Re: [gardeners] woad
George Shirley (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Wed, 28 Jun 2000 10:19:14 -0500
Bob Kirk wrote:
>
> Guess you already got one recipe. A quick look at the first two pages of
> Alta Vista search results yields several more. Obviously your friend isn't
> going to be using a mush of the fermented plants as a dye bath, so there's
> a high limit to that. As for the alkaline treatment, a search on {woad and
> ... well, not to offend - water} yields 104 hits. Delicacy forbids noting
> why laws were passed against woaderies(?) being located close to towns or
> why woad people tended to intermarry, but anyway, there's something of an
> upper limit to that as well, either for a solitary dyer or one with N
> cooperative friends and limited access to mundane lime-water.
> Not much help, probably. No time to look up either the humorous bit on
> woad in The Dogsbody Papers or the touching Wall Street Journal account of
> the passing of the last woad farmer in Britain (fittingly drawn to his
> reward on the old woad-waggon). Didn't spot any blue on the barbarians in
> the opening scenes of Gladiator, either, though far from being endemic to
> Britain, the plant appears to have spread across all of northern Europe
> from Russia etc.
>
> bk---
>
> unwilling to spend another $7.50 to see the movie a second night running
> just to double-check what I recall as a dubious inscription above the
> entrance to the Colosseum. Anyway, their consultant (way down in the
> credits) would never have missed it. But would she know the vernacular
> Latin for "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."?
Doesn't the Latin translate to "I love the smell of Greek fire in the morning."?
George