----- Original Message -----
From: "neville attkins" <[log in to unmask]>
followed by ...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Hayden" <[log in to unmask]>
> > >The tale of Toby
> > >
> > >Once primest prigs would ogle old louse
> > >Almost all the words here are gleaned from the Oxford
> > >English Dictionary and are in Cant a language now
> > >defunct but once (so dictionary makers would have us
> > >believe) spoken by thieves and tramps and prostitutes.
> Chris Hayden sez: Sort of reminds me of some of the more gracious
> renderings of Eminem, the Geto Boyz or the Insane Clown Posse.
Well, MacDiarmid did once make poetry using +Jamieson's Dictionary+ (so he
said: letters A-E only, not because he was excluding but because he hadn't
read beyond -- the eemis stane 'n that). But somehow the OED doesn't seem
the best source for cant -- what happened to Partridge's _Slang and
Unconventional English_? OK cant isn't slang, but Partridge documents the
idiom of the canting coves better 'n Oxford.
Say, how about a poem in rhyming slang? Constraint on constraint ... I'd
check the OED on this, but my mincepies are overcooked due to encroaching
old age.
But Neville's original point isn't entirely invalid (as see the argument
that rhyme in English is powerful because it's +so+ difficult -- leave
alone the continental rhymesters with their easy inflected endings, Arabic
[so I'm told] forbids it because it's TOO easy) -- but not that new, as
Frost strangled free verse on the ties of the tennis net waybackwhen.
But enough for burble burble burble now ...
Robin Hamilton
PS
Oh, cant -- not so new is it? Villon did it oh so long ago, as I seem to
remember. But nobody knows what he meant then today ... Or George Borrow
teaching his lavengro the romano lavo-lil in 19thC England.
Footnotes to Eminem for posterity, anyone?
PPS
Having contrived a poem with the title, "The Lady, the Rude Boy and the Toy
Boy", it occurred to me to wonder how this would be read in a hunner yearz
time [if it woz]. The dictionaries weren't all that useful. I asked my
Darling Only to check this for me, but he said that the rastas who sat
beside him in lectures went home and washed their mothers' dishes, while he
sure as hell wasn't going to ask the ones he bought CDs from on the market.
Do your own field research (quote/unquote)...
PPSS
Elizabeth, Ralegh, and Essex, if anyone cares ...
endburble2
RH
signoff was: We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us
signoff is: gigo
signoff might be: Kilroy caricatured Aknahten on a pyramid.
*****************
A Last Marginally-Relevant Comment (as it's in my head now ...)
If anyone is curious as to why the term "squaddy" occurs in texts of the
lyrics of "Lock Hospital" (aka "The Unfortunate Rake", aka "The Streets of
Laredo") supposedly dating from the early 19thC, when the wordform
"squaddy" isn't recorded until 1940+, then try the term "swaddy" (which
does -- that is, date from the early 19thC, and occurs in one text of "Lock
Hospital").
OK, I know, silly, but it irritated me for days till I cracked it.
Did the man who lost the chord play the last post?
R2D2
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