On Sun, 9 Dec 2001 17:30:54 -0500, Candice Ward <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Robin wrote:
>
>>> As to sexualised flowers, there's the medieval quatrain (I quote from
>>> memory):
>>>
>>> All nicht bi the rose, rose
>>> All nicht bi the rose I lay I lay
>>> Ich dar noght the rose steal,
>>> And yet I bure the flower away.
>
>Good cross-referencing between rose and cherry-tree (_Prunus_ being of the
>rose family), Robin, and the conventional image of deflowering has a long
>traditional association with both the tree (in flower--a puberty image) and
>the cherry itself (as hymen). The opening couplet of "The Cherry Thief" is
>similarly conventional, with its balladic-sexual allusions ("long before
>cockcrow"--ahem!), though whether that's also the case in the German I have
>no idea. It doesn't really make sense to analyze Brecht's poem (what's its
>German title, btw?) in English translation or to assume an English source
>for it, but the translator seems to have picked up on or introduced real
>song echoes, especially in those first two lines. At the same time, the
>scene and tone seem ostentatiously artificial, as if Brecht's commenting on
>their very traditionality in that old defamiliarizing way of his, so the
>poem has a strong "moon over alabama" resonance for me.
>
>
>Erminia wrote:
>
>> I would like to understand what "cherries", as a symbol, stood for
>> (primarely sex or money?), in medieval times; who were the authors who
>> first used this proverb in literature (in German literature and in the
>> English one); whether it happeared first in ballads or tales - (Brecht
>> made a wide re-use of the themes and the style of the ballads, for
istance,
>> and was deeply interested in folk tradition).
>
>Ballads _and_ proverbs (_Spruches_), right? I'd guess that both figure in
>here, depending on how close this translation is to the original. (Martin:
>Can you say more about your dissatisfaction with the trans. and maybe
>provide the German?)
>
>I'll say what I can about the medieval associations, but I'm not sure why
>Brecht's poem is presumed to have any (did I miss something
>cockamamie-loik?). The folk associations with the cherry-tree are both
>sexual and of a pubescent innocence, depending on how the de/flowering
>aspects are handled, while the cherry (w/stone fruit) signifies (lost)
>virginity even now in such expressions as "popped her cherry." What I'm
>saying is that Brecht didn't need to get medieval in 1938 in order to write
>a sexy little number like "The Cherry Thief." He no doubt knew the song "I
>Gave My Love A Cherry," for instance, just as most of us know of it at
>least. It's source is a c. 13th-century lyric known as "I Have A Young
>Sister," which nicely captures both the innocent love (the sister's
>gift-giving) and sexual longing (the "lemman's" desire/lack/"want")
>associations of the cherry. The speaker's sister sends him (from "fer
>beyonde the see") a series of riddling "drowries" that amount to (slyly?)
>wise advice on his love life: a cherry with no stone, a dove with no bone,
>and a briar with no brambles--the latter with the admonition to love his
>"lemman" (mistress) "withoute longinge." Following the "how sholde" queries
>(any cherry be without stone, any dove without bone, any briar "withoute
>rinde"), the lyric concludes with the conventional answers to these
riddles:
>
>Whan the cherye was a flowr
> Thanne hadde it no stoon,
>Whan the dove was an ey [egg]
> Thanne hadde it no boon.
>
>Whan the brere was unbred [ungrown]
> Thanne hadde it no rinde,
>Whan the maiden hath that [what] she loveth
> She is withoute longinge.
>
>I got interested in this poem when I found a cherry-tree in Prynne's rune
>poem (the only instance of it, so far as I know), although the choice of
>tree may well have been dictated solely by the alliterative and/or
>runic-pictorial demands at that point in the poem. The Anglo-Saxon word for
>cherry-tree is "ciris- (or cisir-) beam," and most of Prynne's alliteration
>there is on "b." Many tree names in A-S end with "beam" ("tree"
or "cross"),
>though, so I puzzled over what else he gained with his "ciser" (variant "e"
>included). One thing was a torch (the C-rune)--each of the 3 middle rune
>rows has one, while the identical first and fifth rows don't.
>
>Then, because at least one other runic/A-S text is referenced (quoted, in
>fact) in the rune poem, and I couldn't find any other cherry-trees in
>Prynne's corpus, I went looking for a medieval one and found "I Have A
Young
>Sister," with its stunningly suggestive (for my purposes) title and not
only
>a cherry but also a dove and an egg, all of them riddled.
>
>None of which probably has anything to do with Brecht's poem.
>
>Candice