[Sca-cooks] Hoopoe

[Suey]

Emilio, I like you. You are very hard on me like J. Israel Katz but he 
has been worse! He emailed me at 3 am my time in Spain when it was 40 
degrees in summer with corrections to the corrections!!! - So I thank 
you for all you are doing for me.
But I would like to clarify:
First you said,

<<  She is just writing, not checking facts.  And, that's what blogs are for
- expressing one's own opinions and not necessarily providing "true facts".>>

Who? Emilia G Sevilla or me?

I would like to clarify that I have spent 17 years on this project and 
10 years in the National Library of Spain from 9 am to 8:30 pm five days 
a week. The remainder of the time I have spent correcting my information 
with the resources I have in my personal library and on internet. My 
blog is not based on unchecked facts, on the contrary. They are checked 
as far as possible.

Emilio wrote:
> <<  I'm sure someone will correct me, but I can't find that Boccaccio ever
> wrote the Satyricon.>>
>
>
> It is Petron (Petronius). The text is online. See also_cena trimalchionis_
>
>
> etc
I concur with you that we have a responsibility not to distort history. 
My endeavor is to relate history as close as possible to the truth.

In the case of the hoopoe, however, one really must put himself in the 
place of a duke's bird hunter or the duke himself in the Middle Ages who 
with his bow and arrow  gets a hoopoe! It was as exciting as the bird 
watchers today who spot one! Anne-Marie Rousseau has a beautiful account 
about how riding through France she spotted a hoopoe. So it is logical 
that the duke's cook in the 15th Century would roast the hoopoe and 
redress him to please and honor his master.

These feelings came to me as I researched the first Duke of 
Albuquerque's archives in Cuellar, a small town in Segovia north of 
Madrid. Why did Beltran de la Cueva ask the king for that town when 
given the dukedom? The answer was that he was a bird hunter. Even today, 
driving up there every morning in the fall, masses and masses of birds 
flew by.  It was magnificent.
Suey