# Need source for this metaphor for life and death... **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 13, 2005, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297 "2005-07-13T03:47:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/1 "2005-07-13T03:47:40Z")
Help! I once read something (a poem or lines from a play, or some other literary passage) that conveyed the image of a bird flying in a deep cold night, coming through the open window of a tower full of light and warmth, then flying out another window into the night again, never to return. This was used as a metaphor for our mortal lifespan. Unfortunately I don’t remember anything else – does this ring a bell for anyone? ---
**Author:** ![uglybeech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/82dd89/32.png) [@uglybeech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/uglybeech)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/2 "2005-07-13T04:13:45Z")
It’s medieval. I’m gonna go see if I can find it. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/3 "2005-07-13T04:13:59Z")
It does indeed ring a bell, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what bell. Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![Manatee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/50afbb/32.png) [@Manatee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manatee)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/4 "2005-07-13T04:15:08Z")
> [@uglybeech](#): > > It’s medieval. I’m gonna go see if I can find it. Older than that: Anglo-Saxon. ---
**Author:** ![uglybeech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/82dd89/32.png) [@uglybeech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/uglybeech)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/5 "2005-07-13T04:21:22Z")
Apparently it’s from [Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England](http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book2.html) > [@](#): > > Another of the king’s chief men, approving of his wise words and exhortations, added thereafter: “The present life of man upon earth, O king, seems to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the house wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your ealdormen and thegns, while the fire blazes in the midst, and the hall is warmed, but the wintry storms of rain or snow are raging abroad. The sparrow, flying in at one door and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry tempest; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, passing from winter into winter again. So this life of man appears for a little while, but of what is to follow or what went before we know nothing at all. If, therefore, this new doctrine tells us something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.” The other elders and king’s counsellors, by Divine prompting, spoke to the same effect. ---
**Author:** ![uglybeech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/82dd89/32.png) [@uglybeech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/uglybeech)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/6 "2005-07-13T04:23:27Z")
> [@Manatee](#): > > Older than that: Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxon is not medieval? ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/7 "2005-07-13T04:24:08Z")
> [@uglybeech](#): > > Apparently it’s from [Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England](http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/bede-book2.html) Thanks for going medieval on my ass, **uglybeech**! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![uglybeech](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/82dd89/32.png) [@uglybeech](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/uglybeech)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2005, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/8 "2005-07-13T04:26:58Z")
My pleasure. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Manatee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/50afbb/32.png) [@Manatee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manatee)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/9 "2005-07-14T07:08:39Z")
> [@uglybeech](#): > > Anglo-Saxon is not medieval? Not according to many of the history books on my shelves. The culture (and certainly the language) is distinct enough that I think it warrants being its own period rather than an adjunct to the midde ages proper. (Upon rereading the thread, I can’t believe that I hit “Submit Reply” after that single line that I posted–without even mentioning the source of the metaphor? D’oh!). ---
**Author:** ![blackhobyah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blackhobyah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blackhobyah)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2005, 9:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/need-source-for-this-metaphor-for-life-and-death/312297/10 "2005-07-14T09:20:23Z")
> [@Manatee](#): > > Not according to many of the history books on my shelves. > > The culture (and certainly the language) is distinct enough that I think it warrants being its own period rather than an adjunct to the midde ages proper. > . Hmmm. Anglo-Saxon England would certainly be considered Medieval, which means “middle age”, i.e. that period which comes between the end of Classical period, which sees the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the beginning of the Renaissance around 1500. These dates are much contested though. There is a joke amongst medievalists, which passes for a knee-slapper, to the effect that if the Classicistists don’t know when their period ended and the Renaissance scholars don’t know when their era begins, who are the Medievalists to tell them their business. But because it spans something like a thousand years, there is obviously a huge disparity between whatever might be considered the beginning of the Medieval period and whatever you take for its end. It also makes a difference if you are talking about the Middle Ages in Britain or on the Continent or elsewhere. Anglo-Saxon as a language belongs to the Early Middle Ages and is often called “Old English” and is primarily a Germanic language. After the Norman Invasion the language changed (from Beowulf to Chaucer), and is generallly known as “Middle English”. From the Renaissance (say around the end of the 15th Century in England), you have “Early Modern English”. I think what we tend to think of as strictly Medieval is what is sometimes called the High Middle Ages, the 12th, 13th and early 14th centuries. The Venerable Bede was writing in the Early Middle Ages, and although he wrote his best known works in Latin, there is at least one poem in Anglo-Saxon which has been attributed to him. If you are willing to do a bit of work, those remnants of texts we have left in Anglo-Saxon are worth reading, they are both extraordinarily alien and yet oddly familiar.