Alexander: Bravo! Prefer your triple rhyme. These trinkets are very much subject to the oral folk process. If the Listmasters will allow (on the plausible grounds that Nabokov was fond of comic “verse or worse”) here’s a delightful example also relying on alternative names for things. In this case you need to know that Sarum is the Latin for Salisbury, and that Hants is an abbrev. For` Hampshire.
There was a man from Salisbury
Whose manners were Halisbury-Scalisbury
He ran around Hampshire
Without any Pampshire
‘Til his wife shouted ‘Why don’t you Walisbury?”
Many variants on “D H Lawewnce loved Florence, but Compton MacKenzie preferred Firenzi.”
Often wonder if VN ever joined any of the offbeat Cambridge Univ. “social” clubs. Apart from his Soccer goalkeeping (and Tennis?) exploits, he seemed to have shunned the typically varied social student life. In my day there was the boozy Kerriemuir Society devoted to adding verses (some 300 they claim) to the eponymous bawdy ballad (“Four an’ twenty virgins cam doon frae Inverness, and whan the Ba’ [Ball] was ower, there was four an’ twenty less ...”)
Skb
On 20/02/2009 01:24, "Nabokv-L" <nabokv-l@UTK.EDU> wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] THOUGHTS: Botkin, V
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:06:23 -0500
From: Alexander Drescher <alexander@musicwoodsfarm.com> <mailto:alexander@musicwoodsfarm.com>
To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU> <mailto:NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
References: <C5C28F0F.3A3A%skb@bootle.biz> <mailto:C5C28F0F.3A3A%skb@bootle.biz>
This message was originally
Possible variant for most non-Brits:
Her aunt, with a gasp,
"That's a wasp in your grasp..
a[s]d
On Feb 18, 2009, at 11:22 PM, Stan Kelly-Bootle wrote:
> ...
>
> ** Elaine will know of the Menzies pronounced Mingus spelling
> quirk, but for others there’s a helpful lmerick
>
> A lively young damsel named Menzies
> Inquired: "Do you know what this thenzies?"
> Her aunt, with a gasp,
> Replied: "It's a wasp,
> And you're holding the end where the stenzies."
>
> skb