Surprised Eel Historian, PhDさんのイラストまとめ

@grenouille781

Friends...it's my birthday today! I'm 45...so maybe 1/4 of the way through my life (if I'm estimating right).

So. What are some stupid things I can do today?

Need a cover for your affair? What about eels?

In one 13th C. tale a wife says she's going to smoke eels -- a 1 hour task. But instead she goes to her lover!

She comes back a week & 1 hour later (with the eels) & convinces her husband he's crazy, & she's only been gone an hour.

Nelson likely mixed up 2 different stories: one about Dunstan's clergy problems & one about God turning married priests in Germany into eels.

So it isn't a medieval tale. But it's a fun story, and a useful one in our present moment. /fin

There is a "medieval" tale about why the Fens has so many eels. The story goes that St. Dunstan got mad at a group of rebellious monks & turned them all to eels. Bam!

Because insurrection has consequences. Don't want to be an eel? Don't rebel. Don't encourage rebellion. 1/3

@singingscholar Hey, Lucy...I can help you out with both drawing and digitally annotating. By way of a work sample:

Here's a link to an annotated copy of Matthew Paris's c.1250 map of Britain:
https://t.co/L6IvG0NX5w

And here's a quick hand-drawn map I did to help my son with his schoolwork.

@ChrisRouse1212 We talked about that, too.

It's a happy day, so I'm sharing one of my favorite eel history things.

John More (d.1530) said that choosing a bride is like reaching into a bag of snakes & eels (at a 7:1 snake-to-eel ratio) & hoping you grabbed an eel.

This saying became quite popular in 16th C London. 1/3

@TheMedievalDrK Thanks! That's lovely.

You know I'm always gonna say it's an eel if given half a chance. But one thing that really makes it look like one is the way that the end of the scroll replicates the pectoral fin.

Or, as this diagram helpfully calls it...the mini flapper.

@perlchyk @proteinwisdom