| Conversations in our house |
[Oct. 11th, 2006|11:47 am]
Xiphias Gladius
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LIS: ". . . lost his nose to syphilis . . ."
IAN: Is that a search term by which someone found your blog? [Lis checks her referrer logs periodically to see how people get to her blog.]
LIS: No, it's William Davenant. He lost his nose to syphilis. There's a portrait of him in this book.
IAN: Well, you know, that was the third-most common cause of nose loss in the period.
LIS: [Wary, but can't help herself] What were the first two?
IAN: Duels and geese.
LIS: Which was Tycho Brahe?
IAN: Duel. . . actually, number two was waterfowl attacks in general, not just geese.
LIS: How about dogs and cats?
IAN: Eight and ten respectively.
LIS: What was number five?
IAN: Fruit pie explosions.
LIS: Wouldn't some of those be counted in bird incidents? I'm thinking of the "four and twenty blackbirds" case.
IAN: That's why I specified "fruit" pies.
LIS: Ah, that makes sense. Where did the "got your nose" game rate?
IAN: Sixth. But that's from cases where they didn't get it back -- you had roving gangs of people stealing noses and ransoming them back. They were called "picknoses", and would often work with pickpockets. It's from those gangs that we get the phrase, "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose," because you wouldn't ransom a nose back to a friend. |
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