MD Query

[Greg Montalbano]

 Jim Caufield asks:

 Did Dixon's insinuation, somewhere toward the
>end of book the second, that Mason intended illicit sexual relations with
>some one of a number of dead lambs in the hold of the ship, and was
>prevented only by the oleaginous impediment to firm footing, make oblique
>reference to the ancient Carpocratians' practice of heretical love feasts
>in which communion with the lamb, as theriomorphic figuration, was sought
>with devout abandon, or was this merely a reprise of the high-seas buggery
>motif found earlier in book the first? Cf. Irenaus, Adversus Haereses,
>XXV.iv. 

Maybe;  but from reports gathered from world-traveling friends, and from my
own obs in different parts of this country, it's a pretty standard & eternal
slander on any "other" group of people (any folklorists in the crowd who've
specialized in insults throughout history may be able to help with this one).

~G~