In Competition No. 2474 you were invited to expand a nursery rhyme mockingly in the style of a well-known poet.
G.K. Chesterton did ‘Old King Cole’ as written by Tennyson, Browning, Yeats, Whitman and Swinburne, and Anthony Deane expanded ‘Jack and Jill’ to the tune of more than 50 hilariously Kiplingesque lines. These can be found in Apes and Parrots, an anthology by that keen cricketer, drinker and parodist, Sir John Squire. I am fairly well-read in poetry, but I am not a mind-reader, so I was puzzled by one or two competitors who omitted to mention whom they were parodying, for instance Martin Parker’s ‘Humpty Dumpty’, which was witty, but at whose expense?
Commendations to G.M. Davis, Peter Scupham, Josephine Boyle and Frank Mc Donald. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver goes to G.McIlraith. Happy new year!
(Burns)
Wee sleekit, not so tim’rous moosie,
You ran awa’ and found a hoosie
Secure from me and auld Tam pussy
Inside the clock
And there you settled douce and cosy.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
You climbed the pendulum, had fun
Until the hammer blow of one
So startled you and made you run.
For what it’s worth
The striking chimes bring everyone
Back down to earth.
In palace, prison, but and ben,
In prose or rhyme,
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Are lost to time.
G. McIlraith(Gray)
The curfew tolls the knell of parting Puss,
The mewling mog sinks swiftly down the well;
What rustic tyrant planned this vile abuse
And marked his action with a passing bell?
Th’ applause of villagers could he expect
Or gain distinction when he pushed her in?
Let sober habitants such claims reject
And justly curse the name of THOMAS THIN.
E’en from the tomb the hapless victim cries,
But whose compassion serves to pull her out?
One braver soul to her assistance flies,
And History’s page remembers THOMAS STOUT.
To shut the gates of mercy on a cat
Whose gentle nature paid no dues to vice,
How great a sin, how foul a deed is that!
Applauded only by the farmyard mice.
Mary Holtby(Auden)
It is time for the sounding of horns
Where silence frowns on urgent untenanted pasture
Or where farmer neurotically weeps,
Cursed by confusion of livestock,
Dreaming of systems of order in the long dry valley.
All reasonable signs point to the fact of desertion,
To impact of absence, the blue idle lad lolling
Inert as a seal among stems of friable hay.
The wise passer-by leaves him,
Nervous of raising from stolen sleep
The old difficult wizard of inadmissible wishes
And the furious onset of tears.
Basil Ransome-Davies(Chaucer)
An egge ther was, ful ronde and shapelie,
The whyche ycleped was Dan Dumpetty,
Though to hys felawes Humpetty he hight,
And was a verray parfit eggy wight.
Whan that thys egge was come to man’s estate,
In al his pryde upon a wall he sate
And mynded nat oure fader Adam’s fal
From Paradyse, as al men do recal.
Now Boreas eke with his colde brethe
Thys Humpetty caste down to yolky dethe.
Hys fal was grete, men wepte with wilde wo,
And in hys royale palast even so
The kyng, who dyd hys horse and knyghtes sende
That they Dan Dumpetty agayne shulde mende.
Yet with the myghte of kyngys maiestie
That egge it could namore restorèd be.
Brian Murdoch(Wordsworth)
I met her by a mountain stream,
Yon solitary shepherd lass,
Looking a little lost herself
Upon the path below the pass.
I glimpsed upon her cheek a tear.
‘My sheep,’ she wept, ‘are lost, I fear.’
‘They’ll soon come back,’ I said, ‘you’ll find
Their tails a-wagging close behind.’
No collie bitch did ever search
So earnestly o’er vale and hill
For sheep who’d left her in the lurch.
Perchance she may be hunting still.
Her story in my heart I bore;
And now upon my couch I pore
On how she came to lose those sheep
Till I, as she did, fall asleep.
Alanna Blake(Pope)
While wasteful Whigs discard their milk when sour
True Tory ladies curds and whey devour.
Behold the smallest of the Muffet clan
Not touch’d by malice, envy, want or man.
A tuft of grass becomes her dining chair
When all alone she takes her simple fare.
But though her meal is not disturb’d by friends
A large arachnid by her side descends.
Fear springs unreason’d in the female breast.
She takes her bowl and quite the scene distress’d,
A true emotion in her heart releas’d
Not by a man but by a spineless beast.
Philip Roe
No. 2477: Tata Ltd
This might be a suitable name for the German firm that is currently offering to say goodbye on your behalf to an unwanted friend or lover, by telephone, letter or personal visit. You are invited to describe one such operation from the viewpoint of either the victim or the messenger. Maximum 150 words. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2477’ by 11 January.