"I can think of no way in which this thing would be considered even remotely close to safe"

[larryhammer]

Orland Furioso VI:72.1-4, as Ruggiero enters Alcina's earthly paradise:

Ariosto (1532):

Su per la soglia e fuor per le colonne
corron scherzando lascive donzelle,
che, se i rispetti debiti alle donne
servasser più, sarian forse più belle.

Harington (1591):

About these stately pillars and betweene
Are wanton damsels gadding to and fro,
And as their age, so are their garments greene,
The blacke oxe hath not yet trod on their toe,
Had vertue with that beautie tempred beene,
It would have made the substance like the show:

(Line 3 is Ariosto's next two lines, displaced, while 4 ETA is from thin air elaborates upon this idiomatically [see comments].)

Rose (1821):

Upon the sill and through the columns there,
Ran young and wanton girls, in frolic sport;
Who haply yet would have appeared more fair,
Had they observed a woman's fitting port.

Reynolds (1975):

And on the threshold, near the colonnade,
Alluring damsels sported winsomely.
(If more sedate decorum they displayed,
More comely and more lovely stilll they'd be.)

Google (2012):

On the threshold and out for columns corron kidding lascivious maidens, that if the debts respects women more servasser, Sarian perhaps more beautiful.

Harington is famously not as susceptible the charms of feminine beauty as Ariosto, and can always be counted upon to moralize more heavily on the subject -- but the contrast between "stately" (his addition but implicit in the staging) and "wanton" is neat. Rose is serviceable if pedestrian. Reynolds otherwise trips lightly over the ground but that "winsome" is winceworthy, and hides all the erotic dimensions of that lascivious "lascive." Ruggiero is being erotically as well as morally seduced into the sorceress's honey-trap, and Harington and Rose have it right with "wanton."

Google, on the other hand, does not do as well with Renaissance Italian as the modern dialect. Ah, well. If it were easy to do, it wouldn't be worth doing well.

Or something like that.

---L.

Comments

[rymrytr.livejournal.com]

Very interesting!

[snakypoet]

Interesting indeed!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Fascinating!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

What happens when the blacke oxe doth trod upon their hads?

[larryhammer]

Someone corrects the transcription, which had somehow swapped two words across the end of the line. Try it now.

What the black ox is doing there at all, I've no clue. I suspect Elizabethan slang may be involved. Probably smutty.

---L.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That's interesting. Some examples here: http://www.deproverbio.com/display.php?a=3&r=43

It's a pity though, having a black ox treading on your head sounds like a much more interesting. We all have days like that...

[larryhammer]

!!

Good work. Even if it isn't as smutty as I thought.

---L.

[ersatz-read.livejournal.com]

According to the Google book pile, it means "worn with age or care" (I too was expecting something smuttier):
http://books.google.com/books?id=hDITAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA44&lpg=PA44&dq=blacke+oxe&source=bl&ots=c2iR1ndgPI&sig=LGmixfdDH-S7y-1k9n-dzLF0dFo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=XDg0UKW0HYq3yQGsg4GIAQ&ved=0CE0Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=blacke%20oxe&f=false

If we hadn't already chosen the honey badger as the project mascot, I'd put in a vote for the blacke oxe.

[larryhammer]

Hee. Also, also a good find.

---L.