What I learned today about Robert Browning

I learn so many things because of work. Every afternoon when I get home I have a list at least five items long of things to investigate further.

Here's my favorite one from today:

I was looking through tax returns today, and someone had given money to an organization in a town today called Pippa Passes, KY. Pippa Passes! although apparently, the residents of Pippa Passes call it "Caney Creek", and seriously, Caney Creek citizens, why, why, why, why would you do that? What a good town name you have! You should use it! Get together a town council, all 300 of you (by the 2000 census), and discuss maybe calling your town by its right name from here on out.

Well, so anyway I couldn't remember what on earth "Pippa Passes" was from, because the first I heard of it was a Rumer Godden book (and not a very good one, I felt at the age of ten), so whatever its actual origin was has never stuck in my brain since then. Turns out it is a poem by Robert Browning. Which pleased me, naturally, because I like Robert Browning as a person (he sounds like a sweet dear), and he was also born on my birthday. Anyway, Wikipedia informed me that "Pippa Passes" is the source of the oft-quoted "God's in his Heaven / All's right with the world", and right below that it quoted this:

But at night, brother Howlet, all over the woods,
Toll the world to thy chantry;
Sing to the bats' sweet sisterhood
Full complines with gallantry:
Then owls and bats, cowls and twats,
Monks and nuns, in a cloister's moods,
Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry!

Teehee. I giggled immaturely. So apparently the OED contacted Robert Browning, who was very fortunately still alive, and were all like, WHAT is the HELL of THIS? and Robert Browning was like, What? It means a nun's habit. YOU BIG CRAZIES, and the OED was like, Um, no, honey, it's a nasty word for a woman's special parts and it has meant that lo these many years, and Robert Browning was like, Nuh-uh, cause look at this pome from 1660, which I read before I wrote this pome and from which I inferred the meaning of twat:

They talkt of his having a Cardinall's Hat
They'd send him as soon an Old Nun's Twat.

And the OED people were like, ....

And so am I.