Joining in the play with signifiers and chance, and returning to
rankling "draoncle," drowning Lucette, Tobakoff sailors and weeds,
wiki informs: "In former times,
Kraut was used as a colloquial expression for
tobacco... Today it is sometimes used for marijuana a.k.a "weed".
Kraut may have been used as a term for German sailors, who
carried Sauerkraut on board in an effort to battle scurvy...The practice
was comparable to the British Royal Navy's consumption of limes,
which earned British sailors the nickname 'Limey'."
................................................................................................................................................................
btw: Wiki-googling is most unfair, but
marvellous. Lucette's unremembered "myosotis" (forget-me-nots) derives
this name from the Greek for "mouse-eared"( a return to Dan's "rodends"?)
Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The mouse-ear forget-me-not, Myosotis laxa, has now
extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is
one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being
small and unpretending; even flowers must be modest." Thoreau, Henry David; Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1884), The Writings of
Henry David Thoreau, p. 109, http://books.google.com/books/
Another flower, of the "ramping" kind like
the Krolikcrawling larvae, comes close to
the "triple viol" with interesting tidbits:
"Heartsease" (Viola
tricolor), a small plant of creeping and ramping habit...it has a long history
of use in herbalism. Long before cultivated pansies were released into the trade
in 1839, Heartsease was associated with thought in the "language of flowers",
often by its alternative name of pansy (from the French "pensée" - thought):
hence Ophelia's often quoted line in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "There's pansies,
that's for thoughts". What Shakespeare had in mind was Heartsease, not a modern
garden pansy.Shakespeare makes a more direct reference, probably to Heartsease
in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Oberon sends Puck to gather "a little western
flower" that maidens call "Love-in-idleness". Oberon's account is that he
diverted an arrow from Cupid's bow aimed at "a fair vestal, throned by the west"
(supposedly Queen Elizabeth I) to fall upon the plant "before milk-white, now
purple with love's wound". The "imperial vot'ress" passes on "fancy-free",
destined never to fall in love. The juice of the heartsease now, claims Oberon,
"on sleeping eyelids laid, Will make or man or woman madly dote Upon the next
live creature that it sees." Equipped with such powers, Oberon and Puck control
the fates of various characters in the play to provide Shakespeare's essential
dramatic and comic structure for the play.
Thyme brings another amusing link, passing
through Scarborough fair, Elfin Knights and herbal refrains:
"Scarborough Fair" appears to derive from an
older (and now obscure) Scottish ballad, The Elfin Knight (Child Ballad #2),
which has been traced at least as far back as 1670 and may well be earlier. In
this ballad, an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she
can perform an impossible task ("For thou must shape a sark to me / Without any
cut or heme, quoth he"); she responds with a list of tasks that he must first
perform ("I have an aiker of good ley-land / Which lyeth low by yon
sea-strand"). As the song spread, it was adapted, modified, and rewritten...The
references to "Scarborough Fair" and the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary and
thyme" date to nineteenth century versions, and the refrain may have been
borrowed from the ballad Riddles Wisely Expounded, (Child Ballad #1), which has
a similar plot...Much thought has gone into attempts to explain the refrain
"parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme"...The oldest versions of "The Elfin Knight"
(circa 1650) contain the refrain "my plaid away, my plaid away, the wind shall
not blow my plaid away" (or variations thereof), which may reflect the original
emphasis on the lady's chastity.
Scrambling letters, from Kurland to the Kuriles,
instead of finding poor Onkel Ruka, I came to Kur in Sumerian mythology, "a monstrous demon personifying
the home of the dead, Hell, the "river of the dead" (see also Styx), and
the void space between the primeval sea (Abzu) and the earth (Ma)."