I think we could apply Ocam's razor to this discussion of nuts (now there is a sharp metaphor): It seems to me that metaphysical statements often are explanations of observed physical phenomona, what one brilliant anthropologist refered to as attempts to "explain the inexplicable".

When we consider most people to be right handed, at a time when hand-held weapons were for beating, slicing or sticking, the danger would come more readily from the harder to defend left side. From there, it is easy to see how "left" could become symbolic.

I don't think anyone would regard it as accidental that Leonardo d.Vinci placed Judas to the left of Jesus. He was picking up on a tradition that was so old that it was already embedded in the Romance languages as "sinister" and "dexter" - left and right.

As I was writing, I remembered another example of a "left shouldered song": As I recall, there is a verse towards the end of Queen Eleanor's Confession that draws on the left shoulder tradition.

"The king looked o'er his left shoulder
With a grim look look-ed he
Earl Marshall, had it not been for my oath
Hangest wouldst thou be.

Having sharpened Ocam's Razor and possibly malquoted Malinowski on metaphysics, I also have an urge to remind myself of the old Freudian quote: "Sometimes a telephone pole is just a telephone pole".

Sourdough