Sunday 2 July 2017

Dithyramb(s)

This lovely word was in my post this morning from one of thse sites that spits out a word a day.I can't possibly quote every dictionary on it so if you want to know more, please google it!

If I had to choose one definition it would be this one:

choral song in honour of the wine god Dionysus. The form was known as early as the 7th century bc in Greece, where an improvised lyric was sung ................to be found HERE

I searched for examples and some very nice ones came up HERE, especially in the choruses. One could be tempted to call them jingles, I suppose....


Look HERE if you are a glutton for punishment. I found a nice one on INSOMNIA. It definitely qualifies. It is centred on the writer (poet?), is irregular and a lot of it is daft (to quote a fellow northener) to the point of ecstasy. I expect that 's how the Ancient Greeks thought of their congenial gods, but in fact the idea of praising someone to the hilt who does not really merit it is still around us, even if it is not expressed in verse. It happens a lot at funerals.

I went to one once where the parson, who did not know the dead person (I did) praised her as being sweet-tempered and nice. She was definitely not sweet-tempered and nice and she came to a rather sticky end.. Unfortunately for her, at the ripe old age of 90 she drank a whole bottle of cassis liqueur that had just been given her for her birthday (not by me, I hasten to add) thinking it was ribena (UK kids' drink made of red fruit), fell and at the hospital they did not wait until she was sober before operating. That really put the kibosh on things.
I had stopped visitng her except on her birthday, when I felt obliged.. My baby son had flame red hair and I caught her with her head in the pushchair chanting "Rotes Haar, roter Sinn, Steckt der Teufel mitten drin" (translates to red hair, red mind, and the devil is inside) which is actually a reversed dithyramb, I suppose. I understand that Germans used to think of people with red hair as coming from the devil! Mind-boggling....



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