Pages

▼

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Translation, anyone?

A friend who knows about my dog-barding project shared this with me and it cracked me up.  Seriously, barding on a cow?!  Wow.  Sadly I do not read German at all so I have no idea why on earth this manuscript is showing such a thing, but it's pretty entertaining.  If anyone out there can translate the inscription I would really appreciate it!

At least I now know putting barding on my chihuahua is not that ridiculous an idea after all!
at

3 comments:

  1. juliMarch 10, 2013 at 10:39 PM

    What an intriguing picture! I'll give it a try. (If I can crack the script.) Can you send me the link please!

    ReplyDelete
  2. HeidiMarch 12, 2013 at 7:22 AM

    Here is the link for the manuscript page - http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/cpg77/0139 Again with the German. I would have run the text through Google translate but because of the language issue the script was giving me fits. Thanks for any help you can offer!

    ReplyDelete
  3. MariaJune 1, 2013 at 12:07 PM

    I came across your page today while looking for inspiration for my mid-15th-century houpeland. As a native speaker I was intrigued by the "riddle" but I still had trouble deciphering the fractura.

    Still, I could make out the following German words (in the order they appear, dots indicate a single word I could not read):

    "Das fürstlich [...] und Nachschießen so auch der Durchleuttig hochgeborn Fürst unnd Herr Herzog Christoff zu Wirttenberg und zu [...], Grave zu Mumpellgart gehallten hat darzu [...] eine Ochsen zum Besten gab, 30 Dt wertt unnd mit einner Seidenen Decke uberzogenn."

    There is another full sentence after that which I could not read, but the information I gleaned from the fragment above is enough to know what the picure is about - and to google it.

    The manuscript the illustration came from is a report about the most popular sporting event of the area: the armbrust (crossbow) target shooting competition in the city of Stuttgart, 1560. The event was sponsored by Herzog Christoph von Wuerttemberg (1515-1568). After the main competion there was another round, the so-called "Nachschiessen". The main prize donated by Herzog Christoph was an ox worth 30 Dukaten, with a silken caparison. The animal was paraded down the line of cheering spectators and then stood near the shooting lane until the lucky winner could take it home with him.
    Source: "Wuerttemberg wie es war und ist" by Ernst Sues and other books about Wuerttemberg's history that mention the Armbrustschiessen.

    Result: Putting barding on an ox was not uncommon if said ox was a prize. There are lots of references to other crossbow shooting events where the sponsor chose a cow or an ox for the common people who were participating.

    ReplyDelete