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A thread of medieval bees with a miracle rather than a sting in its tail
What noise do early English bees make, before they start to BUZZ around 1500?
They BOM, BUM or BOMEL: ‘the BOMELYNG of the bees’ is, as one 15thC poet names it, their song, their language
What noise do early English bees make, before they start to BUZZ around 1500?
They BOM, BUM or BOMEL: ‘the BOMELYNG of the bees’ is, as one 15thC poet names it, their song, their language
Chaucer is fascinated by noisy bees and noisily apian people
A swarm of bees is the climax of a catalogue of uproar in the NPT when the fox takes Chauntecleer
The crowd that ‘swarmeth’ around the amazing horse of brass in the SqT ‘murmured as dooth a swarm of been [bees]’
A swarm of bees is the climax of a catalogue of uproar in the NPT when the fox takes Chauntecleer
The crowd that ‘swarmeth’ around the amazing horse of brass in the SqT ‘murmured as dooth a swarm of been [bees]’
The noisy crowd who arrive to petition in the House of Fame are also like swarming bees, making ‘such a maner murmurynge’
(MURMURING in Middle English is a louder sound than today’s word would suggest)
(MURMURING in Middle English is a louder sound than today’s word would suggest)
Scottish bees are equally noisy. Douglas’s Virgilian bees in their beehive make ‘mekill dyn and BEMYNG’ [i.e. noise and BOOMING]
Bees also MUM, HUM and HUMBLE. John Burrell describes bees ‘mumming and bumming& #39; in 1590
Bees also MUM, HUM and HUMBLE. John Burrell describes bees ‘mumming and bumming& #39; in 1590
Though small, ‘Al hugely and haske [loudly] yf [when] that they [bees] humme, / As houses holgh [hollow] their voices multiplye’ says the 15thC translator of Palladius’s De re rustica
In 1582, Stanyhurst’s Virgilian bees ‘toyle [toil] with mutterus [i.e. mutter-ous] humbling’
In 1582, Stanyhurst’s Virgilian bees ‘toyle [toil] with mutterus [i.e. mutter-ous] humbling’
Bees are thus HUMBLEBEES (first recorded in the 15thC) before they are BUMBLEBEES (first recorded in 1530)
And now the promised story. What would happen if you put a piece of consecrated wafer in a beehive?
And now the promised story. What would happen if you put a piece of consecrated wafer in a beehive?
Well, the bees would miraculously build a miniature church, of course, as this story from the 15thC translation of the Alphabet of Tales recounts
