on earth.

I am now craving both, and in a place where there's no chance in hell I'll be able to get either. Sigh.

Guess I'll have to console myself by reading Geoffrey Chaucer's blog and laughing hysterically. :)

Choking on goose-egg quiche here! (Our goose egg supplier has a silly goose that's still laying. Yum!)