1. ”About these ‘middle spirits’ or daemons Apuleius has much to tell. They naturally inhabit the middle region between Earth and Aether; that is the Air —which extends upwards as far as the orbit of the Moon. All is, in fact, so arranged ‘that every part of nature may have its appropriate animals’. At first sight, he admits, we might suppose that birds provide the ‘appropriate animals’ for the Air. But they are quite inadequate: they do not ascend above the higher mountain-tops.“

2. ”In this sense may the Birds be considered as allogorical; as an allogorical representation of the soaring ambitions and the spirit of reckless adventure, which the poet saw everywhere around him. But this light touch of Hellenic satire was too vague and indefinite for the robuster appetites of our Teutonic cousins; and for the last eighty years they have been endeavouring to coarsen the delicate fibre of Aristophanic fantasy by discovering some actual event or events which it may be possible to attach it.“

3. ”For they counted Sicily not the final prize, but the startingplace, of the war, from which they were to enter into struggle with Carthago, and possess themselves of Libiya, and the sea within the Pillars of Heracles.“

4. ”In the fiftheenth book of Homer′s Iliad the goddess Hera flies across to Mount Olympus (in Thracië) and the poet compares her to a particular movement of the human mind. When a man has travelled far and wide, he tells, his minds will sometimes leap and he will think, ‘I wish I was here, or I wish I was there,’ as he ‘longs for many different things’.“

5. ”Some months later, Aisha′s father return from the pilgrimage. Again the son of the Sultan approached her. “Your father will come to me crying and laughing,” he said tauntingly, for so a father appears when he gives his daughter in marriage. Aisha sent her father to him crying from onions and yet laughing about the meaninglessness of her tears.”

6. ”As the tale of Aisha indicates, the virgin is innately responsible and so must be forced into sexual awareness; the male youth is innately sexual and so must be forced into a socially responsible state………It is thus logical that the parents of a bachelor initiate and carry through the complex search for a suitable bride.”.

7. ”Humour, like cockfighting, is episodic, emotional and understood as somehow ‘lesser than’ or detached from everyday life. As such, it becomes a way to displace, condense and examine various social tensions, anxieties and contradictions. Humour is an indirect means of thinking trough contentious community issues.”

8. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, translation Edward Fitzgerald, Pocket Books, 1948, pag 32:
”Think, in this batter′d Caravansarai
Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day
How Sultán after Sultán with his pomp
Abode his Hour or two, and went his way.”

9. Image-Music-Text, Roland Barth, vertaling Stephen Heath, A Fontana original, made and printed bij William Collins Sons & Co, Ltd, Glascow, 1977, The Struggle with the Angel, pag 134-135:
”Traditionally, the line of brothers is in principle evenly balanced (they are all situated on the same level in relation to the parents); this equality of birth is normally unbalanced by the right of primogeniture: the eldest is marked. Now in the story of Jacob, there is an inversion of the mark, a counter-mark: it is the younger who supplants the elder (Genesis 27:36), taking his brother by the heel in order to reverse time; it is Jacob the younger brother, who marks himself. Since Jacob has just obtained a mark in his struggle with God, one can say in a sense that the A(ngel) (=God) is the substitute of the elder brother, once again beaten by the younger. The conflict with Esau is displaced (every symbol is a displacement; if the ‘struggle with the angel’ is symbolic, then it has displaced something). Commentary -- for which I am insufficiently equipped -- would at this point doubtless have to widen the interpretation of the inversion of the mark, by placing it either in a historico-economic context --………………-- or in the field of the symbolic;………the elder are ousted in favour of the younger;………Freund pointed to the theme of the smallest difference: is not the blow on the thigh, on he thin sinew, just such a smallest difference?”

10. Me funny, compiled and edited by Drew Hayden Taylor,pag 131-132:
“Why did the chicken cross the road?
Mi′kmaq: He was on his way to Burnt Church.
Mohawk: To put up a blockade.
Ojibway: That′s the chickens inherent right.
Salish: It was going upstream to spawn.
Cree: Was the chicken running away from residential school?
Inuït: What road?
Slavee: What′s a chicken?”
Vertaling:
Waarom stak de kip de weg over?
Mi′kmaq: Hij was op weg naar een afgebrande kerk.
Mohawk: Om een wegversperring op te werpen.
Ojibway: Daar heeft een kip van geboorte af aan recht op.
Salish: Hij ging stroomopwaarts eitjes schieten.
Cree: Liep de kip soms weg van de kostschool?
Inuït: Welke weg stak hij over?
Slavee: Wat is dat, een kip?

11. Book of Noodles:
In a Russian variant, an old man had three sons, one of whom was a noodle. When the old man died, his property was shared between the brothers, but all that the simpleton received was one ox, which he took to the market to sell. On his way he chanced to pass an old birch-tree, which creaked and groaned in the wind. He thinks the tree is offering to buy his ox, and so he says, “Well, you shall have it for twenty roubles.” But the tree only creaked and creaked, and he fancied it was asking the ox on credit. “Very good,” says he. “You'll pay me tomorrow I'll wait till then.” So he ties the ox to the tree and goes home. His brothers question him about his ox, and he tells them he has sold it for twenty roubles and is to get the money to-morrow, at which they laugh; he is, they think; a greater fool than ever. Next morning he went to the birch-tree, and found the ox was gone, for, in truth, the wolves had eaten it. He demanded his money, but the tree only creaked and groaned, as usual. “You'll pay me to-morrow” he exclaimed. “That's what you said yesterday. I'll have no more of your promises.” So saying, he struck the old birch-tree with his hatchet and sent the chips flying about. Now the tree was hollow, and it soon split asunder from his blows; and in the hollow trunk he found a pot full of gold, which some robbers had hidden there. Taking some of the gold, he returns home, and shows it to his brothers, who ask him how he got so much money. “A neighbour,” he replies, “gave it to me for my ox. But this is nothing like the whole of it. Come along, brothers, and let us get the rest.” They go, and fetch the rest of the treasure, and on their way home they meet a diachok (one of the inferior members of the Russian clerical body, though not one of the clergy), who asks them what they are carrying. “Mushrooms,” say the two clever brothers; but the noodle cries, “That's not true; we're carrying money: here, look at it.” The diachok, with an exclamation, flung himself upon the gold and began stuffing it into his pockets. At this the noodle grew angry, dealt him a blow with his hatchet, and killed him on the spot. The brothers dragged the body to an empty cellar, and flung it in. Later in the evening the eldest said to the other, “This business is sure to turn out badly. When they look for the diachok, Simpleton will be sure to tell them all about it. So we had better hide the body in some other place, and kill a goat and bury it in the cellar.” This they did accordingly. And after several days had passed the people asked the noodle if he had seen the diachok. “Yes,” he answered. “I killed him some time ago with my hatchet, and my brothers carried him to the cellar.” They seize upon him and compel him to go down into the cellar and bring out the body. He gets hold of the goat's head, and asks, “Was your diachok dark-haired” “He was.” “Had he a beard?” “Yes.” “And horns?” “What horns are you talking of?” “Well, see for yourselves,” said he, tossing up the head to them. They saw it was a goat's head, and went away home.

12. MODERN GREEK FOLKLORE AND ANCIENT GREEK RELIGION,A STUDY IN SURVIVALS BY JOHN CUTHBERT LAWSON, M.A,Cambridge, at the University Press, 1910, pag 314 en haalt daarbij aan Celsus: Origen, contra Cels. iv. 88:
We believe in the prescience of all animals and particularly of birds. Diviners are only interpreters of their predictions. If then the birds……impart to us by signs all that God has revealed to them, it follows of necessity that they have a closer intimacy than we with the divine, that they surpass us in knowledge of it, and are dearer to God than we.

13. In effect, the special aptitude of birds to carry divine messages to men was never questioned in ancient Greece; it was a very axiom of religion, without which the whole science of auspices would have been a baseless fabrication.

14. Book of Noodles:
Thus we are told, among the cases decided by a Turkish Kází, that two men came before him one of whom complained that the other had almost bit his ear off. The accused denied this, and declared that the fellow had bit his own ear. After pondering the matter for some time, the judge told them to come again two hours later. Then he went into his private room, and attempted to bring his ear and his mouth together; but all he did was to fall backwards and break his head. Wrapping a cloth round his head, he returned to court, and the two men coming in again presently, he thus decided the question: "No man can bite his own ear, but in trying to do so he may fall down and break his head."
Vertaling
Onder de rechtszaken waarover een Turkse Kázi uitspraak moest doen, was een zaak waarin twee mannen voor de rechter verschenen. De ene man klaagde de andere aan, omdat die andere man bij hem bijna zijn oor had afgebeten. De beschuldigde ontkende dit, en verklaarde dat het net iets anders was gegaan, nl. de klager had zijn eigen oor afgebeten. Na een tijdje de zaak in overweging te hebben genomen, vroeg de rechter aan de beide heren om over twee uur terug te komen bij het gerechtshof. Daarop ging hij naar huis en zonderde zich af in een privévertrek. Hij probeerde zijn oor in zijn mond te nemen. Maar hij raakte zijn evenwicht kwijt, tuimelde achterover en bezeerde zijn hoofd tot bloedens toe. Hij bond een doek om zijn hoofd en keerde terug naar het gerechtshof. Toen de beide mannen even later zich meldden, besloot hij als volgt in deze kwestie: “Niemand is in staat in zijn eigen oor te bijten, maar mocht je het onverhoeds toch proberen dan bestaat er gevaar dat je je hoofd erover breekt.” En dat is mijn uitspraak en daarmee heeft u het te doen!

15. Fathers, fathers, hear me well. Call back your young men from the mountains of the bighorn sheep. They have run over our country; they have destroyed the growing wood and the green grass; they have set fire to our lands. Fathers, your young men have devastated the country and killed my animals, the elk, the deer, the antelope, my buffalo. They do not kill them to eat them; they leave them to rot where they fall. Fathers, if I went into your country to kill your animals, what would you say? Should I not be wrong, and would you not make war on me? (Simonin, Louis L. The Rocky Mountain West in 1867, geciteerd in Bury my heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown, pag 139-140).

16.He was baptized and by Chrismas of that year was ready to take his first communion. He fasted all day and attended the Chrismas Eve services that evening. The weather was bitterly cold and the little church was heated by an old wood stove placed in the center of the church. Gall, as the most respected member of the community, was given the seat of honor next tot he stove where he could keep warm. In deference tot he old man, my grandfather offered himcommunion first. Gall took the chalice and drained the entire supply of wine before returning to his seat. The wine had been intended fort he entire congregation and so the old man had a substantial amount of spiritual refreshment. Upon returning to his warm seat bij the stove, it was not long before the wine took its toll on the old man who by now had had nothing to eat for nearly a day. “Grandson,” he called to my grandfather, “now I see why you wanted me to become a Christian. I feel fine, so nice and warm and happy. Why didn′t you tell me that Christians did this every Sunday? If you had told me about this, I would have joined your church years ago.”(Uit Custer died for your sins, Vine Deloria, pag 154-155).

17. Fragment uit: The conference of Birds, Farid uddin Attar, translated by Afham Darbandi and Dick Davis, London, Penguin, 1984 (org. 1177), pag. 75:
In India lives a bird that is unique: The lovely phoenix has a long, hard beak
Pierced with a hundred holes, just like a flute —
It has no mate, its reign is absolute.
Each opening has a different sound, each sound
meeans something secret, subtle and profound —
And as these shrill, lamenting notes are heard,
A silence falls on every listening bird;
Even the fish grow still. It was from this
Sad chant a sage learnt music′ artifice.
The phoenix′life endures a thousand years
And, long before, he knows when death appears;
When death′s sharp pangs assail his tiring heart,
And all signs tell him he must now depart,
he builds his pyre from logs and massy trees
And fom its centre sings sas trenodies —
Each plaintive note trills out, from each pierced hole
Comes evidence of untarnished soul—
Now as a morner′s ululating cries,
Now with an inward care the cadence dies —
And as he sings of death, death′s bitter grief
Thrills through him and he trembles like a leaf.
The drawn to him by his heart-piercing calls
The birds approach, and savage animals –
They watch, and warching grief; each in his mind
Determines he will leave the world behind.
Some weep in sympathy and some grow faint;
Some die to hear his passionate complaint
So death draws near, and as the phoenix sings,
He fans the air with his tremendous wings,
A flame darts out and licks across the pyre —
Now wood and phoenix are a raging fire,
Which slowly sinks from that first livid flash
To soft, collapsing charcoal, the to ash;
The pyre′s consumed — and from the ashy bed
a little phoenix pushes up its head.
What other creature can — through the earth —takes him,
After death takes him, to himself give birth?
If you were given all the phoenix′years
Still you would have to die when death appears.
For years he sings in solitary pain
And must companionless, unmated, reign;
No children cheer his age and at his death
His ash is scattered by the wind′s cold breath.
Now undersrand rhat none, however sly,
Can slip past death′s sharp claws— we all must die;
None is immortal in the world&primes vast length;
The wonder shows no creature has the strength
To keep death′s ruthless vehemence in check—
But we must soften his imperious neck;
Though many tasks will fall to us, this task
Remains the hardest that the Way will ask.