Something Rhymes with Purple - Lanolin

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

It’s a knit and natter kind of episode today Purple People, as we unravel the words and phrases that are woven throughout the world of knitting.  We’ll unstitch the mystery of what frogs have to do with knitting mistakes, how a lawyer’s wig pulled the wool over our eyes, what stitches and sticks have in common and Susie advises Gyles to avoid knitted underwear as she is certain it will cause him shivviness - the feeling of roughness caused by a new undergarment. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us here: [e-mail] We currently have 20% off at the SRwP official merchandise store, just head to: https://kontraband.shop/collections/something-rhymes-with-purple Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com  Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week:  Metopomancy: Divination by the (lines on the) forehead or face. Hamsterkauf - Panic buying. Egg of Colombus - A brilliant idea that seems easy once you know how.  Gyles reads ‘Requiescat’ by Oscar Wilde  Tread lightly, she is near Under the snow, Speak gently, she can hear The daisies grow. All her bright golden hair Tarnished with rust, She that was young and fair Fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, She hardly knew She was a woman, so Sweetly she grew. Coffin-board, heavy stone, Lie on her breast, I vex my heart alone, She is at rest. Peace, Peace, she cannot hear Lyre or sonnet, All my life's buried here, Heap earth upon it. A Somethin’ Else & Sony Music Entertainment production.   Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts     To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail]  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's up y'all it's your man Mark Strong Strizzy and your girl Jem the Jem of all Jems and we're hosting Olympic FOMO your essential recap podcast of the 2024 Olympic Games in 20 minutes or less every day we'll be going behind the scenes for all the wins

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skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Welcome to another episode of Something Rhymes with Purple. This is a podcast where my friend Susie Dent and I meet each week to talk about words and language, because we love both words and language.

Essentially, it's an etymological show. Etymology meaning what, Susie Dent? Well, she goes back to a Greek word meaning the truth. So I like to think that it is digging around for the truth of the story behind a particular word. So it's uncovering the stories of our word origins. We're very thrilled that this podcast is international. We have listeners all over the globe, and they may not know that in this country, Susie Dent and I are known, if at all, for different things. Susie is particularly known for having been for a quarter of a century or more the doyen of the Oxford English Dictionary in a daily programme on Channel 4, one of our TV stations, called Countdown, which is a game show every day about words and numbers.

And she knows all about the words. How many years have you been doing that? I've been doing it for 30. And actually using the word doyen really reminds me of one of our old warm-up men, lovely Dudley Doolittle. And he never quite got Dorianne right, and he would introduce me to the audience as the Dunyon of Dictionary Corner. Anyway, that's me. Now tell me about you and your book, because that's out now. Oh, well, thank you very much. Yes, my book, I'm very pleased to say, is proving to be a bit of a

bestseller, not because of me, but because it's about a fascinating subject, our late queen, Elizabeth II, and it's called Elizabeth, an Intimate Portrait. And it's a serious book, though often I'm known for being a knitwit. I've been described as a knitwit, not entirely insultingly, because it's to do with my wearing knitwear when I appear on television in this country. But before I explain about the knitwear and talk about knitting, which I thought might be our theme today, the phrase knitwit, you're a bit of a knitwit. What's the origin of knitwit as a word? Well, I would love to think that it actually goes back to

the first sense of wit, which was general knowledge, essentially, or common sense. So your in-wit was your inner sort of knowledge and your common sense. It was also your conscience, really. And your out-wit was your perception of the world externally. And so if you had out-wit, you also had kind of good gumption and common sense, rumble gumption as it used to be called. And so I immediately assumed that a nitwit was to have no common sense at all. But sadly, the dictionary says it's much more recent and that the nit might actually be to do with the knits that you have in your hair I know I was very disappointed by that and I don't quite understand what the link would be except if you've got knits in your hair perhaps I don't know anyone who has children knows all about knits so a bit of a kind of broken thread there for me I anyway that's where it comes from so were you a knit twit with your knitwear? I began wearing colourful knitwear on television back in the 1970s.

So that's almost half a century ago. In fact, it is half a century. I wore one first. I founded, in this country, the National Scrabble Championships. And at the finals in the first year, it was in 1971, somebody brought me a lovely sweater, which we call a jumper. In America, it's called a sweater. Did you know that? Yes. I think jumper is related to jupe, dress, etc. Exactly, yes, because a jumper was a sort of short dress. And sweater. Sweater is something you sweat in.

They brought me a sweater, a bright yellow sweater with a Scrabble board on the front saying Giles Brandreth loves Scrabble in Scrabble tiles. I appeared on television wearing that, and I was noticed. The jumper was noticed. And then I remembered having been told by an advertising man that people remember what they see on television. 83% of what they recall is what they see. Only 17% what they hear. So I thought, well, what they see will make a difference.

So I began wearing colourful jumpers, which I still do. Even on a TV show that I do here called Gogglebox, there's a celebrity version that I take part in. And another participant on Celebrity Gogglebox has been the Olympic gold medalist Tom Daley, who is an incredible diver, but he's also an incredible knitter. He loves knitting. He knits by the poolside and I'm a big knit fan. But also don't forget Sally Taylor, because do you remember at one of our live shows, she came up and gave us little knitted versions of ourselves, which is, I have to say, it's on my shelf right now. I can see it from here.

I love it. So we have knitting fans listening to our show and I love knitting. I can knit myself. Can you knit? Well, I could knit a little bit, thanks to my mum trying to teach me when I was little and crochet too. But now I think if I dropped a stitch, I wouldn't know what to do. I think I can safely say that any knitted item would be a disaster. Well, and mine are pretty disastrous. When I was in the Cub Scouts as a little boy, I got my knitting badge and I knitted a very, very, very long scarf.

Well, it seemed very long, but that's about all I could do was a very, very long scarf. I became a bit more sophisticated. Ultimately, I teamed up with a friend of mine called George Hosler, who was an artist, a sculptor. And we created knitwear together in the 1970s and 1980s, which became a bit of a vogue. together in the 1970s and 1980s, which became a bit of a vogue. People like Elton John took up our knitwear. Diana, Princess of Wales, she wore some of our sweaters. And I now have a label with George Hostler called Giles and George. So I know quite a bit about knitting, but I don't know where the word knit comes from. Where does the word knitting come from? Well, when we knit something together, we are essentially uniting it, aren't we? We're tying it together. And that figurative sense is also behind the literal sense. In Old English, you have to remember that the K was pronounced in those days because it was of Germanic origin

and the Germans pronounced their Ks. So, a boy is a Knecht, for example. And that's exactly how we used to pronounce things. And so this was Knitten, which is related to a German word Knitten. And that is a sibling of knot, because that was the sense really of knitting. It was to tie with a knot or to knot a string to make a net. And that sort of, you know, is all folded in together. We have an interesting question actually from a purple person, Lennon y Vasquez Toledo, who's from Mexico. Great name, if I may say so. He's asked if there's a connection with being a trickster,

because in French, tricot means to knit. So he's wondering if that tric is actually behind a trick. And the answer is no. It's a lovely idea, Lennon, but no. Tric, well, tricoter, I should say in French, to knit, that comes from an old French word meaning to beat with sticks, really. It was all about kind of striking. So when you're knitting and, you know, tap, tap, tapping with your needles, that is what you're doing and nothing to do with tricking someone, sadly.

Maybe we could talk a little bit about the sort of substance of knitting and you know what we knit so yarn is not particularly interesting that is well i say it's not particularly interesting sorry to disc yarn where does yarn come from it just is from a germanic word which was looked very very similar so there's not much of a story to that but wool has been used in various different ways and wool is first recorded in around the 8th century. So we're talking around 700. And it goes back to a root that's shared by a Latin word, lana, which also meant wool. And you'll find that in lanolin, because lanolin is oil from wool. And trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes. And that was first used, I think, of an American

lawyer in the mid 19th century. So the idea is that the wool was the lawyer's curly wig. So if you are wooling someone, you are basically pulling the wig over their eyes, so they're not actually seeing the truth and they are beguiled by falsehoods. That's the idea, which I like. And then woolly headedheaded, which is something I feel particularly often. I think that's just in the idea of having something woolly has this kind of slightly fuzzy outline to it, which is quite a good metaphor when you're feeling a bit befuddled, I find. You mentioned dropping a stitch. What is a stitch and why is it so called? Well, in Anglo-Saxon times, so again, we're going back to World English,

stitch was any sharp, stabbing pain, right? So this is not just the pain in the side that we know as a stitch today caused by exercise. And the word is related to a stick, really. And Shakespeare was the first to mention a stitch brought on by laughing in Twelfth Night. If you will laugh yourselves into stitches, follow me. So that was the first sense and the sewing sense of stitch didn't arise until medieval times so we're talking about the middle ages and i guess again the idea is of stabbing something so you are puncturing something with a needle just as pain punctures your side when you have a stitch and then we have the

proverb a stitch in time saves nine that's 18 century. And that obviously means if you sort out a problem now, you'll save a lot of extra work later. No particular significance, we think, in the choice of number nine, except it rhymes with time, sort of. And people talk about a bobble hat, a knitted hat with a bobble on top. Yes. What is the origin of the word bobble? It's a lovely word, isn't it?

I have loved reading the origin piece in the Oxford Dictionary for this because it says that short words are often the hardest to pin down and this is particularly the case with bob because it can be used in lots of different ways. So if you have a hairstyle, the bob hairstyle, it means short. A bob tail on an animal is short. A bob cat, for example. A bob sleigh is a short form of a sleigh. But other things involve a quick, short movement. So people bob up and down and boxers bob and weave. And I think the bobble stitch, kind of creating that sort of ball, I don't know which of those it would be. I suspect not short. I imagine it's the kind of quick movements, really, quick movements in the same place. But to be honest, the jury is slightly out on that one. We're doing all this with knitting needles,

as in finding a needle in a haystack. But these needles are, well, they're quite big, a knitting needle, isn't it? They're different from a little needle, but it's the same word. Yes. And ultimately, it goes back to the German nadl. That's how it came into Old English. But ultimately, probably a Greek word meaning thread. So that makes sense. And then if we needle someone, we're irritating or annoying them as though we're sticking a pin in them. Yeah. But nothing to do with noddle, as in another word for your head.

Because that's to do with nodding. That is absolutely to do with nodding. Your noddle is nodding. Yeah. Although your noddle originally was the back of the head believe it or not i like to noddle my noddle with my bobble on my bobble hat yeah what is frogging we've talked about this before i know the word frogging has come up on yes okay well this is if i was to knit this is what i would be doing all the time uh you're basically ripping up your knitting and starting over because you've you've made such a mess of it or you want to correct a mistake and i love this

and we did cover this you're right it is apparently so cool because you rip it rip it uh when you are ripping up your your wool and it must have reminded someone of that ribbit ribbit of a frog oh really do you mean that's the origin? Apparently, which is lovely. Well, I tell you what, I remember this, but I'm going to double check this. Do double check that. While you double check it,

I will tell you, and I'm sure when it came up last time, I did tell you because the picture immediately came into my mind of me as a very little boy, age three or four, sitting at my mother's feet. My mother was a very keen

and a very skilled knitter all her life. She knitted, you know, for her own children, then her grandchildren. But I would sit at her feet when I was a little boy with my hands out in front of me, about a foot apart, stretched out in front, and she would unravel the knitting that she'd done and loop it around my hands. Was your mother a knitter? Can you picture? Yes, I do remember that. Yeah, my mum still knits. I absolutely can. And just to confirm, the OED does corroborate the fact that it is a punning reference to ribbit, ribbit. Isn't that lovely? 1995 is the first record that we have of that.

But you mentioned raveling as well. And it's interesting because you would expect that ravel would be the opposite of unravel. So if you unravel something, you take it apart. And if you ravel something, you are possibly putting it together. But actually, the Dutch raveled first and it meant to both entangle and disentangle. So it's thanks to them that we have this sort of slight, what they call Janus word, one that faces both ways. And in the early 17th century, we took on unravel, and they essentially had the same meaning, ravel and unravel. So whoever said that English was easy. I only have, as knitted garments, I only have sweaters. I have got a nightshirt. I can imagine you in a nightshirt.

With a nightcap. It's a red striped nightshirt, and I've got a lovely shirt i can imagine you're in a night with a night cap it's a red striped night shirt and i've got a lovely hat with a pom-pom this is how i'm imagining it is it's very screwed like i look very screwed like and i love that and i've got lots of scarves i've got some bobble hats but i don't have any undergarments you don't wear used to wear knitted oh you mean no knitted i do wear undergarments i don don't wear undergarments? People used to wear knitted. Oh, you mean no knitted at all? I do wear undergarments. No knitted at all? I don't, yes. We're going to discuss going commando

and not wearing undergarments when we do our next live show. You know that? On the 18th of December, I do know we're due to be at the Fortune Theatre in London on stage, you and I, talking about undergarments, underpinnings, unmentionables.

People call them undercrackers, do they? Is that one of the words for them? Have I made that up? No. Undercrackers unmentionables. People call them undercrackers, do they? Well, I do. Is that one of the words for them? Have I made that up? No. Undercrackers, that's hilarious. Men's underpants are called undercrackers. But I think underwear generally undercrackers in my book. Yeah, I think so.

But I don't like the idea of knitted underwear. People in olden days, people used to wear knitted underwear. Oh yes, do you remember the word shivviness, which is the discomfort caused by new underwear? I imagine a lot of shivviness when it comes to knitted underwear. Anyway. If you want to come to one of our live shows, simply go to somethingrhymeswithpurple.com or follow us on social media.

But somethingrhymeswithpurple.com is the place to go. Should we take a quick break? Absolutely. And come back with maybe some idioms and knitting related phrases. And then we've got some great correspondence today too. Oh, I'm knitting my brow in anticipation of that. I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray.

And I'm Leah President. And this is Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. We are a new show breaking down the anime news, views and shows you care about each and every week. I can't think of a better studio to bring something like this to life. Yeah, I agree. We're covering all the classics. If I don't know a lot about Godzilla, which I do, but I'm trying to pretend that I don't.

Hold it in. And our current faves. Luffy must have his do. Tune in every week for the latest anime updates and possibly a few debates. I remember, what was that? Say what you're going to say and I'll circle back. You can listen to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. And watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Hi, I'm Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast Dinners On Me. We'll be right back. The only thing that I had that I could have done was organize crime. And Sofia Vergara, my very glamorous stepmom.

Well, I didn't want to be comfortable. Or Julie Bowen, who had very special talents. I used to be the crier. Or my TV daughter, Aubrey Anderson Emmons, who did her fair share of child stunts. They made me do it over and over and over. You can listen to Dinners on Me wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Something Rise with Purple, where Giles is instructing me on the art of knitting, with which I have only a very, it's a bare minimum of knowledge, a very tangential relationship.

I know about the craft of knitting. The art of knitting was really in the hands of my colleague, George Hosler, when we teamed together. He was the artist. I just had amusing ideas. It's a great craft. And of course, traditionally associated with men, because it was sailors who were on long sea journeys were considered to be great knitters.

And it's only more recent years that's become seen as a female craft. But now I think, I hope everybody can do it. And actually young people particularly too and I remember when I lived in Germany in the 1990s and early well in the 2000s as well I remember you know any subway journey that you would take you would see students particularly men but also women knitting away and it was really cool thing to do and Germany's got a lovely relationship with knitting actually it's never been something consigned to old age which i think it has that reputation here doesn't it that is changing because knitting get-togethers are happening everywhere people

have knit and natter sessions where they get together they have tea coffee and do some knitting sometimes i'm afraid also known as these gossipy sessions uh stitch and bitch not just knit and natter stitch and bitch I've heard but that apparently is one of the phrases people hook up to oh hook up is that a knitting phrase people hook up together to go knitting I think that hook might be you know used in a sort of general sense if you like I am just looking now, a hookup, 1903, that was a connectional combination of radio or TV broadcasting facilities. 1903? Yeah.

1903, radio? Well, in terms of... I didn't think radio really got going until the 1920s. No, it says especially, a connectional combination, especially of radio or TV broadcasting facilities. And it's earliest earliest forms probably not but 1922 in a manual how to make vacuum wireless receiving sets they talk about amplifier hookups but nowadays obviously it is in a slang sense actually from 1980s a romantic or sexual relationship especially a casual one is a hookup so i'm not sure the hook

is specifically needles i think it's from the idea of casual that hence the expression hooker so and so was a hooker that's a more recent as in hooking up for a casual relationship is in the sense of a sex worker i think will be much much older um okay so 1567 a thief who snatched away articles with a hook, a pilferer. And then 1845, a prostitute. So someone who hooks someone else, I suppose, is the idea. Reels them in. So that's the noun hook up.

But the verb to hook up actually was mentioned in 1854 as in using a crochet needle. Miss Townsend hooked away with her crochet needle. So pretty old, that usage. Well, there you go. I said I was knitting my brow. I wasn't really. I just wanted to know the origin of that expression, knitting your brow. 19th century. Why is it called knitting? Because there are lines on your brow. Yeah. But are they knitted together? Why do they? Well, I i think in a way if you knit your brow they do come closer together your eyebrows don't they so you almost have a mono brow i think maybe maybe that's the idea have you ever seen yarn bombing there's quite a lot of

yarn bombing near me which i love yarn bombing what's yarn it's also called uh i love this graffiti knitting or niffiti and this is where lampposts i mean it's just so clever lampposts overnight suddenly acquire this kind of almost like a leg warmer uh going all the way i've seen near me there are letter boxes post boxes that have been covered they've been given sort of little hats it's such a lovely thing warm it's a charming street art also called gorilla knitting gorilla knitting but yeah it's covering objects or structures with with these lovely decorative Keep them warm. It's a charming idea. It's a kind of street art, also called guerrilla knitting. But yeah, it's covering objects or structures with these lovely decorative knitted coverings. It's gorgeous.

It is gorgeous. I love yarn bombing. And hats off to the people who do it, because I imagine it takes quite a long time in the middle of the night. Yeah, not just hats off, but particularly knitted bonnets off. particularly knitted bonnets off. If you know more about the language of knitting than we do, or you want that a particular specific words that you're after the correct etymology of, and want Susie to help, do get in touch with us. Our address is simply purple at somethingelse.com and something is spelt without a G. Have people been in touch with us this week? They certainly have. Scott Hales is the first because we recently spoke

about kid napping and kidding someone, if you like. And a kid nap literally was nap or napping or nabbing a child, essentially. And a child is called a kid because of the idea of a small kiddie goat, a young goat. So it's fairly sort of obvious, but you wouldn't expect it to be, I think. But anyway, Scott says, recently, a group of us volunteered to learn how to repair a church wall. The wall is made up of flint and coping stones held together with lime mortar. To help shape the wall, we often needed to nap, spelt K-N-A-P, the flints. This led us to discuss the word nap and its various derivatives such as a knapsack taking a nap and various other uses and uses any help on the subject or word would

be greatly appreciated so i went delving into the oed as i always do and start off with knapsack now this is this is a an outlier really because this goes back to the German knappen, again, that hard K, which meant to bite food or take a snack and sack, which meant to sack. So knapsack was first used by soldiers for carrying food supplies. So it was essentially a bag for snacks. Now, the sense that Scott mentions in architecture and archaeology and, you know, wall building is essentially, the nap here is to shape a piece of stone by striking it so as to make a tool or weapon or a flat face stone for building walls. And it goes back to a Dutch and German word knappen, which meant crack or crackle, because the idea is of striking someone and making a hard

short sound so this is the idea of knocking or wrapping and finally Scott mentions taking a nap and that's not spelt with a k and is very different this is an old English word that means obviously taking up is to doze or to slumber and lots of siblings in different languages you'll find a word in Norwegian that's spelled pretty much the same way, but we don't know where it comes from. But it isn't to do with a knapsack and it isn't to do with napping a wall, but it did take me off on a lovely etymological hunt. So thank you for that, Scott. Well done. Isabel Cornfoot, great name, has been in touch. Kia ora, Susie and Giles. Please could you tell me more about the etymology of the word squall?

I don't hear it used so much these days, but I've heard squall being used in relation to the wind and sea and is more commonly used by older family members that are either living in the US or the UK and is often paired with gust. I'd be interested to know the history of gust too. I've also heard squall being used when referring to a moaning younger sibling. Stop that dreadful school! Now, I don't know if that's a creative use or a correct use of the

word. Either way, I'm fond of it. I love listening to the podcast and have been listening since the beginning. I currently live in Wellington in New Zealand, but I was born in Canterbury in the UK, and the podcast is a nice tie back to home. Ka kite, Isabel Cornfoot. Isabel, thank you very much for being in touch. And tell us the etymology of squall. Well, just start with gust, because that was an aside from Isabel. That's from the Vikings, and it goes back to a word meaning to gush.

So the idea of something kind of coming out forcefully was then transferred to the wind, gusts of wind. And squall is very similar, really. It's interesting because I've not heard squall in the idea of crying out loudly. I've not heard any mention of babies squalling. Really? A squalling child? No, I've not. That was completely new to me.

I'd have spelt it S-Q-U-A-W, but maybe that's wrong. That says in a squalling child. No, no, Isabel's right. It is to do with squalling. And this is another Viking word. This time one, ksvala, meaning to cry out, which is probably imitative in origin, imitative. So it replicates the sounds cavala. And it's related to squeal, that idea of crying out, if you like. And it is related to the squall that is a silent and violent gust of wind, because the idea again is of wind squealing and making a sort of intense blowing sound. So both of those do go back to the same route, the same Viking route. Brilliant. If people want to communicate with us, you know where we are, purple at something else dot com. And you know where we are at the end of each podcast because Susie always gives us

a trio, a threesome of interesting words. And what have you got in your grab bag today? My grab bag? Well, it was interesting. I was on a train thinking of these actually, and I kind of went into the Oxford English history in a different way in that I entered via the thesaurus and thought, I wonder what's a good word, old word for this. So I kind of started off with a definition and this was one I hadn't really expected. I was thinking about knitted brows and I came across the word metopomancy, which is M-E-T-O-P-O-M-A-N-C-Y. Now mancy, if it's got that in its word, it means divination of some kind. So foretelling the future. And this is from the 17th century divination or foretelling the future by the lines on the forehead.

divination or foretelling the future by the lines on the forehead. So rather like reading a palm, apparently some people can read the lines on your forehead and predict your future, which I thought was pretty interesting. The second one is hamsterkauf, a German word meaning hamster buying. And hamsterkauf is essentially panic buying, particularly, which we all remember from lockdown when people were coming to verbal, well, fisticuffs essentially over loo rolls. Hamster calf is panic buying because a hamster will stuff things into its cheeks for later use. So I just quite like hamster calf. And the egg of Columbus, have you heard of this, Giles? I've never heard of the egg of Columbus. It's great. When do you come up with these things?

The egg of Columbus is a brilliant idea that seems easy once you know how. And it actually does derive from an apparently apocryphal story from the 16th century. So Christopher Columbus was essentially told by a group of naysayers that his success could have been achieved by anybody. You know, it wasn't particularly special. And so he comes up with a challenge to prove how superior he is. And he invites these people to take an egg and make it stand on its tip. They try every which way, but they botch every attempt. They give up and then look at Columbus who taps the egg on the table, gives it a flat bottom and voila, the egg stands up. And that is why the egg of Columbus moved into English to mean something that's really easy when you know how.

Oh, I love it. That's a great trick to play. Do remember, children, if you're going to try and do this, boil the egg first. Otherwise, you end up with a lot of mess on the table. With a boiled egg, that really works. With a raw raw one it can not work quite as well how about a poem do you have a poem for us today yes i do when i've finished today's podcast i'm going to a funeral another one i go to a lot i've reached that age this is a friend of mine who died comparatively young i met him 22 years ago he invited me to join him and some friends of his in Paris to mark the death of the great Irish playwright, poet, Oscar Wilde. And Oscar Wilde, born 1854, died 1900 in a hotel in Paris on the 30th of November in 1900. So 100 years later, 30th of November 2000, my friend,

who's called Robert Palmer, whose funeral I'm going to, he invited us to gather in the very room where Oscar Wilde died to raise a glass to the memory of Oscar Wilde. I mean, he's looking for a poem to read at the funeral. The poem I'm going to read you is not the poem I've chosen to read at the funeral, but this poem is a well-known poem by Oscar Wilde. It's called Requiescat, and it was written in memory of Oscar Wilde's younger sister, who died not long before her 10th birthday in 1867. And according to her mother, Isola, that was her name, she died of a sudden effusion of the brain. And Oscar was only 12 at the time, and he was inconsolable when his sister died. Anyway, Oscar Wilde wrote this poem in the memory of his sister in 1881. Tread lightly, she is near, under the snow.

Speak gently, she can hear the daisies grow. All her bright golden hair, tarnished with rust, she that was young and fair, fallen to dust. Lily-like, white as snow, she hardly knew she was a woman, so sweetly she grew. Coffin-bored, heavy stone, lie on her breast. I vex my heart alone, she is at rest. breast. I vex my heart alone. She is at rest. Peace, peace, she cannot hear, lyre or sonnet. All my life's buried here. Heap earth upon it. It's a touching poem, isn't it? Yeah. And Oscar Wilde in memory of his sister. So anyway, there we are. So I'm going to a funeral. So let's think of all the people who are going to funerals today. Well, I will be thinking of you. How old was Oscar Wilde when he wrote that? He was an adult by then, but he was still quite young. And of

course, he was young when he died. He was only, I think, 46 when he died. But she was not quite 10. There's nothing so heartbreaking as the death of a child. And at least my friend, whose funeral I'm going to today, he lived his full score, seven, you know, what is the line? Three score years and ten. Three score years and ten. That's what the Bible promises us. So he had at least what was promised to him. Good. All right.

Well, we will be thinking of you. And thank you to everybody who has joined us today on our knitting trip. I have learned a lot. I think I might take it up, actually. I'm not sure. I might get one of those kids knitting sets and have a go. And if you can't, if you haven't got the patience to do that, and you've got a lot of money,

you could go to GilesandGeorge.com and look at all my beautiful jumpers. Honestly, enough flannecking from you, Giles. Flannecking is the indiscriminate selling of oneself or one's goods. Thank you to everyone who's joined us today. Please keep following us wherever you get your podcasts and do recommend us to friends because we would love to extend the Purple community.

You can join us on social media at Something Rhymes on Twitter and Facebook or at Something Rhymes with on Instagram. And for more Purple even, why not consider the purple plus club if you can for ad free listening and special bonus episodes on words and language yeah well it leaves me time to say something rhymes with purple is a something else and sony music entertainment production produced by harriet wells with additional production from chris skinner

jen mystery jay beal teddy riley and i reckon he's off yarn bombing because he's never here production from Chris Skinner, Jen Mystery, Jay Beale, Teddy Riley and... I reckon he's off yarn bombing because he's never here. And now he's the original nitwit. Gully.