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Post by andrew on Dec 31, 2020 11:34:01 GMT -5
I'm going to share another horsey sort of anecdote... about one of my particular favorites: Thomas Chamberlain (Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's little brother). There's something about Tom's sense of humor and ultimately tragic life that make me feel for him. After being sick with bronchitis, Tom returned to duty - and in a letter from Joshua to their sister Sae (Sarah Chamberlain Farrington) was described as being quite the equestrian. He sounds finely. I feel embiggened when I read about the Chamberlains.  |
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Post by Windischer on Dec 31, 2020 12:09:17 GMT -5
Here's one anecdote that includes my favourite mustache man. No, not Hitler ...
I have to give a bit of backstory first as I'm sure most of you aren't that familiar with the whole mess that was going on at the time. In the autumn of 1918 Austria-Hungary fell appart and although the First World War ended, armed conflict between the newly formed countries dragged out for two more years or more. New borders had to be drawn. One of those was the border between the Republic of German Austria and the shortlived State of SHS, because the Duchies of Carinthia and Styria were ethnically mixed: part Slovene and majority German. Because both sides claimed the same territory, there had to be conflict. One of the key figures in those events was Rudolf Maister, one of the most famous mustaches in Slovenian history. He was the commanding officer of Landsturmkreis 26 with its seat in the city of Maribor and helf the rank of major. Maribor was a funny city, it was generally seen as the last real German bastion on the way south because it had a German ethnic majority, but the surroundings were all Slovene albeit the ethnic border was not far north of the city. On October 30 1918 the city council declared Maribor to be part of the newly formed German Austria. On November 1 all the highranking officers in the city held a meeting, which was moved to an earlier hour and Maister wasn't notified, so he was running late. However, another Slovene officer who was present demanded that they wait for Maister to arrive, which they did. The commanding officer of the city, lieutenant colonel Anton Holik, started the meeting, talking as if the city now being part of Austria was a generally accepted fact. In that moment Maister stood up and loudly declared how he does not accept that and that he declares Maribor to be part of the State of SHS. Technically the other officers present could simply arrest him or even kill him because it was pretty much an act of insubordination (he held a lower rank of major), which was a serious offense in the former Austrian-Hungarian army. Everyone was so baffled by Maister's demands though that the meeting simply came to an end and the officers parted ways. Maister then phoned the National Council for Styria, a sort of regional government body set up by local Slovenes, and demanded to be given the rank of general. Which they did, without the central government in Ljubljana knowing about anything that just happened. Maister's promotion came very handy on November 27 when the Austrians sent Rudolf Passy to broker a treaty with Maister, who had already taken several key military actions to take the control over the city, disarm the German volunteer militia and secure the surrounding villages. Passy, a colonel, was still outranked by Maister, which gave him more weight in discussing where the new border line between the two sides should be. Although Maister generally didn't try to push North of the ethnic border, he still made Passy agree to a new line at Leibnitz, some 20 km North of the ethnic border. Oddly enough neither the Austrian nor the Slovene government accepted this treaty and there had to be several more small battles fought through the next few months for the new border to solidify until it was then formally determined with the Treaty of Saint-Germain in 1919. It remains the same to this day and almost overlaps with the ethnic border. It is safe to say that without Miaster's bold interventions it would have turned out very differently.  |
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Post by The Duchess on Dec 31, 2020 14:25:44 GMT -5
I'm going to share another horsey sort of anecdote... about one of my particular favorites: Thomas Chamberlain (Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's little brother). There's something about Tom's sense of humor and ultimately tragic life that make me feel for him. After being sick with bronchitis, Tom returned to duty - and in a letter from Joshua to their sister Sae (Sarah Chamberlain Farrington) was described as being quite the equestrian. He sounds finely. I'm shocked he was able to get back on his feet and be finely after falling off a horse... I wonder what is meant by "treacherous ground" in this context? Most likely uneven, but like I've said, I know nothing about horses. |
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Post by andrew on Dec 31, 2020 14:51:43 GMT -5
I'm going to share another horsey sort of anecdote... about one of my particular favorites: Thomas Chamberlain (Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's little brother). There's something about Tom's sense of humor and ultimately tragic life that make me feel for him. After being sick with bronchitis, Tom returned to duty - and in a letter from Joshua to their sister Sae (Sarah Chamberlain Farrington) was described as being quite the equestrian. He sounds finely. I'm shocked he was able to get back on his feet and be finely after falling off a horse... I wonder what is meant by "treacherous ground" in this context? Most likely uneven, but like I've said, I know nothing about horses. I assume, in a horse context, treacherous is either pot-holey or boggy. |
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Post by Aurelia on Dec 31, 2020 16:29:37 GMT -5
I'm going to share another horsey sort of anecdote... about one of my particular favorites: Thomas Chamberlain (Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's little brother). There's something about Tom's sense of humor and ultimately tragic life that make me feel for him. After being sick with bronchitis, Tom returned to duty - and in a letter from Joshua to their sister Sae (Sarah Chamberlain Farrington) was described as being quite the equestrian. He sounds finely. I'm shocked he was able to get back on his feet and be finely after falling off a horse... I wonder what is meant by "treacherous ground" in this context? Most likely uneven, but like I've said, I know nothing about horses. Rutted by wagon wheels, muddy where the grass gives way and you slide... even groundhog holes are a real problem. 😬 |
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Post by The Duchess on Dec 31, 2020 18:23:57 GMT -5
Rutted by wagon wheels, muddy where the grass gives way and you slide... even groundhog holes are a real problem. 😬 It was actually a molehill that killed William of Orange... His horse stumbled over a molehill, which threw the little Dutchman off. As William was very sickly to begin with, he wasn't able to recover from the injury -- I think he broke his clavicle and subsequently developed pneumonia? -- and died from complications. As such, Jacobites drank healths to "the little gentleman in the black velvet," or the mole that built the molehill and subsequently killed the usurper king. |
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Post by Abraham on Jan 2, 2021 19:20:20 GMT -5
Rutted by wagon wheels, muddy where the grass gives way and you slide... even groundhog holes are a real problem. 😬 It was actually a molehill that killed William of Orange... His horse stumbled over a molehill, which threw the little Dutchman off. As William was very sickly to begin with, he wasn't able to recover from the injury -- I think he broke his clavicle and subsequently developed pneumonia? -- and died from complications. As such, Jacobites drank healths to "the little gentleman in the black velvet," or the mole that built the molehill and subsequently killed the usurper king. Even better, the horse that stumbled and threw William of Orange was confiscated from Sir John Fenwick, a Jacobite conspirator who had been beheaded in 1697 under an Act of Attainder. |
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Post by Abraham on Jan 3, 2021 13:34:03 GMT -5
I just learned yesterday that Mozart was a massive fan of scatological humor. He wrote one canon called "Leck mich im Arsch", which means exactly what you think it does. He also wrote a canon called Difficile Lectu, regarding which I will simply post what Wikipedia has to say about it:
"Although some of the canons in the 1788 set have serious (that is, religious) lyrics, K. 559 was evidently meant entirely for fun. The work features two bilingual puns and some scatological humor. The lyrics are — ostensibly — in Latin, though as they are given in sequence they do not make sense in this language:
Difficile lectu mihi mars et jonicu difficile
The humor of the work consists of hearing these words instead as vulgar phrases of German and Italian.
The German pun is based on the strong Bavarian accent of the tenor-baritone Johann Nepomuk Peyerl (1761–1800), who can be presumed to have been the lead singer in the first performance (see below). As Jean-Victor Hocquard points out, the pseudo-Latin lyrics lectu mihi mars, as Peyerl would have sung them, resemble Bavarian German leck du mi im Arsch, which in a literal English rendering is "[you] lick me in the arse". More idiomatically, the phrase could be translated "kiss my arse" (American English "kiss my ass"). The second pun in the canon is based on the single Latin word jonicu. Emanuel Winternitz explains that when this word is sung repeatedly and rapidly, as in the canon, its syllables are liable to be heard as the Italian word cujoni, or in modern writing coglioni, meaning "balls, testicles". The line thus translates as "It is difficult to lick my arse and balls"."
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Post by Windischer on Jan 4, 2021 9:05:13 GMT -5
I'm sorry but it seems all my anecdotes are tied to guys with big mustaches ...
Ivan Cankar (1876-1918) is today considered to be the greatest Slovene novelist and representative of the Modernity movement in literature. He came from a very poor background, so you'd think he knew how to appreciate money, but that wasn't the case. He lived all over the place - Ljubljana, Vienna, Sarajevo and other places - but always struggled to with poverty, which is a constant theme in his works as well. He was a hopeless womaniser and spent the royalty honorariums for his works as soon as he got them. So one time when he got paid, he went to downtown Ljubljana to celebrate, which meant heavy drinking with his friends. And when Ivan had some spare change, everyone was his friend. After he made merry it was time to return to Rožnik, where he lived at the time. Now Rožnik is a small hill on the edge of Ljubljana, about a one hour walk from downtown, probably more in Ivan's condition ... But Ivan didn't walk. He hired not one but two coaches to drive him home. In one he sat himself and in the other he put his hat.  |
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Post by Aurelia on Jan 5, 2021 11:22:16 GMT -5
I just learned yesterday that Mozart was a massive fan of scatological humor. He wrote one canon called "Leck mich im Arsch", which means exactly what you think it does. He also wrote a canon called Difficile Lectu, regarding which I will simply post what Wikipedia has to say about it: "Although some of the canons in the 1788 set have serious (that is, religious) lyrics, K. 559 was evidently meant entirely for fun. The work features two bilingual puns and some scatological humor. The lyrics are — ostensibly — in Latin, though as they are given in sequence they do not make sense in this language: Difficile lectu mihi mars et jonicu difficile The humor of the work consists of hearing these words instead as vulgar phrases of German and Italian. The German pun is based on the strong Bavarian accent of the tenor-baritone Johann Nepomuk Peyerl (1761–1800), who can be presumed to have been the lead singer in the first performance (see below). As Jean-Victor Hocquard points out, the pseudo-Latin lyrics lectu mihi mars, as Peyerl would have sung them, resemble Bavarian German leck du mi im Arsch, which in a literal English rendering is "[you] lick me in the arse". More idiomatically, the phrase could be translated "kiss my arse" (American English "kiss my ass"). The second pun in the canon is based on the single Latin word jonicu. Emanuel Winternitz explains that when this word is sung repeatedly and rapidly, as in the canon, its syllables are liable to be heard as the Italian word cujoni, or in modern writing coglioni, meaning "balls, testicles". The line thus translates as "It is difficult to lick my arse and balls"." I was familiar with Mozart's naughty "Leck mich in Arsch" - didn't know about his other clever / silly pieces! It paints an interesting mental picture of his personality, that's for sure! Sometimes it's easy to imagine classical composers as all being gloomy, humorless geniuses... and then there's Mozart. And Purcell. And Satie... And... And... And... LOL! |
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