SCENE AT A COUNTEY INN IN THE PROVINCE OF NELSON.

Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1833, 17 November 1874, Page 2

SCENE AT A COUNTEY 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 small hamlet, that I shall hardly be accused of any violation of social confidence if I endea~ vor to transcribe some small part for the amusement, if not benefit, of Nelson readers.

. The company consisted of some eight <fr ten persons. The conversation was not wholly uninteresting, comprising the usual topics of horses, dogs, sheep, and their diseases, farm produce and its prices, 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. Lefc us keep it up in the good old style; as the poet says-—

Funde tinum, funde ; tauqium siot flaminis undtc

Nee qujnra-5 undo ; se.d fun.ic sempor abuude.

"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 suppose t\ afc thedr's got » 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 ho has not left school so long as to have forgotten his Latin. Come, sir, do you think you could give my friend here a translation of the 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 read—

Pour out the wine, Tho drink dmne, In draughts as deep as ocean's brine ; * Korrask whence thine ~~~ 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 thing, gaffer. I leave it to less sober men to sing the honors of the wine. Though wine is one of the best gifts to man a3 I've read."

A weather-beaten Scotchman, evidently of the shepherd class, here took his pipe out of his mouth and said : " Askin' yeer pardon, sir, but what for aye 'wine?' Wine's unco gude in its way, but cauld on 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 vinum, and vinum means wine."

An Irishman, with red hair and high cheek bones—" Sorrah one of it, ye're honor. Shure, hav'nt I heard Tim Dooly, me ould schoolmaster that was, in Ould Ireland, discoorse en that vary point: 'Yinum, boys,' he'd say, 'is commonly supposed to be wine, but at the word is always used with great honor, and poets do be praising it beyant telling, it stands to rayson it manes the best dhrink in the world; and that dhrink we all know is whisky. So you may translate vinum—whisky.' That was Tim Dooley's word; and a great acholar 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 f ye'er fu' o' whisky, Eneuch to mat' the ocean frisky, Dinna speer wha pajs the cost o't, Tak a richfc gude willie-wsughfc o'.fc Squire: "By the Lord Harry, Sandy, you're a poet; that rendering of 'unde' by ' who pays for it' is your country all orer."

Sandy: " Weel, I conseeder its a rational translation of the poet's idea." Paddy: "Translation is it? Shura d'ye call it a translation to put a thing from one furrin tongue into another? Put it into English, me dear, and then talk about translation. Look hers now' —and then this Irish bullock-drirer, actually without paper, and after a moment's pause, repeated with a glorious brogue-

Fill me oruishkeen Wid onld potheen, As aften as flow the tides, O; The devil may care How it come there, Barrin' there's lashiu's inside, O.

" Talk a' thranslating, be gor ; there's a touch of ould Tim Dooly's style for ye?" Countryman: " Darn'd if I see much differ'nee 'twixfc Squire's lingo and yourn. Yours and Sandy s English an 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 doan'fc care what They puts in ths rat, \ If on'ny they mak's 'un good baer.

Theer now, that's what I ca'al good English, and good sense, too—dang'd if taint."

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 rery distressing to me to listen to a conversation whose object it is to glorify the use of intd|jeat« ing liquors. The original lines wewfbrtunalely in a dead language, now unused. It is lamentable that it should hare been resuscitated to corrupt the morals of more civilised times. Whilst you have been distorting the poet's words into so many shapes, X have humbly endeavored to produce a modest paraphrase, which I ■hall hope to read at the next meeting of my total abstinence brethren. It runs as follows:—

Pour out the tea, The nice Bohei, Ai harmless »■ the watery eea; It may aot be The real Chinee, Bat still we'll drink it copiouily.

This was toomuchforthe squire. H«roao irom his chair, hi a face beaming with tht

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 ifc with great care. Then he filled out a glass for each, including the teetotaller", lor 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 us—vinum, tea ! After all, I think mine's the best translation —

Pour cut tho wine—the wine out-pour In waves that roll from shore to shore, Nor ask whence comes the generous store,

But still 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 went to bed, saying to myself: — IWson is the place of all the world to lire 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 ofi' 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 genius—that accounts for it. And I went to sleep. A Tbathxi-eb.