OWL HUSBANDS, REBECCA'S CAMELS, THE 7TH COMMANDMENT

 The title of this post has to do with errata that crop up in some editions of sacred texts, the Holy Books of Judaism and Christianity in particular. Wherever there have been printing presses, or keyboards in more recent times, you can be certain that the Typo Fairies and the literal printers' devil (as in, a small imp from Hell that causes typos and errata) Titivillus will seize that chance to make some mischief. Here are four major examples that have caught my attention:

OWL HUSBANDS?

Apparently zoophilia was condemned in the Old Testament but not in the New? 1 Peter 3:5, from a 1944 edition (WW2-era, printing presses were then still in use):

"For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted God, adorned themselves, being in subjection unto their owl husbands."

Actually it's supposed to be "their OWN husbands." The error was caused by a damaged letter lower-case n in the printing press.

REBECCA'S CAMELS (OR ARE THEY DAMSELS?)

Genesis, 24:61, an 1823 edition (in between the Regency and Victorian era). Picture the scene: Eliezer, a manservant to Abraham and Sarah, comes to town looking for a bride for their son Isaac. He finds Rebecca, daughter of a local wealthy household, who, after quenching their thirst from their long journey, agrees to become Isaac's bride, scouted by the servant Eliezer for her kindness to him and his entourage. As the heiress she is, Rebecca travels from her hometown to her fiancé's nomadic campsite lock, stock, and barrel, with all her camels and damsels (handmaids). How does this nineteenth-century edition tell it?

"And Rebecca arose, and her camels, and they rode upon the camels, and followed the man (ie Eliezer): and the servant took Rebecca and went his way."

What a balancing act! It should have been "And Rebecca arose, and her DAMSELS, and they rode upon the camels..." But it could have been worse. It could have been the second "camels" that was replaced with "damsels" instead, yielding: "And Rebecca arose, and her damsels, and THEY RODE UPON THE DAMSELS," leaving readers to ponder if those poor damsels broke their spines or even straight out died at the end of the day.

SUBVERTING THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT

In 1631 King James editions known as Wicked Bibles, a crucial little word, ie NOT, is missing from the Seventh Commandment (Exodus 20:14), so that it appears as:

"Thou shalt commit adultery."

In other words: Cheating on your marital partner is encouraged by the Word and Law of the LORD.

The publishers/printers of the Wicked Bible lost their book-printing license to the British Crown for a lifetime due to this little critical blunder and the one below:

THE LORD HIMSELF... MOONING?

Speaking of the Creator, those same Wicked Bibles appear to have been messed up by Typo Fairies at a spot in Deuteronomy 5:24 where He shows up in His greatness, let the word "greatness" sink in, and replaced "greatness" with something far more ludicrous:

"the LORD our God hath shewed us His glory and His great-asse."

The thought of the LORD mooning at the Israelites, His Chosen Ones, is hilarious.

THE CABINET OF THE MARSH WITCH

The Marsh Woman, or Marsh Witch, is an aunt of the royal elf maidens, who are very well known. There have been poems written about them and pictures painted of them, but nobody knows much about the Marsh Witch, except that when the meadows begin to reek and steam out their fog and mist in the summer mornings the old woman is at her brewing down below.  A cesspool or cesspit is a wonderful palace compared with the Marsh Woman's brewery. Every vessel is reeking with horrible smells that would turn a human being faint, and they are packed closely together; but even if there were enough space between them to creep through, it would be impossible because of the slimy leeches and the fat snakes that are creeping and slithering along. And all the horrible, creeping mess is so icy cold that a mortal person shivers in every limb; becoming more and more stiff, until they are petrified yet retaining consciousness.

"I know as much as you do, anyway," said the marsh witch, and wrinkled her nose, which wasn't as pretty as it had been when she was an elf maiden. "Poetry and fairytales and stage plays are cut from one and the same cloth, as is all other literature; and as far as I am concerned, they can go and lie down wherever they please. All their work and all their talk--the same stuff can be brewed both cheaper and faster than they do it. I'll give you some for nothing. I have a chestful of bottled literature right here in this tantalus. There you will find the essence of poetry, and prose, and drama, the very best of it, brewed from both sharp and sweet herbs: all the literature that a person needs, and one can put a drop or two on one's handkerchief for Sundays and bank holidays."

"How amazing!" exclaimed the man, who was none other than H.C. Andersen himself. "You mean you actually have a liquor cabinet of literature in bottles?"

"More than you could bear to sniff," answered the marsh witch. "Have you heard the story about the maid who stepped on a loaf of bread to avoid getting her shoes dirty? I believe someone wrote it down and it has since been printed and published."

"I am the one who wrote it," said the man.

"Well, in that case you must be familiar with it. Do you remember what happened to the maid Ingrid, how she sank down into the ground? Well, she landed right in my potion brewery, on the very day when the boogeyman's great-grandmother was paying me a visit. 'Give me that creature who's just sunk down here as a memento, as a knickknack,' begged the great-grandmother, 'and I'll put her on a pedestal to remind me of my visit with you.' So I gave her the girl and the great-grandmother in return gave me her portable medicine chest and tantalus, or liquor cabinet--not that I have any use for it, it's a whole cupboard filled with literature in bottles. Look around! You have your seven four-leaf clovers in your pocket and on top of those a six-leaf clover, so, if you put that six-leaf clover over your left eye for a monocle, you ought to be able to see it."

There in the middle of the meadow was something that looked like the hollow stump of an alder tree, but it was the liquor cabinet that had belonged to the boogeyman's great-grandmother, a very poisonous old creature (as old as Time itself) who was never idle and always doing something. She never goes out without taking some needlework with her, and she had brought some this time. She was sewing bits of leather to put in people's red shoes, so that they should have no rest, and keep on dancing even after their hearts fail, as their bodies decay. She embroidered lies, and worked up into mischief and slander thoughtless words that would otherwise have fallen harmlessly to the ground, had she not strung them together. Yes, she could sew, embroider, and weave, that old great-grandmother! "Anyone in the whole wide world could come and make use of it, the problem is to be able to find it," said the marsh witch. The cabinet could be opened in front and in back, on all four sides, and at the corners. It was a work of art and yet it resembled an ordinary hollow tree stump. Poets and novelists and playwrights from all over the world, but especially from our own Scandinavia, were to be found here in imitation. The rather artistic bas-reliefs represented all of them, as caricatures. The best of their work had been selected, criticized, improved upon, and finally brought up to date. With great talent--that is the word generally used when one does not want to say "genius"--the great-grandmother had taken from nature the smell or the flavour that seemed most like the style of this or that writer, then added a bit of wicked witchcraft to it, and presto! voilà! she had fiction and poetry and drama in bottles, preserved for eternity.

"Let me have a look inside!" begged the man.

"I have more important things than that to talk with you about," the marsh witch insisted.

"But now that we are here," mumbled the man as he opened the tantalus. "There are bottles of all different sizes," he said excitedly. "What's in this one? . . . And in that?"

"Here we have one that is called 'Essence of May.'" The witch stared at the small green bottle. "I haven't tried it, but they say that, if you spill a little on the floor, where it falls a beautiful lily-pond appears, the kind you find in the forest, in which water-lilies and cattails and irises and spearmint are growing. A drop or two in a notebook, even one from a school-child of the first grade, and you have a springtime idyl of fragrance strong enough to be produced on the stage and long enough to make you fall asleep. I am sure that it is meant as a courteous compliment to me that the label reads: 'Brewed by the Marsh Witch.'"

Another bottle was called "Scandal." It looked as if it contained only dirty water, and that was what was in it, only dirty water; but an effervescent powder of street gossip, made up of two grains of truth and two gallons of lies, had been added to make it fizz. The mixture, that tasted like vitriol, had been carefully stirred with a twig--not one that had been used in a cat-of-nine-tails on a criminal's back or by a harsh schoolteacher on naughty children, but a twig that had been taken from a broom with which the streets were swept.

There was also a bottle of devotional piety, ready to be set to sacred music like hymns. Every drop in the bottle had been inspired by the portals of hell, so that it sounded like a clanging door slam shut of those same hell-gates, and penned with the sweat and blood and tears of punishment and penance of the damned. 

There stood the bottle of all bottles: the largest of them all, and it took over half the cabinet. It was a large beast-skin bag filled with true-to-life everyday realistic stories. It had been wrapped and covered and doubly sealed with both a whole pigskin and the urine bladder of that pig, so that it couldn't lose any of its strength, because it lost its flavour so easily. From this bottle, each and every nation could make its own soup, all depending on how you turned and tipped the bottle; what would come forth would depend upon how you'd turn and tip the pigskin. There was old Prussian Blutsuppe, blood soup with cannon-meatballs; tasteless English governess soup; and French pot au coq, made from chicken legs (rooster leg bones) and frogs' eggs--in other languages, it is called cancan soup or cabaret soup. There was also a thin peasant soup for those who like high society, with real counts and courtiers who lay like vegetables on the bottom of the plate and greasy globs of philosophy, like fat philosophical eyes, floating on top in the middle. Oh, there was an endless variety in that bottle, but the thickest of all soups was the Russian borscht. And it is still regarded as such.

Tragedy was bottled in champagne bottles that start out with a bang, as tragedy should. Light Comedy was nothing but a bottleful of fine itching or sneezing powder to throw into the eyes of the audience. There were bottles of the more vulgar kind of comedy, but they were empty except for the playbills, in fact Coarse Comedy consisted only of future playbills, on which the titles were in the boldest typeface; there were some excellent titles: for instance, "One Right on the Jaw!" "The Sweet Jackass!" and "She's Drunk as a Newt!"

The man looked thoughtfully at all the bottles, but the marsh witch had no patience with them, she had more important matters to think about.

"You have looked long enough at that junk shop," she said.

While the man, the author, was completely lost in his thoughts, the Woman of the Marsh thought ahead; she wanted to put an end to this.
"By now you must have seen enough of the hodgepodge cabinet," she said. "You know what it is now." 

ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

IN WHICH MISS DERMARK SHOWCASES THAT, IN SPITE OF HER PERFECTIONISM AND ADHERENCE TO SCIENTIFIC TERMINOLOGY, SHE IS NO CURMUDGEON.

AND THAT BY EXPLORING THE THEME OF THE "GUARDS DRUGGED THROUGH ETHYL INTOXICATION" MOTIF IN FICTION.

Another of my obsessions (aside from internationalisms, the 30YW, self-expression values...) is the portrayal of intoxication in fiction, especially if it's used as a narcotic.
There is an exceedingly vast flora of stories where guards get wasted to knock them out -- Othello and The Master Thief, the two first ones I discovered, are only two of them: drugging guards seems to be a folk motif in its own right.
All right, so this snippet from a sacred text is not the only instance of the motif. The story itself comes from a culture of teetotalers, so do the maths.

The story is set at the Queen's parents' in the west, her relatives in the countryside, where her only son has learned the arts and sciences he needs for his future, and where he has developed all the skills necessary to become a king. So the prince has lived secretly with the Queen's parents. But there's a villainous tyrant in the realm, and he has the good old noble couple executed and guards posted at their scaffold.

What then? Get the freaking guards dead drunk!


Voilà a couple of versions to compare:


That night he bought wine and gave it to the guards, who soon became drunk. 

As the soldiers stood watch, he bought some strong wine. When night fell, he returned and walking up to the soldiers said, “You have put in a hard day’s work. You need something to relieve the strain of your labors,” and he handed them each a bottle. The soldiers gladly accepted and soon lay drunk and sound asleep on the ground.

As the soldiers stood watch, he bought some strong wine. When night fell, he returned and walking up to the soldiers said, “You have put in a hard day’s work. You need something to relieve the strain of your labors,” and he handed them each a bottle. The soldiers gladly accepted and soon lay drunk and sound asleep on the ground.

He bought strong wine in the marketplace and brought it to the guards. They took it gladly, and soon lay drunk and asleep.


He bought strong wine in the marketplace and brought it to the guards. They took it gladly, and
soon lay drunk and asleep.

NARRATOR 2:  He brought strong wine from the marketplace out to the guards. They took it gladly, and soon lay drunk and asleep.

Then the prince brought out some liquor and got the guards to drink it. When they had fallen down drunk, he collected sticks, made a pyre...

procured liquor, and gave it to the soldiers to drink. When they were drunk and had fallen, he gathered sticks of wood, built a pyre

their son bought strong wine and made the guards drunk.

bought strong wine and made the guards drunk.

comprò un vino molto forte e fece ubriacare le guardie. 

tomó una cantidad de licor fuerte y lo dio a tomar a las tropas. Cuando todos ellos cayeron embriagados, recogió las estacas, hizo una pira funeral...

riuscì a far bere alle guardie del liquore che aveva portato. Quando le guardie caddero a terra ubriache, riunì i resti dei suoi genitori, costruì una pira...

got strong drink there, and made those soldiers drink it. When they were drunk and had fallen down, he gathered the pieces (of the two bodies), made a funeral pile...

apareceu com uma bebida alcoólica e fez com que os guardas a tomassem. Quando eles caíram bêbados, ele juntou paus, fez uma pira...

... brought out some liquor and got the guards to drink it. When they had fallen down drunk, he
collected sticks, made a pyre...

Bet, Kinder, bet!

Morgen kommt der Schwed'!

Morgen kommt der Oxenstern,

der frisst die kleine Kinder gern!

Bet, Kinder, bet!

Traditional German 30YW lullaby