zoobyshoe said:
I agree with your whole post. This part about French though, is even more complicated than you've laid out. We're talking not only about poetic French, but about old French. There's more to being able to understand Elizabethan authors than speaking modern English, and the same applies to any language of 500 years ago.
Is "plus part" an old form of "plupart," i.e. does it say "La plupart du camp..."? or does it mean "plus, part du camp..." The first means, "the greater part of the army..." and the latter would mean "Moreover, the allegiance of the army ("part" being "side" or "concern of"). One of the translators of the quatrain cited by SGT chose one interpretation and the other chose the alternate.
In the same line: "plus part du camp encontre Hister sera" I have to wonder what's up with the bare word "encontre". Isn't it true that, in modern French anyway, this is only used in the phrase "a l'encontre de"? Why doesn't the line read: "plus part du camp a l'encontre de Hister sera"? Does it mean exactly the same thing in the French of Nostrodamus' time, or is there some other spin on the meaning of it only a scholar of the French of that era could fathom?
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Additionally, Nostradamus gave "times" for his predictions in the form of statements about where certain astrological figures and stars would be in the sky when a predicted event would take place. Apparently these are specific enough that an astonomer can say "Yes, that particular configuration of the night sky is not random and will denote a particular point in time." The trouble is that these turn out not to be unique. A particular configuration may come round every 20 years or every two centuries, or whatever, and no one has any way of pointing to one and saying "This is when the prophecy will be fullfilled."
A few years ago one of these alignments came around exactly as N had predicted and it was associated with a big disaster in a city some interpreted to be Los Angeles. Actor Eddie Murphy left LA during that time specifically out of nervousness the prophey would come true. Aside from doubt about whether LA was referred to it turns out that same configration of astronomical features had already occurred twice since N's time, and would again after the LA scare.
Ugg.. ok you caught me zoob

You are correct that it is more complicated. And I'll be the first to admit that while my contemporary french is decent, I have no knowledge of older french grammar. Maybe a native frenchman with a better knowledge of french grammar could be more specific. I haven't practiced regularly in over 10 years, so I may be a little rusty. Pluspart would also refer to the majority. as for a l'encountre, literally wouldn't make sense. Actually the whole line doesn't make sense
Plus part du camp encontre Hister sera.
This means the greater part of the encampment (encontre isn't a word and I couldn't find it in a dictionary, could be an old word though) Hister will be.
This may not have been copied somewhere corrrectly, but it should read:
Le plus parte du camp sera contre hister. I believe
contre is against, but like I said, I'm a bit rusty. But that's the correct grammatic order I believe.
So it would mean the majority of the encampment will be against hister.
Hister being a river, it could refer to some group setup near the hister. Very ambiguous.
And I can't tell if some of this is just typos, or it's actually just old french spelling. Take this:
Du ciel viendra vn grand Roy d'effrayeur
It should be Roi and frayeur. I don't recall adding an "e" to nouns.
So I would say roi de frayeur.
Of course this could just be poetic french, I'm not sure. I don't know all the tenses and there are approximately 60's tenses in french, including some such as passe histoire that aren't common except in the written french. But one thing stands out 'vn' should be "un". That's an obvious typo.