Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

Lyon verses (so called, it is said, as having first been practised by Apollinaris Sidonius, a Gallic bishop and poet of the fifth century, born at Lyons) are verses the words of which are the same whether read backward or forward. Here is a memorable English specimen,—an epitaph, so it is said, from a church in Cornwall:

Shall we all die?
We shall die all
All die shall we;

Die all we shall.

M.

M, the thirteenth letter and tenth consonant in the English alphabet, as in the Latin, and the twelfth letter in the Greek and in the Phoenician. This letter used to be branded on a criminal convicted of manslaughter and admitted to the benefit of the clergy. "To have an M under [or by] the girdle," a now obsolescent phrase, means to address one by the courtesytitles Mr., Mrs., or Miss.

Miss. The devil take you, Neverout! besides all small curses.

Lady A. Marry come up! What, plain Neverout! methinks you might have an M under your girdle, miss.-SWIFT: Polite Conversation, i.

Macaroni, a wheaten paste, prepared in the form of hollow tubes of different diameters, is said to have originated in Sicily. And this is the legend. A wealthy nobleman of Palermo owned a cook of marvellous inventive genius. One day, in a rapture of culinary composition, this great artist devised the farinaceous tubes and served them up, with all the succulent accessories of rich sauce and grated Parmesan, in a mighty china bowl. The first mouthful elicited from the illustrious epicure the ejaculation, “Cari!” or, in idiomatic English, "The darlings!" With the second mouthful he emphasized the statement as "Ma cari!" or, in a very free translation, “Ah, but what darlings!" Presently, as the flavor of the toothsome mess grew upon him, his enthusiasm rose to even higher flights, and he cried out, in a voice tremulous with joyful emotion, “Ma caroni !"—" Ah, but dearest darlings!" In paying this verbal tribute to the merits of his cook's discovery he unwittingly bestowed a name upon that admirable preparation which has stuck to it ever since. This derivation is probably the work of some amateur etymologist (though it may be a mere jest), but, if so, is worth quoting as an excellent specimen of his art of plausible narration.

Macaronic literature (an allusion to the miscellaneous nature of a dish of macaroni), in its larger sense, a name given to any jumble of two or more languages, though experts and purists would differentiate the true from the false macaronic by insisting that the former should be a mixture of Latin (or Greek) with the vernacular, in which the words of the living language are given the inflections of the dead. Thus, "lassas kissare boneas" seems to the initiated an exquisite macaronic metamorphosis of the plain English “to kiss the bonny lasses," and they can hardly contain their joy when they find lendibus rhyming with circumbendibus. But these refinements are of later growth. In its origin macaronic literature was meant as a burlesque on the corrupt Latinity of the monks of the Middle Ages, whose sermons were a strange hodgepodge of Latin and of the vulgar language. The originator of this form of humor, or at least its earliest known professor, was one Odaxius, or Odassi, of Padua, born about 1450. His efforts were bad enough, and on his deathbed he is said to have had the grace to ask that these early effusions should

be destroyed. His most eminent disciple among his countrymen was Teofilo Folengo, an Italian Benedictine, who died in 1544. He wrote under the name of Merlinus Cocaius, and he gave to this species of drollery a degree of poetic excellence which has secured for him a respectable place in unread and unreadable literature. Numerous macaronic writers carried on the same work in Italy, and were highly appreciated. Cardinal Mazarin used to amuse himself by reciting three or four hundred of these verses, one after another. In France and in Germany also the fashion spread apace. Indeed, the famous "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum" is a sort of macaronic prose, burlesquing the logic and the pedantic Latin of the schoolmen. It is said that Erasmus, when he read this work, was so overcome with laughter that he burst an abscess in his face, and so saved the doctors an operation and himself a fee. Rabelais and Molière occasionally indulge in the same form of composition.

Dunbar, a man of great but uncouth genius, is held to have introduced macaronic poetry into the literature of Great Britain in his "Testament of Andrew Kennedy," first printed in 1508. This is not the true macaronic, however, but consists of alternate lines of old Scotch and dog-Latin, mixed up with shreds from the Breviary. A sufficient idea of Dunbar's manner and method may be gained from these the concluding verses:

I will na priestis for me sing,

Dies illa, Dies iræ,
Na yet na bellis for me ring,
Sicut semper solet fieri;

But a bagpipe to play a spring,
Et unum ailwisp ante me;
Instead of banners for to bring
Quatuor lagenas cervisiæ :

Within the grave to set sic thing,
In modern crucis juxta me.
To flee the fiends, then hardily sing
De terra plasmati me.

Scattered about the "Colin Clout" and the “Philip Sparrow" of John Skelton (first published in 1512), a younger contemporary of Dunbar, and poetlaureate of England at the close of the fifteenth century, may be found the first examples of true macaronics in the English language. Like Dunbar, Skelton is expressly ridiculing the monkish Latinity of his time. A short specimen from "Colin Clout" must suffice:

Of suche vagabundus
Speaking totus mundus,

How some syng let abundus,
At euerye ale stake

With welcome hake and make,

By the bread that God brake,

I am sorry for your sake.

I speake not of the god wife,
But of their apostles' lyfe,
Cum ipsis vel illis

Qui manent in villis
Est uxor vel ancilla,
Welcome Jack and Gilla
My prety Petronilla
You shall haue your willa,
Of such pater noster pekes
All the world spekes.

The fashion, once started, spread apace. That period of intellectual development had just begun when our British forefathers delighted in all sorts of verbal quips and cranks, in distortions of language, in conceits and

HANDY-BOOK OF

euphuisms. Macaronic poetry offered just the pedantic kind of ingenuity in which they revelled. In any account of this genre the following specimen cannot be overlooked. It has been preserved in the commonplace book of one Richard Hilles, who died in 1535. tain. While not perfect as a macaronic, it is better poetry than the average Whether he was the author is uncer. composition of this class.

A TREATISE ON WINE.

The best tree, if ye take intent,
Inter ligna fructifera,

Is the vine tree by good argument,
Dulcia ferens pondera.

Saint Luke saith in his Gospel,

Arbor fructu noscitur,

The vine beareth wine as I you tell,
Hinc aliis præponitur.

The first that planted the vineyard,
Manet in cæli gaudio,

His name was Noe, as I am learned,
Genesis testimonio.

God gave unto him knowledge and wit,
A quo procedunt omnia,

First of the grape wine for to get,

Propter magna mysteria.

The first miracle that Jesus did,

Erat in vino rubeo,

In Cana of Galilee it betide,
Testante Evangelio.

He changed water into wine,

Aquæ rubescunt hydriæ,

And bade give it to Archetcline,

Ut gustet tunc primarie.

Like as the rose exceedeth all flowers,

Inter cuncta florigera,

So doth wine all other liquors,

Dans multa salutifera.

David, the prophet, saith that wine

Lætificat cor hominis,

It maketh men merry if it be fine,
Est ergo dignum nominis.

It nourisheth age if

be good,

Facit ut esset juvenis,

It gendereth in us gentle blood,

Nam venas purgat sanguinis.

By all these causes ye should think

Quæ sunt rationabiles,

That good wine should be best of all drink

Inter potus potabiles.

Wine-drinkers all, with great honor,

Semper laudate Dominum,

The which sendeth the good liquor

Propter salutem hominum.

Plenty to all that love good wine

Donet Deus largius,

And bring them some when they go hence,

Ubi non sitient amplius.

A very famous carol "on bringing in the Boar's Head," still sung occasionally in England at the Christmas festivities, is certainly as old as 1521, for it may be found in a volume printed by Wynkyn de Worde in that year. The

version subjoined is from a collection of carols imprinted at London “in the Poultry, by Richard Kele, dwelling at the long shop under Saynt Myldrede's Chyrche," about 1546:

A CAROL BRINGING IN THE BORE'S HEAD.

Caput apri defero,

Reddens laudes Domino.

The bore's heed in hande bring I,
With garlands gay and rosemary.
I pray you all synge merelye
Qui estis in convivio.

The bore's heed, I understande,
Is the chief service in this lande,
Look wherever it be fande,

Servite cum cantico.

Be gladde lordes both more and lasse,
For this hath ordeyned our stewarde,
To cheere you all this Christmasse,
The bore's heed with mustarde.

Caput apri defero,

Reddens laudes Domino.

Another version of the last verse is,

Our steward hath provided this
In honour of the King of Bliss:
Which on this day to be served is
In Regis mensæ atrio.

Caput apri defero,

Reddens laudes Domino.

But it was in the year 1616 that a sustained macaronic composition fulfilling all the rules of the game and satisfying the most pedantic requirements appeared in the poetical portions of the comedy entitled "Ignoramus." This was by a clergyman named Ruggle. In its entirety it is a burlesque on the Norman Law-Latin of the period,—a sort of Latin which burlesqued itself in such phrases as "a writ de pipå vini carriandâ,”—i.e., " for [negligently] carrying a pipe of wine,"-but which the ridicule of centuries only slowly eliminated from the pleadings of the British bar. It was three times performed before James I., to the great delight of that erudite and pedantic monarch, who withal had wit enough to relish hugely the wit of the piece, the more so as he was attached to the simpler forms and terms of Scotch law. The dialogue, prose and poetry alike, is all carried on in legal hog-Latin. Here is one of the speeches of the titular hero, Ignoramus, a lawyer, in which he celebrates his passion for the lovely Rosabella and shows how richly he purposes to endow her:

Si posem vellem pro te, Rosa, ponere pellum
Quicquid tu queis crava, et habebis singula brava,

Et dabo, fee simple, si monstras Love's pretty dimple,
Gownos, silkcoatos, kirtellos, et petticoatos,

Farthingales biggos, stomacheros, et periwiggos,
Buskos et soccos, tiffanas en cambricka smockos,
Pantofflos, cuffos, garteros, Spanica ruffos,
Wimpolos, pursos; ad ludos ibis et ursos.

Our next example goes back avowedly to the Skeltonic form.

It was

written to celebrate the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and hence has an historic if not an intrinsic interest:

[blocks in formation]

In setting forth an Armado
England to invado.

Pro cujus memoria
Ye may well be soria,

Full small may be your gloria,

When ye shall hear this storia,
Then will ye cry and roria,

We shall see her no moria.

Shortly afterwards appeared Drummond of Hawthornden's "Polemo Middinia," which contains macaronic verses that were highly esteemed in their time, but are at once too coarse and too obscure for reproduction to-day.

A modern specimen of a macaronic which is perfect in structure and exemplifies the sort of humor which may be expected in this kind of verse is the following from the "Comic Latin Grammar :"

Patres conscripti-took a boat and went to Philippi.
Trumpeter unus erat qui coatum scarlet habebat,
Stormum surgebat, et boatum overset-ebat,

Omnes drownerunt, quia swimaway non potuerunt,
Excipe John Periwig tied up to the tail of a dead pig.

But, on the whole, nothing better has ever been produced than the following, which appeared in Punch:

THE DEATH OF THE SEA-Serpent.

BY PUBLIUS JONATHAN VIRGILIUS JEFFERSON SMITH.

Arma virumque cano, qui first in Monongahela

Tarnally squampushed the sarpent, mittens horrentia tela.

Musa, look sharp with your banjo! I guess to relate this event I

Shall need all the aid you can give; so nunc aspirate canenti.

Mighty slick were the vessels progressing, jactata per æquora ventis,

But the brow of the skipper was sad, cum solicitudine mentis ;

For whales had been scarce in those parts, and the skipper, so long as he'd known her,
Ne'er had gathered less oil in a cruise to gladden the heart of her owner.

"Darn the whales," cries the skipper at length, "with a telescope forte videbo
Aut pisces, aut terras." While speaking, just two or three points on the lee bow,
He saw coming towards them as fast as though to a combat 'twould tempt 'em,
A monstrum horrendum informe (cui lumen was shortly ademptum).
On the taffrail up jumps in a hurry dux fortis, and, seizing a trumpet,
Blows a blast that would waken the dead, mare turbat et aera rumpit.
"Tumble up, all you lubbers," he cries, "tumble up, for careering before us
Is the real old sea-sarpent himself, cristis maculisque decorus.'
"Consarn it," cries one of the sailors, “if e'er we provoke him he'll kill us,
He'll certainly chaw up hos morsu, et longis implexibus illos."
Loud laughs the bold skipper, and quick premit alto corde dolorem ;

(If he does feel like running, he knows it won't do to betray it before 'em.)
"O socii," inquit, I'm sartin you're not the fellers to funk, or
Shrink from the durum certamen, whose fathers fit bravely at Bunker,
You who have waged with the bears and the buffalo prælia dura,
Down to the freshets and licks of our own free enlightened Missourer,
You who could whip your own weight catulis sævis sine telo,
Get your eyes skinned in a twinkling, et ponite tela phasello!"
Talia voce refert, curisque ingentibus æger,

Marshals his cute little band, now panting their foes to beleaguer;
Swiftly they lower the boats, and swiftly each man at the oar is,
Excipe Britannos timidos duo, virumque coloris.

(Blackskin, you know, never feels how sweet 'tis pro patria mori;

Ovid had him in view when he said, "Nimium ne crede colori.")

Now swiftly they pull towards the monster, who, seeing the cutter and gig nigh,
Glares at them with terrible eyes, suffectis sanguine et igni,

And, never conceiving their chief will so quickly deal him a floorer,

Opens wide to receive them at once his linguis vibrantibus ora;

But just as he's licking his lips, and gladly preparing to taste 'em,
Straight into his eyeball the skipper stridentem conjicit hastam.
Straight as he feels in his eyeball the lance, growing mightily sulky,

At 'em he comes in a rage, ore minax, lingua trisulca.

"Starn all !" cry the sailors at once, for they think he has certainly caught 'em, Præsentemque viris intentant omnia mortem.

« AnteriorContinuar »