'ES BRILLIG WAR . .
SIR,—The setter of your 'Holiday Questions' is mistaken in stating that the author of the German translation of 'Jabberwocky' (Ques- tion 14) was 'probably Lewis Carroll himself.' The author was actually Dr. Robert Scott, collaborator in the Greek Lexicon, who in- cluded it in a pseudonymous contribution to Macmillan's Magazine, February, 1872, which purported to prove that 'Jabberwocky' was itself a translation from a German original. According to this theory, 'mein Bohm'sches Kind' should have been rendered 'my young Bohemian,' instead of 'my beamish boy'; and so on, ad lib. This entertaining article can be read in The Lewis Carroll Picture Book 1899; it is quite as plausible as many later interpretations of Carrol which have been seriously intended. 'Sent Snark to Dr. Scott (in return for his German Ballad),' wrote Dodgson in his diary, April 3, 1876.
The German version is amusing to English people, especially when spoken aloud, as a parody of the general effect of the language. It is unlikely to amuse Germans, even when they appreciate the original English, because it is, of course, thoroughly bad German, un- intelligible even as 'nonsense.' When I included it in my recent biography of Lewis Carroll, I received a friendly protest from a librarian in Hanover.—Yours faithfully,
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