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Today, drum roll please, the word of the day and the quote actually go together! I know! The word is "druggerman" which is an archaic alternate of the word "dragoman" which means an interpreter in a country where Arabic, Turkish or Persian is spoken.
In today's story, Pepys is spending time with his friend Erwin, who has just returned from Siam (now Thailand) and is telling stories of his time abroad, specifically about the King of Siam. Pepys writes:
"He told me what I remember he hath once done heretofore: that every body is to lie flat down at the coming by of the King, and nobody to look upon him upon pain of death. And that he and his fellows, being strangers, were invited to see the sport of taking of a wild elephant, and they did only kneel, and look toward the King. Their druggerman did desire them to fall down, for otherwise he should suffer for their contempt of the King. The sport being ended, a messenger comes from the King, which the druggerman thought had been to have taken away his life; but it was to enquire how the strangers liked the sport. The druggerman answered that they did cry it up to be the best that every they saw, and that they never heard of any Prince so great in every thing as this King. The messenger being gone back, Erwin and his company asked their druggerman what he had said, which he told them. 'But why,' say they, 'would you say that without our leave, it being not true?' -- 'It is no matter for that,' says he, 'I must have said it, or have been hanged, for our King do not live by meat, nor drink, but by having great lyes told him.'"
Did anyone else have flashbacks to Anna and the King of Siam?
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