"Toujours pur" - Black family motto?

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 113940

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "delwynmarch" 
<delwynmarch at y...> wrote:

> Del replies :
> Really ? I didn't know that. So technically, I couldn't *remember* 
> it :-) 

In that case, I am happy to have been of assistance with my deep 
reserves of random knowledge. :)

> You *do* realise, of course, that you've just made a direct 
> connection between the Black family and the classic, *Muggle* 
> aristocracy ? Smells of HBP. Or does it ?

Eh, not for sure.  The family motto and such likely date back to 
before the more strict separation (post-Statue of Secrecy) of the two 
worlds, so I don't think it's amiss to posit a greater cultural 
continuity between the two.

[The question that that possible cultural continuity raises for me is 
more one of, natch, scholarship--how was all of this knowledge 
preserved, etc.  For short example--I'm always more than a little 
wary (because of my own hangups, I know) when we get postulated 
extensive knowledge and traditions of Egyptian magic texts, because 
no text (in hieroglypics--Coptic is another story) was really 
readable to a modern reader until Champollion in the early 19th 
century...unless we want a wizarding philologist, and I don't see 
it.  Or, to rephrase it, I'm wary of postulating wizards with wildly 
superior scholarly abilities to those of the poor hard-working 
Muggles.  Urk.  Let's end this rant now before it goes into 
completely speculative (ick) territory.]

-Nora recovers from an operatic double feature