Date: Sunday, 13 Sep 1992 14:32:06 EST
From: <RVESTERM@vma.cc.nd.edu>
Newsgroups: alt.paranormal,sci.skeptic,alt.astrology
Subject: Re: Did Nostradamus predict the end of communism?
 <92257.122510RVESTERM@vma.cc.nd.edu> <92257.125941RVESTERM@vma.cc.nd.edu>

i just went out and bought myself a dictionary (french-english, that is).
here is the dictionary-aided translation of

             nous sommes ici, mais ou sont tes amis, alice
             la-bas, sur l'herbe
             qui est le garcon en maillot rouge
             c'est guy, mon cousin.  et le garcon sous l'arbre est
                  son compain.


             we are here, but where are your friends, alice?
             down there, on the grass.
             who is the boy in red tights?
             it's guy, my cousin.  and the boy under the tree is
                  his companion.

 how did you arrive at your "translation"?  it is precisely mistranslations
 such as yours which have made nostradamus famous.  i offer the following,
 taken directly from "the straight dope" by cecil adams   (if you're not
 familiar with "the straight dope", people write in with questions, which
 cecil answers.) :

      recently i saw a movie on cable tv called "the man who saw tomorrow",
 about michael nostradamus the prognosticator.  that film scared the shit
 out of me.  nostradamus claims that first halley's comet will screw up
 the entire world and then in the 1990's a middle east/russian collaboration
 will wage nuclear war on the west for 27 years, after which the u.s. and
 russia will join together again to defeat the islamic horde.  halley's
 comet is supposedly due in 1986 - should i begin to say my prayers? how
 good was nostradamus at predicting the future? did orson welles (the film's
 narrator) con me again? -lisa l., river forest, illinois

      there are two schools of thought on nostradamus: either (1) he had
 supernatural powers which enabled him to prophesy the future with uncanny
 accuracy, or (2) he did for bullshit what stonehenge did for rocks.  i am
 inclined to the latter view, for reasons which will become clear presently.
       michel de nostredame (nostradamus in latin) was born in southern
 france in 1503.  intelligent and well-educated, he worked as a travelling
 physician for many years, but late in life his reason failed him and he
 decided to become a free-lance writer.  among his works (which include a
 collection of jelly recipes, charmingly enough) were several books of
 prophecy, organized into sets of 100 quatrains, or "centuries."  there were
 so many of these prophecies and they were so vaguely written that they
 could be made to apply to nearly anything.  for example, one quatrain
 predicted prosperity for henry ii, the king of france.  unfortunately,
 henry was killed in a jousting accident a couple years later.  no problem -
 someone discovered the following gem among the 940 or so other quatrains:
 "the young lion shall overcome the old/on the field of battle in single
 combat;/in a cage of gold he shall pierce his eyes:/two knells one, then
 to die, a cruel death" (sic).  it was pointed out that a sliver from the
 lance of henry's opponent had penetrated the king's golden helmet and
 pierced his eye and brain.  furthermore, the king was seven years older
 than his opponent.  ergo, nostradamus had really been on target after all.
 (after nostradamus's death, some editors emended the enigmatic last line
 to read, "two _wounds_ (from) one," which fits the circumstances even
 better).  fast shuffles like this do wonders for a guy's reputation.
      true believers have since applied mike's predictions to nearly every
 significant event in the 400 years since his death in 1566.  this effort
 has been aided, for those not fluent in french, by convinient mistrans-
 lations.  for example, the well-known "people's almanac" gives one verse
 as follows: "the captive prince, conquered, to elba,/he will pass the
 gulf of genoa by sea to marseilles,/though he escapes the fire, the
 bees yeild liquor by the barrel."  the mention of elba makes this otherwise
 ambiguous quatrain appear to apply to napolean.  in fact, however, the
 original has "aux itales," which is generally translated to "to italy,"
 not "to elba."  (the more imaginative, it must be conceded, claim
 "itales" derives from "aethalia," the classical name for elba.)  similarly,
 some say the following verse predicts the great fire of london in 1666:
 "the blood of the just shall be dry in london./burnt by the fire of 3 times
 20 and 6./the ancient dame shall fall from her high place,/of the same
 sect many shall be killed."  the ancient dame supposedly was the statue of
 the virgin on st. paul's cathedral.  sounds convincing, but a literal
 translation of the first two lines is far more cryptic: "the blood of the
 just will commit a fault at london,/burnt through the lightning of 23 the
 sixes."  yet another verse mentions a certain "hister," which some claim
 refers to adolf hitler.  in fact, though, hister is simply the classical
 name for the lower danube, and nostradamus uses it as such in several
 instances.
      supposed predictions by nostradamus of future wars and disasters are
 equally implausible.  i didn't see the movie you allude to, but other
 scenarios i've come across talk about an alliance between the u.s. and
 the u.s.s.r. followed by a joint arab-chinese invasion of europe.  there's
 also something about a giant meteor falling in the indian ocean (maybe
 this is the reference to halley's comet you mention).  this last is based
 on a quatrain supposedly beginning, "a great spherical mountain [i.e.,
 a meteor] about one mile in diameter/...will roll end over end, then sink
 great nations," etc.  once again an overenthusiastic translator has been
 at work - the first line in more plausibly rendered as "a great mountain
 seven stadia around," and many nostradamus buffs say it refers to vesuvius.
 in any case, it's not worth worrying about.