medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Shannon McSheffrey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>...Similarly colourful-- or over-the-top -- was a later reference to a statue
of the Virgin as a "brent-arse poppet," i.e. a prostitute infected with
venereal disease.
mmmm... the O.E.D. doesn't know this meaning for "poppet" :
2.
[obsolete sense]
c. Contemptuously applied to an image used in worship; hence, any material
thing worshipped; an idol, a maumet. Obs.
1550 Bale Image Both Ch. i. Pref. A vj b, Bablynges, brawlinges, processyons,
popettes, and suche other mad masteries.
1553 Becon Reliques of Rome (1563) 88 He [Nicephorus] also destroied al her
[Irene's] poppets, sufferyng no images to remayne in the temples.
1687 Dryden Hind. & P; iii. 780 You..will endeavour in succeeding space, Those
houshold Poppits on our hearths to place.
1880 Webb Goethe's Faust iii. vii. 164 And knead and mould your poppet well As
many a foreign tale will tell.
poppet deity (sense 2 c),
A. 1641 Bp. Mountagu Acts & Mon; iii. (1642) 184 To appease the fury,
forsooth, of their angry *poppet Deities.
'poppet v. trans., to treat as a poppet, to carry like an image or effigy.
Obs.
1748 Richardson Clarissa (1810) V. ii. 15 These lines of Rowe have got into my
head; and I shall repeat them very devoutly all the way the chairmen shall
poppet me towards her by-and-by.
whereas "brent" is :
2. Of the forehead:
a. Lofty, straight up, prominent.
b. Unwrinkled, smooth.
1513 Douglas Æneis viii. xii. 14 From his blyth browis [L. tempora læta]
brent and athyr ene The fyre twinkling.
1629 Z. Boyd Last Battle 678 (Jam.) At the first sight of that angrie
Majestie, with brent browes and sterne countenance.
A. 1758 Ramsay Poems (1800) II. 17 (Jam.) Her fair brent brow, smooth as th'
unrunkled deep.
1789 Burns J. Anderson i, Your bonie brow was brent.
so, "a prostitute infected with venereal disease" is a bit over-the-top, as a
translation, it seems to me.
best from here,
christopher
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