SCENE AT A COUNTRY INN IN THE PROVINCE OF NELSON.

Tuapeka Times, Volume VII, Issue 402, 24 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 overheard a conversation around the bar-room fire, which spoke so highly for the intelligence and intellectual culture of the dwellers in the smaU hamlet, that I shall hardly be accused of any violation of social confidence if I endeavour to subscribe some small part of it, for the amusement, if not benefit, of Nelson readers. The company consisted of some eight or 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, geutlemcn," said a fine hale old gentleman, " I think it's my turn now. Let us keep it up in good old stylo ; as the poet says — Funds vinum, fuude ; fcanquam sint fluminis undiß Nee quceras uncle ; sed f uncle semper abunde. " There you bo 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 that theer's got a English belonging to ft, h'ant it. Wot's it all about squired eh?" The Squire — "Ask that young gentleman there ; notwithstanding his jumper and short pipe, I think he haa not left school so long as to have forgotten his Latin. Come, sir, do you think you could give my Mend here a translation of i that old oon pig L V The youth, a very good-lowknig gontle- j manly lad, spite of his evident de3ire to j make himself appear an old hand, said ! modestly — "Can you repeat them again, I squire ?" The squire did so, slowly and with emphasis, and the lad, taking out his note book and pencil, with a little conj sideration wrote down and read — Pour out the wine, The drink divine, In draughts as deep as ocean's brine ; Nor ask whence shino Those drops benign, But still pour out the mnscadino, Squite — l< Veryfair, sir, you docredit to your school, wherever it was." A quiet Tounjj gentlemrm in black, whom- I believe to bs the paraon, remarked — " The ' translation is spirited, but I may remark, I am sure without offence, that its fault lies Ju being more diffuse than" the original ; and, again to to particularise the wine muscadine ; I think that weakens the effect." Countryman — " Weil ; gie us a touch o't yourself p?.s'3on ; you be a schoUrd, you be. Best in the parish, I reckon." Parson — " Not so much a scholar as you think, gaffer. I leave ie to less sober men to sing tho honours of tho vine.. Though wine is one of the best gifta 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 — if A skin' jeer 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 poefc was na speaking o' whiskey." Parson — " I doubt it, Sandy, nesays vinum, and vinum means wine." An Irishman, with red hair and high cheek bones — " Sorrah a one of it ye'ro honor. Shure, hav'n't I heard Tim Dooly, me ould schoolmaster that was, in Ould Ireland, discourse on that vary point. ' Vinum boys,' he'd say, 'is commonly supposed to be wine, but as the word is always used wid great honor, and the poets do be praising it beyant telling, it stands to rayson it manes the bast dhrink in the world ; and that drink we all know is whisky. So you may translate vinum — whisky.' That was Tim Dooly's word ; and a great schoolar he was — rest his soul." Parson—" Well, I think Sandy has got his translation ready. Come, Randy." The Sctotchman who had been alternately scratching his head and a small piece of paper with a pencil, to my supprise read out the following— JEh mon fcak' ye'er fu. 1 o' whiskey, Kneuch to ina.lt' -fclic ocean frisky ; T)inna spier wlia pays the cost o'i, Tak a richt gude willie-waught_ 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 over," Sandy. — "Weel, I conseeder its arational translation of the poet's idea. Paddy.— " Translation b> it? Shnre d'ye call it a thrauslation to put a thing from one furrin tongue into another? Put it into English, me dear, and chen talk about thranslation. Look hero now" — and then llaia Ir3li tmJloclv-rinver, actually without paper, and after a moment's pause, repeated with a glorious brogue — Fill me cruishkeen Wicl ould potheen, As aftan as flow the tides, O ; The divil may care How it comes there, Barrin' there's laaoin'a inside, O. Talk a 5a 5 thranslating, be gor ; there's a touch of ould Tim Dooly's style for ye ?" Country man — "Darn'd if I see much differ'nee 'twixt Squire's lingo and yourn. Yours and Sandy's English and Squire's Friuch be all pretty much alike. But I'll tell 'c what it means — Gie I a barrel o' beer As big as you harbour dono th'eer, I doan't care what They puts in the vat, If on'ny they mak's 'un good beer." There now, that's what I ca'al good English, and good sense too— dang'd if t'ain^," A small, thin, cadaverous looking mau here rose. His nose, by the way, was a leetle red, which -probably accounts for its use in tinging his pronounciation. 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 morals of more civilised times. Wliilst you have been distorting the poet's words into so many shapes, 1 have humbly endeavoured to produce a modest paraphrase, which I shall hope to sing at the next meeting of my total abstiuence brethern. It runs as follows :-*- Pour out the tea, The nice Bohea, As harmless as fclie Tvatory sea ; It may not be The real Chinee, But still we'll drink it copiously. This was too much for the squire. He rose from his chair, his face beaming with the indignant hue of his favourite

beverage, so deeply outraged, and roaroil out — " Landlord, bring half-a-dozen of your best old port. Tho green peal, mind/ The wine waa 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, for he knew human nature ; muttering to himself, as he filled tho glasses — "So vinum is whisky and beer, is it? — that's bad enough — but tea ; Ugh. Heaven above vs — vimim, tea ! Aftor all, I think mine's the best translation — Four out the wine — the wine out-pour In waves that roll from shore to shoro, Nor ask whence conies the generous store, Bui still the sparkling wine outpour. That's a little closer than yours, my young friend, if not so sparkling. Bub, ah me ! when shall we see a language that can oxpress so much in so few words like the Latin ? Put these two lines into any modern tongue, my lad. and you'll bo a much better linguist than 1 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 :—: — Nelson is the place o£ all tho world to live in if this be the ordinary style of conversation at a way-aide inn, what must not the society be like I But just as I dropped off to sleep, I started up and said: — Of course I forgot, Domett lived here for years. The author of Ranolf and Amohia has impregnated the vi>ry climate with Ma genius — that accounts for it. Aud I went to sleep. A Traveller.