this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
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Vampires
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"Few creatures of the night have captured our imagination like vampires.
What explains our enduring fascination with vampires? Is it the overtones of sexual lust, power, control? Or is it a fascination with the immortality of the undead?"
Feel free to post any vampire-related content here. I'll be posting various vampire media I enjoy just as a way of kickstarting this community but don't let that stop you from posting something else. I just wanted a place to discuss vampire movies, books, games, etc.
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This has real There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly energy to it. Perhaps...
And we're off until the 18th.
I love to hear about english nursery rymes. It is very interesting this one remind me of the less grim "le fermier dans son prΓ©". But this french nursery ryme doesn't look anything like what is happening in the book.
Oh we have The Farmer in the Dell too!
But yeah, There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is quite a bit darker.
The first three verses in full:
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,I don't know why she swallowed a fly β perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her;
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly β perhaps she'll die!
There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
How absurd to swallow a bird!
She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,
She swallowed the spider to catch the fly;
I don't know why she swallowed a fly β perhaps she'll die!
And from there it continues building in that manner, adding cat, dog, goat, cow, and, finally, the final verse is (in full):
ending
There was an old lady who swallowed a horse...She's dead, of course!
The Famer in the Dell is quite close to the french one. But at our end everyone "beat the cheese". Like you sometimes "beat" dairy product to make them. I'm not sure how to translate it in English.
Whipped would be a better translation in this context. Took me a fair bit of searching to figure that out, because I normally associate whipped with cream, not cheese. Apparently some cheese can be whipped though.
The French Wikipedia has sheet music showing the rhythm of the song. And interestingly, it shows straight quavers. In English, I'd normally sing it with a swung rhythm, alternating crotchets and quavers.
You lost me here, sorry. I don't speak musik neither in english or french.
I don't know much about cheese making but the use of the verb "battre" has always intringed me. Butter is beaten (at least in french). Cream and some sort of cream or cottage cheese are whipped. But in french cream cheese or cottage cheese are closer too quick cheese or cheese subproduct than cheese. So why? I wonder.
Ah, sorry. These two examples on MuseScore should be possible to play back so you can hear the difference.
This one is how the sheet music on French Wikipedia displays it.
And this one is more familiar to me.
I don't know much about the making of cheese, butter, or cream. But the word that comes to my mind for butter is "churned". The tool used is a "butter churn", en francais, une baratte. But the French Wikipedia page for this talks about "le barattage", so I think it's a separate step from battrement? (battage? battement? idk)
idk, I don't know enough about milk products to have this conversation in English, let alone French.
Me neither but what a shame. It is such an interesting subject !