No. 643: The winners

Charles Seaton reports: In his 'Notebook' some time ago the 'Spectator' accounted for T. S. Eliot's lines: Garlic and sapphires in the mud Clot the bedded axle-tree by suggesting that they were inspired by the poet mishearing the local word for one of the worts, `samphire', as 'sapphire,' and that samphire 'could easily grow so as to clot the ancient axle- tree bedded in the mud of a disused track.' Competitors were asked to suggest some equally speculative explanation for any other poetic couplet.

There seemed to me two or three conditions the entries should aim at satisfying: the chosen couplet should contain some odd word or phrase; it should still be odd, even when read in context; and the explanation given should be both plausible and ingenious. These appeared not unreasonable requirements but, working diligently through the entries, I discovered that a rigid application of these criteria eliminated nearly everybody. I accordingly lowered my sights. Even so, there were still a large number of casualties under rule one above which did not sufficiently redeem themselves by the quality of their textual com- mentary.

The entry which most nearly—to my mind— caught the spirit of the 'Spectator's' paragraph was that of Brian Allgar, and he wins four pounds. Of the other entries which managed to survive the eliminating tests, or whose merits rose above them, P. W. R. Foot and Richard Probyn win three pounds, and George van Schaick and Peter Peterson two pounds. Close runners-up were Roger Woddis, W. F. N. Watson and Maud Gracechurch, and commendations go to the multiple entries of Lance A. Haward and Margot Crosse.

Lovelace's well-known girl friend Honor More CI could not love thee, dear, so much ... ') turned op, with variations, from several competitors, and this was the only couplet which appeared more than once.

(Brian Allgar) For Hades' bobbin, bound in mummy-cloth, May unwind the winding-path.

(Yeats: 'Byzantium') Extensive research in Port-au-Prince has convinced me that these puzzling lines are a reference to voodoo. Returning from an outlying village, my guide suddenly seized my arm and, pointing along a primitive track, said: `Man, you don' wan' go down that ol' windy-path!' Apparently, the inhabitants of his village believe that when the wind blows along this track, ghosts ride upon it, the only protection being to light fires at both ends. But no ordinary fires will do; they must be, literally, spirit-flames, kindled with whiskey or bourbon. Moreover, the bottle niust be wrapped in rags belonging to one of the village 'mammies'. Later, I realised that I had inadvertently found the key to Yeats's couplet. Deafness or senility had evidently distorted his meaning, but the lines should read: 'For Haiti's bourbon, bound in mammy-cloth, May un-wind the windy-path.'

(P. W. R. Foot)

The king shall drink to Hamlet's better breath, And in the cup an union shall he throw. (Hamlet)

Close reading of the First Folio has now pretty well established that since Hamlet suffered so notoriously from halitosis Shakespeare meant the King to throw not a union but an onion. Scholars will spot the double entendre for not only is there the obvious allusion to Hamlet's bad breath, which is so bad that even the smell of onion will improve it, but the onion in Elizabethan times was accredited with aphrodisiac and energising properties. Thus one spots the irony later on when Hamlet says: 'Is thy Onion here? Follow my mother.'

(Richard Probyn) Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat, night, has flown, When the Earl of Cardigan purchased command of the 11th Hussars, one of the former Indian Army or 'black' officers as he sneeringly called them, was almost certainly a Captain Selby Knight. This officer served fifteen years in the 28th Native Cavalry, where his naturally swarthy complexion had become tanned so deeply that he was known throughout Society as Pluto. He is also thought to have been a noted cricketer, who probably batted for the Gentlemen of England against Hambledon in 1850. He is believed to have pro, posed to Lady Matilda (Maud) Collick, to whom he was doubtless a rather unwelcome and per- sistent suitor, and it seems likely that Tennyson's couplet refers obliquely to Knight's probable jealousy. In my view, therefore, the line should read: 'For the black bat, Knight, has flown', implying that it was thus safe for Maud to venture forth with another.

(George van Schaick) What seeks on the mountain The glorified train?

There now seems little doubt that in these lines from Empedocles on Etna Matthew Arnold is alluding to his far-sighted proposal for a railway to be built up the side of the famous volcano. George Stephenson had died only four years before the poem was published and Arnold is clearly calling on the younger Robert to undertake the design and construction, even suggesting a possible route ('Up the still vale of Thisbe 0 speed and rejoice'). He masks Stephenson's identity as 'Empedocles' with the characteristic secretiveness which was later to cause him to hide his own behind the equally unlikely pseudonym of Arminius von Thunder-ten-Tronckh.

The line immediately preceding this couplet is carelessly rendered in most editions as 'They stream up again'. A fuller understanding reveals this as an obvious misprint for 'steam up'.

. (Peter Peterson)

To-morrow, and to-morrow, etc. (Macbeth, Act V, Scene v, line 19)

For syllable, read syllabub. Macbeth's at first sight inadequately motivated outburst then becomes perfectly. intelligible. Having in an earlier scene ordered the destruction of all medical supplies ('Throw physic to the dogs'), he is now compelled to fall back on the standard home remedy of the day, then and for many years after- wards thought to be a specific against depression. This is, of course, handed to him by Seyton, whom the received text gives suspiciously little to do, strongly suggesting a dropped stage direction. The concoction proves, however, unsuitably spiced for the King's long-since-vitiated taste. Hence his indignant query:

Creeps in this pesty mace from day to day To the last syllabub of recorded time?