azure legs of the cock, etc.

[Jonathan Lighter]

I wonder whether medieval European chickens could have had legs of azure/ blue. The only modern chickens I can clearly recall seeing had red or yellow legs.

  BTW, as late as 1911 the Britannica was asserting that the common "fowl" was "otherwise nameless."  http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/F/FO/FOWL.htm.
  OED traces generic "chicken" only to 1827 (at Harvard).

  JL

RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: RonButters at AOL.COM
Subject: azure legs of the cock, etc.
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I had some suggestions about these items in an earlier posting. Is this just=
=20
a diplomatic way of saying that they don't make sense to you, or did you mis=
s=20
it?

I read the azure legs to be veins.
I read the white patches to be skin.
I read the crystal eye to be precum.
I read the amber eye to be urine (or possibly semen).
I'm still not sure what to make of wortewale for either a rooster or a=20
penis--even aftrer looking it up.

I grant you that some of these associations are a bit strained, but then the=
=20
poem IS written by somebody who is comparing his penis to poultry--what can=20
one expect?

In a message dated 6/30/06 9:50:31 AM, Berson at ATT.NET writes:


> At 6/29/2006 07:49 PM, JL wrote [excerpted]:
> >=A0=A0 Third. None of the various details in the lyric are obviously
> > inconsistent with the presumed double-entendre.
>=20
> Jonathan, can we have a learned dissertation on none of the details
> being "obviously inconsistent" with the unmentionable sense?=A0 Most of
> them do not need explication, but I have wondered about:
>=20
> >his legs=A0 be of azure
> >so gentil and so small
>=20
> [This can't be "blue balls".=A0 What are the legs, and why azure?]
>=20
> >his spurs are of silver white
> >into=A0 the wortewale
>=20
> [I suppose I can imagine "wortwale"--after looking it up!--but spurs
> of silver white?]
>=20
> >his eyes are of crystal
> >locked all in amber
>=20
> [More than one eye?]
>=20
> And what does "comen" signify in the first and second verses?
> ...
> >=A0=A0 To take a vaguely comparable modern example.=A0 The heroine of the
> > Ian Fleming classic _Goldfinger_ is named "Pussy Galore."=A0 Yep,
> > that's her name, and it was her name in the '64 movie too. In an
> > era when the sexual sense of Ms. Galore's Christian name was
> > ordinarily unutterable in a Hollywood film, was its presence a
> > Bawdy Joke or a Meaningless Accident ?
>=20
> Just as much of an accident as its use in "Are You Being Served".
>=20
> Joel
>=20
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>=20
>=20

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