At 08:25 AM 12/17/04 +0100, Eva Von Der Bey wrote: > none of my dictionaries knows about > "moly".
I once read a fantasy story in which instructions for a magical spell began "pick a sprig of moly", so I assume its an herb or plant of some kind. The story was sort of a feghoot -- the denouement was that the spell wouldn't work because there was a misprint in it -- one was supposed to *lick* a sprig of moly. Feghoot: there was once a series of filler-length stories called "Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot", each of which ended in an atrocious pun. Like the one where Ferdinand was called to a chicken-raising planet that was asymmetrical -- the light-gravity side was noted for broilers, and the heavy-gravity side was noted for eggs. He solved their radio-communication problem by putting a hen in orbit -- thereby providing them with a heavy-side layer. (I gather that radio waves bounce off the Heaviside Layer in our atmosphere.) --------------- No wonder it wasn't in your dictionaries! Mine says that moly is a mythical herb with a black root and milk-white flowers that Hermes gave to Odysseus. It also says that a European wild garlic that is cultivated for its yellow flowers has been named after it. ??? Man, English don't make no sense. At least they are both herbs. Though I don't think that a wild garlic would have sprigs to pick *or* lick. So the characters must have had a source of the mythical plant. -- Joy Beeson http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ http://home.earthlink.net/~dbeeson594/ROUGHSEW/ROUGH.HTM http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where most of the snow melted. To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace-chat [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
