Honi soit- was Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: seving wenches

[Laura C. Minnick]

At 11:56 AM 4/22/2005, you wrote:

> > (according to "1066 and all that",
>Er. You don't really believe '1066 and all that' is non-fiction, do you?
>
>-- ER...no..it's humour..and mea culpa, the actual translation 
>offered  for honi soit qui mal y pense was the painfully puniferous 
>"honey, your silk stocking's falling down." The reference was a joke, and 
>I mentioned the incident just to point out that lewdness was universal, if 
>not universally acceptable behavior. I'll try to remember not to make 
>jokes when I should be going to bed..

No harm done ;-)

I was sitting and smiling to myself about that one, as I am more than a 
little familiar with the whole scenario. The best translation I heard in 
school was "Evil to him whom evil thinks"- very much like the grade-school 
"He who smelt it, dealt it". There are many version if the Edward III 
story, including one that the woman in question was thought to be Ed's 
mistress, and he was trying to dispel that notion.

The phrase is, interestingly enough, the last sentence of the Middle 
English poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight". For a variety of reasons, 
scholars believe that the phrase was added after the fact, by someone else. 
No clue why. I have a baldric that I wear (my awards hang from it as gauds, 
since you seldom see necklaces on women in my time period- especially the 
usual tangle of SCA necklaces), greed edged with gold, like Gawain's, and 
on it is written 'Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense' I have to explain it often, 
and I often note that having written a conference paper on the poem, I 
think I've earned the right to wear such. :-P

Obligatory food content- there's some fascinating passages in SGGK 
describing a hunt, with lots of evisceration of the prey, and cool gory 
bits. And banqueting scenes, although the uninvited guest at the beginning 
of the story is a bit of an abnormality- we can't necessarily imagine that 
scenario happened very often. ;-)

'Lainie
___________________________________________________________________________
O it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous To use it 
like a giant--Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act II