7.0370 Rs: Horny cuckolds; Transferring files (2/76)

Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 23 Dec 1993 10:31:02 EST

Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 7, No. 0370. Thursday, 23 Dec 1993.


(1) Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1993 18:47:27 -0500 (EST) (64 lines)
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (W. McCarty)
Subject: horny cuckolds

(2) Date: Thu, 23 Dec 93 16:05:28 IST (12 lines)
From: "David M. Schaps" <F21004@BARILVM>
Subject: Re: 7.0356 Rs: Transferring Files

(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1993 18:47:27 -0500 (EST)
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (W. McCarty)
Subject: horny cuckolds

The etymology of "cuckold" is not helpful to answer Michael Ossar's
question about why cuckolds wear horns: "The origin of the sense is
supposed to be found in the cuckoo's habit of laying its egg in
another bird's nest" (OED, 2nd edn.). I suspect that the ancient
association of sexual energy with the head and that which grows from
it is ultimately the origin. See in particular the amazing book by
Richard Broxton Onians, <t>The Origins of European Thought about the
Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate</t> (Cambridge,
1951; rpt. New York, 1973) for many clues of where to look. I quote
here from the pages cited in the index as having to do with cuckolds
(243-5):

-----
In any case, if 'horn' had in early times such sexual
significance, we can understand, as it has not been possible
hitherto, how a man's wife, who receives lovers, prostituting
herself ..., could be said 'as the saying is, to make
horns for him ....' She thus supplements him. Possibly there is a
joking suggestion also of her working for his benefit. From such an
idiom it would be but a step to say that the husband who
'has many a Paris in his house'... has horns. The lemma to this
epigram describes him as keraspho/ros.
These appear to be the earliest references to this association.
Mediaeval poems (e.g. in the thirteenth century) show a
belief that a horn grew upon the forehead of him whose
wife had received a lover. Presently it was a custom in
England and elsewhere in Europe for neighbours to put actual
horns upon the head of the husband, apparently to show with
what his wife had supplemented him. Possibly on occasion
the association of horns with the pugnacious anger (see
pp. 148 ff.) of the sexual element played a part. In The Story
of Rimini Leigh Hunt describes how an enemy

Had watched the lover to the lady's bower
And flew to make a madman of her lord.

The putting of horns upon the head of the patient cuckold
might by some be intended to endow him with that which he
seemed to lack, sexual power and pugnacity, what belonged
to the element in the head. Their use (see pp. 148 f.) of cerebrum
and cerebrosus (cf. eenchainneach) implies that for the Romans
to have more brain was to have more of the substance active
in aggressive anger, and the conception traced of the horns
as an outcrop of that substance will help us to understand
Ovid's reference to his becoming angry at last because his
mistress receives other lovers: venerunt capiti cornua sera meo, and
Petronius' aerumnosi quibus prae mala sua cornua nascuntur, also
Virgil's irasci in cornua of a bull extending its anger into its
horns (cf. Ovid's armenti modo dux vires in cornua sumo)....
-----

I hope this helps. Merry Christmas!


WM
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Willard McCarty / Centre for Computing in the Humanities
University of Toronto / mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

(2) --------------------------------------------------------------19----
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 93 16:05:28 IST
From: "David M. Schaps" <F21004@BARILVM>
Subject: Re: 7.0356 Rs: Transferring Files (3/70)

For transferring files from computer to computer, I use a shareware
program called ZIP.COM, which is, I believe, cheaper than LAPLINK and
very serviceable. MS-DOS 6.0 comes with a INTERSRV, which allows your
own computer to treat the other computer's drives as its own, which
means reading its disks without bothering to move them to yours. My
experience so far suggests that it is much slower than ZIP.COM, but
that really depends on what you are planning to do with the file, and
how much room you have on which computer.