PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 4041, 25 August 1931, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

The Government of Rumania is to pffset an evident indifference to “ les convenances ” on the part of its repatriate king by a vigorous overhaul of the manners of the people. There is to be a public renunciation of vanities, reminiscent of the votive pyres of Savonarola, and the inhabitants of Bucharest convert their cards to castles of paper and gravely meditate on the incendiary flames destroying these agreeable toys. And the gravamen of the attack seems to have fallen most heavily on bridge players and on the dispensers of justice. What would the eminent occupants of our Bench, our judiciary, say to having their rubber of bridge made forfeit? A more repellent suggestion by far than that the emoluments of their office should be curtailed by the prevailing “ cut!” Mrs Battle had other notions of the proprieties of card playing.

She would retort that man is a gaming animal, he must always be trying to get the better in something or other —that this passion can scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game of cards; that cards are a temporary illusion; in

truth, a mere drama; for we do but play at being mightily concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, during the illusion, we are mightily concerned as those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms.

In a recent bridge test between England and America, one distinguished contestant, of the fair sex, co-ordinated hei bridge centres (or would she say centers?) by the consumption of a neverending succession of cigarettes. How would Sarah Battle view this admixture of a pre-eminent rigour of the game with the studied insouciance of our modern devotee ?

The disthressful isle, like some intermittent volcano, is due for an eruption of national temper, and this notwithstanding that we had been assured that feelings as to old political disabilities were assuaged by the salve of Home. Rule. The Irish are proverbially given to verbal disputation and argument and have equal aptitude to clinch the matter by an appeal to physical force. Herein we have the characteristic virtues of the good soldier, and the Irish have fought for England on every battlefield of Europe, and can claim among her warriors such as Wellington, Gough. Wolseley, Roberts, White, French, and Kitchener. When there is no outlet for an ingrained belligerency, then the timehonoured trailing of the native coat begins, and in this year of grace Hibernians, Republicans, and Orangemen appear in effervescent mood, old rancours are revived; it is the anniversary of the siege of Londonderry. Derry Galgach on the Foyle, its very name signifies the oak wood of the fierce warrior, and there in 1089, with the Jacobites under

’gitive King James blockading them, the Orangemen resolved to eat the Irish, and then one another, rather than surrender. Mice and other small deer sold in the streets for sixpence a head, a good-sized rat for a shilling, and puss for four and six. If these sleeves are to be stripped and old scars shown, one must expect a recrudescence of the feud itself, a rekindling of the smouldering faggot. But if there must b e wigs on the green, let us have an honest fight, a shillelagh or two maybe, but avaunt moonlighter and assassin!

I have been asked by a correspondent the meaning of the expression “tappithen.” Is it related to the taproom, tapster, on tap? No, this resemblance is on the surface only. A tappit hen is a crested hen, or one with a top-knot, and from this came to describe a drinking vessel, with lid and knob, shaped like the hen. Its valour as an instrument of conviviality may be gauged by its fluid content, a measure of three quarts. It has good authority iff- its favour, as witness Allan Ramsay— That mutchkin stoup, it hauds but dribs. Then let’s get in the tappit hen. And Burns, also, in similar vein: Come Bumpers high’ express your joy The bowl we maun renew it— The tappit hen. gae bring her ben. To welcome Willie Stewart.

The death of Oliver Madox Hneffer, grandson of Ford Madox Brown, the pre-Raphaelite painter, and brother of Ford Madox Ford the novelist, has just been announced. The concatenation of names in this family of songbirds and artists is a remarkable one. Not content with a certain picturesqueness of name, they seek by extra embellishment to render the nomenclature even more bizarre. Charles Tennyson, brother of the laureate, was dissatisfied with his title and became Tennyson-Turner. And in the legal world one notes those cele-

brities Swinfen Eady, Cozens Hardy, and Hanbury Aggs. Oliver Madox Hueffer is presumably brother to Ford Madox Hueffer, who has given many fruitful sidelights on pre-Raphaelite and aesthete. He was boru and reared in a somewhat refined atmosphere, and did not always respond to its stimulant qualities. “My benevolent but misguided father had the greatest possible respect for my aunt, Mrs William Rossetti. In consequence our mornings would be taken up in listening to readings from the poets or in improving oiir knowledge of foreign tongues. My cousins the Rossettis were horrible monsters of precocity. Let me set down here with what malignity I viewed their proficiency in Latin and Greek at ages incredibly small.” And of Mathilde Blind, one of the minor luminaries that gravitated around the central group of Burne-Jones, Morris and Company. Hueffer wrote: '■

I would be sitting iu my little study intent either on my writing or mj' school tasks, when ominous sounds would be heard at the door. Miss Blind, with her magnificent aquiline features and fine grey hair, would enter with her alarming slip-proofs dangling from both her hands. " Fordie,” she would say, “ I want a synonym for dun.” On page 152 of her then volume of poems she would have written of dun cows standing in green streams. She was then correcting the proofs of page 154 to find that she had spoken of the dun cows returning homeward over the leas. Some other adjective would have to be. found for this useful quadruped. Then my bad quarter of an hour would commence. I would suggest “ straw-berry-coloured,” and she. would sa.v that that would not fit the metre. I would try “ roan,” but she would say that that would spoil the phonetis syzygy. I did not know what that was, but I would next suggest “ heifers,” whereupon she would say that heifers did not give milk and that, anyhow, the accentuation was wrong. I would be reduced to a miserable muteness. Miss Blind frightened me out of my life. And, rising up and gathering her proofsheets together, the poetess with her Medusa head would regard me with indignant eyes. “ Fordie.” she would say, with an awful scrutiny, “your grandfather says you are a genius, but I have never been able to discover in you any signs but those of your being as stupid as a donkey.” I never could escape from being likened to that other useful quadruped.

A captious correspondent from the snug township of Gore, who would desire for me, “ ’Ercles vein, and a part to tear a cat in,” writes on the vexed’ issrue as to the boundaries of Otago and Southland, and whether Queenstown belongs to the one or t’other. The educational test seems to find favour in his eyes, and as the Southland Education Board controls school activities there, ergo, Queenstown is part and parcel of Southland. Possibly a plebiscite would set at rest all wrangling on the question. From this preamble and from the question whether he and his should be called Otagoites, Otagoers, or Otagoese or merely Southlanders, my friend proceeds to illustrate the meaning of “ poaching ” in general and presents me with an indifferent story. The season had been a close one for the opossum tribe, but a certain trapper had managed to secure for himself what he deemed to be a fairly valuable collection of skins. With some trepidation he approached a dealer whose sympathy he was so bold as to think he could claim. That astute chafferer, eyeing the wares displayed for his inspection, quoted a price whose pitifulness could not but deeply disappoint and offend the would-be vendor.

He turned away with every evidence of disdain, but was summoned back within a few. minutes to face some pertinent inquiries of a representative of rhe police. Our merchant subsequently made a pretty profit on the transaction. A lifelong association with the ways of Brer Possum, Brer Fox, and Brer Rabbit had combined to endow him with some of the sagacity displayed bv these innocent creatures. The poacher had perforce to swallow his own medicine.

From a district high school in Central Otago:

Dear “ Civis,”— During our literary studies, a discussion arose in class over the poem “ How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,” by Robert Browning. We should like to know whether the poem refers to any historical event, and whether it is possible for a horse to gallop eighteen hours without a stop.

Browning scholars aver that there is no actual basis in history for th e incidents of this poem, though there is no doubt that in the wars in the Netherlands such an adventure was likely enough. But where do the eighteen hours come in ? The first stanza has it: And into the midnight we galloped abreast and so on through moonset, dawn, until, say, midday or a trifle after. Would Roland be good for this at a gallop? Well, if not, blame the poet who, astride his mettlesome Pegasus, forgets the limitations of mundane horseflesh. Civis.