indoeuropean/hand

[Steven A. Gustafson]

Priscilla de Paula wrote:

L'an mil neuf sens nonante neuf sept mois
Du ciel viendra grand Roy deffraieur
Resusciter le grand Roy d'Angolmois
Avant apres Mars regner par bonheur.
                                 --- M. de Notre-Dame

> Dear Sir : I saw in the end of the text a century of Nostradamus in the
> languedoc langague of the Midle Age in France. This supose that nearly in the
> end of this century will be restared a Kingdom of Angleterre or may be also a
> alegory sense of the presence of a angel manifestation in the earth. The
> profecy brought to the present can say about the appearance of some celestial
> phenomenon that can interfere in the evolution of normal facts. Can you
> comment something about your interpretation ? Thanks.  Adelgicius paulae

To risk being severely off-topic ---

My translation would be (this being Nostradamus, there are a number of
obscurities in the text, of course):

In the year one thousand nine hundred ninety nine, seven months,
>From the sky will come the great King of Terror
To revive the great King of Angolmois
Before and after, Mars to rule playfully.

I believe that this text is in relatively standard Middle French, and
not Langue d'Oc.  I am going to have to change that signature, since it
seems not to have come to pass <g>.  At any rate, most Nostradamus buffs
seem to believe that it refers to Armageddon and the Judgment Day
occurring in July 1999.

(Unless, of course, these prophesies run on the Old Style calendar, in
which case there is still a week or so for Armageddon to start.)

The King of Angolmois is usually claimed to be a distorted version of
-Mongolois-, referring to a revived Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun, and
perhaps the prophesied Antichrist.  (It might be likelier to mean a king
from Angoule^me, but that hardly seems as dramatic.)

To get back slightly on topic, from a linguistic viewpoint, one of the
interesting things about Nostradamus' text is how it came to pass that
the perfectly sensible word he used for "ninety" (nonante) got replaced
in Academy French by "quatre-vingt-dix."  I've seen the explanation
mooted that the quatre-vingt numbers are a holdover from ancient
Gaulish, and didn't know that we knew enough Gaulish to tell.  But
perhaps so long as the French Academy staves off the moral horrors of
creeping decimalism, the Antichrist will be kept at bay.

Steven A. Gustafson, attorney at law
Fox & Cotner:  PHONE (812) 945 9600   FAX (812) 945 9615
http://www.foxcotner.com

Ecce domina quae fidet omnia micantia aurea esse, et scalam in
caelos emit.  Adveniente novit ipsa, etiamsi clausae sint portae
cauponum, propositum assequitur verbo.