Thursday, April 16, 2009

Of Magical Birds, (a Corny Story) . . .

A few weeks back we took a little trip down around Lyon, one afternoon made a detour to the medieval village of Pérouges. In a sheltered alcove under the overhang of the upper floor of a building on the square in the center of Pérouges, there were a large number of ears of yellow corn suspended from the ceiling, which intrigued me considerably . . . what were they doing there ?
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Winter was almost over, and the corn didn't seem to have served as bird feed, as they were all quite intact, nary a kernel was missing. In a side street not far from there was a lovely sign saying "Au Bel Oiseau" (At the Beautiful Bird) for a bar no doubt, which did indeed have a beautiful, albeit somewhat rusty (just the way I like them) parrot on it.
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It wasn't until later that I put 2 and 2 (or bird and corn) together. . . The bird on the sign is in fact a magical bird. Every morning just before dawn he frees himself from the bindings on the sign he spends every day attached to, and flies over to eat his fill of the corn that has been put out to feed him, and then flies back to his sign for the day. And the corn, being magical corn, replenishes itself with the sunrise, growing back the missing kernels, to appear as if freshly cut from the corn stalk. . . this is the local parallel to the Prometheus myth. Well, if you have any alternate theories, I'd be happy to hear them . . .
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4 comments:

jeff said...

Nous savons tous qu'en philosophie,... le mythe de Prométhée est une métaphore qui signifie en gros l'apport de la connaissance aux hommes...
J'ai pas tout compris de ton english... Aussi... franchement, tu pourrais pas de temps en temps mettre la traduction simultanée sous ton texte...! Le traducteur raconte n'importe quoi !
Aussi je me permettrais cette métaphore... C'est par le feu que nous périront !

Unknown said...

perhaps they are making popcorn to aid the rusty parrot!

Nathalie H.D. said...

Ah Jeff, tout le monde n'a pas le temps d'écrire en bilingue comme moi! LOL (mais je n'écris pas des contes...)

Du maïs à sécher comme ça on en voit beaucoup dans le sud-ouest - je me demande si ça pourrait être les grains à replanter l'année suivante (avant que Monsanto ne fasse des grain stériles qu'il faut leur racheter tous les ans, youpi!)

Nathalie H.D. said...

Et Jeff, les traductions Babelfish m'ont donné certains des plus grands rires de ma vie.

Owen if you haven't tried it many times before, put your tale through Babelfish and see how it comes out in French - I bet it's hilarious!