I’d be glad to know the story behind the tune, “Shee Bag, Shee Mor.” I know it is a conflict between two Fay kingdoms, but details?
Thanks.
I’m unaware of any story behind it. Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór is commonly attributed to O’Carolan - possibly his first known melody - but that’s as much as I know. Anyone else?
Ah, well now, they say the ´Big Fairy Hill (Fort) fought a battle with the ´Little Fairy Hill (Fort) and Carolan commemorated this event.
Another apocryphal story has Sheridan going on about this being the inspiration of the Lilliputian War between the ´Bid Endians´ and the ´Little Endians´. Swift never said. The dispute was over which end of a boiled egg was to be consumed first.
There, now I´ve told you a story. 
Bob
You might get more information asking about “Sí Bheag, Sí Mhór”. Like that it may have been O’Carolan’s first song, but he took the music from an existing tune, The Bonnie Cuckoo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sí_Bheag,_Sí_Mhór
As for the lyrics, take a look at this. (I can’t vouch for the accuracy.)
https://anglofolksongs.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/si-bheag-si-mhor/
All good, right thinking people SLICE boiled eggs to consume them.
When I was a kid my mom had, among the other useless things accumulated in her kitchen utensil drawer, an egg slicer. My mom grew up in the extreme poverty of the Great Depression, then her early marriage years was separated from her husband and her house during WWII. By the time life got to what we’d now describe as “normal” she along with many of her peers became a gizmo hoarder. (sort of like WAD in the kitchen) The egg slicer was a cast aluminum base with a depression for an egg and slots which corresponded with a hinged lid upon which was strung a wire tightly wound around pegs to slice an egg.
I think we actually used it once or twice, but it was never discarded until she moved to assisted living. As a child and as an adult I would search the drawer for a spoon or potato peeler and find myself pulling it out of the drawer and play it like a harp. Each string section stretched on the egg shaped lid had a slightly different note.
I never have developed an appreciation for a sliced egg.
in her kitchen utensil drawer, an egg slicer.
We had one in or kitchen too! I was also played like a harp. In my own home I just use a knife and quarter the eggs. More for aesthetics than anything else.
Do they indeed? Where I come from, that would be thought effete. But maybe I need some polish. Here’s how this smelly beast does it: If they’re hardboiled, I first peel them - nobody has yet mentioned that step, so I must conclude that I’m getting significantly less calcium out of my eggs than the rest of you. Then I bite their naked, pointy little heads off, putting either salt or hot sauce or Worcestershire sauce in the bite’s depression, and repeat the process until the egg is gone. It’s good to know I’m a bad, wrongheaded person, otherwise I might never have guessed. Thank you. I gratefully steel myself for the flames to come.
Yeah, my mom had one of those wire-strung egg slicers too, and I always wondered why it never got used until I tried it for myself. I believe they’d see a ton more use if the yolk parts didn’t keep falling out. Most awkward to spend the time fitting all those whites and crumbling yolks back together, and for what? If I’m making egg salad, I just get out the chef’s knife and merrily chop away like a psychopath.
You are a vivid and engaging writer! I suspect the wire egg slicer is to make eggs presentable on a salad.
I pickle all my hard boiled eggs and thus fore go hot sauce. Pickled eggs… yum.
Yes, that was always the idea as I had it. But I would only even consider bothering with that if I were feting a dignitary (fat chance), or suspending the slices in aspic like a Calder mobile (fat chance of that, too, although it does sound like a cool project, now that I think of it). I’m afraid the theoretical dignitary would have to be satisfied with less eye-catching fare, and I’m quite fine with making apologetic noises if necessary (not that I’d mean it).
They’re nice on occasion, but I can’t make a habit of them. At certain bars there would always be big jars of them: combine that with beer, and you have a room-clearing intestinal offense on the horizon.
Yes, those wire thingys were surprisingly useless. Which made her keeping it all the more eccentric. But she’d spent good money on it and thought it might come in handy for something.
And Nanohedron: Worcestershire sauce will likely protect you from those flames to come…
Speaking of flames, I used to love deviled eggs which are a bit of a mess to make, not to mention mayonaise is no longer on my accepted fats list, especially consumed at the same time as an egg yoke. So I got in the habit of slathering my peeled boiled egg with mustard. It has a tendency to slide off before the first bite. But after you make that divot it becomes an acceptable non-elegant somewhat dry version of a deviled egg, sort of a shadow of its self. But it gets the job done.
Yup, I remember plunking out a rudimentary version of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (you had to be sort of fluid on the exact pitch lol) on my mom’s when I was very young.
For the life of me I can’t imagine what else I’d use one for, since I have never liked eggs… 
(Although it seems I’d recently read there’s something else you can use them for, but can’t remember now what it was. But I remember it was something I might actually do (probably some sort of Chinese or Thai cooking), and I felt somewhat excited at the prospect of perhaps getting one. I will neither confirm nor deny that you might then find me in the store plunk-ing all of them to also find the one with the most pleasing sound…)
But have you got one in D…?
OMG. Deviled eggs. Mom used to make them on Sundays, and because I had to share, they made me curse the day I had siblings; I could have eaten them all. The eggs, that is. Fortunately I’d been house-trained, so by the time I had teeth my brothers and sister were off the menu.
I made deviled eggs once, and it was enough; going to all that trouble, and for something destined to vanish in the blink of an eye, was too much for me to take.
I hadn’t thought of putting mustard on boiled eggs. Not a bad idea at all. Normally yellow mustard and I have an extreeeemely limited relationship - usually it’s brown mustards for me - but this could be one of those times where I might relent.
[quote=“Nanohedron”
I made deviled eggs once, and it was enough; going to all that trouble, and for something destined to vanish in the blink of an eye, was too much for me to take.
[/quote]
I was helping out in the kitchen before a friend’s party years ago. Her 21 year old daughter was given the task to put the yellow mixture back in to the halved eggs. She methodically dipped in her spoon, slid the mixture off into the empty white with her finger to shape it just so, then stuck her finger in her mouth (to clean it or taste it I don’t know which), then back in the mixture the spoon would go and back on the spoon the finger would slide and back into the mouth. This went on for 2 dozen eggs. It was the first time I ever demurred when offered a plate of deviled eggs.
I think I just threw up in my mouth. You get an A+ in conveying a really bestial image. But I have to ask: Why didn’t you say anything?? I don’t think I could stop myself from blurting out, “No. No. Stop. Just - stop. Get out of the kitchen, go find your friends, climb a tree, I don’t care. Just stop, in the name of all that is holy. Gimme that, and out you go. Whoosh. Whoosh.”
The Martha (she of ´It´s a _good thing_´ fame), on multiple occasions opined at how unacceptable it was to ´double-dip´, that is use a chip or whatever to dip, take a bite, and then use the same chip to scoop some more dip. Hilariously on at least one show had sampled a rather large glass of wine, or possibly two or three, proceeded to use a carrot slice to scoop some dip, use the remainder to gesture at something, and the dip again!. We don´t have a cringe emoji, but there you have it 
Bob
Of course I’ll double dip if I’m not sharing; I think that’s entirely acceptable in most circumstances. Maybe that was The Martha’s rationale, too, but then she should have said as much, given all her pious finger-wagging. But then there’s the question of whether it’s an offense to double dip by oneself in front of a TV audience, and I’ll leave that up to debate. I do think, though, that it’s even more coarse yet to gesture at something with your food. That was icing on the cake, for it’s something I would only do in a beer-scented fishhouse, or by the campfire where everyone’s been at least a day without a shower and the latrine is where the shovel hits, or if I were Emperor. And I haven’t done any of those in quite a while. How is it she rose to become a doyenne of refinements in the life beautiful, again?
Speaking of dipping - be it double or no - my favorite dip for French fries is ketchup with a truckload of black pepper mixed in: just dispense with the shaker top and dump it out freely. The mixed result should look as if the ketchup has gone dreadfully moldy (which, upon glancing at my plate, is what one bartender thought had happened, to his great alarm). Let it sit for a bit, if you have the patience to wait at least a couple of minutes, so the flavors have time to meld and bloom. It’s sublime and rugged.