[NPPF] Canto Four: Versipellis

s~Z keithsz at concentric.net
Mon Aug 11 00:06:15 CDT 2003


My Adam's apple is a prickly pear:
Now I shall speak of evil and despair
As none has spoken. Five, six, seven, eight,
Nine strokes are not enough. Ten. I palpate
Through strawberry-and-cream the gory mess
And find unchanged that patch of prickliness.

Having a bit of trouble eliminating that fur there Mr. Shadow?

"We shall be assisted in this explanation by turning aside for a moment to
examine the wild superstitions about "changelings," which contributed, along
with so many others, to make the lives of our ancestors anxious and
miserable. These superstitions were for the most part attempts to explain
the phenomena of insanity, epilepsy, and other obscure nervous diseases. A
man who has hitherto enjoyed perfect health, and whose actions have been
consistent and rational, suddenly loses all self-control and seems actuated
by a will foreign to himself. Modern science possesses the key to this
phenomenon; but in former times it was explicable only on the hypothesis
that a demon had entered the body of the lunatic, or else that the fairies
had stolen the real man and substituted for him a diabolical phantom exactly
like him in stature and features."

        --John Fiske




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