posted
I'm kind of curious why the author acts so mystified by why the "Boiling in a Cauldron" image of cannibalism is so predominant.
We could ask the same thing about a big fat bearded Santa Claus... except we know the answer. Thomas Nast first drew Santa as the fat jolly man with the fur coat, and Haddon Sundblom made his coat red, to match the Coca Cola emlem. The rest, as they say, is history.
Somewhere along the line, someone drew cannibals boiling people in a cauldron, and it has stuck. It goes back to before 1852, because Herman Melville discusses it in Moby Dick when he comes to the inn called the "Try Pots."
And maybe that helps answer the question. Whaling ships were equipped with a pair of cauldrons, large enough to boil a human being, that were used to render (or "try out") whale oil from the blubber of whales. Such stories of cannibalism must have been commonly told among whalers, and since whalers spent most of their story telling time on board and out of sight of land, the try pots may have taken on the role of the setting for such story telling.
The author also mentions "boiling in oil" as a common reference, saying that somewhere where water was scarce would likely be a place where such a phrase would be coined. Well, again, on board a whale ship fresh water is scarce. And oil is particularly plentiful.
posted
Hey, think how I felt when Einstein published my Theory of Relativity with his name on it. I still haven't gotten around to sueing..
Posts: 1996 | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I just wonder if anyone is going to explain the difference between "shutter" and "shudder" to this erstwhile researcher . . . ?
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Cry]](graemlins/cry.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
![[Grumble]](graemlins/grumble.gif)
