SOME SPOONERISMS

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXIII, Issue 11877, 23 February 1933, Page 7

SOME SPOONERISMS

BY THE CLERGY

Lingual lapses in the pulpit have sometimes created amusing situations. A clergyman in the effort to endow the words with, fitting dramatic solemnity once forcefully declared: “Now Rabababbas was a bobber.” Another in. intimating that a certain meeting would take place in the church had informed the congregation thaF it would be “hailed in the hell beneath.”

Rivals of Spooner have at times appeared in Scottish pulpits. A-. North Country divine once gave out his ffcext as in ‘the Duke of Bob.” Another of the old Scots school prayed that “the naked might be fed and the hungry clothed.” It .was a. preacher in Alorayshire who, reading .of the shrivelled .fig tree, gave vent to-the astonishing words. “Ancl the wig tree fithered away,” ■>< A. tongue-tangled pulpit orator once announced his text as from. the. "Epistle Paul the Colossal to the. Apossians j” A would-be very dramatic, parson, who seemed a kind of provincial Shy-

lock, gravely enquired: "Shall I lay surgery upon my pole?’ 7 . He went on to represent the JO'ng of Denmark as haying desired • his nobles to u “suck them a-pj,under?,’ He intended, of course, .to aslc: “Shall. I lay perjury upon my soul and he meant that Hamlet and Laertes should be plucked asunder at the grave of- the fair Ophelia.