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May 30

Who is the priest in The House That Jack Built??

I've been doing research on trying to find what kind of person the priest is in The House That Jack Built. I have 2 problems with this character. To see both of these problems, please examine these words:

This is the priest all shaven and shorn
That married the man all tattered and torn
That kissed the maiden all forlorn...

First, if the man kisses the maiden it would make sense that the man is about to marry the maiden. Second, priests are normally male, and the priest and the man would make a gay couple; this is an old story and gay marriage is a modern concept. (Wikipedia itself has an article Priest, but it refers to women of this kind as priestesses, and a Google search on "This is the priestess" reveals only 39 results, none of which talk about this poem.)

Does anyone have any idea on what kind of person the priest actually is?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:23, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Uhm, it might interest you to know that when we say that a priest "marries" a man, or "marries" a man and a woman, that the priest is the formal Church/State witness to the marriage between the man and a woman. This normally goes without saying, given the widespread practice of clerical celibacy. Does that help some? Elizium23 (talk) 00:26, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Correct. In this case the word “married” means he officiated at the wedding ceremony, not that he was one of the people getting married. It is somewhat archaic usage. Blueboar (talk) 00:46, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Blueboar, it is not archaic in the least. It is in current and common usage among men and women who are married by priests. Elizium23 (talk) 00:58, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

(after edit conflict Yes, see Wiktionary's entry wikt:marry#Verb, meaning #5. You read it as meaning #1 #3, Georgia guy. In our article's version (This Is the House That Jack Built), it's the judge who marries the man etc. Judges rarely have to be celibate, but the shaven-and-shorn one still didn't enter into a conjugal state with the man all tattered and torn. ---Sluzzelin talk 00:48, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

:) Bookku (talk) 00:52, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The judge must be an American innovation, since judges can't officiate at weddings in England; you need a registrar, an office which I believe post-dates the rhyme by about a century. Alansplodge (talk) 11:59, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Everyone in modern society is familiar with the word marry as having meaning #1. Am I right?? Georgia guy (talk) 00:56, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Correction; it's definition #3 that I read it as (and also the definition that everyone is familiar with these days.) Georgia guy (talk) 01:00, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you're right. Sorry for being careless. Amended. Sluzzelin talk 01:05, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Until you asked this question, I would have thought that everyone was familiar with definition #5 as well. --Khajidha (talk) 12:02, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As for other things we can tell about this priest... given the age of the poem, the fact that he is “shaven and shorn” may indicate that he is Tonsured. He may also be a bit grumpy about being woken up by a rooster. That is about it. Blueboar (talk) 01:17, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I always heard it as the priest. And the illustration in the poem's article corresponds to the illustration in the tonsured article. As to the notion of the priest marrying the man, it's unlikely anyone would have read that into it until recent times. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:07, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

...the English version is very old, as may be inferred from the mention of "the priest all shaven and shorn" (i.e. predating the Reformation in England in the mid-16th century). From Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales: A Sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England (1849) p. 9, although our article says that the rhyme first appeared in print in 1755.

BTW, the confusion between getting married by someone and getting married to someone occupied an entire episode of the British sitcom, The Vicar of Dibley, when the eponymous female priest thinks she is being proposed to, but is actually being asked to officiate. Alansplodge (talk) 09:57, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't there a riddle about a man who married both his daughters, still living, yet had never committed incest or bigamy, and had never divorced? DuncanHill (talk) 14:03, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DuncanHill, can you show me a link to the riddle online?? Georgia guy (talk) 14:28, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Georgia guy: If I could find one I would. I can't even recall the exact wording at the moment. DuncanHill (talk) 14:45, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

DuncanHill Is that the answer though, that he married his daughters [to someone else]? ——Serial 15:11, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Serial Number 54129: Yes, he was a priest, and officiated at their marriages. DuncanHill (talk) 15:17, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a variant on that riddle.[1] ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:18, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Before The Vicar of Dibley, the wordplay featured in a Monty Python sketch, and also in (iirc) As You Like It. —Tamfang (talk) 02:11, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's also a Harold Lloyd movie where he overhears his fiancée talking to a man who says "of course I'll marry you." Leading to his despair and a lot of death-defying stunts. It later transpires that the mystery man is the girl's brother and also a priest. Chuntuk (talk) 08:41, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

A twist on this: the case of Beamish v Beamish (1863) involved a clergyman who married himself - he was both bridegroom and officiant. 95.144.174.70 (talk) 18:13, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

aside

Note that "Jack", the builder of the house, is otherwise undescribed. There was a TV ad many years ago, for a bank or savings and loan institution, in which "Jack" was used in the slangy sense of "money". Hence, it was a loan that got the house built. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:14, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Chief Justice; why isn't this title part of the Presidential line of succession??

We know the line starts:

President
Vice President
Speaker of the House
President pro tempore of the Senate
Secretary of State
Secretary of the Treasury
Secretary of Defense
Attorney General

After that it has had a sequence that varied from time to time. But what I want to know is why the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is NOT part of the line of succession. Georgia guy (talk) 18:37, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Inclusion of Chief Justice would violate separation of powers under the Constitution, as James Madison noted. "Under the principle of separation of powers, the Constitution specifically disallows legislative officials from also serving in the executive branch". Brandmeister^talk 19:26, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

As the linked page notes, the inclusion of the speaker and the president pro tem already violates the "philosophy" of separation of powers; but the requirement that they resign their legislative positions or else remain ineligible to serve as president covers that. If the legislators wanted to put the Chief Justice into the line of succession, it could work the same way. --184.145.50.201 (talk) 21:45, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Article Three of the United States Constitution provides for removal only for lack of “good behavior,” so it would be questionable to set up any other circumstances that would require them to leave the bench. I suspect it would also be unseemly because it would open a vacancy on the court, where the former-justice-acting-president would immediately nominate his or her own successor to a life term on the court. —Amble (talk) 22:26, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be the correct answer ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 05:11, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

US shootings were attacker was shot by eyewitness

In what US shootings a citizen eyewitness (outside of law enforcement) managed to pull out own handgun and kill / incapacitate the shooter? Presumably, given the number of weapons at hand in the US (and notorious NRA claim that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun"), such instances of collective defense should be frequent , but actually this doesn't seem to be the case. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 19:16, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

While there are (comparatively) a lot of guns in the US, most of them are kept at home, and used either for hunting and/or home defense. Very few people carry a firearm on an everyday basis. Indeed, in most states, you need a special permit to do so, and it can actually be quite difficult to get a carry permit. Thus, the chance that there is a “good guy” bystander in the crowd who is actually carrying a firearm when a “bad guy” starts shooting is slim. That said, it has happened a few times recently. I will see if I can find details. Blueboar (talk) 20:47, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There are 20 US states (by my count) where no permit is required to carry a concealed gun, see Concealed carry in the United States. Alansplodge (talk) 21:07, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/2012_July_9#Concealed carry laws stopping a spree shooting found only six examples where armed civilians had halted a mass shooting (one was a knife attack), in some cases no shots were actually fired. However, that was 9 years ago, there's been a whole lot of shooting since then.

Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Archives/Humanities/2014_April_3#Mass shootings outside of North America, and also non-American shootings where the perpetrator committed suicide brought up the case of the Tacoma Mall shooting in 2005, when an armed civilian who intervened was shot and paralysed while the gunman continued his spree. Alansplodge (talk) 21:19, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There was a case in North Carolina in April where a woman was attacked outside her house by a bobcat. Her husband was present and armed; he grabbed the animal and threw it away from her, then shot it dead. The bobcat turned out to have rabies. A video was released showing the first part of the sequence, but not the shooting. --184.145.50.201 (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But was the bobcat armed? Clarityfiend (talk) 01:41, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, with bladed weapons. Thanks for replies btw. 212.180.235.46 (talk) 09:34, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Retractable, too, which would make them even more illegal. In most of their range. Hypothetically. InedibleHulk (talk) 02:19, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

While I've always found the NRA etc argument nonsense, worth remembering as sort of pointed out in the 2012 discussion that if the intervention was successful early enough, it wouldn't be considered a mass shooting. While it may be possible to tell from writings, ammunition or other details whether a mass shooting was planned, I'm not sure anyone, even the NRA is bothering to look out for such events. Also given the time taken to reach the shooter etc, logic would suggest there should also be a significant number of cases where the shooter was stopped after it was a mass shooting. Nil Einne (talk) 20:12, 2 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There was a pretty damn obvious mass shooting at a prom in Antigo that never happened a while back. The mass shooting, I mean, active prom situation. A cop ended that one before it started, but still, it probably made him think about his own prom and what might've been, back before he got badged. InedibleHulk (talk) 05:46, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Because these incidents are not interesting to most, they do not appear in regular news feeds. The NRA keeps a running tally of them in their "Armed Citizen" news feed here. Not all cases are about a suspected criminal armed with a firearm. For example, the first one I saw today was a man using a club and pepper spray to beat an old woman until a bystander with a handgun shot him. 97.82.165.112 (talk) 11:13, 4 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

American Indian Supreme Court Justice

If an American Indian were to be nominated and confirmed as a supreme court justice, i would think he or she would be interested in lawsuits brought by indians to enforce old treaties between tribes and the United states. That could be pretty embarrassing and inconvenient for the court and all of us americans. With all of the legal rulings in usa courts about getting nazi-stolen art returned to the rightful owners, i feel sure that major law firms and major law schools like Yale and Harvard are thinking about the logical possibility of enormous amounts of american land returned to(in my view) its rightful owners. Since i’m somewhat cynical, and paranoid, and i also appreciate how intelligent and foresighted law school professors are, what i’m wondering is: Is there a concerted action among Ivy League law schools to prevent admission of gifted American Indian students?Rich (talk) 22:56, 30 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is it not more embarrassing for you Americans if the US persists in not honouring treaties? --Lambiam 21:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Most definitely. I want our chickens to come home to roost.Rich (talk) 22:15, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Embarrassment won’t change history. We acknowledge it happened and move on. Blueboar (talk) 21:34, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Acknowledgement is good but I don’t think it’s enough. We can’t move on without redressing the wrong.Rich (talk) 22:15, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes ... you are being somewhat cynical and paranoid. Law professors at Ivy League schools are plenty smart enough to know that such a bias would be easy to detect, and why would they go to such lengths for an issue that is unlikely to affect them personally? And violate a lot of the legal principles they presumably believe in and teach. Let's not admit a Native American because they might graduate at the top of their class and might get nominated to the Supreme Court and might rule in favor of their own people? Risk >>>>>> reward. Clarityfiend (talk) 01:38, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tuskegee syphilis scandal shows at least a few college professors are capsble of amorality mixed with arrogant blatancy(articles being published in medical journal even into the 1970s). Also, consider how much toleration Jeffrey Epstein got from academics because he gave money to colleges. But the amount of money involved in Indian treaties could be farr greater than the kind of money Epstein ever had, maybe many trillions of dollars, so that would increase motivation for among the “Establishment”,, including school admission offices. But whether or not an Indian made it to the supreme court, just more of them becoming US district judges, appeals judges, hotshot lawyers at major law firms, would likely increase the number of treaty cases that the supreme court would “need” to decline to hear, which would make embarrassing publicity and some soul searching... it’s late at night, so hope what i said is somewhat intelligible. Thanks for your reply.Rich (talk) 11:38, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

"whether or not an Indian made it to the supreme court... would likely increase the number of treaty cases that the supreme court would “need” to decline to hear," suggests that you believe that anyone who has benefitted or was involved in racially-grounded . If that were so, Justice Thomas would not be able to vote in affirmative action cases, or really anything involving black people, no? Ad infinitum, to be sure...but silly nonetheless. This is not how "conflict of interest" works.

If that’s what was suggesting, “that anyone who...i” it mught be silly, but I used the word “likely “as a qualifier. Also cases like the ones I’m thinking about would have arguable conflicts of interest for all 9 justices.Rich (talk) 22:10, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It may be useful to note that the Chief Justice needs (a) a case to decide; and (b) a minimum of four like-minded colleagues. DOR (HK) (talk) 15:25, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

For me, even one justice wishing to hear such cases would be a welcome opening wedge, and probably an unwelcome opening wedge to the “Establishment”(the establishment is what i call “they” in my appropriately paranoid viewpoint).Rich (talk) 22:32, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm somewhat concerned by Richard L. Peterson's That could be pretty embarrassing and inconvenient for the court and all of us americans. Apparently, those for whom it would not be inconvenient and embarrassing are not Americans. --ColinFine (talk) 17:29, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Colin Fine, you are misconstruing my words. I don’t like the sarcastic “apparently “.Rich (talk) 21:56, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Colin, I realize now I shouldn’t have taken offense at what you said.Rich (talk) 23:35, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Is it not more embarrassing for Americans if the US persists in not honouring treaties and engages in ethnic discrimination to ensure continued abuse? --Lambiam 21:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed it would be embarrassing if and when the coverup/distraction hopefully fails. My real point, and certainly yours too, is that it’s morally wrong. But whem looking at motivations for wrong actions, I look at “embarrassment”, which includes ppossibly severe financial embarrassment, especially for powerful landowners and corporations and universities. That’s why I think the Establishment wants it swept under the rug, and also tries to distract the American public from it.Rich (talk) 22:05, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Mutant rutabagas may have enslaved the residents of Poughkeepsie, New York, but it and other almost-as-outlandish conspiracy theories don't trouble my sleep. Clarityfiend (talk) 22:55, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t think suspecting powerful institutions of corrupt behavior is outlandish.Rich (talk) 22:59, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, but this particular example is. Clarityfiend (talk) 23:00, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No it isn’t. Truce? :-) Rich (talk) 23:40, 31 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It seems as if some participants in this discussion are WP:NOTHERE. ✌️ The owner of all 🗸 05:16, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help!Rich (talk) 07:38, 1 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]