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Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Happy Story

A mother who refused chemo which might have endangered her unborn children is clear of leukaemia and has healthy twins. Deo gratias!

For oat-cake lovers:

'I say, for my part, that I would rather eat that British oaten bread than bread made of barley or of wheat. I nowhere remember to have seen on the other side of the water such good oats as in Britain, and the people make their bread in the most ingenious fashion... When my fellow-countryman, David Cranston, was taking his first course of theology, he had as fellow-students and bosom friends James Almain of Sens, and Peter of Brussels, one of the order of Preachers, who along with him attended the arts class under me. These men one day, in the course of a discussion on Founder's Day in the courtyard of the Sorbonne, brought this accusation (based on the report of a certain religious) against the common people in Scotland, that they were in the habit of using oaten bread. This they did, knowing the said Cranston to be a man quick of temper, and to the end that they might tease him with a kindly joke; but he strove to repel the charge as on that brought a disgrace on his native land. We hear besides of a certain Frenchman, who brought this bread with him to his own country on his return from Britain, and showed it about as a monstrosity...'

Shocking.

John Major, History of Greater Britain (1521), tr. A. Constable (SHS 1892), Bk I Ch ii.

I think I might like Major better than Hector Boece (though I haven't tried his Latin yet - that might change everything). Maybe I should change my nom de, um, blogge?!