Friday, March 25, 2011

Something That Never Was Before

Bendt Alster, Sumerian Proverbs in the Schøyen Collection = Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology, 2 (Bethesda: CDL Press, 2007), p. 8:
Something that never was before: A young girl (who) does not fart in the lap of her husband.
Thanks to a friend for drawing this to my attention.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Commode

Robert Halsband, "New Anecdotes of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu," in René Wellek and Alvaro Ribeiro, edd., Evidence in Literary scholarship: Essays in Memory of James Marshall Owen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 241-246 (at 245):
She shew'd him her Commode, with false backs of books, the works of Pope, Swift, and Bolinbroke: she said she knew them well. They were the greatest Rascals, but she had the satisfaction of shitting on them every day.