PASSING NOTES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18026, 28 August 1920, Page 4

PASSING NOTES.

Many modern festivals are lineal descendants of ancient heathen revelries baptised into Christianity. The ancient Italian festival of the Saturnalia, originally a harvest thanksgiving, a rejoicing at the completion of a year's labour, a gladsome cessation from toil, lias a direct representative in the local students' carnival without the baptism into Christianity. In local methods thero is decidedly an atavistic tendency. The heathen hordes that make their annual descent upon the city carry out their rejoicing in a manner closely resembling that of immemorial antiquity. The ancient Saturnalia -was the occasion of aai 'orgie of rejoieing> Topsyturvydom reigned supreme. Distinctions of rank disappeared. Slaves dressed in their masters' clothes. Crowds thronged the streets in dress more or less extraordinary in shape and hue. Laughter held both its sides. After twenty centuries of civilisation man does not require to seek far to find an occasion for a similar saturnalia. Merriment is one of the needs of humanity. As Rosalind said, "I had rather a fool to make me merry than experience to make me sad." And someone else has said that *' the laughter of man is the contentment of God." Old-time moralists regarded merriment as an invention of the devil. If so the devil has got hold of a good thing, as somebody has said of Monte Carlo. I iike Stevenson's statement: "If y°ur morals make you dreary, depend upon it," they are wrong. I do not say 'give them up,' for they may be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people." Boswell relates- in his preface that " the great Dr Clarke, when in one of his leisure hours he was unbending himself with a few friends in the most playful and frolicsome manner, observed Beau"Nash approaching; upon which he suddenly stopped: ' Aiy boys,' said he. ' let us be grave, here comes a fool.' " Finally let us remember that excellent addition to Wordsworth attributed to J. K. Stephen: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy; we lie about ourselves in our old age."

Some remarks that appeared recently in an English paper under the ambiguous title of " duplicity of names" leads one to reflect that it is by no means advantageous to be namesake with a man of fame. In surprisingly few cases have two men of the same name become both famous. English examples of these exceptions are of course the two Pitts, the two Winston Churchills, the two Cromwells. But who remembers that there were two Macaulays, both of whom wrote the history of the Stuarts? Who is aware that there are—at least—two Yergils, one of whom is our best authority | on the time of Henry VII and on the doings of Wolsey? And, oddly enough, he was also an annotator of Horace ! This■ reminds one of Sydney Smith's old lady who, being taken into the Rolls Court when Sir Julius Caesar was Master, remarked that she thought he was dead! There are of course many John Browns of fame. The name ; s naturally responsible for confusion. Did not some person once express a pious wish that the author of " Rab and his Friends may still go marching on"? There have been also many James Smiths—one was the brother of Horace, the others were merely James Smiths. A James Smith once came to lodge in the same house as James Smith, brother of Horace. The result was great inconvenience. At length the wit told his namesake that he must go. • " Why?" asked the other. "Because you are James the Second, and must abdicate." There were also two kings Jeroboam, two kings Joash, a long list of Appii Claudii, two Queen Annes, two Wellers. two Plinvs. In Homer we have the greater and the lesser Ajax. There were also Plato the philosopher and Plato the comedian and many old classical critics thought they were one and the same person. In fact, when two great men have the same name, one usuallv kills the other. Francis Bacon has killed—or almost killed —old Roger Bacon, whom some consider the greater rnri n of the two. Similarly Mr William Massey—our Mr Massev—has killed Mr William Massey, the journalist. It behoves the infant therefore to be careful in deciding what family he is to be born into. It is humiliatiug to have to go through the world merely as somebody else s namesake, or to be. like a schoolboy, a Minor to somebody else's Major.

Apropos of a recent note on Maori names and dialectical differences, a correspondent writes to point out, as a further eX n"i? l6 ' that " Pukeuri, which is of three in your island, is of four syllables m this." _ I gather that he has in mind such variants as " Poo-ka-y-00-ree'' and Pyoo-kyoo-ree. ' But this difference is not due to dialect, but to plain and unashamed ignorance. The men who first thought of spelling Maori names with the modernised or continental values of vowels and consonants were benefactors to their s P®^! es -, No one need make a mistake in a, Maori name. The unfortunate Australian with his Wooloomoroo and his Tibooburra is in a much worse state. I heard an Australian once speak of "Pttre-a-kan-you-eye, near the town of Way-tat-eye.'' The same correspondent adds : , But I have always felt that this could . hardly explain or palliate the statement ot a well-known public man who once ,wrote: 'As I write the limpid, liquid notes of the moki axe flooding rn~ garden with melody." Tom Mackenzie —no less. Of course he meant mako maJco, or mocky in the'vernacular. But all Nature has a voice, were our ears attuned to the sound of it. Even the "un« communicating muteness of fishes" may make its note heard to some. And beyond all doubt that note would be liquid and limpid and would come in a flood.

From time to time reports come to hand of the appalling ignorance of important place-names shown bv people who ought to know better. A correspondent sends the following clipping from the Otago Dailv Times:

An instanoo of the ignorance abroad of Zealand and New Zealand affan's is given by Mr Malcolm Eraser who, during his recent trip through America, saw in a Los Angeles paper, m answer to a correspondent who had' asked where Dunedin was, an explanation that Dunedin was the old name "for Edinburgh. Mr Eraser wrote to the paper to say that Dunedin was a New Zealand city of 80.0C0 people, but it was a week before Ule pancr published the correction. The same correspondent also sends thefol lowing: Not long ago a gentleman interested in Maori nomenclature wrote to a northern paper inquiring the meaning of Waimate. The editor briefly replied, under the " Answers to Correspond'ents " heading: "Waimate is the Maori name for dead water." A visitor from the South, however, saw in the replv a refloxion on his native parish, ancl promptly wroto to the editor accusing him of crass ignorance, and explaining that Waimate was a. town of South Canterbury with 2000 inhabitants. His letter was held over for a week while tho Mental Hospital authorities were

communicated with. The parallel which my correspondent evidently intends to establish Between these two instances is clear. Dunedin is another name for Edinburgh, and Waimate is another name for dead water. Dunedin is a Southern Edinburgh, and \yaimate is South Canterbury dead water. Against this conclusion I have no valid arguments available. Probably the parallelism also contains the implication that Waimate is what Dunedin may come to, and vice versa.

The democratic spirit of the age is working its way into all industries, and is breaking down all terriers. The most recent industry to be democratised is that of dairying." The Otago Milk Suppliers have just held a meeting at which it was solemnly resolved to widen the scope of their organisation, and to call themselves "The Otago Milk Producers Association." This is right and proper. The change from " Suppliers " to " Producers " means of course that, in the new association, cows —as the only real producers of.milk—are eligible for membership. At least the ''producers " will havo a controlling voice in the management cf the industry. For years thoy havo been exploited. They havo seen their capital watered by unscnrpulous financiers, ar.d this always takes the cream off things. The,v lnvo txea the

price of millc steadily rising, while their standard of living has remained stationary. Yet every penny of the milk-wealth of the country lias been produced by them, and by them alone. When the time comes for tho formation of a milk-producers' Soviet, the hated bourgeois milk-suppliers will be placed where they should be— under the heel of the proletariat. This new combination of milk suppliers and milk producers is an attempt to stave off the evil day, when the motto of the dairying industry will be Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, among milk suppliers and milk producers.

" Diplomacy," once said Bismarck, " is no shoemaker's stool on which one can sit, strctch a knee-strap and put a patch on a shoe; diplomacy ia not a craft which can be learnt by years and developed by rote on a roller. Diplomacy is an art." How Bismarck practised his art we all know— by simulation and dissimulation, by saying bluntly what he did not mean, and by meaning quite as bluntly what he did not say. But there is another kind of diplomacy—a wary, cautious, wait-and-see kind. According to this method you say what yen m«ra in words t"hat convey no meaning. A correspondent sends the following clipping from the Times of August 14—a cable from Rome: It is announced that the Vatican lias made no statement regarding Man nix, but the absence thereof must not be taken in the least as implying that there is no truth in the report that the Vatican does not consider Mannix blameworthy. My correspondent asks with reason, "Now, what is the papal attitude?" The answer is that the papal attitude is precisely as set forth in the message. Like the message quoted, the papal attitude to the world events of the last six years has been an ambiguous accumulation of confusing negatives. I should say that the -policy of the Vatican has not been inconsistent with its feeling that it is not incompatible with a disinclination to taking a nonquiescent part in matters wherein it should avoid making even an indefinite statement of an absence of any policv at all. Got it?

A correspondent writes to ask for an elucidation of the statement that " the exception proves the rule." The meaning seems to me to be that the exception proves, not the cogency of the rule, but the existence of it. Mention of an exception presupposes that there is a. rule. Mention of a rule similarly presupposes that there is an exception. - We do not say: " as a rule, the Sun rises in the morning." Nor " as a rule hydrogen is lighter than air." If we said," Dunedin students are the exception that proves the rule," we imply that there is a rule, and that students as a rule are not what they are in Dunedin. We therefore get to the point of formulating a rule that students are . Another phrase that requires annotation is: more honoured in the breach than in the observance." As usually understood this is taken to mean " more often broken than observed." The real meaning, however, is " more honoured by being broken.than by being observed." Cms.