RETURNING TO TRIVET'S CHRONICLES...

With the version of Trivet's Chronicles we have in stock from the nineteenth century, it would be nice to have a present-day translation of the same snippets to compare:


Nineteenth century:

That night she made the messenger so drunk with an evil drink which laid hold of his brain, and bound his senses so strongly, that he lay as if insensible, and as a dead man.
Then, in the morning, the messenger arose, quite sick and ill-at-ease through the badness of the drink which had envenomed his brain.

But the traitress comforted him greatly with 
her false show ; and that night she made him drunk, 
as before. 

They could not suspect treachery in any quarter but that 
of the messenger. And he at last said that he felt 

guilty of no treason, nevertheless he freely 
acknowledged to them his drunkenness at the court of Domild;
and if there were treason, there was 
the source.

Twenty-first century:

"[···] for that night she made the messenger so drunk with an evil drink which took hold of his brain and bound his senses so strongly that he lay as if insensible, like a dead man. [···]
Then in the morning the messenger arose, very sick and unhappy because of the mischief of the drink that had poisoned his brain [···]
But the traitress comforted him greatly with her false show, and made him drink as before [···]
Then they could not suspect treachery in any quarter but from the messenger.
And the messenger said finally that he felt guilty of no treason; nonetheless he fully admitted to them his drunkenness in the court of Domild, and if there were treason there was the source."

Macaulay's commentary (on the "evil drink" as containing something more than liquor):
Trivet says that Domilde gave the messenger a drugged potion on each occasion (cp. 952 ff., 1008 ff.). 

Remarks:
Intoxication, ethyl intoxication, intoxicación etílica. The Swedish version of the expression, "etylförgiftning", cannot be clearer. Ethyl excess can even be lethal. Also noteworthy is the gender and adherence to, or rather, deviance from, gender roles of the plyer (a mannish villainess) and the plied (a trusting servant). The cup as a weapon of the weak and/or the shrewd (Iago on Cassio, or *I support the theory!* Oberyn on Tywin): whether to kill or to drug that person. The so-called three nights tales (in which the villainess drugs the love interest to keep him for herself and not lose him to the heroine) and The Cattle Raid of Cooley prove great examples of strong females who are shrewd enough to use the cup instead of the blade or gun to further their aims, and so do Cersei Lannister and Olenna Tyrell, not to mention Countess Clara von Platen in the Königsmarck affair.