meat

[calbert at hslboxmaster.com]

Nicholson and Grant are both indolent slobs......Here is the part 
they failed to cite.........you tell me if it has any bearing.....


"Even in 1622, after the beginning of the Thirty Years War, a 
SPecial Post and Butcher Regulation issued by Duke Johann 
Friedrich of Wurttemberg shows that in remote localities where 
there was no regular mail service the butchers were still in the habit 
of carrying letter bags;
AND THAT IN SUCH DISTRICTS THEY WERE ALSO EXPECTED 
TO SUPPLY THE MEANS OF CONVEYING TRAVELLERS, 
WHICH WAS NOW CONSIDERED ONE OF THE FUNCTIONS OF 
THE MAIL SERVICE......"

Harlow, pg.67......

How did they miss this?


love,
cfa 

> >From J. Kerry Grant, A Companion to The Crying of Lot
> 49 (Athens; U ofGeorgia P, 1994), p. 11 ...
> 
> "H10.17, B2.9  Metzger  Nicholson cites Mendelson's
> note that the name is German for buthcehr and then
> adds his own observation: 'Because of the peripatetic
> nature of tehir trade, German butchers in the Middle
> Ages were given leters to carry from village to
> village: Metzger hence came to signify "temporary
> postman"' (94).  The 'butcher post' was by no means an
> exclusively medieval phenomenon, however: 'In the
> course of time the Butchr's Guild forme a regular
> postal organization.  A patent of the Emperor Rudolf
> II in 1597 mentions the butcher post as an esatblished
> institution to promote communication.  Even in 1622,
> after the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, a
> special Post and Butcher Regulation issued by Duke
> Johann Friedrich of Wurttemburg shows that in remote
> localities where there was no regular mail service the
> butchers were still in the habit of carrying letter
> bags....  For a long time these Germn butchers had
> been in the habit of carrying a bugle with which to
> announce their arrival to buy cattle, and this now
> became in some sense a post horn.  Even in the
> nineteenth century the butchers' guils often had a
> bugle intheir coats of arms.  In Wurttemburg they
> continued to use the bugle until the end o the
> seventeenth century, and teh Thurn and Taxis officials
> frequently complained bittrly of the butchers using
> what they called the "post horn"' (Harlow 67)."
> 
> Citing ...
> 
> Nicholson, C.E. and R.W. Stevenson.  "'Words You
>    Never Wanted to Hear': Fiction, History, and
>    Narratology in The Crying of Lot 49."  Pynchon
>    Notes 16 (1985): 89-109.
> 
> Harlow, Alvin F.  Old Post Bags.
>    New York: Appleton and Co., 1928.
> 
> Have been waiting to deploy that one, thanks ...
> 
> --- calbert at hslboxmaster.com wrote:
> > Did anyone cover the 
> > 
> > Metzger - Butcher - Mail connection?
> 
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