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The Monty Python French taunters classic is a scathing insult and noone gets it. Break down the line:
"Your mother was a hampster, and your father smelt of elderberries"
Firstly, they are calling your mother a fast-breeding rodent, ergo, your mother is a whore, that one is simple. Second, why would your father smell of elderberries? What was it used for at the time? Wine, but better wine would be made from grapes from France or southern England, implying your father was was not just a drunk, but a cheap drunk.
Its one of the most insulting lines ever uttered on film and it has so many layers, which is why that movie is hillarious.
I'm sure the Python loved it when their jokes were explained in excruciatingly boring detail
I fart in your general direction.
Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time!
Fetchez la vache!
Ni!
At the renaissance festival today there was a shirt with the horsey chess piece and a bub le caption "ni". Almost came home with me.
Isn't the elderberries thing actually just about the smell? Based on what I read, elderberry flowers begin to develop a strong musky and/or cheesy aroma, so it would be akin to saying that your father doesn't wash himself.
Also, your mum is really hairy
Cheap drunk? Do you have any idea how much it costed to ship goods back then overland? To ship wine no less, which is bulky in the vast quantities our ancestors drank it.
People made alcohol with what they had, every household made their own usually, they didn't buy it. That's why the north drank beer and ale, and the south wine. That's why so many apple trees were planted in the north as well, the only other northern fruit (idk about elderberries,) that has enough sugar to ferment to an appreciable degree, (it's less than grapes, I think 5% hard cider is about average, or at least mine was that.
Furthermore, I bet I like the taste and smell of elderberries, they don't grow here that I'm aware. So I don't agree it's a good insult, but thank for describing it, because I always thought that was an odd one.
Swallows could have carried the elderberries
A swallow couldn't carry elderberries to north america, it's a question of direction, why would they fly west, into the wind when they migrate south?
They were shouting it at king arthur (the taunters clearly knew who he was, he was introduced as such), I think his parents could afford the costs to get what ever shipments they wanted, be them from France... Or [shudders for comedic effect] Scottland.
You are correct in that people used what they had, and that is entierly the joke. Wine made from elderberries was much more common up north where imports were not something people had... Unless they were of nobility.
This is both historically inaccurate and you typed out "costed" like it was a real word.