[Other] Breaking Apr 1st news! MS 408 proves Blackadder actually existed!

[hatoncat]

Though at first glance I seem mild snake,

T'would be a foolish error to make!

No garter snake, I! Don't void your bladder --

I am, in fact, the loathsome Adder!



While I seem brown, I fade, alack!

So know, in truth, my hue is BLACK!

Heed me well, though 'tis hard to imagine it,

For I am the glorious serpent Plantagenet!



The snake loomed larger, its jaws gaping, and I found myself falling into its ravenous maw. Waking bathed in sweat, I somehow knew I had been given the key to the Voynich manuscript.



Puzzled, I did a Google search for some sort of "black adder" or "blackadder". Buried among results for William Blackadder (executed for his role in the murder of Lord Darnley), St. Andrew Blackadder Parish Church, and every Thursday being Curry Night at The Blackadder Hotel Bar & Restaurant [1], I found references to a BBC historical drama involving a fringe theory regarding the final years of the Plantagenet dynasty [2]. A thrilling dramatization that features all the historical accuracy that viewers of _I, Claudius_ had come to expect [3] from the Beeb, it follows the adventures of the Black Adder (Prince Edmumd, younger son of Richard IV (sic!)), and his associates Baldrick and Lord Percy Percy.

This reminded me a bit of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Horace Smith's Voynich competition:

"In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great VOYNICH," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder — and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.
— Horace Smith, "Voynich"


I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart.[d] Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Voynich, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

— Percy Shelley, "Voynich", 1819 edition[16]