The saddest of the year;
Too warm, alas! for whiskey punch,
Too cold for lager beer.
Religious and Political Parodies.
Those parodies which deal with Religious and Political questions are alike in that they are both of great antiquity, and that, no matter how harmless they may be, they are sure to displease a certain proportion of their readers. Thus the parodies that were published by William Hone were both religious and political, and they gave great offence to the supporters of the government of his day, yet any history of English parody that should omit the parodies which gave rise to his three trials would be ridiculously incomplete. It is difficult to adequately treat of the topic without appearing to ridicule that which to many appears too solemn for burlesque.
But in the following pages a broad distinction has been drawn, those Parodies only have been admitted which, whilst imitating the form or language of portions of the liturgy, have no tendency to ridicule religion in itself, nor to burlesque any of its dogmas. It should be remembered that much of the phraseology we associate with the Liturgy is simply old fashioned English, such as was in common use at the time the Scriptures were translated into English, and when the services of the Church of England were first compiled. There can therefore be nothing impious in applying similar language to other subjects, and many eminent churchmen have used the liturgical forms of expression in answering and ridiculing the arguments of their opponents.
There would be little difficulty in showing that in the matter of Parodies no one creed has been less considerate of their neighbours religious opinions than the Protestants, and that, from the days of Luther, the Reformers have left no weapon unemployed which could, in their opinion, do injury to the older form of Catholicism.
When that pattern of filial devotion, Mary the Second, came over with her husband to dispossess her father of his kingdom, we read that he who, with all his faults, had been a kind father, exclaimed “Heaven help me, since even my own children desert me!” It was in the name of holy Religion that James the Second was banished from this country, and his enemies, to show how truly christianlike they were, addressed the following poem to his daughter. In this, not content with burlesquing one of the most beautiful portions of the Catholic Church service, they compare this Mary, descended from the Stuarts, with the Virgin Mary.
THE
Protestants Ave Mary,
on the
Arrival of Her most Gracious Majesty,
MARY,
Queen of England.