“I suppose they’ll be wanting us to change our language as well as our habits. Our years will have to be dated A.C., in the year of cremation; and ‘from creation to cremation’ will serve instead of ‘from the cradle to the grave.’ We may expect also some lovely elegies in the future—something in the following style perhaps, for, of course, when gravediggers are succeeded by pyre-lighters, the grave laments of yore will be replaced by lighter melodies”:
| “Above your mantel, in the new screen’s shade, Where smokes the coal in one dull, smouldering heap, Each in his patent urn for ever laid, The baked residue of our fathers sleep. The wheezy call of muffins in the morn, The milkman tottering from his rushy sled, The help’s shrill clarion, or the fishman’s horn, No more shall rouse them from their lofty bed. For them no more the blazing fire-grate burns, Or busy housewife fries her savoury soles, Though children run to clasp their sires’ red urns, And roll them in a family game of bowls. Perhaps in this deserted pot is laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire, Hands that the rod paternal may have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living liar.” |
The well-known lady traveller, Mrs. Burton, in one of her volumes gives the following amusing verses:
| “What is the black man saying, Brother, the whole day long? Methinks I hear him praying Ever the self-same song— Sa’b meri bakshish do! Brother, they are not praying, They are not doing so; The only thing they’re saying Is sa’b meri bakshish do. (Gi’e me a ’alfpenny do.)” |
To give specimens of all the kinds of parody were impossible, and we can only refer to the prose parodies of Thackeray’s “Novels by Eminent Hands,” and Bret Harte’s “Condensed Novels.”[6] Renderings of popular ballads in this way are common enough in our comic periodicals, as Punch, Fun, &c. Indeed, one appeared in Punch a number of years ago, called “Ozokerit,” a travesty of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” which has been considered one of the finest ever written. They are to be found, too, in many of those Burlesques and Extravaganzas which are put upon the stage now, and these the late Mr. Planchè had a delightful faculty of writing, the happiness and ring of which have rarely been equalled. Take, for instance, one verse of a parody in “Jason” on a well-known air in the “Waterman:”
| “Now farewell my trim-built Argo, Greece and Fleece and all, farewell, Never more as supercargo Shall poor Jason cut a swell.” |
And here is the opening verse of another song by the same author:
| “When other lips and other eyes Their tales of love shall tell, Which means the usual sort of lies You’ve heard from many a swell; When, bored with what you feel is bosh, You’d give the world to see A friend whose love you know will wash, Oh, then, remember me!” |
Another very popular song has been parodied in this way by Mr. Carroll:
| “Beautiful soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a big tureen! Who for such dainties would not stoop! Soup of the evening, beautiful soup! Soup of the evening, beautiful soup!” |