DEAR #HurdontheHill also known as Will Hurd, the congressman for the 23rd district of Texas, wherever that is.
Thank you so much for using our TechEye story on your website.
But, as we say in Scotland, everything has a price. Therefore please consider this to be an invoice for £10,000. Our terms are 30 days net. You don’t need to pay VAT.
Nick Farrell and yours truly are looking forward to an early payment. Thank you for syndicating our content and a pleasure to do business with you! ♦
Posted in Home
Tagged 23rd district of Texas, Mike Magee, mill street, Nick Farrell, oseney abbey, Oxford, TechEye, Will Hurd
Another very interesting talk at the West Oxford Academy, just up the road from chez moi.
Mark Thakkar was talking about Oxford’s Dictionary of Mediaeval Latin which has just gone to the printers even though the project was started in 1913.
Mark said the project first started at 78 Banbury Road at a place called The Scriptorium. It was effectively crowd sourced, he said. The literati were invited to send in quotations and RJ Whitwell (1859-1928) only sent in 30,000 of them.
In 1913 the academics petitioned for “an adequate dictionary of mediaeval Latin”. The period in question was between 500AD to 1500AD and we’ve stuff about the former Osney Abbey, demolished by Henry VIII just down my street in a piece of privatisation called the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Were they dissolute? Certainly they were “dissolved”.
Mark pointed to Osney Abbey. One of the quotations said the pope sent his legate to the kirk and a group of scholars from Oxford University “started a terrible fight, with a cook pouring boiling oil”. 70 folk were arrested and imprisoned. Several clerics died.
The quotations only relate to English mediaval Latin, and Mark showed that English words were sort of dumped into the Latin.
We then came to the fabulously named Robert Grosseteste (1220) who obviously had the balls to mash up his Latin grammar with some choice, that is to say pithy Anglo-Saxon.
As far as we can tell, the dictionary ends with the letter “s” – funding is a problem, said Mark. But the Packard Foundation – we’re talking an HP heir here, funded the most recent project.
A source close to the Kite tells Volesoft that mediaeval Latin was a very bastardised form of the lingo. Mark started and finished his talk with this mediaeval picture which sort of tells its own story, doesn’t it? ♦
DOWN HERE in Mill Street, Oxford, has something of a reputation, don’t you know?
For example, the Miller’s Tale, in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, is set at the old mill down the end of the road and describes how a student had his wicked way with the miller’s wife.
Then there was Oseney Abbey – pictured – which had its lot when Henry VIII decided he was short of a bob or two and decided to dissolve the monasteries.
And now we get through the post a missive about a “pre Christmas sale” at the “remains of Osney Abbey, Mill Street, Oxford OX2 0AN” on Saturday, October 19th from 08:30 to 13:30. The sale is “in aid of the restoration of the scheduled monument roof”. So be there or be square. ♠
Posted in Home
Tagged chaucer, handbags, Henry VIII, jewellery, mill street, oseney abbey, Osney Abbey, Oxford, Oxford City Council, reverse Archimedes Screw, the Canterbury Tales
THIS CITY goes back a fair way. Where I lived was the site of a big abbey, Oseney Abbey, which fell at Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries. There’s only a tiny bit of the original abbey left. That’s not counting the stuff carted off from Oseney Abbey to Christ Church college, including the bells, the bells. Rewley Abbey was also trashed, but we were strolling round the area where it once stood. The photo shows some mediaeval architecture embedded into what seems to be Victorian brickwork. ♥
Posted in Home
Tagged dissolution of the monasteries, Henry VIII, mill street, oseney abbey, Oxford, rewley abbey
Dūrgā Devī
