The third episode of the current season of "Game of Thrones," which is featured on the cover of Rolling Stone, contains an Easter egg of Arthurian proportions: Monty Python references.
The show's linguist, David Peterson, has revealed that the references appear in the scene where Daario Naharis faces off with the champion of Meereen and the latter shouts at Daenerys Targaryen in some foreign tongue. Although she asks what the invective means, she does not get an accurate translation.
"He's actually saying a Low Valyrian translation of the French guy's insults in 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail,'" Peterson told Making Game of Thrones. Series co-creator D.B. Weiss allegedly came up with the idea.
"Right after that episode aired, I was getting tweets like, 'Is he saying a "your momma" joke?'" Peterson said. "Close, but no, he's actually starting out with, 'Your mother is a hamster.'"
So, as the champion was urinating on the sand in front of Targaryen, here are some of the things he was saying: "You don't frighten us, English pig-dogs. Go and boil your bottoms, sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you, so called Arthur King, you and all your silly English Kah-nights."
The French sentinel also called Arthur an "empty-headed animal food trough wiper," told him his mother was a hamster and father "smelled of elderberries" and catapulted livestock at him and his crew of "wipers of other people's bottoms."
And lest we forget, the Frenchman said, "I fart in your general direction." Sounds like the makings of a Red Wedding.
In other Python news, one member of the comedy troupe will help out in a performance of an oratorio based on the group's 1979 "Life of Brian" movie taking place in New York this winter. Eric Idle has written text for music by "Spamalot" composer John Du Prez for a piece called "Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy)," The New York Times reports, and it's meant as a counterpoint to Handel's ubiquitous "Messiah" oratorio. Idle's work was original commissioned in 2007 by Toronto's Luminato Festival, which premiered it.
Idle's oratorio overture is Du Prez's arrangement of the John Phillips Sousa march "The Liberty Bell," which also served as the theme music for the TV series "Monty Python's Flying Circus." Its finale is "Life of Brian's" "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."
Idle's "Not the Messiah" will be performed by the Collegiate Chorale and American Symphony Orchestra at New York City's Carnegie Hall on Dec. 15 and Dec.16. The Python member is confirmed to be performing.
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