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black cow verse
Issue 11: "TRAGEDY"

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black cow verse: "Tragedie of Lepropais"

The Melatauros Cycle

This verse fragment from the epic Melatauros Cycle, was discovered in Delphi in 1255, and has since been dated to the late 3rd century BC. It follows the episodic adventures of a Greek prince journeying from Sparta to Byzantium. This section of parchment contains the oldest extant reference to goat song or "tragoidia," the origin of our English "tragedy."

BOOK XXXIV:
Of the Sorrow of Lepropais

MELATAUROS: Accch! 'Tis Lepropais who croucheth in this squalid way, and covered in a pox of prickle spots.

LEPROPAIS: Good day, Melatauros. Aye, 'tis my fortune this curst hide of a rabid donkey. The children play at lots now for to make cruel lancings at the most suppurous of these fell boils.

MELATAUROS: Dost they bother with an itch or smarting?

LEPROPAIS: Bother? Alas, 'tis with a dread that they do bother. For 'tis nibbly death of which they do portend. The Magi who dwelleth in the southern march below the ford at Iolcus hath forbade that they be healed. It seems their arrangements do form an augury from which he reads mens' thoughts and better sees the devious branchings of their fates. The constellations of these foul blemishes do aid him tell men's futures with a clarity unknown to any seer who studies stars. Alas, for I would be rid of them in one beating of the heart. They do bother me with shame and, SEE!, how now there doth issue a reeking blatch from out them that would close a city's doors were I to wander windward of the dwelling places.

MELATAUROS: 'Tis true. You stinkest like a carrion. This fume must reach from high places to the most infernal pit of Hades. I should think thou hadst come upon a brace of rotting kine and fallen here by the roadside to flay the fox and change the juices of thy stomach atime amid the shade of these rough reeds.

LEPROPAIS: My stomach barks the hours of the day, dear Melatauros. It is a feature of this malady. Would that it were only rank and reeky offal of the highway that had put this fit of retching on my body... But can no one remove this foetid Furies gift?

MELATAUROS: Have you knowledge of the playing of the goats?

LEPROPAIS: Speak not of goats that dance and play amid the twisted bracken. 'Tis fools talk.

MELATAUROS: 'Tis more a singing of the goatish songs. Thou wouldst not skip about on goatish hooves. Nay, more a chanting than a play of feet.

LEPROPAIS: And why this goatish bleating, this song of kids?

MELATAUROS: A cruel spirit of the woods hath laid these poisons on you. Do not dally in this dreck of pus and bilious earth for the Magi to return and prophesy with your lesions. Leap up in tragoidia like one that moves with Pan, swollen with the nectar and ambrosia. Cast off these rags of the underworld. Sing of buoyant nights under midsummer's pale orange moon and... [end of text - incomplete]


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