COMPETITION

No. 562: Farewell to Auntie

A subversive Bac employee has suggested that suitable theme music to accompany the proposed departure of throe orchestras from the Corporation's service might be Haydn's Abschiedssymphonie, or 'Farewell' Sym- phony, whose score is so designed that the players can, one by one, blow out their candles and depart, until none remain. Competitors are invited to submit a vocal composition along similar lines (maximum 15) for performance by the Bac Chorus when they too, alas, get their cards. Entries, marked 'Competition No. 562,' by 1 August

No. 559: The winners

Trevor Grove reports: It was recently learnt that Gretna Green might be losing its chief claim to notoriety, following a recom- mendation that the Scottish law should be changed to stop runaway couples from foreign parts getting married in Scotland. Dr Johnson might have entertained a view or two on this and competitors were invited to substitute for his friend, J. Boswell Esq. in reporting the occasion. A vigorous entry revealed in the Master a bewildering variety of opinions on the subject of both marriage in general and runaway marriages in par- ticular. With respect to one matter he remained reassuringly firm, and that is the irredeemably devilish nature of the Scots and ditto of the barbaric country they please to call their home—as Mrs P. K.

Brown neatly puts it: . . if the law of their own country cannot protect them from their folly, but they must needs flee to a region where the very heavens will weep for them, and where they are like to get nothing but horse-fodder for their wed- ding breakfast, and an inhospitable heath for their bridal bed, then, Sir, let there be a law made; or they will 'assuredly breed greater fools than themselves.'

Meanwhile, two guineas to J. S. Mac- Arthur for a topical entry: BOSWELL . . . thus putting an end to the rash marriages at Gretna Green. JOHNSON Why, Sir, just as the prospect of the road to England is the finest that ever meets the eyes of a Scotchman, so its reverse has often presaged ill to romantic Englishmen who have found themselves shackled for life by chains forged at the Gretna smithy. Her Majesty's ban on this tratlick is therefore timely. But should the Scotch achieve their coveted return to bare barism you shall see such a concourse of fools on the Scotch border as will out- number the late congregation of Norse wenches in London.

And the same for another up-to-date entry, this time from John Digby:

BOSWELL Does it not demonstrate, Sir, enlightenment and wisdom in my country- men, that they are to end this practice? JOHNSON No, Sir; it is like their retention of the kilt, the anachronism inseparable from an ossified national mind. For, just as it is ridiculous in a Scotchman to wear the habiliment proper to scrambling over his starvacre hills, when his actual mode of travel is to beg a free place in some other's automobile; so is it absurd in him to close Gretna Green when marriage is becoming as dispensable as reticence or obedience to this age . . .

Two to Martin Fagg:

JOHNSON I am sorry to hear it. This was the one service that Scotland afforded the country to which she is such a paltry appendage.

BOSWELL You surprise me. I had supposed that you would have castigated our pan- dering thus to the folly of the young. JOHNSON These young people were, if I recall aright, obliged to reside for three weeks in Gretna before they could legally be wed.

BOSWELL That is so.

JOHNSON Sir, any couple whose liaison can survive three weeks of unrelieved propin- quity when their only diversions are those yielded by the squalor of a Lowland village must be united by a passion beside which the attachment of Eloise and Abelard appears merely the fleeting whim of an idle hour.

Four guineas to W. F. N. Watson: 'It is no surprise, Sir, that a nation given to so barbarously licentious a form of dress as the philabeg should have found it neces- sary to devise customs permitting the solemnisation of hasty marriages. That such unseemly rites should also have been avail- able to more civilised persons was intoler- able in its gross incitement to the making of unsuitable matches contrary to parental wishes. To be sure, Sir, did we not know the Scotch to be so undistinguished for humour, we might think it a pretty wit to have ordained that such marriages be per- formed by one practised in forging fetters.'

Four guineas also to Hilary Temple: .. Dr Johnson was affected with a strong indignation at this question.

'The existence, Sir, of this place is but to encourage the propagation of the com- mon strumpets and foolish libertines who avail themselves of it. I wish him joy of his union who will journey thus far into a realm of savages merely to pursue his low amours. Sir, a marriage License is well

named when it is obtained in such con- ditions.

'Yet (he said with a satyrick laugh) I do not suppose that the Scotchmen will remove this source of revenue, for they are a notoriously grasping Race.'

And a final word from Fergus Porter: 'Sir . a man which journeys four hundred miles, whether for love or gain, and takes upon himself the penance of sojourning for three weeks in Scotland deserves better of the law than that it should deny him the right to matrimony!'