The Wooden Horse

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 447, 31 August 1928, Page 14

The Wooden Horse

/in Occasional Column And with great lies about his wooden horse Set the crew laughing, and forgot his course. J. E. Flecker. 1 SHALL SHORTLY begin my Index of Curious and Useful Information Derived from Miscellaneous Reading. (Alas, poor idiot! How many indexes have you meditated and how few have you even begun? There was that Index of Passages in Which the Well-Read Essayist Quotes “The world is so full of a number of things”; there was that Index of Detective Novels Damned by the Discovery upon a Nail or Thorn of Some Damned Damning Shred of Shirt, Skirt, or Hanky; there was that Index of Man’s Inhumanity to Man, as Illustrated in Choice Passages Expressing the Contemporary Novelist’s Malice towards his Fellows; there was . . . Yes, yes, I know all that. But I am now going to make an Index of Curious Etcetera.) I have already a few passages noted—“culled,” as a school inspector of my acquaintance used to assure classes he was pelting with little poetical puzzles, “culled from me own reading”—and very willingly copy them out. Stiff knee, induced by rigor mortis, how to take the stiffening out of. “The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club.” Dorothy L. Sayers, p. 137. If, during the period of rigidity, you loosen one of the joints by main force, then it doesn’t stiffen again, but remains loose. Which is why, in a hospital, if the nurses have carelessly let a patient die and stiffen with his knees up, they call in the largest and fattest person on the staff to sit on the corpse’s knees and break the joints loose again. [Lord Peter Wimsey to Mr Murbles.] Large ticks, in Canterbury Cathedral, irritation of to worshippers, overcome by preacher’s eloquence. “Cambridge Cameos.” Sir Arthur E. Shipley. From the chapter on “The Fauna of King’s College Chapel,” p. 115.

Then there is the Argas a large tick which has also beec, found in Canterbury Cathedral. The so-called “marginated tick” is yellow and white —the Papal colours. It is common near dovecotes and pigeonhouses, and may attack people sleeping in their neighbourhood. Its bite causes much irritation and sometimes leads to vesicles and ulcers. At one time it was common in Canterbury Cathedral, and so worried the worshippers that it took all the eloquence of the “Very Reverend the Dean” to overcome its repellent powers. Beer, cask of. necessary to professors on holiday. “Noins on a CellarBook.” George Saintsbury. p. 149. Just before the present century opened, and some years before we Professors in Scotland had . . . given up half of the old six months’ holiday ... I had taken from a friend a house at Abingdon for some time. So, though I could not even then drink quite as much beer as I could 30 years earlier a little higher up the Thames, it became necessary to procure a cask. It came—one of Bass’s minor mildnesses—affectionately labelled “Mr George Saintsbury. Full to the bung.” I detached the card and I believe I have it to this day as my choicest (because quite unsolicited) testimonial. 80, as word of command, anserine obedience to. “Small Talk of Wreylands.” Second Series. Cecil Torr. P. 62. There was a wonderful old lady on a Dartmoor farm, ostensibly of English ancestry, but born about the time when French prisoners-of-war were out on parole there. I have seen her towering form with eagle eye and outstretched hand, directing geese into a pond; and I have fancied that I saw a Marshal in Napoleon’s army launching a charge of cuirassiers. I have heard her say Bo to a goose. Few people say it now 7, and they never say it properly. If it is said in the right way, the goose turns round and waddles off at once, however much it may have hissed before. It is like Ahi with a horse in Italy. When the driver has flogged and E cogged in vain, as a last resource e says Ahi, and then the brute moves on. Birds-nests, fatality in dreaming of. “Miscellanies.” John Aubrey, F.R.S. Library of Old Authors edition, p. 60. My Lady Seymour dreamt, that she found a nest, with nine finches in it. And so mrwiy children she had by the Earl of Winchclsea, whose name is Finch. Mallet, shape of, approximation to, considered desirable in heads. Notes on Thomas Hobbes, by John Aubrey, in “Characters of the Seventeenth Century.” Nichol Smith, p. 184. In his old age he [Hobbes the philosopher] was very bald, which claymed a veneration; yet within dore he used to study, and sitt bareheaded: and sayd he never tooke cold in his head but that the greatest trouble was to kcepe-off the Flies from pitching on the baldness; his Head was . . . inches (I have the measure) in compasse, and of a mallet forme, approved by the Physiologers. Witches, tw r o Scotch (male), disbursements incidental to the burning of. “News out of Scotland.” Eleanor Brougham, p. 162. Imprimis. For ten loads of coal to burn them, five merks £3 6 8 Item. For a tar barrel, 14f 0 14 0 Item, for towes 0 6 0 Item. To him that brought the executioner . . . . 2 18 0 Item. To the executioner for his pains 8 14 0 Item. For his expenses here 016 4 Item. For one to go to Finmouth for the laird .. 0 6 0 Summa town part (Scots) £l7 1 0 This example of what Sir Thomas Browne calls “prodigal blazes” occurred at Kirkcaldy, in 1636. But the fearfu’ expense noted above was only the municipal share of the bill: the “kirk’s part” totted up to even more, to £l7 10/-, in fact, making a grand total of £34 11/-. But the ceremony was not as costly as the figures seem to indicate; for the reckoning is in Scots coinage. In sterling, the expenditure was only £2 17/7, or £1 8/9J a witch. J,H.E.S.