Things you were shockingly old when you learned

It seem there was a theory for a while that the green bottles were slang for policemen but then a 14th century manuscript complicated things:

Green bottle' academic not hanging around

Brian Hunt
National Post

Prof. Pierre d'Ouidlede displays the manuscript fragment at the Ecole de vielle musique in Grenoble. The picture was taken shortly after the discovery of the artifact in September, 1998.

https://i.imgur.com/tkmG8qy.jpg

A fiercely intense debate about the nature of scholarship, sparked by the discovery of a fragment of English folk song, has taken a new twist this week with the disappearance of the Canadian scholar who has been a chief protagonist. Dr. Brett Shatner, the musicologist who has been taking his European counterparts to task for their alleged lack of intellectual rigour, was reported missing from his Don Mills, Ont., residence last Friday.

This sudden vanishing act (Shatner was due to deliver a lecture in North York, Ont., this morning) brings to a climax a story that began in September. The song that sparked academic acrimony is an unlikely bone of contention: the English ditty Ten Green Bottles, a variant of which is well known in North America as 100 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

In all previously known versions of the English song the verses count down to "no green bottles" from the figure 10, thus:

"Ten green bottles hanging on the wall
Ten green bottles hanging on the wall
And if one green bottle should accidentally fall
There'd be nine green bottles hanging on the wall . . ."

However, in September, 1998, a French scholar, Pierre d'Ouidlede, announced the discovery of a page of poetry manuscript, apparently dating from the late 14th century, containing what seems to be an early version. Allowing for changes in language between the Chaucerian age and our own, the scheme of the song seems unmistakably the same:

"Syxthene boetell gryne
Yhangen, Yhangen
Yhangen, Yhangen
Syxthene boetell gryne
Doonfal won
Syxthene boetell gryne
Yhangen, Yhangen
An . . ."

Frustratingly, the manuscript breaks off at that point. Nevertheless, musicologists were immediately abuzz at discovering that one of the best-known songs in the English language was some five centuries older than previously thought.
Speaking on the highbrow BBC Radio 3 in November, 1998, Prof. Peter Muddelwheat of the University of Thatcham in southern England declared: "It may be one of our silliest songs, but it is sublimely silly, and I personally am thrilled to think of the like of Chaucer's pilgrims passing the time [by singing it] . . . Obviously there were verses between this and [the verse beginning] 'Ten green bottles' . . . and the unlikelihood that it would have started at a random number such as 16 strongly suggests there are other verses out there waiting to be found."

Shatner, a freelance musicologist and philosopher from Toronto, heard the broadcast while visiting London for a symposium. To the Canadian, the English professor's words were a red rag to a bull -- to which animal's droppings he allegedly alluded in the e-mail he immediately fired to Muddelwheat's office.

The exact contents of that communication have not been made public, but a slightly more restrained version of the same argument was published in The Daily Telegraph a few days later. Wrote Shatner: "It is a profound shock to see the depths to which British scholarship seems to have sunk. If it is "obvious" to Prof. Muddelwheat that verses exist for which there is no material evidence, then he should perhaps change his professional title to 'clairvoyant' rather than 'musicologist.' "

Muddelwheat responded in a letter printed in the Telegraph two days later: "I am not sure what standards apply in Canada," he wrote, "but in Great Britain we have been around long enough to have the confidence to approach questions of scholarship with a certain degree of common sense . . . it is particularly sad that Mr. (sic) Shatner seems unable to distinguish between informal remarks made in a radio broadcast and the very different disciplines of academic publication. Perhaps in his country scholarship does not go back beyond the invention of wireless."

The Telegraph allowed one more letter, a reply from Shatner, before declaring the correspondence closed. Repeating his point that deductions must be based on evidence ("It is this that separates the scholar from the layman"), Shatner asserted that there was no exact correspondence between the mediaeval verse and the modern song: "It is a gigantic leap of faith to say they are one and the same. It is, for a musicologist, an unpardonable act to assume the existence of material that links separate entities."

If the Telegraph thought it had quashed the debate, it was mistaken. Three weeks later, in another British publication, Lucas's Curios, Mr. E. C. Poswaithe claimed that he had done extensive research into the song Ten Green Bottles while at university in the early 1950s. He had, he said, proved to his own satisfaction that the song originated in the London underworld of the 1830s.

"Sir Robert Peel's 1829 Metropolitan Police Act had made life much less comfortable for the criminal classes. The bane of their life were the officers of the law known by various popular names: 'bobbies' and 'peelers' in honour of their founder and, on account of their green uniforms and curved helmets, giving them in profile a resemblance to a string bean, 'the Bow Street Runners.'

"To the criminal world, however, they were almost universally known as 'greenbottles' and, since they were responsible for the hanging of many a felon, what could be more satisfying than the thought of 10 greenbottles hanging on a wall?" To those who put forward alternative derivations, Poswaithe said he had a simple answer. "If these are glass bottles, why should they be 'hanging' rather than 'standing' on a wall -- the latter situation would not only be more logical but more likely to precipitate the destructive series of tumbles the song catalogues incrementally."

The matter might have rested there had not Postwaithe gone on to suggest that the discovery of the "lost verse" might be a hoax.

The hitherto silent d'Ouidlede made his first and so far only contribution to the controversy in the January, 1999, issue of Lucas's Curios. "While I cannot comment on the opinions expressed by my colleagues . . . I can assure everyone that the manuscript is entirely genuine. It was found in the collection of a 19th-century Spanish curator, Don Valliparque, and has been authenticated by a number of experts." The magazine carried a photographic reproduction of the fragment.

Anyone hoping for a final word from Shatner is, for the time being anyway, likely to be disappointed. This morning he was due to appear at the North York Centre for Advanced Thought in suburban Toronto to present a paper titled "After the colon: the words before the colon considered in context." However, a spokesman at the Centre, situated above Spice - Wings, confirmed that the lecture had been cancelled as Shatner has been officially reported as missing. Neighbours at his Don Mills residence say he was last seen on Friday, heading in the direction of Hamilton, Ont.

the spoof, the spoof, the spoof is on fire!

First appeared in the National Post, April 01, 1999
(Note date)

Ha ha - you're right. I would have doubted they'd make up a correspondence in another newspaper, but "University of Thatcham" is a giveaway (no such institution). Weird April fool!

I quite enjoyed Don Valliparque

If you have 99 bottles, there's no need to take one down and pass it around. Just give everyone their own bottle. Much more hygienic and more efficient.

Each person can pour some beer into their own glass, mug or tankard. Alternatively, if the room is crowded with up to 100 people, passing the bottles back is a far more efficient distribution system than for each person to make their way to the bar, shelf or wall.

passing bottles through a bunch of hot hands is a good way to make wall-warm beer even less appetizing by the time it reaches the back of the crowd.

what if you're several meters underground, and the wall is the hewn face of the living rock?

"After the colon: the words before the colon considered in context."

I want to read this paper, sad it's not real ;_;

99 dead police on the wall

"Syxthene boetell gryne
Yhangen, Yhangen
Yhangen, Yhangen
Syxthene boetell gryne
Doonfal won
Syxthene boetell gryne
Yhangen, Yhangen
An . . ."

Shouldn't the last "Syxthene" be "Fyfthene?"

Who's the fool now, eh, National Post?

Another revelation regarding "Sixty Minute Man" by the Dominoes: I'd long known that another group, the Du Droppers, offered a cheeky sequel-song riposte, "Can't Do Sixty No More." But who would have guessed that the Dominoes themselves, four years after the original hit, would record an entirely different sequel song also titled "Can't Do Sixty No More"? Theirs keeps the tune of the original song, but the Du Droppers did a better job matching its sound. So strange.

Du Droppers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13_F-RusZtQ

Dominoes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm8PJD0zUqM

the....Du-Droppers

Persia is Iran - that is, it's an older name for exactly the same country, not some area roughly but not exactly coterminous.

A mobile phone's live camera image makes a good mirror. Or substitute. Hadn't really thought about it but somebody just groomed their hair a few seats in front of me that way.
Guess if you do it frequently it becomes 2nd nature to have the viewpoint slightly out.

that fucking Brooker was a co-founder of the CeX chain.

:-O

!

what!

it does say this on Wikipedia, but following the references it seems likely he was just one of the first people working there rather than being one of the owners

“So that was Music and Video Exchange, and a guy ended up going off to set up CEX so I was working there - I did some comic strip adverts for them, because when they found out I was a cartoonist they’d get me to do cartoons for them. And they’d appear in various magazines, and one of them was PC Zone which was based round the corner.

Started by Robert Dudani (Drinking Buddy), Paul Farrington (Gig Buddy), Hugh Man (Zen Buddy), Charlie Brooker (Cynical Student Type Buddy), Oli Smith (Genius Buddy) and Oliver Ball (The Consigliere).

That Charlie Brooker worked in the Notting Hill Music and Video Exchange, although it seems to have been in the games shop so I wouldn't have had to endure his moroseness - just the sparkling upbeat wit of the bods who inhabited the music branches.

That appletiser is literally just carbonated apple juice.

haha.

i remember my brother not realizing that salad cream was different to mayonaisse when he was about 20. my friend and i who were with him were very perplexed. it has a whole different name, why would it be the same thing?

Today, at age 32, I learned that there's a condiment called "salad cream"

it's a british thing. somewhat like miracle whip but yellowish in colour and perhaps more vinegary

I tried miracle whip once, it tasted like bad Asian low-cal mayonnaise. love salad cream, but grew up on it, don't think I tasted mayonnaise until I was in my mid-teens

Persia is Iran - that is, it's an older name for exactly the same country, not some area roughly but not exactly coterminous.

― In the wastelands of Birmingham and Manchester, massages are back (ledge)

Yeah, most Iranian immigrants in the states refer to themselves as Persian - we associate 'Iran' and 'Iranian' with the Ayatollah

esp Jewish ones aiui

(only 3% or so of the Persian Jewish population still lives in Iran)

^This gets really complicated.

Like, there are the 'Jadid al-Islam' (fake Muslims, literally "new Muslims") who were converted to Islam by force, for example in Mashhad in the 1800's. Some became 'crypto-Jews' and continued to practice Judaism secretly.

Then there are others who, like my parents, fled to Iran from other Arab states after the formation of Israel and maybe added -pour to their surnames to blend in. We're "fake Persians" as well as "fake Muslims". It's all very muddled. Like, if 3% of Persian Jews still live in Iran, who exactly does this account for

no idea tbf I just read the wikipedia infobox, do tell

Just saying i don't see how it's really possible to calculate this. I assume it's a guesstimate of the number of Jews in present day Iran who openly identify as Jewish as compared to the number of Jews in Persia of whatever nationality who openly identified as Jewish in 1978, but that's a potentially misleading figure.

Quite apart from the complex question of who counts as Jewish, or of who counts as Persian, Jews in Iran were not necessarily eager to out themselves in the mid 19th c, let alone the late 20th c

There's also the matter of record keeping, I have aunts and uncles who don't know when their birthday is.

microsoft office informed me yesterday that use of the word "farsi" is potentially offensive

That "hung like a donkey" is from the Bible (Ezekiel 23:20).

"Jizz like a horse" also in the same verse.

Wasn't Ba'athist Iraq fairly tolerant of Jews? I remember hearing that somewhere

No, no they weren't:

Almost all the rest follow after the public hangings of "Israeli spies" in 1969 by the Baath party, which had just come to power off the back of a coup.

"Promotion of Zionism" was punishable by death and that legislation has remained unchanged.

There are currently fewer than five jews in Iraq.

All I was trying to do was make a really stupid joke, but Google wouldn't let me.

https://i.imgur.com/jUJWABW.png

Uh kind of stereotyped there, Google

My paternal great uncle was executed in Baghdad in 1950, after that they "converted" and split and for Tehran in 1951. They were long gone by the time the Baathists took over anyhow- i doubt if many Jews were left in Iraq in the late 60's. Prior to 1948, they were hardly "tolerated" but not quite persecuted. My grandfather used to tell me all the time about how segregated Baghdad was before all this.

I don't think "Farsi" is offensive but we call it Persian

Gonna take a break from discussing this.

Sorry mom's family left in '51.
Dad's family left in '57 so that would mean my great uncle was executed in 56 if it makes a difference.

In 57 they had to bribe officials just to be allowed to leave. In 51 they could just leave.