PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3774, 13 July 1926, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

Kins Saturday's Otaco Daily Tima*). Somehow, if not by miracle by the next thing to it-, the British newspaper press contrived to keep going and showing throughout the general strike. A batch of London papers received this week are a sorry sight or an exhilarating sight as you choose to take it—the newspaper press crippled yet unbeaten; The Times reduced to four skimpy pages, the Daily Mail to two, but with the brave heading, “For King and Country”; the Daily Express, the Daily Telegraph, the Daily News and the rest all under jury-rig. Yet there they are, and the wonder is that they are there at all. From every office the unionist operatives, down to the junior printer’s devil, had cleared out; how was it possible for derelict editors and reporters to produce a daily newspaper? Possible or not, they did it. To cap all, (he Government issued a daily broadsheet, the British Gazette, commandeering for the purpose the Morning Post establishment, lock, stock, and barrel. By help of the cables we lived through the strike and its emotions at the time, but it comes back vividly with this week’s mail. To the Government be praise for sagacity, to Government and nation alike be credit for pluck. When Mr Baldwin left No. 10 Downing Street for the House of Commons after the end of the strike had been an-

nounced, he might have been a cricketer carrying his bat after a century. Mr Baldwin found 100 photographers and some kinematographers awaiting him. “I say,” he exclaimed in surprise, but his surprise turned to obvious pleasure a moment later when the crowds in Downing Street and at each end raised cheer after cheer. The Prime Minister raised his hat in acknowledgment time after time. Mrs Churchill ran out of No. 11, shouting “Hurrah.” and Mr Baldwin warmly shook hands with her. Then he entered his car and drove off. At the end of Downing Street the crowd wa9 so dense that the car had to stop. People surged round it cheering wildly. A way was then made for the car, and it proceeded through a lane of cheering people to the House of Commons.

“ I see that an Auckland newspaper has been prosecuted for publishing the name of a juvenile culprit charged before the Children’s Welfare Court,” says a correspondent. Quite right too. The law forbids publicity* in the case of children. Equally should the law forbid publicity in the case of motor car drivers, since from the point of view of the City Council by-laws they are merely children of a larger growth, unfit to be trusted. Any day you may be hauled before the court for some petty breach—cutting the corner, putting on pace, disregarding or misunderstanding the signals of the human semaphore posted at the crossings; you may be “convicted’ think of the word!—and fined. In all motor car cases at the magistrate's court—there is often a string of them —there should be suppression of names. Maybe;—but publicity is part of the penalty. My sympathies are divided. From the Octagon one way to the Oval, the other way to Knox Church, if driving I bless the loitering wayfarer who crosses the road diagonally; if walking I bless the motor traffic that makes crossing a risk of life or limb. It is the man on the street that gets knocked down, not the man in the car. And if Iris car is a luxury car I would show him no mercy. London Police Magistrate to a friend who interrogates him across the luncheon table at the club: “What would happen if I came before you some morning at Bow Street 'drunk and disorderly*?”— “Having regard to your social position it would be my privilege to give you a month without the option of a fine.** From Seacliff. A homily on verifying your references:— Dear “ Civis,” —In last week’s Passing Notes you attribute to Gibbon the well-known maxim “ Always verify your references, sir **; but the originator of this saying wa4 old Dr Routh, of Magdalen College. Oxford (see Chambers* Encyclopedia). In Passing Notes some time ago you were unable to name the prelate who in his episcopal visitations wearied of oold chicken and the hymn, “The

Church’s One Foundation.” The prelate was Dr Maclaggan, Archbishop of York, I believe —but I may be confusing him with Dr Magee, the LowChurch Archbishop of York, who used to go about with his episcopal garb stained with splashes of pea-soup! I hope I shall not throw you into the state of extreme dejection of the war correspondent who, writing home to his paper about the rats in the trenches, forgot to make any quotations from The Pied Piper of Hamelin when I remind you that, a week or two ago, in commenting on the indispensibility of women in the economy of life you made no mention of I. Esdras, iv.

Of Bishop Magee in relation to soup stains I know nothing; "but I know that to him is attributed the saying—unpleasing to a Pussyfoot ear, impious indeed—- “ Better England drunk and free than sober and enslaved.” The Book of Esdras which I neglected to quote belongs to the Apocrypha, and the Apocryplia is not popular in Presbyterian Otago; the Bible Society refuses to publish it. Nevertheless I have been at the pains to turn it up and find I. Esdras iv a wordy contest on the question “ Which is the strongest, wine, or the king, or woman, or truth ? ’* The edifying conclusion is reached that truth is stronger than the other three; but it is easily shown that woman is stronger than the king. Is not the king great in his power? Do not all regions fear to touch him? Yet did I see him, and Apame the king’s concubine, the daughter of the admirable Bartacus, sitting at the right hand of the king. And taking the crown from the king’s head and setting it upon her own head; she also struck the king with her left hand. And yet for all this the king gaped and gazed upon her with open mouth; if she laughed upon him, he laughed also; but if she took any displeasure at him, the king was fain to flatter, that she might be reconciled to him again. Another correspondent asks for the meaning of “ great wits jump.” You say, “Gibbon certainly verified his references; ‘ Civis ’ cannot be less punctilious; great wits jump.” You may be a great wit, but I don’t understand the jumping. “ To jump ** in this use is to coincide, tally, agree. Thus in “Twelfth Night,” Each circumstance Of place, time, fortune, do cohere and jump. . . . And so elsewhere in Shakespeare. “ Great wits jump ’* is a neat translation of the French saying, “Les beaux esprits se rcncontrent,” —neat and for my purpose preferable, since I do not care to cumber this column with French. Mr Alfred Noyes, himself a poet, has been giving advice on the value of rhythm in poetry—advice to the address of the lawless barbarians whose “free verse’’ knows neither rhyme or rhythm. Everything in the universe really moved in rhythm. The stars and the tide moved in rhythm. “Tile human heart beats in rhythm, or if it begins to beat in free verse ” said Mr Noyes, “you go to the doctor.—(Laughter.) You walk in rhythm, for if you began to walk in free verse you are in danger of being arrested for a misdemeanour.— (Laughter.) If you look at a crew on the river you find that they work in rhythm, and they work in rhvthm for a practical reason, not merely for a decorative effect, because if they began to row in free verse they will probably lose the raoe. and the reason for their working in rhythm is that they find that they are free to deliver their strength more effectively through rhythm than by any other means.” To what lengths of ugliness and obiscurity “free verse” may go, judge from

the following specimen given seriously under the head of Poetry by the Transatlantic Review. Space for it might be grudged even in a museum of curios. But read it through, and be not discouraged, death is more than certain a hundred these sounds crowds odours it is in a hurry beyond that any this taxi smile or angle we do not sell and buy things so necessary as is death and unlike shirts neckties trousers we cannot wear it out no sir which is why granted who discovered America ether the movies may claim general importance to me to you nothing is what particularly matters hence in a little sunlight and les3 moonlight ourselves against the worms hate laugh shimmy ' Say whether it would be possible to write this into intelligible prose. The last word, “shimmy,” I take to be slang for “chemise,” meaning “shroud,” since he is maundering about death and worms.

From Mosgiel:— Dear “ Civis,” —You write that no edition of Burns known to you contains the song “ Coming thro' the rye.” I would beg to advise you that I have an edition of Burns’ Poetical Works, published by F. Warne and Co., which contains that song. I enclose a copy of the words: Coming through the rye, poor body, Coming through the rye, She draiglet a’ her petticoatle Coming through the rye. O, Jenny’s a wat, poor body; Jenny's seldom dry; She draiglet a' her petticoatie Coming through the rye. A correspondent at Waitepeka sends me the same verse slightly varied:— Jennie wat hersel' pulr body; Jennie’s seldom dry; She’s draggled a’ her petticoaties Cornin’ through the rye. “ Songs of Scotland,” two volumes, Novello, 1863, edited by George Farquhar Graham, has “ Gin a body meet a body,” words and music, as now sung; adding ?n a footnote that there are three versions, the first, written by Burns to the tune of a strathspey called “ The Miller’s Daughter ”; —this, I take it, is the song ir which Jennie draggles her petticoat coming through a field of rye wet with dew or rain; the second, adapted from the first to the tune we now know; the third, set to entirely different words. Only the first of the three, the Jennie song, set ’S to have been written by Burns, and the Jennie song has gone out of use.

Let me round off this barren disquisition on a moot point in Scottish minstrelsy by one or two Scottish stories, quite new. I take them from a review of “Milestones,” a volume of reminiscences by the Marquis of Huntley, the “ Cock o’ the North.” Mrs Janet Farquharson, of Inyercauld, was a real Highland chieftain’s lady. A despot in her own house, she kept her sons in great order: “One of the younger sons, John Atholl, had asked for a second helping of some dish at lunch, which Iris mother had refused Jo give him. He again begged, and added, * If you don’t giv- it to me I’ll tell.’ No attention being paid to him, lie screamed out, ‘ Well, I’ll tell. Ma breeks were made out o’ the drawing room curtains.’ Everyone laughed, and Mrs Farquharson, apparently unconcerned, started another subject. In the evening I met her in the passage leading to the rooms the boys occupied. Soon after, soupds of woe and lamentation arose, and testified to Mrs ability in administering ‘medicine’ to John Atholl’s person.” This is not bad; but the next is better:— The caress traius between Glasgow and Edinburgh used to stop at Larbert Junction for the collection of tickets. In a full first-class compartment one of the passengers could not find his ticket; lie searched his pockets back and fore, but no ticket was forthcoming. At last the exasperated collector saw he had it in his mouth, and, pulling it out, he slammed the door, saying, “You hae it in yer moo. ye fule, keeping the train waiting!” When the train started, the passenger quietly remarked, to the astonishment of the others: “Awm nae sic a fule as I loQk. Yon was an auld ticket, an' 1 was jist sucking the date aff.” Civis.