The final tale in this series is about what Frenchmen are often believed to be most obsessed with: L’Amour. It might be all too easy to be cynical about any such tale written in the words of another time, but France still engages us, despite the subject. Oh, […]
This delightful short tale gave me a few questions to ponder, never having given anyone a New Year present in all my life. Have I been an unknowingly awful and stingy miser? Heaven forbid, will I have to get enlightenment from, well if not a Capuchin monk, because […]
THE WHICH WAS SHOWED IN A TEMPLE AND OF SUNDRY LIMNINGS OF A RIGHT PACIFIC AND AMOROUS SORT THE WHICH THE SAGE PHILEMON HAD HANGED IN HIS LIBRARIE AND OF A NOBLE PORTRAITURE OF THE POET HOMER THE WHICH THE AFORESAID PHILEMON DID PRIZE ABOVE ALL OTHER LIMNINGS […]
The image of a “Devil’s Pie” might appear to be a bit odd nowadays, but according to Barry Popik in”The Big Apple“, it apparently hails from the famous English priest Thomas Adams: “The Devil makes his Christmas-pyes from lawyers’ tongues and clerkes’ fingers”, attributing his original source to […]
Never having had a confessor, I found this tale a little difficult to appreciate at first. I’d heard of King Edward the Confessor of course. As a kid, I used to believe that he must have confessed a lot… My only direct experience with such a, to me, […]
A certain Brother Olivier Maillard’s sermon is recalled by a Capuchin monk, who describes it as “macaronic“. If macaroni is a pasta made without eggs, then what kind of text or speech could this be? One without a binding element such as proforms and antecedents? That could prove […]
France is of course not the only nation to have fought wars, harboured grudges and perpetuated stereotypical slurs against those whom we in Australia call the “Poms”. I needn’t even mention the Scots. Despite connections with the Royal Family, Germans have of course also had a somewhat difficult […]
While the previous chapter was about boasting, this one, ‘The Miracle of the Magpie’, which plays in the town of Le Puy-en-Velay in the beautiful Auvergne district of France, seems to be all about mocking. Mocking the beliefs of people “elbowing their way” to the place where they […]
Perhaps a word of warning about this story by Anatole France from the year 1909. The ending in particular might offend, so be prepared to make an allowance for attitudes in it being 112 years old—the original French chanson de geste eight centuries earlier than that. The story, […]
Furin Chime 