bwa-huh? more LJ weirdness ... turns out it's I.E. 8's fault somehow.

So, yesterday, I made a post about how I could read my LJ f'list page, and my personal LJ, but I couldn't read or leave comments on friend's pages... I kept getting an error message.

alto2 recommended that I try clearing my cache, and rebooting my PC. So I did that last night.

Now, on AOL (which piggybacks on IE as its OS), I can't get into LiveJournal at all. The error message on the screen reads: "Navigation cancelled," even though I did nothing to cancel it. The message in the title bar reads: "Internet Explorer cannot display ..." (Don't remember if it's "this page" or "livejournal.com.")

I tried following this advice on LJ's Support page:

(Quote)
Some journals are displaying an Error 500 message. This issue is caused by a problem with that journal's style data being corrupted in LiveJournal's internal caching system. If you receive this error message in your own journal, you can re-select your previous style from the "Your Styles" page (Paid/Permanent accounts) or the "Choose Journal Style" page (Basic/Plus accounts).
(Unquote)

.... or I would, if I could remember what my previous style was, to see if that fixes the problem.

BTW, every other site via AOL opens just fine. It's only LJ that's being a P.I.t.A..

Right now, I'm online via Google Chrome.

Question I posted, just now, to Mudcat.org (and I might as well post here, too)::

Folklore: Queen Bertha Broadfoot: M. Goose?

For my blog: Plato's Nightmare / Aesop's Dream (Discovering images of disability in folklore and classics of literature), I'm considering writing an entry on the image of the disabled story-teller as a recurring motif in stories, themselves -- stories about storytelling.

I have seen mention in several places that the "original Mother Goose" was Bertha Broadfoot, or, in Latin: Regina pede aucae (The Queen with the Goose-foot), the Eighth Century Queen of the Franks.

I find this excruciatingly tantalizing, because of my emerging theory about the role of "monsters" as living omens, and how "monsters" were originally those born with deformed or missing limbs (and also as creatures who were "mixes" of different animals in one). The problem is, all the references I can find lead back to the same Wikipedia article, which is both a stub, and lacking in references.

So I was hoping someone here on Mudcat could point me to more fleshed-out legends of the queen, and how she became linked to "Mother Goose."

Whether or not there is any historical basis for the legend, or whether the figure of fairy tale and nursery rhyme could ever be attached to a living woman is unimportant to me. What I'm after is the role she's played in the imaginations of people through the centuries.

Help?