That's just the minced oath use, though maybe evolved a bit further. The bottom line is that they're using "pox" in all kinds of exclamations.
The chronological evolution is as follows:
"I swear by Gott's five holy wounds/liver/lungs/... that I will pay you back".
"I swear by pox wounds that I will pay you back
"
"Pox liver! What is this place?"
The "exclamation" use expands and evolves over time.
(12-01-2026, 11:07 PM)Koen G Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view."Pox liver! What is this place?"
'Pox liver' used as an exclamation sounds really funny, I like it
. It's weird, but not impossible at all, not weirder than ie. a minced oath in Eastern Lombard which was very common until 20-30 years ago: "kà 'nde l'ùa" ['ka.nde.'lu.a] which literally means 'dog in the grapes' (and which I cannot understand how it possibly came to be).
It all comes from the belief that God's body parts are the most sacred thing you could testify by. If you broke your oath, your sin would literally cause damage to the holiest of tissues. Of course they started mincing this into "pox" to make it less Gotts-like. But that's how we get this more profane kind of swearing with all these body parts.
Ok, thanks for clearing that up!
I assumed 'pox' came from latin (could've checked that before posting
). I did see a german translation of pox into 'die pocken' on google translate, but maybe that's more modern.
Also assumed 'leber' is the same as the Swedish word 'lever', which means either liver or living/to live.
I've kinda gotten the impression the author might be working in several languages. Maybe someone who's travelled from afar to become a scholar.
Imagine if said author is writing in a somewhat unfamiliar language mixing in foreign words & phrases, maybe a phonetic interpretation. This combined with using an alphabet and/or shorthand techniques, from another part of the world, that's since been forgotten. Could explain why it's so hard to decipher.
The question is then who is the book intended for, who would understand it's contents?
...could also just be the ambitious writings of a dyslexic druid
"Pox liver! What is this place?"
I've come to look at that case of "pox leber" like "By Merlins beard!"
.. because its funny. But I think it's closer to "Goodness gracious!" Mauro.
I actually think your example (dog in the grapes) may ring true with 116v, and what Katherine Hindley was saying might be the case in Koens video. Basically "if you know, you know". Earlier tonight I was reading about a charm to draw out 9 worms from a person into an arrow head using magic words, then a wizard(?) fires the arrow into the woods so the worm is returned home, as the woods in where the demons live, then the person will get better.
If I were to note the words down, I can imagine something like
"Wizard worm arrow abracadabra
magical stuff + magical stuff + magical stuff + magical stuff
magical stuff + magical stuff + magical stuff + magical stuff
blah blah - so then fire the arrow."
Then there's us hundreds of years later trying to work out what "Wizard worm arrow" ???????? "so then fire the arrow" is all about
Maybe they just knew "dog in the grapes".
The OCR Fastnachtspiele Torsten touched upon in the other thread contain an interesting form of "pox", which seems intermediate to me:
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"Die meidt bald bey ir selber schwur
Samer pox hur so glaubet mir"
I
think this translates to, keeping word order:
"The maid soon to her self swore
So me God .... believe me"
I'm unclear about the word "hur", this might be an OCR error. Maybe hör, "so hear me God"?
If you look back at the first post of this thread, the priest was complaining about people trying to evade proper testimony by saying "sam mir pox" instead of "Gott". So this attestation is an example of that, in the internal monologue of a lower class individual. This kind of language would have amused the audience as a recognizable caricature of the speech mannerisms of farmers, maids etc.
Not sure if it is of any use whatsoever, but I remembered "Samer pox/box/botz" was common in the examples I found previously.
I have no idea what any of these mean.. (translation tools do not have a scooby doo) so hopefully I'm not posting anything offensive...
"kein wunder wers, sammer botz lung,
das mir vor leid mein herz zersprung."
"samer pox haut!"
"samer pox leichnam!"
"samer pox trost!"
"hur" Unzucht / Hure (Fornication, whore) I think that's a curse like : Bloody hell, believe me
Die meidt bald bey ir selber schwur: Samer pox hur so glaubet mir, dass nymant schult dran hat, dann ir und ich törst wetten auf mein eydt, ir hettents mit ym an geleyt.
Die Maid bald bei sich selbst schwor: samer pox hur - so glaubet mir, dass niemand schuld dran hat, denn ihr und ich wagtet es zu wetten auf mein eid, ihr hättet euch mit ihm angelegt.
(modern German)
The maid soon swore to herself: ‘Damn it all’ – so believe me, it’s nobody’s fault, for if you and I had dared to bet on my word, you would have picked a fight with him.
I take back what I said in that post here; Koen is right, it was nonsense.