Yet another explanation for dain daiin...

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

> The former would not score very high in a character
> frequency count. It might occur once or twice per
> page.

Thanks for all your feedback - I accept all your points.

Looking closely at the few pages of Gli Experimenti I was able to photocopy 
at the British Library before I ran out of time, I can see surprisingly few 
obvious places where a nearby copy strategy would be effective. :-(

I can see "agocia agocia", "parte con parte", and a very few others: so 
perhaps "dain daiin" holds onto its secrets for another day. :-)  Still, it 
was interesting while it lasted. :-)

So: here's an entirely new hypothesis for you all to disagree with wildly. :-)

Looking at the last page of my photocopies, the topmost recipe (no. 38) says:-

        Piglia vitriolo Romano on iiij salnitrio on iij limatura achi
        on. 1. et destilla alanbicco et piglia della prima aqua on 1/2 et po-
        nili in essa 3 on de canfora et con questa fregate la faccia

Now, translating from 1500s Italian isn't my strong part (especially with 
only a modern dictonary to guide me), so please excuse my (inevitably 
numerous) mistakes:-

        Take 4 parts [vitriolo Romano], 3 parts saltpetre, and 1 part
        (iron?) filings, distill in an alembic, take half the resulting
        liquid, mix (?) it with 3 parts camphor, then rub it onto the face.

"on iij" ("2 on") and "on iiij" ("3 on") would seem to be excellent 
candidates for "dain" and "daiin". :-)   Similarly, "on 1/2" could well be 
"dair" (etc).

Also: m (with a tilde above it) is used to denote "metallum" in a number of 
places, but this is the only Tironian-style abbreviation I can see. This 
would be a good candidate for one of the embellished picnic tables. :-)

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling.....