17 August 2013

bower

[bou-er]

noun

1. a leafy shelter or recess; arbor.
2. a rustic dwelling; cottage.
3. a lady’s boudoir in a medieval castle.
verb (used with object)
4. to enclose in or as in a bower; embower.

Example:

‘Sister I implore you, take him by the hand,
take him to some shady bower, save me from the wrath of this man,
please take him, save me from the wrath of this mad man’.

– from ‘Gallow’s Pole‘ by Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, who had rewritten and reinterpreted the song ‘Gallow’s Pole‘ by Fred Gerlach, which was a version of an old blues song called ‘Gallis Pole‘ by Leadbelly, which was based on a country and western song called ‘Slack Your Rope‘ by Jimmie Driftwood, which was based on a 15th century British ballad called ‘The Maid Freed from the Gallows‘. Many versions of this song have been done, but Zeppelin’s version is one of the few in which the protagonist is hanged even after all the bribes given to the hangman.

Origin:
before 900; Middle English bour, Old English būr chamber; cognate with Old Norse būr pantry, German Bauer birdcage; akin to neighbor

Related forms
bow·er·like, adjective

Today’s aphorism

We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.

– Davy Crockett

On this day

17 August 1786 – birth of Davy Crockett, American frontiersman, King of the Wild Frontier.

17 August 1970 – Russia launches the Venera 7 spacecraft, which becomes the first man-made object to land on Venus (15 December 1970)