SCENE AT A COUNTRY INN IN THE PROVINCE OF NELSON.

Grey River Argus, Volume XV, Issue 1938, 22 October 1874, Page 3

SCENE AT A COUNTRY INN IN THE PROVINCE OF NELSON.

'' [The following communication, addressed to the " Nelson Evening Mail," is from a pen once familiar to Canterbury readers :] — Having occasion to spend an evening in a small country hotel in this beautiful Province, I heard a conversation around the bar-room fire, which spoke so highly for the intelligence and intellectual culture of the dwellers in the Bmall hamlet, that I shall hardly be accused of any violation of social confidence if I endeavor to tcan- < scribe some small part for the amuserriQufc, if not benefit, of Nelson readers. The company consisted of some eight or j ten persons. The conversation was not wholly uninteresting, comprising the usual topics of horses, dogs, sheep, and their diseases, farm produce and its prises, and, as usual, the ceremony of glasses round was repeated from time to time. "Come, gentlemen," said a fine hale old gentleman, "I think it's my turn now. Let us keep it up in the good old style ; as the poet says — Funde vinum, funde ; tanquam sint fluminis undae Nee quaras unde ; sed funde semper abunde. "There you be with your French agen, squire," said a stalwart countryman, whom I took to be a thriving immigrant farmer, and a capital specimen of his class. " I suppoEe that theer's got a English belonging to it, h'ant it. Wot's it all about squire? eh?" The Squire— "Ask that young gentleman there ; notwithstanding his jumper and short pipe, I think he has not left school so long as to have forgotten his Latin. Come, sir, do you think you could {,ive my friend here a translation of that old couplet?" The youth, a very good-looking, gentlemanly lad, in spite of his evident desire to make himself appear like an old hand, said modestly — " Can you repeat them for me, again, squire ?" The squire did so, slowly and with emphasis, and the lad, taking out his note-book and pencil, with a little consideration, wrote down and lead — Pour out the wine, The drink divine, In draughts as deep as ocean's brine ; Nor ask whence shine Those drops benign, But still pour out the muscadine. Squire — Very fair, sir, you do great credit to your school, wherever it was. A quiet young gentleman in black, whom I believe to be the parson, remarked — "The translation is spirited, but I may remark, I am sure without offence, that its fault lies in being more diffuse than the original ; and, again, to particularise the wine — muscadine; I think that weakens the effect." Countryman — Well ; gie us a touch o't yourself, pas'son ; you be a scholard, you be. Best in the parish, I reckon. Parson — "Not so much a scholar as you think, gaffer. I leave it to less sober men to sing the honors of the wine. Though wine is one of the best gift to man as I've read." - A. weather-beaten Scotchman, evidently of the shepherd class, here took his pipe out of his mouth and said — "AskhV yeer pardon, sir, but what for aye ' wine V "Wine's unco guds in its way, but cauld en the stomach, I'm thinking. Are ye just weel advised noo, that the poet was na speaking o' whisky !" Parson—" I doubt it, Sandy. He says vimum, and vinum means wine." An Irishman, with red hair and high cheek bones— " Sorrah one of it, ye're honor. Shure, hav'n't I heard Tim Dooly, me ould schoolmaster that was, in Ould Ireland, discoorse on that vary point. 'Vinnm, boys,' he'd say, 'is commonly supposed to be wine, but as the word is always used with great honor, and potes do be praising it beyant telling, it stands to rayaon it manes the best dhrink in the world ; and that dhrind we all know is whisky. So you may translate vinum — whisky.' That was Tim Dooley's word ; and a great scholar he was — rest his soul." Parson — " Well, I think Sandy has got his translation ready. Come. Sandy." The Scotchman, who had been alternately scratching his head and a small piece of paper with a pencil, to my great surprise read out the following — Eh mon— tak' ye'er fu' o' whisky, Eneuch to mak' the ocean frisky ; Dinna speer wha pays the cost o't, Tak a richt gude willie-waught o't. Squire.—" By the Lord Harry, Sandy, you're a poet; that rendering of '\inde' by ' who pays for it ' is your country all over." Sandy. — "Weel, I conseeder its a rational translation of the poet's idea." Paddy.— " Translation is it? Shure d'ye call it a thranslation to put a thing from one furrin tongue into another? Put it into English, me dear, and then talk about translation. Look here now" — and then this Irish bullock-driver, actually without paper, and after a moment's pause, repeated with a glorious brogue — Fill me cruisfckeen Wid ould potheen, As aften as flow the tides, 0 ; The devil may care How it comes there, Barrin' there's lashin's inside, 0. " Talk a' thranslating, be gor ; there's a touch of ould Tim Dooly's style for ye?" Countryman — "Darn'd if I Bee much differ'nee 'twixt Squire's lingo and yourn. Yours and Sandy's English and Squire's Frinch be all pretty much alike. But I'll tell 'c what it means — Gie I a barrel o' beer .As big as yon harbor doon th'eer, I doant care what ' Ihey puts in the vat, If on'ny they mak's 'un good beer. Theer now, that's what I ca'al good English, and good sense, too^-dang'd if faint." . A small, thin, cadaverous looking man here rose. His nose, by the way, was a leetle red, which probably accounts for its use in tinging his pronunciation. He said : — ''■ Gentlemen, it is very distressing to me to listen to a conversation whose object it is to glorify the use of intoxicating liquors. The original lines were fortunately in a dead language, now unused. It is lamentable that it should have been resuscitated to corrupt the morah of more civilised times. Whilst you have been distorting the poet's words into so many shapes, I have hmably endeavored to pioctace a mode&t paraphrase, which I shall hope to read at the next meeting of my total abstinence brethren, It runs as follows : —

Pour out the tea, The nice Bohea, As harmless as the watery soa ; It ma) not be The real Chinee, But still we'll drink it copiously. This too much for the squire. He rose from his chair, hia face beaming with the indignant hue of his favorite beverage, so deeply outraged, and roared out — " Landlord, bring half-a-dozen of your best old port. The green seal, mind." The wine was brought in a basket. He took one bottle tenderly, and proceeded to uncork it with great care. Then he filled out a glass for each, including the teetotaller, ior he knew human nature ; muttering to himself, as he filled the glasses— " So vinum is whisky and beer, is it ? — that's bad enough— but tea ! Ugh. Heaven above vs — vinum, tea ! After all, I think mine's the best traslation — Pour out the wine— the wine out-pour In wave 3 that roll from shore to shore, Nor ask whence comes the generous store, But etill the sparkling wine out-pour. That's a little closer than yours, my | young friend, if not so sparkling. But, ah me ! when shall we see a language that can express so much in so few words like the Latin? Put those two lines into any two of any modern tongue, my lad, and you'll be a much better linguist than I am ; and yet they want our lads not to learn Latin. Fancy educating a boy on weak tea and no Latin." So I weht to bed, saying to myself : — Nelson is the place of all the world to live in. If this is the ordinary style of conversation at a way-side inn, what must not the society be like ? But just as I dropped off to sleep, I started up and said : — Of course I forgot, Domett lived there for years. The author of Ranolf and Amohia has impregnated the very climate with his genuis— that accounts for it. And I went to sleep. A Traveller.