To anyone with a medical background or a general familiarity with infectious diseases, the first phrase of that sentence would give a shudder. I found it in Chapter 3 of G. B. Edwards' The Book of Ebenezer Le Page. My dictionaries - including the O.E.D. - offer nothing but venereal disease definitions for "chancre."
The book is set on the island of Guernsey, off the French coast, and the narrative is peppered with French terms. When I type "chancre" into Google translate, however, all it offers is canker/chancroid/plague.
From the context, the "chancre" should be a shellfish, and I'm betting that the etymology is related to the Latin "cancer" for "crab" and that the chancre is a crab of some type. But why can't I find the connection? Is it perhaps a local dialect of the Guernsey region?
Perhaps one of my Francophile readers can help out on this one.
Update - Once again, no question on this blog goes unsolved. First someone found this - "The edible crab is also sometimes referred to as the Cromer crab, because it is commonly caught around the Norfolk coastal town of Cromer. In the Channel Islands languages of Dgèrnésiais and Jerriais, it is called a chancre."
And then Dominique found -
Crabe chancre - Callinectes bocourti at this link, and
Crabe verruqueux - Eriphia verrucosa at this link, which provided the photo above, and offered the photo below re etymology (from the DMF, Dictionnaire du Moyen Français)
Reposted from 2010 (!!) because tonight I rewatched The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society movie, and when I checked TYWKIWDBI to see if I had blogged it before, this was the first post that popped up. I think it's worth the repost.
FWIW, this post from 16 years ago is an example of how readers of this blog help me polish and improve the posts.
More re the movie later in the week.
Maybe this footnote will be of some help:
ReplyDelete"The edible crab is also sometimes referred to as the Cromer crab, because it is commonly caught around the Norfolk coastal town of Cromer. In the Channel Islands languages of Dgèrnésiais and Jerriais, it is called a chancre."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_crab#References
Some kind of crab :
ReplyDelete- Crabe chancre - Callinectes bocourti according to Wikipedia (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crabe)
- Crabe verruqueux - Eriphia verrucosa (http://www.iodde.org/post/Le-retour-du-chancre-de-roche)
The best reference being the DMF, Dictionnaire du Moyen Français :
"Espèce d'écrevisse de mer, dite aussi crabe". (http://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/dmf/chancre?idf=dmfXeXrmXcYbdhb;str=0 , clic on first link in the definition)
From the Dictionnaire Jersiais-Français:
ReplyDeletechancre, s.m.
5. Tourteau, ou crabe guernesiais (Cancer pagarus). Mais on dit plus communement eune crabe, ou un poigclios. Cependant les uns nous ont souvent dit qu'un chancre est plus gros qu'un poingclios (...) Les gens du district de La Rocque ddisaient, et disent encore, un ouais pour un chancre.
The scream referred to is also chilling, since these animals have a nervous system.
ReplyDelete"It gave a scream...": https://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
ReplyDeletere: the scream, can confirm. I've lived most of my life in and around Maryland, where blue crabs are popular. I haven't eaten them in years since seeing one being prepped for steaming. When Old Bay (salt, pepper, other spices) was shaken over it, it covered its eyes and shrieked.
ReplyDeleteYou are saying it "shrieked" before being put in boiling water? How do you think it made that noise?
DeleteI'm not sure. It moved its mouth-parts and there was a high-pitched noise, so in my memory, it "shrieked". Could have been its shell scraping against the steamer basket as it covered its eyes. To clarify, this wasn't "before being put in boiling water", which implies they knew something bad was about to happen. The crabs were to be steamed, not boiled. They were placed in a metal steamer basket inside a larger pot holding a fairly small amount of water -- all of this still at room temp. Old Bay was shaken over them, the pot lid was put on, and finally the heat was turned on. So at the time it "shrieked", the only negative stimulus was the spice, not the heat.
DeleteThank you for the clarification.
DeleteI suspect steam exiting a small hole in the shell makes the sound. Microwaved potatoes can scream through the fork pricks.
Delete@Maia, couldn't have been steam, this was before the burner was turned on.
DeleteGiven the choice between the "cancer crab" (chancre) or the "wart crab" (verrucosa), I think I'll pass.
ReplyDeleteChancre bleu!
ReplyDelete"..... It gave a scream when it was dropped in the hot water..."
ReplyDeleteWhen the tables turn and they become our overlords .... we can expect nothing different from the pot, be it our vocalisations or simply our juices expanding at speed through whatever vents there are.
Due unto others, as you would have due to you.
I am commenting anonymously (for now). And my comment is unrelated to this current post.
ReplyDeleteI have followed your posts for quite some time.
I think I first found you, some years ago, from Boing Boing.
What I am looking for is a post you made in recent months, about your travels. During a time when you chose to not post for awhile.
There was a marble sculpture that you liked in your travels abroad, that showed a god embracing a mortal, and the manner in which the sculpted fingers grasped the flesh were very realistic.
I am unable to find it. Did you delete that post? Or, am I thinking of another blog I frequent?
I have seen what I think is that sculpture, in the opening credits of Black Sails.
In any case, I very much enjoy your content.
Greetings to a temporarily-anonymous long-time reader.
DeleteYou may have met me via Boing Boing, because the triad of TYWKIWDBI, Boing Boing, and Neatorama did generate a lot of cross-referencing, and at one point I was on the verge of writing for Boing Boing. But... it's been many (20+) years since I was abroad and I do not remember recently blogging about that subject matter. I was able to find the sculpture image at the 0:50 mark of a YouTube video of the credits, but I do not remember blogging the topic. I tried a keyword search using various combinations and found some interesting old posts, but nothing matches what you describe.
I quite appreciate the idea that if you read something very interesting years ago it must have come from TYWKIWDBI, but in this example I think you must be misremembering.
The sculpture described, where a god's fingers realistically grasp a mortal's flesh, is likely Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Baroque masterpiece, The Rape of Proserpina. The work is famous for its stunning realism, particularly in how the god Pluto's marble fingers appear to sink into the thigh of the goddess Proserpina as he abducts her.
Deletehttps://artblogbybob.blogspot.com/2007/12/pressing-flesh.html#:~:text=Did%20anyone%20ever%20make%20marble,and%20their%20times%20equally%20well.
I found it in plenty of blogs, but on this one.
Found it
ReplyDeletehttps://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2013/12/artistic-skill-beyond-what-words-can.html
13 years ago ! No wonder I forgot about it. I wonder what else is back there.....?
DeleteAh!
DeleteIt was on Mr Kottke's blog (also part of my daily roll).
It is, indeed, the Bernini
https://kottke.org/25/06/berninis-ratto-di-proserpina