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