PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3514, 19 July 1921, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday’s Daily Times.) Being Irish, the Irish truce began with a pitched battle at Castle Island, near Tralee; —ll killed and many wounded. Strictly, it was ‘‘on the eve of the truce”— let us be fair ! —a final spurt of devilry to wind up. In deter, by a perilous conjuncture, the eve of the truce fell within a period sacred to the shillelagh and the defiant antiphonies of the Orange and the Green, —between July the First, Battle ci the Boyne, and July the Twelfth, Batti of Aughrim—that clinched the Boyne. The forty thousand Belfast Orangemen who marched in procession on July the Twelfth were saluted by only “a couple of bursts of shooting,”—a mere nothing, obviously in compliment to the truce. Under which truce, plus a safe conduct, the leading Sinn Fein gunmen adventure themselves to a conference in London, at their head Mr de Valera. “Dee Valeery,” —says Pat to Mike in scorn, —“an’ him born in New York, an’ bis father a Spaniard,—divil a bit ! —liis name's Dan O’Leary, an’ the O’Learys are County Clare.” Be it so; no objection here. Whatever Mr Dan O'Leary and nis friends carry back with them, it will not be an Irish ItepubUe. The most they can hope is a compromise that will save their face. If the blessings of the truce embrace New Zealand, our local Sinn Feiners may take a rest. Much needed! One of them, and he is a priest, was defining himself in the Daily Times the other day as “a political animal.” He can now again he an ecclesiastical animal pure and simple to his own and other people’s great relief. And oh, were it possible, might there be a truce to the controversy on marriage and divorce ! I have not read with can; the blast and counterblast epistles,—nobody but their respective authors could be expected to do that; but. from a late one on the antisaccrdotal side, 1 gather that the supreme authority over all things visible and invisible is the State. Mu! plied by x, you and I and she next man are the State; for, multiplied by x, you and I and the next man are the people of New Zealand, and the people of New Zealand through their elected committee, the Parliament, make the laws. To teach the simple minded that “there cun be a ‘law’ that nullifies the law of Parliament” is intolerable.” Ancient civilisations, as yet uncorrupted by Christianity, took quite an opposite view. Antigone, going to her death for a breach of State law, professes to have

obeyed “the unwritten and immovable laws of the gods.” “Not of yesterday are they,” she says, “but eternally they live, and no one knows from what times the had their being.” And Cicero save ditto to Antigone. So much for Greece and Rome; —(Cicero, by the way, though a Roman, was not a Roman Catholic !) There are the Jews, of course, with their Ten Commandments, not to mention tianity,—But John P. Robinson he Sez they didn’t know everything down in J udoc. Though not the name wanted, “John P. Robinson he” will serve. We may leave it at that. Another thing I gather is that polygamy is all right if you take it by instalments. Has not Bernard Shaw laid it down that in right and justice people should marry and unmarry themselves, no thanks to anybody? In New Zealand, under State law, the ideal social morality, though net that of the fowl-yard, nor of the Turkish harem, nor of Salt Lake City, would be of a kind permitting you to have as many wives as Brigham Young, provided you had them seriatim, one at a time. In short, as below : MARRIAGE A LA MODE. “I’ll have lic-r, but I will not keep her long.”—King Richard the Third. Oh, Phyllis is my only joy; I cherish and adore her Almost as much, I almost think, As those that went before her. Their names?—good sir, I don’t pretend To keep a regular tally; An early one, if not the first, Was Sally in our ally. ’Twas Darling Sally, till the time Arrived to say adieu, — When Black-eyed Susan came on board, — And- then 'twas Darling Sue. Polly the next; —a gentle hint Gave Susie her con-gee; ’Twas “Polly put the kettle on. We’ll all have tea.” V hen Darling Polly’s day was done She left without a trace; And Phyllis is my only joy 1:11 a new one takes her place. Mayhap that Maggie Lauder W ill Darling Maggie be; Mayhap for Annie Laurie I maun lay me doon an' dee. ~ , , Kiddies? you ask—well, yes, a few; Jiut what and where they are Is business of the Government, And—kindly Mr Parr. Another word or two of the virtues of blank verse : Dear Civis, —I am grateful for- your comment on the term “blank vo'-'sp,” nml your admirable illustration. Though grammarians in the largeness of their hearts extend the term to cover all unrimed verse soever. I personally have never used it for any literary form but the great five-stressed ritneless line of Marlow©, Shakespeare, and their kin; of Milton ; of Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth : of Tennyson, Browning, Fdwin Arnold. the passage which you quote may possibly be covered by the indefinite _ and scarce definable term “poetry”-that is another matter, but it js ludicrous to call it “verse.” Tho rhythm of verse is regular, that of prose is not; regularity or irregularity of beat is that which differentiates the one from the other. The greatest, most impassioned prose, touch it what height it may, no matter limv we print, is still prose; but once the heats swing into regular recurrence, prose passes—verse is horn ; verbal expression becomes musical. It is true that, we talk of “musical” prose, but we talk nonsense, we merely mean smooth-flowing, grateful to the ear; looseness of thought is a si i iking and deplorable characteristic of the writings of the hour. I am, yours very truly, Sw.VRA. Naturally we hanker after the rhyming verse. Wo like the recurring assonance, as most people like sugar in their tea. Vet, from Homer downward, the greatest poetry has always been rhymeless. The

reason why ? —because a rhyming poetcannot always say what he would; he says what he must, bondage to rhyme compelling. Byron, albeit he could handle verse as well as most, complains that Monarchs sometimes Are less imperious than rhymes. And Sam Butler, who stuck at nothing, the most unscrupulous rhymester in the language, in effect says ditto to Byron ; For rhyme the rudder is of verses, With which, like ships, they steer their courses. Browning, never a paragon of lucidity, might even in Sordello have made some distant approach to the intelligible, but for the fatal necessity of rhyming every couplet, and this through a poem of 5000 lines —short lines to boot, making the job worse. Eschewing rhyme, he would have been spared Tennyson’s bitter jest : “There are only two lines in Sordello that I understand, the first—Who will, may hear bordello’s story told, and the last— Who would, has heard Sordello’s story told, and neither is true.”

So the Ivaiser that was refuses to pay his rates, —on the ground, he says, “that he had not established himself at Doom of his own free will.” This is about the lowest deep yet. The Art of Sinking could hardly farther go. We are next to hear, let us hope, that the bailiffs are in, and that the Kaiser has been sold up. One would like to know by whose will but his own it was that he 'came to Doom and took up his abode within the range and ambit of the municipal rate collector. Of his own free will he left Germany, a runaway; of his own free will he has remained in Holland, a skulker. It is open to him of his own free will to give himself up to the Allies—to the French for choice, who would probably shoot him at sight. Equally open is the road to Leipzig, where of his own free will he may stand his trial before the sham court of justice there in session, and get himself judicially whitewashed. He will do none of these things. Of his own. free will he will stop where he is and refuse to pay his rates. There always was in the Kaiser a vein of the mean and the petty; tho parasites and sycophants around him knew it; state and pomp were unable to conceal it. Essentially a play-actor—and a poor one, — he never more than half-imposed cn Europe even in the days of his splendour. And now, stripped of his trappings, ho has nothing to show but the natural man, and we see him as he is—squabbling with a. Dutch municipality that has given him shelter and refusing to pay his rates.

What is a tomboy? A tomboy, say tho dictionaries, is a hoyden. And what is a hoyden? A hoyden, on the same authority, is a boisterous girl. And a boisterous girl—we need no dictionary to tell us—is the kind of girl that not even a boisterous man would care to marry. King Lear was a boisterous man, the very type and pattern; blit King Lear knew what men of rough manners preferred in sweethearts and wives : Her voice was ever soft, Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman These remarks are to the address of the girls in Wellington who propose to plav football, and of any girls in O'.ago who may he tempted by the Wellington example:—lt were easy to pile up epithets—tomboy, hoyden, and the like; I prefer to say, for what it may he worth, that not even a footballer would go to a girls’ football club for a wife. The Wellington girls in meeting assembled rejected soccer as too tame; nothing but Rugby would serve their turn, —the whole hog or none. 'Whereupon: Mr Aamodt, of the Ponekc Club, told the meeting that girls could play Rugby if they played it properly. His club, for one, would help them. “Lord help your husbands.” he added. “Heaven help the married man.” Remarks less cryptic than they look. For, after all, a woman is a woman that she may be a wife and mother. Nature built her thus, and not otherwise. Shocks and strains that leave the masculine athlete unharmed wo aid wre-k the fragile woman irretrievably. Fragile,—of course she is fragile. No need to go into the anatomy and physiology of it. Granted only what the judge in the Liguori case desiderated, a little horse sense, and everything is plain. When girls unsex them.fives by the rushing, roaring, rough and-tumble of Rugby football, heaven help their husbands —if they get any. From Oamaru: Dear Civis, —The termination of a lengthy -Shakespearean .season in Dunedin has put the Times out of joint. Look at Last Saturday’s leader. “These, ft ho ready workers) are they for whom the present is a time of rich opportunity.” “The times are out of joint,” they ray. O blessed fate, that over we were born to set them straight! For them never has life been so full,

nor its calls and claims so insistent.” “O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right.” From Oamaru, where we had only one night of Allan Wilkie. Another night or two might have im* proved the Oamaruvian sense of humour. Men of good will who embrace opportuuities of public service don’t complain of a “cursed spite” ; they are grateful for the “blessed Fate" that has given them a useful job. See it? Further, a Daily Times writer, whether in the editorial columns or in this special reserve of mine, may say, as Handel said of his plagiarisms, “I take my goods where I find them.” And, when he takes themlike Handel, he trims and prunes ana pares, adding something, omitting something, shaping them to his own private mind and personal use. And who shall say him nay?

From the Backblocks : Dear Civis, —You do right in referring the cirl and apples problem to tha backblocks. Many of us have harder problems to solve. Girl No. 1 lost her penny, as com. pared with the other girl’s purchase, by spending more than half her money on the apples costing two for a penny—thus, 30 apples at three for a penny, costing lOd; and 30 apples at two for a penny, costing 15d; equals 2s. Ilad she spent her money evenly on the doar and cheap apples the result would have come out the same as the other girl’s purchase—thus, one shilling cn apples at three for a penny equals 36 apples; one shilling on apples at two for a penny equals 24 apples; result, 60 apples for two shillings in both cases. You see, dear Civis, what it is to be a financier. But had you and I gone out buying apples in that way, both of us being Scotch —for you can’t hide your nationality, you entertaining old jumble of learning and wisdom, wit and nonsense—yes, both bring Scotch, I might offer a penny for fower o’ them;'while you, from farther north, might go so far as to offer a penny for sax o’ them; and we would have got them too. Several correspondents have been able to •■see through this transparent mystery. Perforce I select one out of the lot and make acknowledgment to the others. In the conduct of this column I have learned that puzzles and paradoxes are by no means to be despised. They interest all sorts of people, and the oldest of them perpetually- recur. For the hen and ahalf that lays an egg and a-half in a day and a-half, and that ingenious imbecility, “Sisters and brothers have I none, bait that man’s father was my father’s son,” I might keep a separate waste-paper-basket. Civis.