Isaac Watts

I took a necropolitan stroll yesterday through Abney Park, which is a jumbled and bramble-covered cemetery in North London. One might easily deduce from the chaotic state of the grave stones that the Second Coming had happened years ago. Everything is overgrown with brambles and ivy, and the whole thing is like Ozymandias run riot in Stoke Newington.

Hidden right in the middle is a monolithic monument to Isaac Watts, whose writings, dear reader, you are familiar with.

What's that? You've never read any Isaac Watts? Well, you have. Sort of.

Do you remember the poem in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland that goes:

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!


How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in
With gently smiling jaws!

You do? Do you remember how it is introduced? Alice says:

I'll try and say 'How doth the little - '," and she crossed her hands on her lap as if she were saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words did not come out the same as they used to do...

The lesson that Alice is trying to recite was Against Idleness and Mischief. It's a moral poem by Isaac Watts, who was an eighteenth century moralising poet, theologian and hymn-scribbler. The original starts like this:

How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flower!

How skillfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.

And then it goes on to be the origin of another terribly well known phrase:

In works of labour or of skill,
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.

In books, or work, or healthful play,
Let my first years be passed,
That I may give for every day
Some good account at last.

So that's two bits of the same poem that you sort of know, isn't it? Did your mother ever tell you that birds in their little nests agree? Mine did. That's another of Isaac's. The full verse goes like this:

Birds in their little nests agree;
And 'tis a shameful sight,
When children of one family
Fall out, and chide, and fight.

Mind you, you can also kill two birds with one stone, which is how I dealt with my siblings. My old physics teacher told me that time always was always marked on the X axis of a graph because:

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

As you can probably tell, Isaac Watts combined tediousness with talent in roughly equal helpings. So I am complimenting him when I say that he was pretty damned tedious. Victorian children were forced to learn and recite all his awful moralisings.

However, his poetry can be turned on its head. For example, he wrote a thoroughly condemnatory poem called The Sluggard that begins:

'Tis the voice of the sluggard; I heard him complain,
"You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again."
As the door on its hinges, so he on his bed,
Turns his sides and his shoulders and his heavy head.

Which I think I shall print out and pin to the door of my bedroom. Later in the poem we are told of the Sluggard's garden:

I pass'd by his garden, and saw the wild brier,
The thorn and the thistle grow broader and higher;

Which would be a perfect description of Abney Park, in which his memorial now stands among grandiose brambles.

Square Poems

Only Lewis Carroll would think of writing this:

I've been trying to come up with my own version and it's a lot harder than one might think. It's impossible to prove linguistically, but I imagine that the complication increases exponentially with the number of words in the square. There will be an imaginary prize for anyone who can post one in the comments.

I am
Am I?

She has eyes
Has she sense
Eyes sense me

I suppose I have a blog
Suppose I should
I should
Have
A
Blog

Damn. And he made it rhyme.

Clever clogs

Christmas Solved By A Snark

If, and the thing is wildly possible, you are even now, dear reader, trembling at the thought of all the horrible gifts that you will have to hand out to sundry and all to mark the celebration of the birth of Our Lord; weep no more, for your confusion about presents for young and old have softly and suddenly vanished away.

I don't know how many of you have been following The Hunting of the Snark blog, but, dammit, you should have been.

Essentially, there's a fellow in Montreal called Mahendra Singh who has been lovingly illustrating Lewis Carroll's poem and providing an erudite commentary on each picture. His is a combination of art and interest that cannot be commended to too high an altitude.

I remember once seeing a copy of Moby Dick, on the cover of which the illustrator had put a picture of a blue whale. It is a sad truth of illustrations that they are often drawn by people who care not a jot or tittle for the content of the book. Not so here. The chap, obviously, cares. Indeed his care may border on lunacy, but that's none of my business. The point is that this is not some fly-by-night illustrator knocking out a job in a week: it is a labour of love, a work of whimsy, and an opus of obsession.

The relation of all this to December 25th?

His work is now being published by Melville. It will be, I don't doubt, one of the finest editions of our times. Moreover, it can be given as a present to both children and adults: from cradle to care-home. Moreover, you don't even need to worry that the receptor of the gift might already have a copy: the point is that he doesn't have a copy with those lovely illustrations. I already own four editions of Snark, but am rabid for this one.

Thus the problems of Christmas are solved with one fell swoop and swooping fall.

Amazon UK link

Amazon US link

And the blog itself is here.

Others, I'm sure can find it by going to Amazon and searching.

Since you ask, dear reader, my favourite lines from the Snark are the following:

He had brought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.


"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!"


"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our Captain to thank:"
(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best --
A perfect and absolute blank!"

Christmas with the Inky Fool

N.B. I need hardly mention that I have never met the illustrator in question and that this advice aims to profit only you, dear reader.

N.Better. I shall return to tribes tomorrow.

Snarling Snobs and Sniggering Sneaks

The Chambers English Dictionary lists 80 words beginning with the letters SN and 62 of them have derogatory, disgusting or violent connotations. Only three - snazzy, snog and snug - are cheery. And in making that calculation I didn't even count as negative the five words that refer to a scythe-handle. 

I do not believe, dear reader, that this is a coincidence. Here's the list in all its horridness:

Snab, snabble, snack, snaffle, snafu, snag, snaggle-tooth, snail, ‘snails, snake, snap, snaphaunce, snapper, snar, snare, snark, snarl, snash, snaste, snatch, snath, snazzy, snead, sneak, sneap, sneath, sned, sneck, sned, snee, sneer, sneesh, sneeze, snell, snib, snick, snicker, snicker-snack, snickersnee, snicket, snick-up, snide, sniff, snig, snigger, snip, snipe, snip-snap-snorum, snirt, snitch, snivel, snob, snod, snoek, snog, snoke, snood, snook, snooker, snool, snoop, snoot(y), snooze, snoozle, snore, snorkel, snort, snot, snotter, snout, snow, snowk, snub, snick, snudge, snuff, snuffle, snug(gle), snush, snuzzle

If you remove the obscure terms you're left with 46 words of which 38 are negative, which is a nastiness quotient of 83%. Just look at all the fun and horrible sentences you can dream up:

The snivelling snitch sneered at the snaggle-toothed sneak.

The snotty snob snubbed the snarling snake.

Other such groups of words have been found (although I believe I'm the first with the SNs*): there are the ump words - dump, clump, frump - and a peculiar number of words referring to dim light that begin GL: glisten, glimmer and gloaming. It's called sound symbolism and academics are forever snarling at each other about it.

There are two main theories on the subject. 1) It's a complete coincidence. There are a lot of words in the language and something like that is bound to happen**. 2) People naturally look for patterns in language. Perhaps there were once only a few nasty words beginning SN, but there were enough that when people started inventing new words or altering old ones we did it to fit the pattern. This effect snowballs and we even start to let the pleasant SN words die out because they don't fit.

I believe in the second theory. The reason? Because in that tiny sample of the English lexicon, in those five pages of a seventeen-hundred-page dictionary, are two words coined by Lewis Carroll: Snark and snicker-snack. The Snark is, of course, the mysterious and deadly centre of The Hunting of the Snark, and snicker-snack is the sound of the Jabberwocky's beheading.

This shows that Carroll, the master word-coiner, could discern the pattern and use it to his advantage. Moreover, when I checked in the OED I found that there were lots of neutral SN words that had disappeared and died. (Although the OED did list the delicious word Snollygoster, which means a shrewd, unprincipled politician).

This rule of the snarling SN also has consequences for the naming of fictional characters. For example, J.K. Rowling was on to a good thing when she called her villain Severus Snape. (Snape does pop up in the OED meaning a rebuke or a change to cold or bad weather, but Rowling named him after a village in Suffolk).

The result of all this is that you can invent a word and drop it into conversation and it will sound right. "That snikey bastard!" you can shout. "I'm going to snobble him."

Of course, it may just be coincidence. It may be that the theory of sound symbolism is a fiction, a fib, a fallacy, a fantasy, a phantasm, a falsehood and a fraud.

But if you wanted clinching proof of SN's hellish and horrible connotations, I need only say that it is also the post code for Swindon.

Finally, and simply because we're here, my three favourite SN words were:

Snicket - A narrow passage or alleyway
Snirt - A suppressed laugh
Snool - One who submits tamely to wrong or oppression
Snudge- EITHER to save in a miserly way OR to be snug and quiet

Supernova SN1987a (I bet it's horrid)

*It has been noted that there are several SNs relating to the mouth and nose (snout and snuffle), but not the negative aspect that I'm pointing out. Mind you, I stand ready to be corrected. There are also a lot of words to do with cutting.

**This is the classical, Saussurian view. Saussure famously said "The sign is arbitrary"; unfortunately he was driving at the time.

All mimsy were the polka-dots

Fashion designer Bella Freud does not “do knitted polka-dots, because they can look a bit naff and mimsy”, I learned from the Sunday Telegraph’s Stella magazine today; while yesterday’s Times suggested that Old Etonians or Wets* who failed to capitalise on their early advantages were “mimsy gits and no mistake”.

Until this year, I had never heard the word “mimsy” in relation to anything other than Lewis Carroll or Jabberwocky**. But now it seems to be everywhere, a useful term of contempt which broadsheet columnists can apply to anything from “well-mannered” books and films, through political correctness, to sorbet-coloured cardigans, the Lake District, Sophie Dahl, femininity and rugby union. In fact, it was a review of Sophie Dahl’s new television series by Simon Hoggart in The Spectator that drew my attention to the resurgence of the word to imply “a certain sort of self-conscious prettiness”.

The OED defines it as "prim; careful; affected; feeble, weak, lightweight" - quite distinct from Carroll's original sense of something between miserable and flimsy. Interestingly, it has been in use in this sense since the late nineteenth century, but it seems to have recently experienced a surge in popularity - perhaps because there has been an explosion in mimsiness, or in anti-mimsy sentiment among the grumpier sort of journalist.

But even without a dictionary definition, there is something about the word which makes it peculiarly easy to understand. Its combination of letters suggests “prIM”, “sIMpering”, “tIMid”, “MIlksop”, “MIlquetoast”, “MuMSY” and “MIddle-brow” or “MIddle-class”, and there are shades of all of these in the way the word is used – although at the most general level it might best be defined as weak and ineffectual, or pretty in a twee, girly sort of way.

Based on this reading, Cath Kidston is the epitome of mimsy (and I write as someone who earlier today squealed in no doubt mimsy delight after discovering two Cath Kidston cushions under a pile of junk in my bedroom). Expensive cupcakes with pastel-coloured icing are extremely mimsy. So, I suspect, is anything by Emma Bridgewater (all those polka dots), and Laura Ashley.

"Mimsy" is not the only word from Jabberwocky to have survived. The others include:

• 
  
  Chortle ("O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’ He chortled in his joy") - Another portmanteau word, invented by combining "chuckle" and "snort". Still used in the same sense.
• 
  
  Burble ("The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame/ Came whiffling through the tulgey wood/And burbled as it came") - This had been around since the fourteenth century, when it was a noun meaning bubble (later taking on the additional sense of "pimple"). But it was Lewis Carroll who introduced the current sense of "a murmorous flow of words" (n), or to emit such a noise (v), by combining "bleat", "murmur" and "warble" - although I think there is some reference to "babble" there as well.
• 
  
  Galumph ("He left it dead, and with its head/ He went galumphing back") - The meaning of this word has changed slightly since Carroll invented it, combining "gallop" and "triumphant" to create a word meaning "to march on exultingly with irregular bounding movements". Now the OED defines it as "to bound or move clumsily or noisily" - possibly by association with "clump" or "clumsy".

A polka-dot Aga

Dogberry is watching the cricket

* This term appears to refer to someone who, like our new Deputy Prime Minister, went to Westminster School. It sounds improbable, but no more so than Old Wok.

** “Mimsy”, first applied to “borogoves”, was a portmanteau word invented by Lewis Carroll by combining “miserable” and “flimsy”.

Nolo Episcopari and the Rule of the Bellman

Going on dates is an awkward thing if you're a man, [don't worry, this blog is not about to turn into a whining, mewling narrative of my wayward lusts] especially when it comes to payment [don't worry, I'm not talking about prostitution]. When the waiter brings the bill to the candlelit table it is a given that the man will try to pay for the whole thing - both burgers - but it is also a given that the woman will make some sort of frail offer to go halves, that's what feminism is. It must have been far easier for Casanova, whose birthday it would have been today.

The man now starts insisting that he will pay. And the woman? She will probably feel that she should insist a bit too, if only for show, or perhaps she means it. Perhaps she really wants to pay. Perhaps my target for the evening doesn't want to feel in hock to this strange man with the scrupulously waxed moustache, the riding crop and the plus fours.

One is therefore likely to be caught up in a back and forth of "No really" "No I insist" "I insist" "But I had a pudding". And you don't know when to stop and say "All right. We'll go Dutch."

After the first offer? The second? The seventeenth?

You don't know, but I do. For I long ago adopted the Rule of the Bellman. If she offers to pay three times, she's paying. [I should make clear 1) That this only includes direct offers of payment, "But it's so expensive" does not count 2) That this is not necessarily good advice. I have seen a fair few young ladies, aghast at my acquiesence, reaching reluctantly for their purses before spitting at me and stalking out.]

I call it the Rule of the Bellman because everything I learnt about romance I learnt from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll*

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, just not in the way Shelley thought. It is because ofr the Bellman's Rule that three offers means a split bill.

Great men other than myself have used the Rule of the Bellman. Theodore Roosevelt told Edith Wharton:
 
'I am glad to welcome to the White House someone to whom I can quote The Hunting of the Snark without being asked what I mean! ... Would you believe it, no one in the administration has ever heard of Alice, much less of the Snark, and the other day, when I said to the Secretary of the Navy: "Mr Secretary, What I say three times is true", he did not recognize the allusion, and answered with an aggrieved air: "Mr President, it would never for a moment have occurred to me to impugn your veracity"!'
 
There's also a short story called Chaos, Co-Ordinated published in Astounding Science Fiction (1946) in which the humans manage to feed The Hunting of the Snark into the alien supercomputer as a field report and thus save the earth, largely because the computer now runs on the Rule of the Bellman and wipes its own memory of everything that it has heard only once.

But then I discovered that the rule of three was not invented by Lewis Carroll. It is far older and used to be called nolo episcopari: I don't want to be a bishop. The idea was that when somebody was appointed bishop it was a given that they would be too humble to accept the post: that's what Christian humility means. So they would say nolo episcopari meaning "I don't want to be a bishop". They were meant to say this twice as a matter of etiquette. On the third request they were meant to surrender and take the mitre. If they did not, if they said nolo episcopari a third time, it was assumed that they were telling the truth and a new candidate was sought. To say something twice may be mere manners, Truth speaks thrice.

This custom was recorded by Edward Chamberlayne (not to be confused with Charlemagne (I only mention Charlemagne because today would have been his birthday)).

Anyway, that's my rule. The rule of three, because three is beautiful. For example, observe this goal from Euro '96 where three people, including Teddy Sheringham, pass the ball across the face of the goal before making the score three nil (I only mention Teddy Sheringham only because today would have been his birthday).
 
 


Incidentally, there's a splendid blog devoted to The Hunting of the Snark which can be found here. At least I think it's splendid (I only mention me because it would have been my birthday today).

*It should perhaps be noted that Lewis Carroll never married and was probably a pederast.

Revisionist Alice

There's a film of Alice In Wonderland out and the papers are filled with articles about "the eternal magic of Alice" and that sort of tripe. The odd thing about Alice is an utterly technical feature of the prose. It may help to explain this in principle with a clear and invented example:

The fat man went out into the garden. He then took off all his clothes, but only after he had gone back inside and upstairs to his bedroom.

Reading the above you would have pictured, I assume, a fat man walking out into the garden. You then pictured him taking his clothes off in the garden. You then discovered that you had pictured the wrong thing. You had to go back and delete your mental image and form a new one.

This is usually considered to be Bad Writing.

Now, opening my Alice at random:

THE next moment soldiers came running through the wood, at first in twos and threes, then ten or twenty together, and at last in such crowds that they seemed to fill the whole forest. Alice got behind a tree, for fear of being run over, and watched them go by.

She thought that in all her life she had never seen soldiers so uncertain on their feet: they were always tripping over something or other, and whenever one went down, several more always fell over him, so that the ground was soon covered with little heaps of men.

There is a crowd of running soldiers but it is only after they have filled the whole forest and we have formed a clear a picture of them in our imagination that we discover that they are all falling down and the picture must be repainted. The same thing in the next paragraph: (so click on "Read more" below):