Who was milking on that fateful eighth day? Was it a domestic servant or a young unmarried woman? Possibly a virgin. Possibly all of the above. By the Victorian era, a maid was a domestic servant, and there were all types by then. A milkmaid was a girl who milked cows - our maids may or may not have been milkmaids. They were a-milking, though.
Eight maids is a significant number with historical references: a queen regnant (e.g. Queen Elizabeth) had the tradition of eight maids of honour. A maid of honour was a maiden - unmarried, and usually young - commonly in their sixteenth year or older.
However, when we move on to an expression about milkmaids, the implication is that they grew older than 16 by quite a bit - "as smooth as milkmaid's skin" means exceptionally smooth. Wikipedia says that "this phrase came about as a result of exposure to cowpox, which causes no serious symptoms, but does convey a partial immunity to the disfiguring (and often fatal) disease smallpox. Thus, milkmaids lacked the "pockmarked" complexion common to smallpox survivors. This observation led to the development of the first vaccine".
What is the yellow milkmaid syndrome? This is a reference to Johannes Vermeer's most famous painting - of a woman in a yellow dress pouring milk. There are over 10,000 copies on the internet - mostly poor, yellowish reproductions. The colours do not represent the work accurately. "At the national level, for example in the UK, the higher education community has issued the Open Metadata Principles calling on metadata to be openly available for innovative re-use". This is about open metadata in the cultural heritage sector - a current issue and the organization dealing with it is known as Europeana.
.So we look at our pictures today as two options to enter into the New Year - the portal to the golden landscape and the portal to the sea. Which will it be this year?
Here we are in 2017 and already a leap second was added to the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on December 31st 2016. The Earth's slowing rotation needed synchronizing.
A few things we can look forward to in 2017 according to cnn.com are: Drones delivering food and maintaining inventory in Wal-Mart warehouses; an Italian surgeon planning to do the first head transplant; and milk made without cows.
In terms of anniversaries, it is 20 years since Diana died and a spring exhibition is planned of her most famous outfits. It is the 20th anniversary of the start of the Harry Potter novels. Not an anniversary, but very notable is that the documents amassed by the JFK Records Act will be revealed to the public in October.
And don't forget that this is Canada's 150th birthday and the celebrations began on December 31st. The Mosaicanada display that was initially proposed for Niagara Falls will be in Ottawa. These are large-scale sculptures made of plants. OK the first spoiler alert of 2017 - the Mosaicanada site is French-only as it is actually situated in Gatineau, Quebec.
Today - the portal to the New Year - one of my favourite images, taken at Winterthur.
For those with January 1st birthdays, I send out double wishes. And while we celebrate Canada's birthday on July 1st, why not start the celebrating right away!
