On Wed, 4 Feb 2004 22:41:24 +0200, "Opinicus" >
wrote:


>"Fish fights"... The idea is entrancing. I see a movie: "Gangs of Fife".
>
>Could "fish fights" be the antecedents of today's "food fights"?

I suspect that food fights go back a long, long way. There's a great
passage in Castiglione's "The Courtier":

Many times they shoulder one another downe the stayers, and hurle
billettes and brickes, one at an others head. They hurle handfulles of
dust in mens eyes. Thei cast horse and man into ditches, or downe on
the side of some hill. Then at table, potage, sauce, gelies, and what
ever commeth to hande, into the face it goith. And afterwarde laughe:
and whoso can doe most of these trickes, he counteth himselfe the best
and galantest Courtyer, and supposeth that he hath wonne great glorye.

Baldassare Castiglione, "Il Cortegiano", 1528
Translation by Sir Thomas Hoby (1561)
http://www.uoregon.edu/~rbear/courtier/courtier2.html


Robin Carroll-Mann
"Mostly Harmless" -- Douglas Adams
To email me, remove the fish