SYNCRETIC LITERATURE
Observations on the Epic Poem of Giles Scroggins and Molly Brown—resumed.
The fatal operation of the unavoidable, ever-impending, ruthless shears of the stern controller of human destiny, and curtailer of human life—the action by which
“Fate’s scissors cut Giles Scroggins’ thread,”
or rather the thread of Giles Scroggins’ life, at once and most completely establishes the wholesome moral as to the fearful uncertainty of all sublunary anticipations, and stands forth a beautiful beacon to warn the over-weaning “worldly wisemen” from their often too-fondly-cherished dreams of realising, by their own means and appliances, the darling projects of their ambitious hopes!
The immediate effect of the operation performed by Fate’s scissors, or rather by Fate herself—as she was the great and absolute disposer—to whom the implement employed was but a matter of fancy; for had Fate so chosen, a bucket, a bowie-knife, a brick-bat, a black cap, or a box of patent pills, might, as well as her destructive shears, have made a tenant for a yawning grave of doomed Giles Scroggins. We say, the immediate effect arising from this cutting cause was one in which both parties—the living bride and defunct bridegroom—were equally concerned, their lover’s co-partnership rendering each liable for the acts or accidents of the other; therefore as may be (and we think is) clearly established, under these circumstances,
“They could not be mar-ri-ed!”
There is something deliciously affecting in the beautiful drawing out of the last syllable!—it seems like the lingering of the heart’s best feelings upon the blighted prospects of its purest joys!—the ceremony that would have completed the union of the loving maiden and admiring swain, blending, as it were, like the twin prongs of a brass-bound toasting-fork, their interests in one common cause. The ceremony of love’s concentration can never be performed! but the heart-feeling poet extends each tiny syllable even to its utmost stretch, that the tear-dropping reader may, while gulping down his sympathies, make at least a handsome mouthful of the word.
We now approach, with considerable awe, a portion of our task to which we beg to call the undivided attention of our erudite readers. Upon referring to the original black-letter quarto, we find, after each particular sentence, the author introduces, with consummate tact, a line, meant, as we presume, as a kind of literary resting-place, upon which the delighted mind might, in the sweet indulgence of repose, reflect with greater pleasure on the thrilling parts, made doubly thrilling by the poet’s fire. The diversity of these, if we may so express them, “camp stools” of imagination, is worthy of remark, both as to their application and amplitude. For instance, after one line, and that if perused with attention, comparatively less abstruse than its fellows, the gifted poet satisfies himself with the insertion of three sonorous, but really simple syllables, they are invariably at follows—
“Too-ral-loo!”
But when two lines of the poem—burning with thought, bursting with action—entrance by their sublimity the enraptured reader, greater time is given, and more extended accommodation for a mental sit-down is afforded in the elaborate and elongated composition of
“Whack! fol-de-riddle lol-de-day!”
These introductions are of a high classic origin. Many professors of eminence have quarrelled as to whether they were not the original of the “Greek chorus;” while others, of equal erudition, have as stoutly maintained, though closely approximating in character and purpose, they are not the “originals,” but imitations, and decidedly admirable ones, from those celebrated poets.
A Mr. William Waters, a gentleman of immense travel, one who had left the burning zone of the far East to visit the more chilling gales of a European climate, a philosopher of the sect known as the “Peripatetic,” a devoted follower of the heathen Nine, whose fostering care has ever been devoted to the tutelage of the professors of sweet sounds; and therefore Waters was a high authority, declared in the peculiar patois attendant upon the pronunciation of a foreign mode of speech—that
“Too-ral-loo”
was to catch him wind! And
“Whack! fol-de-riddle lol-de-day,”
to let “um rosin up him fuddlestick!” These deductions are practical, if not poetical; but these are but the emanations from the brain of one—hundreds of other commentators differ from his view.
The most erudite linguists are excessively puzzled as to the nation whose peculiar language has been resorted to for these singular and unequalled introductions. The
“Too-ral-loo”
has been given up in despair. The nearest solution was that of an eminent arithmetician, who conjectured from the word too (Anglice, two)—and the use of the four cyphers—those immediately following the T and L—that [pg 113] they were intended to convey some notion of the personal property of Giles Scroggins or Molly Brown (he never made up his mind which of the two); and merely wanted the following marks to render them plain:—
T—oo (two)—either shillings or pence—and L—oo: no pounds!
This may or may not be right, but the research and ingenuity deserve the immortality we now confer upon it. The other line, the
“Whack! fol-de-riddle lol-de-day!”
has, perhaps, given rise to far more controversy, with certainly less tangible and satisfactory results.
The scene of the poem not being expressly stated in the original or early black-letter translation, many persons—whose love of country prompted their wishes—have endeavoured to attach a nationality to these gordian knots of erudition. An Hibernian gentleman of immense research—the celebrated “Darby Kelly”—has openly asserted the whole affair to be decidedly of Milesian origin: and, amid a vast number of corroborative circumstances, strenuously insists upon the solidity of his premises and deductions by triumphantly exclaiming, “What, or who but an Irish poet and an Irish hero, would commence a matter of so much consequence with the soul-stirring “whack!” adopted by the great author, and put into the mouth of his chosen hero?” Others again have supposed—which is also far more improbable—that much of the obscurity of the above passage has its origin from simple mis-spelling on the part of the poet’s amanuensis—he taking the literal dictation, forgetting the sublime author was suffering from a cold in the head, which rendered the words in sound—
“Riddle lol the lay;”
whereas they would otherwise have been pronounced—
“Riddle—all the day”—
that being an absolute and positive allusion to the agricultural pursuits of Giles Scroggins, he being generally employed by his more wealthy master—a great agrarian of those times—in the manly though somewhat fatiguing occupation of “riddling all the day:” an occupation which—like this article—was to be frequently resumed.