Candice,
Good to hear Doug Oliver's name at this time, especially so warmly
recollected.
Your bee anecdote rang a few bells for me. There are a number of mediaeval
sermons against such uses of the host, including one chastising a
parishioner for breaking it into fragments and dispersing it among her
ailing cabbages. There's a parallel to the one you mention, which I recast
as an octet in 1983.
THE SACRAMENT AS CHARM
When she lifted the hive she discovered
a chapel made by the bees from honeycombs.
The windows, walls, roof and tower
all stood exact in golden miniature.
When she opened the little door she saw
that inside they had set up an altar
for the communion which, to cure them
of a plague, she had hid in their hive.
Randolph Healy
that inside
Visit the Sound Eye website at:
http://indigo.ie/~tjac/sound_eye_hme.htm
or find more Irish writing at:
http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr7/contents.html
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From: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: PeeWee Hermeneia's cunning linguistics [was Re: Saffo? Ihope
not.....]
Date: 24 April 2000 19:02
EP e' morto! Viva EP! (Say, isn't that what they used to call
Evans-Pritchard? Any relation?)
You are cheering me up, too, roedeer sole, when I am so sad over
Doug Oliver's death. And how he would have loved your "infinite
chances of Being"! He became very interested in bees when he wrote
his Cave poem, you know, and we used to joke about the Great Chain
of Beeing. I've just been musing on a lovely story he told me he
read in a Renaissance book called _The Feminine Monarchie_ (which
had reversed a long poetic tradition, going back to Vergil at
least, of male queen bees): a beekeeper once put a Communion wafer
at the entrance to his hive in hopes of increasing honey production.
When he later examined the hive, he discovered--Doug said--that the
bees had made a wax cathedral "and were flying around it sweetly
humming."
What did Voltaire whisper in my "infant ear"? He said (in French,
of course--this is just a rough, preschool-girl translation):
"Littlebig-ette, no matter how long a baguette life begets you,
never forget that half a loaf is NOT better than none."
>From the Vicarage, Durham
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