From Oed to Poetry
The man in the moon, one was sometimes informed in one's extreme youth by usually reliable sources, came down too soon and asked the way to Norwich. He went by the south, and burnt his mouth with supping cold plum porridge.
As one grew older, however, doubts began to creep in. In what sense did he come down too soon? Might he have burnt himself less had he landed later? Did his reported decision to go by the south indicate a detour through Suffolk, and if so, why was it made? And while it is, of course, possible to burn one's mouth on something extremely cold, that would probably mean a temperature of around minus 20 degrees, which is difficult to achieve with cold porridge.
The truth is that, while nursery rhymes are sometimes coded accounts of some political conflict, this one probably means nothing at all. Certainly Iona and Peter Opie, the great collectors and analysers of nursery rhymes, have found no explanation for it.
The man in the moon in a nursery rhyme sometimes suggests Charles I, but not in this case, apparently. So the tale we're told here must have arisen purely from the need to provide the rhymes: "too soon" purely to accompany "moon", and "Norwich" to go with "porridge". But in that case, why has it survived over several centuries? Presumably because the euphony of the words appealed to innocent ears. Even a wholly arbitrary collection of words can sometimes seem intriguing; even, now and then, magical.
Take the spines of encyclopedias and dictionaries. Sometimes the summaries they give of their contents are flatly austere: A to Auto, Turk to Zygo, and so on. But where more of the first and last words are revealed, there are sometimes conjunctions that create a kind of poetry. The Encyclopaedia Britannica that was still around in the 1960s, with its Daisy to Education and its Sarsaparilla to Sorcery, has been superseded, but the new one has its pleasures too: Chicago to Death, Menage to Ottawa, and even Excretion to Geometry. Nor is the Encyclopedia Americana outdone, with its Egusquiza to Falsetto; Photography to Pumpkin; Sulphur to Tramways, aerial; and its gloriously evocative Trance to Venial sin.
Even that is surpassed by the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, which gets into its stride in volume 2 (BBC to Calypsography), picks up the pace with volume 7 (Hat to Intervacuum) and then offers in the space of eight volumes Poise to Quelt, Quemadero to Roaver, Soot to Styx, Su to Thrivingly, Thro to Unelucidated and, most intellectually stimulating of all, Unemancipated to Wau-Wau.
Logic tells us that in each case the first and last words have nothing to do with each other. Yet the sense that there must be a connection persists. Surely the BBC, with its all-seeing eye on the world, must dabble from time in calypsography? (Perhaps; perhaps not. Calypsography has nothing to do with calypsos but means, the OED says, steel engraving; it's a "bad formation" from Greek). Yet Thro seems a solid example of something that's unelucidated, at least until you get round to looking it up, while the Wau-Wau sound like a race ripe for emancipation.
Norwich and porridge, Egusquiza and Quelt and Quemadero and Wau-Wau - words like these, half understood or not understood at all, can tug at one's imagination as Chimborazo, Cotopaxi and Popocatepetl tugged at the childhood imagination of the poet WJ Turner in perhaps the only one of his poems that's still remembered.
And oddly, in this sense - and in no other sense at all - there's even an attraction in all that relentless spam about making yourself happier, healthier, firmer and stronger that pours into one's email inbox day after day. The fictitious folk who are shown as its authors use randomly generated words to sum up their subjects, and now and again they hit on the kind of suggestive conjunction that hints at intriguing mysteries.
"Facile pumice mutiny": a rising perhaps of the Wau-Wau, armed with the only weaponry coming easily to hand in that region? "Immodest deciduous hearth inhabitation" - so unlike the decent and untitillating deciduous hearth inhabitations we are used to. "Semper definitive centrifuge profusion"; "Delirious canopy equine" ... what visions they conjure up of a mighty profusion of definitive centrifuges, time and again (semper means always) riding to war on delirious equines with brightly coloured canopies raised over their heads for protection against the merciless sun. Any would-be writer stuck for a story might easily find inspiration here. Certainly Walter Scott would have done so.
As one grew older, however, doubts began to creep in. In what sense did he come down too soon? Might he have burnt himself less had he landed later? Did his reported decision to go by the south indicate a detour through Suffolk, and if so, why was it made? And while it is, of course, possible to burn one's mouth on something extremely cold, that would probably mean a temperature of around minus 20 degrees, which is difficult to achieve with cold porridge.
The truth is that, while nursery rhymes are sometimes coded accounts of some political conflict, this one probably means nothing at all. Certainly Iona and Peter Opie, the great collectors and analysers of nursery rhymes, have found no explanation for it.
The man in the moon in a nursery rhyme sometimes suggests Charles I, but not in this case, apparently. So the tale we're told here must have arisen purely from the need to provide the rhymes: "too soon" purely to accompany "moon", and "Norwich" to go with "porridge". But in that case, why has it survived over several centuries? Presumably because the euphony of the words appealed to innocent ears. Even a wholly arbitrary collection of words can sometimes seem intriguing; even, now and then, magical.
Take the spines of encyclopedias and dictionaries. Sometimes the summaries they give of their contents are flatly austere: A to Auto, Turk to Zygo, and so on. But where more of the first and last words are revealed, there are sometimes conjunctions that create a kind of poetry. The Encyclopaedia Britannica that was still around in the 1960s, with its Daisy to Education and its Sarsaparilla to Sorcery, has been superseded, but the new one has its pleasures too: Chicago to Death, Menage to Ottawa, and even Excretion to Geometry. Nor is the Encyclopedia Americana outdone, with its Egusquiza to Falsetto; Photography to Pumpkin; Sulphur to Tramways, aerial; and its gloriously evocative Trance to Venial sin.
Even that is surpassed by the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, which gets into its stride in volume 2 (BBC to Calypsography), picks up the pace with volume 7 (Hat to Intervacuum) and then offers in the space of eight volumes Poise to Quelt, Quemadero to Roaver, Soot to Styx, Su to Thrivingly, Thro to Unelucidated and, most intellectually stimulating of all, Unemancipated to Wau-Wau.
Logic tells us that in each case the first and last words have nothing to do with each other. Yet the sense that there must be a connection persists. Surely the BBC, with its all-seeing eye on the world, must dabble from time in calypsography? (Perhaps; perhaps not. Calypsography has nothing to do with calypsos but means, the OED says, steel engraving; it's a "bad formation" from Greek). Yet Thro seems a solid example of something that's unelucidated, at least until you get round to looking it up, while the Wau-Wau sound like a race ripe for emancipation.
Norwich and porridge, Egusquiza and Quelt and Quemadero and Wau-Wau - words like these, half understood or not understood at all, can tug at one's imagination as Chimborazo, Cotopaxi and Popocatepetl tugged at the childhood imagination of the poet WJ Turner in perhaps the only one of his poems that's still remembered.
And oddly, in this sense - and in no other sense at all - there's even an attraction in all that relentless spam about making yourself happier, healthier, firmer and stronger that pours into one's email inbox day after day. The fictitious folk who are shown as its authors use randomly generated words to sum up their subjects, and now and again they hit on the kind of suggestive conjunction that hints at intriguing mysteries.
"Facile pumice mutiny": a rising perhaps of the Wau-Wau, armed with the only weaponry coming easily to hand in that region? "Immodest deciduous hearth inhabitation" - so unlike the decent and untitillating deciduous hearth inhabitations we are used to. "Semper definitive centrifuge profusion"; "Delirious canopy equine" ... what visions they conjure up of a mighty profusion of definitive centrifuges, time and again (semper means always) riding to war on delirious equines with brightly coloured canopies raised over their heads for protection against the merciless sun. Any would-be writer stuck for a story might easily find inspiration here. Certainly Walter Scott would have done so.
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