THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18757, 10 January 1923, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Watfabkb.

L’Entenle Cordiale cst morte —Vive L’Ei. tente! Sucli seems to ho the essential philosophy of the new Anglo-French situation. We lose the qualifying adjective with its-warmth of colour; wo retain the cold but not worthless noun. “The little more, and how much it is! and the little less and what worlds away !” The omission of an adjective does make an appreciable difference. Political tradition has it that Sir George Whitmore once called Sir George Grey “a d fool. r rho statesman, choosing to ignore the expletive, protested against being called a fool. “Excuse me —I didn’t call you a fool,” retorted the soldier; “I called you a d fool.” “Is it possible dat I should love de enemy of Franco?” asks Katherine in the heroic play which was presented again in Dunedin on Monday night; and King Harry of England, that breezy wooer, replies, “No, it is not possible you should love the enemy of Franco, Kale; but in loving me you should love the friend of France; for I love Franco so well that”—but the rest of the quotation is hardly to the present purpose. The victor of Agincourt loved France so well that he would “not part with a village of it.” His countrymen five centuries later love France too well to encourage her in making a fool of herself. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. The word “cordiale” may drop out of_ the familiar formula, but it is next to impossible to believe that cordiality will cease to mark the relations of the people, and ©specially the soldiers of France and Britain. Surely they will remain loyal to “the memories (hey amassed” during the four tremendous years of embattled co-operation. For the sake of auld lang syne, if for no other reason, cricket-lovers should endeavour to pay a visit to the Caledonian Ground this (Wednesday) afternoon—a pi - grimage to the past, as it were —and watch the veterans playing against a South Otago team. Sometimes there is pathos as well as fragrance in the thought of bygone cricket days,—pathos poignantly expressed in tlie lines of the weird poet who wrote “The Hound of Heaven”; — For the field is filled with shades, as 1 near the shadowy coast, And a ghostly batspian plays to the bowlof a. ghost, . . And I gazo through my tears at a noiseless clapping host,— O my.Hornby and miy Barlow, long ago! But the clapping will not be noiseless this afternoon, and the players will not be ghosts,—though in some instances the brown hair may be spent with grey. The famous captain of the M.C.C. team has shown triumphantly that the laurel of the double century may crown the silvered head. It should bo good to see Fisher and Downes once more starting the bowling as on many a “well-fought field” in the days that are no more. Waimate. speaking generally, can boast one of the pleasantest climates in God’s own country; blit (writing appropriately, to the tune of drip, drip, drip, drip) I note the fact that when it does rain there it does rain. In the local Advertiser the characteristic is thus celebrated by a strayed lyrist:— A Visitor’s Impressions of Waimate Just New. (Adapted.) It rained and rained, and rained, and rained— The average was well maintained. And when our lawns were simply bogs, It started pouring cats and dogs! After the drought of half an hour, There came a most refreshing shower And then, most curious thing of all, A gentle rain began to fall. Next day was pretty fairly dry Save for a deluge from the sky That wetted people to the skin, But after that ■‘he rain set in. Folks wondered what they next would get. They got in fact, a lot of wet. But soon we'll see a change again, For v.'O shall have a drop of rain. Web Foot. In refraining from anv attempt to represent Richard 111 as a deformed hunchback Mr Allan Wilkie has the authority of a reputable section of historical opinion. “Dickon” was a had egg, but it is by no means certain that he was a hunchback at all. “Tradition is divided as to Richard’s personal appearance,” says the Encyclopaedia Britunnicu, “and the story of his. deformity is possibly derived from Lancastrian malignity and from a misunderstanding of Tiis nickname ‘Crouchback.’ ” Even on the moral side he has had his apologists,—as have Nero, Judas Iscariot, Judge Jeffreys, and some other men of ensanguined mark against whom (wo are asked to believe) there has been a cruel conspiracy of unjust disparagement. In the eighteenth century that ingenious dilettante. “Horry” Walpole, published a volume entitled “Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third,” — perhaps the earliest attempt to rehabilitate a character popularly stamped with infamy It is right that every accused person, alive or dead, should have his advocate, and “audi alteram partem” is a sound maxim; but the historical and traditional case against Richard is too strong—or at least too strongly entrenched in *thc* general mind—to allow a favourable hearing for an appeal at this time of day. Straight or hunched, he has no better chance of reprieve than Mrs Thomsen and Bywater. In New Zealand polling-booths the independent and intelligent elector, clutching, a badly-sharpened official pencil (cannily attached to the premises), makes a more or less vicious stroke through the name or names of the candidate or candidates whose political ambition he (or she) desires to arrest. This patriotic action may, if desired, bo accompanied by a complacent exclamation of “that’s that” —or “that’s jonnick” or “that’s jake.” The contemporary voter in the Home Country, perhaps with a better pencil sketches a cross beside tho patronymic of his (embracing “her”) pet aspirant to public service. emolument, and renown. Tho six-year-old elector in, Lincolnshire spent the morning “practising crosses,” and was escorted in tho afternoon to the booth by on ecstatic female parent for the holv purpose of lodging th.e sign-manual of his consummated citizenship. That precocious politician should go far on the downward path. Facile is tho descent of Avernus, and it would be no great marvel if ho fetched up at No. 10 Downing street. With these few prelusive remarks I give place to a Daily Mail poet; Mental Fog. Mrs Misty, at tho ballot-box yesterday, thus soliloquised; 0 bother! I shall get it in e minute. If “for” a name, yer puts a cross "agin" it! Sounds Irish-like, an’ leaves yer at a lores Jest whore to plank the crorss. If this yer game was only noughts an’ crorsses, Or if yer settled things hy pitch an’ torsses, 1 might ’a’ hin back ’orae agin’ an’ sploshin’ Among tho giddy wa-shin’. Now—put a crorss agin’ me bloomin' favourite? Not 'art! My mind’s made up an’ nort’ll waver it! My vote's for Snuff, an’ seein’ there’s a doubt, I'll cross ol’ Jones’s hout! Another Digger delivers his piece anent that verbal crux, “jake,” hut without solving Uie problem of philological derivation: Dear “Wayfarer,”—The word “jake” referred to by 4/443 in your recent notes brings back pleasant (?) recollections to mo. I first heard it used by the Canadian Railway Battalions in France in T 7 and ’lB, when I was attached to those battalions. “Jake-a-lou” (spelling of latter part uncertain) was a phrase used by the gauger, or man sighting tho rails for the level, to signify “all right” or “enough” when tho men using the lever to raise the rail had reached tho proper level. It was used in the same sense anywhere and in reference to anything. “Jake’’ was used in tho following sense. When swinging a length or rail into place the boss would say "Let her down Diggers, she’s jake,” when tho rail or length was directly over the lied or resting place. As you say, the word may be derived from tho French “j’ai.” n.s ninny of the men in those battalions were French Canadians. And good luck to them, also those Yanks who hopped tho fence and joined up to get in early. Their record as railway battalions will always stand. — Bill Digger. Historically interesting! but, as I say, we are no forrarder philological!,y. I am told that there is n book treating of (ho argot or slang of the groat war. Has it reached Dunedin ?

Ap ropos to words: a note-writer in the Sunday Times notes : The appearance of Lady Susan Townley’s most amusing “Indiscretions” leminds me —though the fact seems to have escaped her —that her father, the late Karl of Albemarle, ns Viscount Bury and as chairman of the Electric Traction Company, wrote to The Times in the spring of 1890 asking for “a word, a verb, which shall express electric powers." A hundred words were suggested, the Viscount himself proposing “ohm” <.r “volt. 1 ' Some queer words were put forward, such as “leek,” “volve,” “galve, ’ and “eddice,” while one writer suggested “burys,” after -■ Bury himself, ’thirty-two years have gone, and so has the Viscount, but the word is still missing. After the thirty-two years I diffidently suggest the electric verb “vh(’amf oflpgdcj’unatlvf,” taken (as Mr Punch would say) from “New Zealand Paper.” Again words, words. “It was stated after the meeting that nothing of importance had transpired.” (North Island Paper.) This should be (if wo must have “transpired”): “it transpired after the meeting that nothing of importance had occurred.” Gladstone (vide Lord Morley’s Life) remarked that he only once heard John Bright use an incorrect expression,--the misuse of “transpirei” in the sense of “occur.” This is a small matter to mention ; but in the matter of blunders each of us has his pot aversion, and I (often blundering) do specially abominate the “transpire” error. True, it is not so bad as “availed of,” —an enormity “more hateful than cold boiled veal,” as Macaulay said of Croker. But “forbear to judge, for we are sinners nil.”