Glosses

I am in the library now, and I’ll be staying here till morn. There is no point in going home-only 6 hours before the next class, and I have seven more pages to the Macedonian paper (well, maybe five). It is advancing very well despite the hour and the yawns. I have been finding weird examples in the text - and that is always good

When I was in London about 1.5 years ago, I was in this small bookstore on Charing Cross Road- cannot quite recall the name, I must have sampled tens of bookstores there - stretching my hand randomly, I pulled a small and well-worn book out of a lower shelf . It was entitled “Useful and Instructive Poetry”, by Lewis Carroll. Yes, Lewis Carroll-but if you go looking in the full collections of his works, you won’t find this bunch of nonsense poems which he wrote as a child - it seems to be forgotten. In my best tradition I purchased it and gave it as a gift to my friend Efrat (the tradition is to give away the book I want very badly to a friend who also wants it). But Efrat made a photocopy of the volume for me, and now I have the poems, if not the book.

Brother and Sister

“Sister, sister, go to bed,
Go and rest your weary head”,
thus the prudent brother said.

“Do you want a battered hide
Or scratches to your face applied?”
Thus the sister calm replied.

“Sister! do not rouse my wrath,
I’d make you ino mutton broth
as easily as kill a moth.”

The sister raised her beaming eye,
And looked on him indignantly,
And sternly answered: “Only try!”

Off to the cook he quickly ran,
“Dear cook, pray lend a frying pan
to me, as quickly as you can”.

“And wherefore should I give it you?”
“The reason, cook, is plain to view,
I wish to make an Irish stew”.

“What meat is in that stew to go?”
“my sister’ll be the contents.” “Oh!”
“Will you lend the pan, cook?” “NO!”

Moral: Never stew your sister.