Sunday 3 July 1664
(Lord’s day). Up and ready, and all the morning in my chamber looking over and settling some Brampton businesses. At noon to dinner, where the remains of yesterday’s venison and a couple of brave green geese, which we are fain to eat alone, because they will not keepe, which troubled us.
After dinner I close to my business, and before the evening did end it with great content, and my mind eased by it. Then up and spent the evening walking with my wife talking, and it thundering and lightning all the evening, and this yeare have had the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man’s memory, and so it is, it seems, in France and everywhere else. So to prayers and to bed.
22 Annotations
First Reading
Robert Gertz • Link
Hopefully it was the feathers of our brave avian pair and not their meat that was green...
"More, sweetheart?" Bess offers the heaping platter.
Arghh... "Pray Heavens, no, Bess. I shall explode."
And here I was hoping for a little afternoon's romp through Cupid's grove. I shall barely manage to roll out to the office.
***
Sounds like a nice, romantic evening's stroll.
Patricia • Link
Green geese:
http://www.infoplease.com/diction…
Terry • Link
Green Geese
In the early summer, young fattened goslings known as green geese were a popular food.
cape henry • Link
"After dinner I close to my business..."So at least for now, work and family have replaced church.No mention of that today.But he was as good as his promise the previous night to finish what we may assume were his studies of the Brampton papers.
Terry F • Link
Patricia, thanks for the Green Goose link. I.a., it provides a passage from Shakespeare on breaking oaths and what flesh demands -- a commentary of a sort on today's Diary entry and yesterday's.
Love's Labor's Lost, Act IV, Scene III
Longaville
This same shall go.
Reads
Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
'Gainst whom the world cannot hold argument,
Persuade my heart to this false perjury?
Vows for thee broke deserve not punishment.
A woman I forswore; but I will prove,
Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee:
My vow was earthly, thou a heavenly love;
Thy grace being gain'd cures all disgrace in me.
Vows are but breath, and breath a vapour is:
Then thou, fair sun, which on my earth dost shine,
Exhalest this vapour-vow; in thee it is:
If broken then, it is no fault of mine:
If by me broke, what fool is not so wise
To lose an oath to win a paradise?
Biron
This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity,
A green goose a goddess: pure, pure idolatry.
God amend us, God amend! we are much out o' the way.
Firenze • Link
'it thundering and lightning all the evening, and this yeare have had the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man's memory' - not much climate change there, then. This last couple of weeks in Britain have been marked by violent storms and flooding. Last evening, sitting in humid, thundery Edinburgh, watching rain stopping play at Wimbleton in humid, thundery London.
djc • Link
this yeare have had the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man's memory, and so it is, it seems, in France and everywhere else.
Nothing changes then,just back from a month in Italy with two weeks of continual rain, and here in England things continue as they apparently were in 1664
Bradford • Link
Anyone else have a vague recollection of folk belief that thundery weather will cause food to spoil faster? Maybe they could work their way through both geese by means of goose fritters, goose tart, and goose morsels (healthy snacking division).
JWB • Link
"Don't know why there's no sun up in the sky..."
But I do know that it's bad luck, and has been since Roman times, to draw attention to the thunder & lightning.
Mary • Link
food in thundery weather.
Thundery weather was certainly supposed to sour the milk when I was a child.
JWB • Link
food in thundery weather
Beer! Thor's hammering on Midgard 'll put off the brew every time. Being a great beer drinker Himself, you'd think He'd have more consideration, but no, He's got His hammer & He's gonn'a use it.
Happy Fourth!
Andrew Hamilton • Link
Then up and spent the evening walking with my wife talking
Touching domestic scene. There is a real bond between Sam & Elizabeth, an insight into why Uncle Wight's plot failed.
Andrew Hamilton • Link
the most of thunder and lightning they say of any in man's memory
"Well it thundered and lightninged, and the rain began to fall."
Bessie Smith
Pedro • Link
THUNDER AND THE DAYS OF THE WEEK
'Some write (their ground I see not) that Sunday's thunder should bring the death of learned men, judges, and others; Monday's thunder the death of women; Tuesday's thunder plenty of grain; Wednesday's thunder the death of harlots; Thursday's thunder plenty of sheep and corn; Friday's thunder, the slaughter of a great man, and other horrible murders; Saturday's thunder a general plague and great dearth.'
LEONARD DIGGES's Prognostication Everlasting of right good Effect, Loud. 1556.
Cumsalisgrano • Link
Sam would have a version of this :
"They hang the man and flog the woman
Who steals the goose from off the Common;
But let the greater criminal loose
Who steals the Common from the goose".
http://www.jubileeresearch.org/op…
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/…
Cumsalisgrano • Link
Goose silly I be, did take a gander,
did hear of a blue goose and grey too,
never the green goose
only about the geese on the green.
then there be the black, then tame too.
did play with a goosling or two,
then I 'member a common saying
there was some sauce for the goose,
was good enough for the gander too
there be the local gander,
who be out to grass,
then there be others that wander
that would take a gander too.
then there be those that kill
the one that laid the goldern egg
others be trying to shoe his goose too
others that would nae say boo to a goose.
then there be others that look for
the winchester geese when out and about.
while others would steal a goose
then give the giblets away.
then thee must never deny
thy neighbor your gander
for he may get up his dander.
{1622 BRETON Str. Newes (Grosart) 7/1 No man must denie his neighbours Goose his Gander, for feare of wanting Goslings at *Goose Faire.}
{ 1601 SHAKES. Twel. N. III. ii. 53 Let there bee gaulle enough in thy inke, though thou write with a *Goose-pen.}
Goose sayings galore.
sauce OED:
[Common Teut.: OE. gós (pl. gés) = Fris. gôs, gôz, MDu. (and Du.) gans, OHG. (MHG. and G.) gans, ON. gás (Sw. gås, Da. gaas):OTeut. *gans- (cons.-stem):OAryan *ghans-, whence L. anser (for *hanser), Gr. , Skr. hasá masc., has fem., Lith. sìs, and OIr. géis swan. Connexion with GANDER is doubtful.]
Pedro • Link
"and a couple of brave green geese,"
What a pity that they lost the race...
WILD GOOSE CHASE -- "Englishmen in the late 16th century invented a new kind of horse race called the wild-goose chase in which the lead horse could go off in any direction and the succeeding horses had to follow accurately the course of the leader at precise intervals, like wild geese following the leader in formation. At first the phrase 'wild-goose chase' figuratively meant an erratic course taken by one person and followed by another; Shakespeare used it in this sense. But later the common term's origins were forgotten and a 'wild-goose chase' came to mean 'a pursuit of anything as unlikely to be caught as a wild goose,' any foolish, fruitless, or hopeless quest." From the "Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins" by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulleti…
tonyt • Link
djc. '..here in England things continue as they apparently were in 1664'. In 1664 there seems to have been plenty of thunderstorms but also a lot of very hot dry weather. In 2007 we are having the thunderstorms but no signs of the upside of the coin.
Second Reading
Terry Foreman • Link
Front Burner | FORKLORE
Green Goose: The Other Dark Meat
March 14, 2001|CHARLES PERRY | TIMES STAFF WRITER
Goose has never been very important on the American table. It's all dark meat, for one thing, and we already have a super-sized bird for festival occasions-the turkey, which has pretty much taken over the goose slot in our eating habits. Our turkey stuffings are adapted from European goose stuffings. Chestnut stuffing comes from France and Germany; bread crumbs and sage is typically English.
We all know about the goose the Cratchitts served in Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." In England, geese were also eaten at Michaelmas (Sept. 29), when they were nice and fat from eating the stubble left after the hay and grain harvests. These "stubble geese" were always stuffed.
But the English also used to prize what was called a green goose. Readers of Jane Austen's "Mansfield Park" will remember Dr. Grant's taste for green geese.
Was this a goose hung so long the flesh turned green? No, it was green in the opposite sense of being young. Geese sit their eggs in February, and the goslings hatch in March; the traditional season for green goose was Whitsuntide, mid-May through June, when they had grown a little.
Only a little, though. Green geese were so small that they were usually not stuffed. They took only half an hour of roasting (on a spit revolving in your fireplace), as against an hour and a half or more for an older goose. In some recipes, they're wrapped with bacon to baste them, because they had little fat-a major distinction from fully grown geese, which are notoriously fatty.
In other words, green geese were not disgusting. They were even wholesomely lean, by today's standards. We can't blame them for Dr. Grant's death by gluttony. http://articles.latimes.com/2001/…
Chris Squire UK • Link
Re: ‘ . . and a couple of brave green geese . . “
‘green goose, n. . .
1. A young goose, esp. one killed under four months old.
. . 1620 T. Venner Via Recta iii. 66 Young Geese, which are commonly called greene-Geese.
. . 1877 E. Peacock Gloss. Words Manley & Corringham, Lincs. Green goose, a goose killed at midsummer time. A goose under four months old . . ‘
(OED)
Chris Squire UK • Link
10 years on: ‘The UK experienced a spell of hot, sunny weather in June 2017 . . From 17 to 21 June temperatures exceeded 28 °C widely across parts of England, with some locations reaching 30 to 32 °C. On 21 June Heathrow (Greater London) recorded 34.5 °C, the UK's highest June temperature since 1976 . . ’ (Met Office)
Liz • Link
31st July 2020 temperature at Heathrow: 37.8 c. The third hottest day on record.