THE COMMON ROUND

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23882, 9 August 1939, Page 2

THE COMMON ROUND

By Wayfarer

The German press, which gives us too much of not enough most days of the year, has at last made news —to wit, an eloquent plea from Will Vesper, a poet, to the newspapers to cease publishing jokes about Scotsmen. The German press. Herr Vesper complains, is full of stupid jokes about Scots which originate in the Jew-ridden London press. Scots, it is added, are in fact the healthiest, most upright, and most Germanic of the races inhabiting the British Isles, and they alone furnish the possibility of a "home-grown English national development":

The Scots are the last healthy racial influence in the British Isles, which is sufficient reason for Jews and Jew-lovers in England to hate them and try to make them look ridiculous. It is sufficient reason, too, for our press to cease furthering the schemes of these Jews and their friends for the sake of a ,few silly jokes, especially since amons the Scots particularly one continually meets men and women who love and cherish Germany An end to Scottish jokes then. Not even a dachshund will accept them any longer They come from the Jews.

This seems to add up to the thing for which the British race has been searching since the days of King Alexander—a joke about Scotsmen that Scotsmen will see.

Personally, we hasten to add, we have always failed to see anything particularly funny about the Scot. Taking him all in all, he is scarcely a joking matter. Outside of Scotland, where he is rarely seen, except for an occasional glimpse of the flirt of the kilt when he is running with the deer, the Scotsman is übiquitous. If we take ship to some distant land, in an attempt to escape him, no sooner is the port cleared than he emerges, with a full philosophy and an empty pipe, from the bowels of the vessel. If we develop a complex about him and decide instead to stay at home, with the doors and windows locked and the blinds drawn, he still reminds us of his presence on the first of the month, when the letter-box is filled with his terse requests for interest payments.

Should we, in panic, climb over the back fence and start madly racing over the surrounding hills to avoid him, there will we find him, armed with a club, standing guard wherever the erass is greenest. And if. driven to despair, we decide at last to remove ourself from his omnipresence by suicide, we shall probably have to purchase the rope to do the trick from a Scotsman, take a dram of Scotch whisky to steady our nerves, kick from under our quaking knees a box that has contained Scottish marmalade—and then submit to being examined by a Scottish doctor, declared temporarily insane by a Scottish coroner, prayed over by a Presbyterian minister, and buried in a Scotch mist by an undertaker from Aberdeen. A valued contributor adds a little more to our store of Native lore: Dear " Wafe."—Anent vour little discourse on strange and laboured communications, a collection of the struggles of some of the old Maoris to transfer their very hazy idea of our language to paper would yield some rather bright examples. It would not be fair to quote personal letters, of course, but the following two which I secured from country tradesmen are typical:— To Dear Mr . Give the boy one bag prou (flour), one tin paking prou my wife she had a pikinini las night and one bar hopi (soap). And this to a butcher, in a script worthy of the College of Heralds: Mr , Please just letting you know about Reckoned it all up my docket of meat Bill and wright uo to now another meat Mr tell you of the part we want in the meat. So vou gave my meat Bill docket to this fellow so to-morrow I pay vou or square ud and close down.—Oblige. From . One could quote numberless epistles in a like strain, but these may suffice.—l am etc.. Pakeha Maori. We suspect, however, that the penning of letters in contempt of the King's English is not confined to the Native race. The difficulty about a free education system is that too many of its beneficiaries are prepared to spend little effort in taking real advantage of it. But to revert to less controversial subjects, our clamorous Hairy Dog, straining to be heard in another chapter of his silly serial for sensible people, demands our further attention. This week, a blithesome anecdote that should test the sense of humour even of the Sassenach: A man in morning coat and tophat went to a famous London confectioners and ordered special cake, to be made in the shape of an "S." He said he would call and inspect it next day. Expense was obviously no object, so the confectioner had a special S-shaped pan made and baked a beautiful cake, lavishly decorated. The next morning, however, the customer was not satisfied. " This is a block ' S.'" he said. " and I want a script 'S.'" The confectioner apologised, ordered another pan. and baked another cake. But when he called again the customer was still unhappy about it. " No. this won't do." he said. " The curlicue is cut off. I want a large and graceful curlicue. Do vou understand? " The tactful and patient confectioner ordered another pan with an elaborate curlicue and baked another cake. This time the customer was delighted. The cake was perfect, he declared. " I am very glad," said the confectioner. " Where shall I send it? " "Never mind," said the customer. "I'll eat it here." More rollicking risibles will be rendered to readers shortly. Watch for further episode in the side-split-ting saga of the Hirsute Hound. It is told of the Irish that they have a favourite meal, potatoes and point, a phrase originating in this wise. . . . that each Derson. before taking a bite, pointed the potato at a salt herring or a bit of bacon hanging in front of the chimney. It is an amusing enough albeit a pathetic, fancy when one has herring and bacon enough oneself, but its flavour, like that of the Irishman's dinner, grows dim when one is in danger of losing even the purchasing power to command the potato. We must confess it, that the Budget worried us less last week, or even Blue Saturday at Invercargill, than the high-flying tactics adopted by this once well-behaved groundling of the tuber family. When orange are the price of rubies, we cheerfully consume apples; when apples assume the price of gold, we contentedly eat potatoes—but when potatoes bid fair to reach the price of apples and oranges combined, and are weighed out at so many to the

shilling, our whole economy is thrown out of gear, our entire dinner table out of harmony. And the fable of the Irishman receives point indeed. Next time our friends come to dinner, they will have an opportunity of seeing it. Bf J de the rind of bacon hanging above our chimney we have this day affixed a potato. With each mouthful of the staple stew which is set before them, our guests will have leave to point to the potato, to give it flavour. But we must hang it high and fix it firmly, or, come the present famine worse, and we have no friend, alas, whom we could trust alone in the room with so precious an item ot diet.

Upon those terrible events that befell last Saturday at Invercargill we prefer not to dwell. In a mood of humility we shall not even raise our voice in that age-old anthem which it is customary for visiting Rugby teams to sing when they leave Invercargill in possession: "It must have been the oysters, it couldn t have been the play." No, we shall write it up on the tablets of. our memory that on August 5, ISM 9, hereafter to be known as Sad Saturday, the province of Otago suffered a temporary eclipse. Truly it was a Maroon Letter Day; but we may reflect that at least the Otagoites assisted in painting the city of Invercargill red.

Otago, as they say, bit the dust (or, as they prefer, in sporting circles, swallowed the slush), and we are not going to start an argument about it. Indeed, we couldn't! But talking of biting, we cannot but ask what became of all that straw, or hay, that we read in the newspapers had been scattered around Rugby Park to make the ground softer for the boys to fall on? There was no sign of it on Saturday, and the only logical conclusion is that the Southland fifteen had consumed it before the Otago team reached Invercargill. Now, this seems just a little irregular From experience, teams which visit Invercargill are prepared to contend with oysters and stout, but we can't help thinking they should have been advised, if the Southlanders were going on to a hay diet. At any rate, we can see that if there's any left around Carisbrook before the return match, both sides are given an equal chance at it before play commences.

An author pays a call: " The dingy, bottle-green atmosphere of the place sobered me, and I sat meekly down on the edge of the chair and could see my nose shining out of the comer of my eye." The unfortunate effect, no doubt, of too much squinting at modern works of art.

" I would like to dig into the polar ice-cap," says Mr Ellsworth, "To see what can be learned of the Antarctic weather." If he had been in Dunedin a week or so ago he would probably, like us, have had to dig his way out, when he'd have learned plenty about it in no time.

A correspondent suggests that the present situation at Danzig could be aptly summarised as one of spit and Polish.