Paragraph 5

Here is my interpretation of the last of the five blocks of text that I have identified in the Buse cryptogram. Under each 'corrected' symbol in my interpretation is a colored chevron which indicates how similar my 'corrected' symbols is to that in the original. Green chevrons indicate 'very similar', orange chevrons indicate 'somewhat similar' and red chevrons indicate 'not similar, and therefore quite possibly wrong'.

My interpretation of the La Buse cryptogram is Copyright May 2017.

Justification and discussion

The first sentence suggests that a woman wanting to get drunk can be calmed with wine that has been mixed with sugared tea. I'm not a big wine drinker, but my research suggests that wine can indeed make one sleepy. These days, it's recommended NOT to drink wine before going to bed because although it can help you get to sleep it will interfere with the second phase of your sleep. This site, for example, says 'If you drink late in the evening, it will help you fall asleep but then wake you up a few hours later when it becomes a stimulant.' This site says 'L’alcool peut vous aider à vous endormir, notamment le vin rouge qui contient de la mélatonine, mais ses effets ne durent pas et leur interruption risque de vous réveiller en deuxième partie de nuit. De plus ils favorisent le ronflement et ses conséquences néfastes sur le sommeil.'  'Alcohol can help you fall asleep, especially red wine which contains melatonine, but its effects do not last and their interruption risks waking you in the second part of the night. Furthermore, they promote snoring and its negative consequences for sleep.'

Tea contains a small amount of caffeine so it's not usually recommended to drink tea before gong to bed. But what about mixing wine and tea - is that ever done? Not very often, but I was able to find some sites suggesting doing just that. This site, for example proposes a drink made of tea and wine, which they call 'twine'. Very interestingly, it says 'Presently, there is only a caffeinated version, which keeps you from falling asleep at the bar!' So presumably a low caffeine mixture of tea and wine CAN have a strong sleep-inducing effect. This site also proposes a mixture of tea and wine, in this case 'vin de glace' which happens to be very sweet. Mixing tea and sweet wine would be equivalent to mixing sweet tea and wine, confirming again that this interpretation is plausible, and it seems that sugary drinks can indeed promote sleep. This scientific article says 'In fact, sugar might even help sleep, rather than hinder.'  This site says 'I have a glass of this drink every night and it really helps me relax and get sleepy and more importantly, it helps me stay asleep! Here are the ingredients; bedtime tea, unrefined sea salt, natural sugar, gelatin and fat. This BBC article says 'Having a high sugar drink to boost energy can actually make people more sleepy, a study suggests.' And this article says 'Many parents think their kids become hyperactive after eating candy or other sweets. But sugar may actually cause drowsiness, not hyperactivity.'

The second sentence refers to African wine. This page indicates that wine was certainly being produced in South Africa at that time. At first I though the text referred to rum, but even though we associate pirates with rum it may have been too early for rum to be available in this part of the world at that time. The first distillation of rum took place on the sugarcane plantations of the Caribbean in the 17th century. 'Rude' is certainly a word that can be used in French to describe wine. 'Rude' se dit d'un vin âpre au goût. 'Rude' is used to describe a wine with a bitter taste.

Looking at the colored chevrons that indicate how similar my 'corrected' symbols are to those on the copy of La Buse's crytogram, we can see which words are most likely to be incorrect in my version. There aren't many red chevrons (the ones which indicate that my symbols look very different to those of the cryptogram) but there are a few around the phrase 'vin d'Afrique très fort'. Other words with a low level of confidence are 'pour', 'vite', 'ivre' and 'rude'.

When I turned 'V' into 'U' or 'U' into 'V' I did not consider this to be 'corrections' (and therefore I did not put colored chevrons) because in old French 'U' and 'V' were more or less interchangeable.

Women are a theme of the cryptogram, and this site indicates that La Buse was indeed a womanizer and even that his nickname 'La Buse' (the buzzard) came from his predatory womanizing rather than his exploits as a pirate.

In my text I have assumed that La Buse spelled 'tranquilliser' as 'trenquilisé' which would be phonetically identical and which would mean that the word contains an embedded symbol that could be interpreted as an '8'. But he could also have used the spelling 'trenquillisé' which would NOT include any embedded symbol.

Similarly, I have assumed that La Buse ended the word 'trenquilisé' with an 'é' which would be another phonetically correct spelling error. But it's also possible that he wrote 'trenquiliser' which would be more correct and which would mean that that word is not followed by an 'embedded symbol', one of the clues in the next level of the cryptogram. I am inclined to think that La Buse wrote 'trenquilisé' because the symbol following that word is quite different from the symbol for 'r'.

In line 14, why are the symbols for 'S' and 'U' joined together? I take this as further evidence that the cryptogram was squeezed onto a small piece of paper, meaning that the symbols would have been very close together. So close, in this case, that the copier reproduced them as actually being connected.

In line 15 is the large dot to which some people attach great importance. In terms of my text, this dot obliterates what I assume to be the symbol for the 'N' in 'VIN'.