Lmst

#MarinaWarner

I love this footnote on gibberish codes in Marina Warner's book "No Go the Bogeyman".

Reminds me of Jessica Weiss's great essay "The Secret Linguistic Life of Girls", in the sadly defunct mag Schwa Fire:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150912190724/https://schwafire.atavist.com/secret_linguistic_life_girls

#language #linguistics #codes #SecretLanguage #familect #MarinaWarner

Footnote 237: "Virginia Woolf . . . 'pixerina-witcherina': Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf: A Working Life (London, 1996), pp. 547–8. This kind of secret family language is related to the nonsense rhymes of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Garbling language seems to have been a particular enthusiasm among Victorian and Edwardian families, both as a parlour game and as a way of creating a private world. Pippa Lewis recalls that when she was a child, her aunts used to put 'arp' in front of every syllable, so that 'How are you?' became 'Harpow harpare yarpou?' Her relations pattered in this manner very rapidly. Personal communication, January 6, 1998."

How the King of the Elves became King of the Alders

Lovely chaotic origin for a piece of Germanic folklore. From Marina Warner's brilliant "No Go the Bogeyman".

#mythology #folklore #MarinaWarner #books #FairyTales #translation #GermanFolklore #reading

'The Erlking' was written when Goethe was still a young poet, in the period when the scholarly circle of Clemens Brentano and Bettina von Arnim was forming, the milieu that would produce Achim von Arnim and Brentano's Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn, 1806), the founding anthology of German songs, and would also nurture the young Grimm Brothers' enthusiasm for fairy tales. Interestingly, it was a mistranslation of a Danish legend that inspired the figure of the Erlking. Johann Gottfried Herder misunderstood the Danish for 'king of the elves', but his was one of those momentous, wondrous, mythopoeic errors that enriches culture, for a 'King of the Alders' belonged by nature to the damp, dark, spooky forests of Germany and to its native folklore. A slip of the ear or of the pen shifted the whole uncanny underworld of the fairies into the deep native woodland above ground, where it threatened more closely, more thrillingly.

Large paperback book on a wooden surface. The full title is 'No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock'. Additional text, in black, blue, and brown type: 'Winner of the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award'. 'From the author of "From the Beast to the Blonde"'. And a blurb: 'It is impossible not to be dazzled by the brilliance of Marina Warner ... No Go the Bogeyman is delightful, enchanting, discursive, funny, erudite' – Guardian. In the bottom right is a colour illustration of The Manticora from F.E. Hulme's book Myth-land. It's a legendary creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a dragon or scorpion that's like a pom-pom of red spikes. The head is grinning uncannily and has red hair, beard, and mane. The body is quite scrawny.

New linky email is out! Me on the Unitary self, links by/re #JeanetteWinterson, #DanielClowes, @brettmartin #MarinaWarner, @mollycrabapple Arcadia, #ScottMeslow & NILE RODGERS THE GOAT, + more, so GO READ https://vmspod.substack.com/p/hitting-the-links-11523

New ep. of The Virtual Memories Show is live! #MarinaWarner joins the show to talk about her memoir of her parents, ESMOND AND ILIA, the flexibility of myth & fairytale, the importance of imagination to refugees, and a LOT more. Go give it a listen! http://chimeraobscura.com/vm/episode-511-marina-warner

#books #bookstodon

New #podcast coming tomorrow feat. #MarinaWarner! While you’re waiting for that one, go listen to last week’s show with #JerrySaltz http://chimeraobscura.com/vm/episode-510-jerry-saltz

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