The Dog of Helvellyn

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Edwin_Landseer_Attachment.JPG

On April 17, 1805, artist Charles Gough set out to walk over Helvellyn, a mountain in England’s Lake District, with his dog, Foxie. He never returned. Three months later, on July 27, a shepherd heard barking high on the mountain’s flank, at about 2,300 feet, and discovered Foxie beside her master’s body.

It appeared that Gough had fallen to his death, and the dog had remained by his side for three months. How she had survived up there remains a mystery — she had even borne a puppy, which was found dead in a burrow dug into the mountainside. The episode captured the Romantic imagination, and Wordsworth, Edwin Landseer, and Walter Scott all paid tribute to Foxie’s loyalty:

How long did’st thou think that his silence was slumber!
When the wind waved his garment how oft did’st thou start!

But I can find no record of what became of her.

Bonus dog-loyalty-overtime stories: New Mexico, Montana, Tokyo.

| Oddities

Can You Do Without Soap?

Heinrich Ollendorff meant well. The grammarian intended his phrasebooks to teach German, French, Danish, and Russian to a new generation of language students. But who would ever need to speak these sentences?

  • Stop, the postilion has been struck by lightning!
  • A man is drowning. Is there a life buoy, a rope, a grapnel at hand?
  • Unhand me, sir, for my husband, who is an Australian, awaits without.
  • After having lost all my money, I was beaten by bad-looking men; and, to my still greater ill luck, I hear that my good uncle, whom I love so much, has been struck with apoplexy.

Ironically, he’s remembered today in the adjective ollendorffian, which means “in the stilted language of foreign phrasebooks.”

| Language

Sky Waves

http://www.flickr.com/photos/robinhutton/413337607/
Image: Flickr

No one knows what causes the “morning glory” clouds of northern Australia, but they’re striking — long rolling tubes that can stretch for hundreds of kilometers across the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Glider pilots converge on tiny Burketown in Far North Queensland each fall, hoping to “surf the glory,” riding the unique air currents that accompany the clouds.

| Oddities

No Man’s Land

On the border between Egypt and Sudan is a small trapezoid of landlocked desert, about 2,000 square kilometers.

Egypt says it belongs to Sudan. Sudan says it belongs to Egypt.

That makes Bir Tawil the only land area in the world (outside of Antarctica) that’s not claimed by any state.

| Trivia

“Justice to Scotland”

(“An Unpublished Poem by Burns”)

O mickle yeuks the keckle doup,
An’ a’ unsicker girns the graith,
For wae and wae! the crowdies loup
O’er jouk an’ hallan, braw an’ baith
Where ance the coggie hirpled fair,
And blithesome poortith toomed the loof,
There’s nae a burnie giglet rare
But blaws in ilka jinking coof.

The routhie bield that gars the gear
Is gone where glint the pawky een.
And aye the stound is birkin lear
Where sconnered yowies wheeped yestreen,
The creeshie rax wi’ skelpin’ kaes
Nae mair the howdie bicker whangs,
Nor weanies in their wee bit claes
Glour light as lammies wi’ their sangs.

Yet leeze me on my bonny byke!
My drappie aiblins blinks the noo,
An’ leesome luve has lapt the dyke
Forgatherin’ just a wee bit fou.
And Scotia! while thy rantin’ lunt
Is mirk and moop with gowans fine,
I’ll stowlins pit my unco brunt,
An’ cleek my duds for auld lang syne.

— Punch, collected in James Parton, The Humorous Poetry of the English Language, 1884

| Literature · Poems

Good Girl

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UnicornTapestry.jpg

Here’s some pretty abstract expressionism — it was painted by a dog. Tillamook Cheddar is a Jack Russell terrier who works with her claws and teeth, spending hours on each canvas and biting anyone who interferes.

She knows what she’s doing — to date she’s had 16 exhibitions in the United States, Bermuda, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and earned $100,000.

| Art

How’s That Diet Going?

Dr. Boehmen, of Wittenberg, described a man who on one occasion ate a raw sheep, a sucking-pig, and by way of dessert sixty pounds of prunes without ejecting the stones; and on another devoured two bushels of cherries, several earthen vessels, and chips from a furnace. He also ate at the same time, some pieces of glass, pebbles, a shepherd’s bagpipe, rats, birds with their feathers, and an incredible number of caterpillars, finishing his astonishing meal by swallowing a pewter inkstand, with its pens, pen-knife, and sand-box. The doctor also informs us that during this miraculous deglutition he was generally under the influence of brandy, but appeared to relish his strange food, and was a man of extraordinary muscular strength, who died in his seventy-ninth year!

— The World of Wonders, 1883

| Oddities