by Unknown
Overture and beginners!
When lo (whish, O whish!) mesaw mestreamed, as the green to the gred was flew, was flown, through deafths of durkness greengrown deeper I heard a voice, the voce of Shaun, vote of the Irish, voise from afar (and cert no purer puer palestrine e’er chanted panangelical mid the clouds of Tu es Petrus, not Michaeleen Kelly, not Mara O’Mario, and sure, what more numerose Italicuss ever rawsucked frish uov in urinal?), a brieze to Yverzone o’er the brozaozaozing sea, from Inchigeela call the way how it suspired (morepork! morepork!) to scented nightlife as softly as the loftly marconimasts from Clifden sough open tireless secrets (mauveport! mauveport!) to Nova Scotia’s listing sisterwands. Tubetube!
His handpalm lifted, his handshell cupped, his handsign pointed, his handheart mated, his handaxe risen, his handleaf fallen. Helpsome hand that holemost heals! What is het holy! It gested.
And it said:
— Alo, alass, aladdin, amobus! Does she lag soft fall means rest down? Shaun yawned, as his general address rehearsal, (that was antepropreviousday’s pigeons-ina-pie with rough dough for the carrier and the hash-say-ugh of overgestern pluzz the ‘stuesday’s shampain in his head, with the memories of the past and the hicnuncs of the present embelliching the musics of the futures from Miccheruni’s band) addressing himself ex alto and complaining with vocal discontent it was so close as of the fact the rag was up and of the briefs and billpasses, a houseful of deadheads, of him to dye his paddycoats to morn his hestern- most earning, his board in the swealth of his fate as, having moistened his manducators upon the quiet and scooping molars and grinders clean with his two fore fingers, he sank his hunk, dowanouet to resk at once, exhaust as winded hare, utterly spent, it was all he could do (disgusted with himself that the combined weight of his tons of iosals was a hundred men’s massed too much for him), upon the native heath he loved covered kneehigh with virgin bush, for who who e’er trod sod of Erin could ever sleep off the turf! Well, I’m liberally dished seeing myself in this trim! How all too unwordy am I, a mere mailman of peace, a poor loust hastehater of the first degree, the principot of Candia, no legs and a title, for such eminence, or unpro promenade rather, to be much more exact, as to be the bearer extraordinary of these postoomany missive on his majesty’s service while me and yous and them we’re extending us after the pattern of reposiveness! Weh is me, yeh is ye! I, the mightif beam maircanny, which bit his mirth too early or met his birth too late! It should of been my other with his leickname for he’s the head and I’m an everdevoting fiend of his. I can seeze tomirror in tosdays of yer when we lofobsed os so ker. Those sembal simon pumpkel pieman yers! We shared the twin chamber and we winked on the one wench and what Sim sobs todie I’ll reeve tomorry, for ‘twill be, I have hopes of, Sam Dizzier’s feedst. Tune in, tune on, old Tighe, high, high, high, I’m thine owelglass. Be old! He looks rather thin, imitating me. I’m very fond of that other of mine. Fish hands Macsorley! Elien! Obsequies! Bonzeye! Isaac Egari’s Ass! We’re the music-hall pair that won the swimmyease bladdhers at the Guinness gala in Badeniveagh. I ought not to laugh with him on this stage. But he’ such a game loser! I lift my disk to him. Brass and reeds, brace and ready! How is your napper, Handy, and hownow does she stand? First he was living to feel what the eldest daughter she was panseying and last he was dying to know what old Madre Patriack does be up to. Take this John’s Lane in your toastingfourch. Shaun-ti and shaunti and shaunti again! And twelve coolinder moons! I am no helotwashipper but I revere her! For my own coant! She has studied ! Piscisvendolor ! You’re grace ! Futs dronk of Wouldndom! But, Gemini, he’s looking frightfully thin! I heard the man Shee shinging in the pantry bay. Down among the dust-bins let him lie ! Ear ! Ear ! Not ay ! Eye ! Eye ! For I’m at the heart of it. Yet I cannot on my solemn merits as a recitativer recollect ever having done of anything of the kind to deserve of such. Not the phost of a nation! Nor by a long trollop! I just didn’t have the time to. Saint Anthony Guide!
— But have we until now ever besought you, dear Shaun, we remembered, who it was, good boy, to begin with, who out of symphony gave you the permit?
— Goodbye now, Shaun replied, with a voice pure as a church-mode, in echo rightdainty, with a good catlick tug at his coco — moss candylock, a foretaste in time of his cabbageous brain’s curlyflower. Athiacaro! Comb his tar odd gee sing your mower O meeow? Greet thee Good? How are them columbuses! Lard have mustard on them! Fatiguing, very fatiguing. Hobos hom-knees and the corveeture of my spine. Poumeerme! My heaviest crux and dairy lot it is, with a bed as hard as the thinkamuddles of the Greeks and a board as bare as a Roman altar. I’m off rabbited kitchens and relief porridgers. No later than a very few fortnichts since I was meeting on the Thinker’s Dam with a pair of men out of glasshouse whom I shuffled hands with named MacBlacks — I think their names is MacBlakes — from the Headfire Clump — and they were improving me and making me beliek no five hour factory life with insufficient emollient and industrial disabled for them that day o’gratises. I have the highest grati-fication by anuncing how I have it from whowho but Hagios Colleenkiller’s prophecies. After suns and moons, dews and wettings, thunders and fires, comes sabotag. Solvitur palum-ballando! Tilvido! Adie!
— Then, we explained, salve a tour, ambly andy, you possibly might be so by order?
— Forgive me, Shaun repeated from his liquid lipes, not what I wants to do a strike of work but it was condemned on me pre-mitially by Hireark Books and Chiefoverseer Cooks in their Eusebian Concordant Homilies and there does be a power com- ing over me that is put upon me from on high out of the book of breedings and so as it is becoming hairydittary I have of coerce nothing in view to look forward at unless it is Swann and beating the blindquarters out of my oldfellow’s orologium oloss olo — rium. A bad attack of maggot it feels like. ’Tis trope, custodian said. Almost might I say of myself, while keeping out of crime, I am now becoming about fed up be going circulating about them new hikler’s highways like them nameless souls, ercked and skorned and grizzild all over, till it’s rusty October in this bleak forest and was veribally complussed by thinking of the crater of some noted volcano or the Dublin river or the catchalot trouth subsi-as away out or to isolate i from my multiple Mes on the spits of Lumbage Island or bury meself, clogs, coolcellar and all, deep in my wineupon ponteen unless Morrissey’s colt could help me or the gander maybe at 49 as it is a tithe fish so it is, this pig’s stomach business, and where on dearth or in the miraculous meddle of this expending umniverse to turn since it came into my hands I am hopeless off course to be doing anything concerning.
— We expect you are, honest Shaun, we agreed, but from franking machines, limricked, that in the end it may well turn out, we hear to be you, our belated, who will bear these open letter. Speak to us of Emailia.
— As, Shaun replied patly, with tootlepick tact too and a down of his dampers, to that I have the gumpower and, by the benison of Barbe, that is a lock to say with everything, my be-loved.
— Would you mind telling us, Shaun honey, beg little big moreboy, we proposed to such a dear youth, where mostly are you able to work. Ah, you might! Whimper and we shall.
— Here! Shaun replied, while he was fondling one of his cowheel cuffs. There’s no sabbath for nomads and I mostly was able to walk, being too soft for work proper, sixty odd eilish mires a week between three masses a morn and two chaplets at eve. I am always telling those pedestriasts, my answerers, Top, Sid and Hucky, now (and it is a veriest throth as the thieves’ re- scension) how it was forstold for me by brevet for my vacation in life while possessing stout legs to be disbarred after holy orders from unnecessary servile work of reckless walking of all sorts for the relics of my time for otherwise by my so douching I would get into a blame there where sieves fall out, Excelsior tips the best. Weak stop work stop walk stop whoak. Go thou this island, one housesleep there, then go thou other island, two housesleep there, then catch one nightmaze, then home to dearies. Never back a woman you defend, never get quit of a friend on whom you d
epend never make face to a foe till he’s rife and never get stuck to another man’s pfife. Amen; ptah! His hungry will be done! On the continent as in Eironesia. But believe me in my simplicity I am awful good, I believe, so I am, at the root of me, praised be right cheek Discipline! And I can now truthfully declaret before my Geity’s Pantokreator with my fleshfettered palms on the epizzles of the apossels that I do my reasonabler’s best to recite my grocery beans for mummy mit dummy mot muthar mat bonzar regular, genuflections enclosed. Hek domov muy, there thou beest on the hummock, ghee up, ye dog, for your daggily broth, etc., Happy Maria and Glorious Patrick, etc., etc. In fact, always, have I believe. Greedo! Her’s me hongue!
— And it is the fullsoot of a tarabred. Yet one minute’s ob-servation, dear dogmestic Shaun, as we point out how you have while away painted our town a wearing greenridinghued.
— O murder mere, how did you hear? Shaun replied, smoiling the ily way up his lampsleeve (it just seemed the natural thing to do), so shy of light was he then. Well, so be it! The gloom hath rays, her lump is love. And I will confess to have, yes. Your diogneses is anonest man’s. Thrubedore I did! Inditty I did. All lay I did. Down with the Saozon ruze! And I am afraid it wouldn’t be my first coat’s wasting after striding on the vampire and blazing on the focoal. See! blazing on the focoal. As see! blazing upon the foe. Like the regular redshank I am. Impregnable as the mule himself. Somebody may perhaps hint at an aughter impression of was wrong. No such a thing! You never made a more freud-ful mistake, excuse yourself! What’s pork to you means meat to me while you behold how I be eld. But it is grandiose by my ways of thinking from the prophecies. New worlds for all! And they were scotographically arranged for gentlemen only by a scripchewer in whofoundland who finds he is a relative. And it was with my extravert davy. Like glue. Be through. Moyhard’s daynoight, tomthumb. Phwum!
— How mielodorous is thy bel chant, O songbird, and how exqueezit thine after draught! Buccinate in Emenia tuba insigni volumnitatis tuae. But do you mean, O phausdheen phewn, from Pontoffbellek till the Kisslemerched our ledan triz will be? we gathered substantively whether furniture would or verdure var-nish?
— It is a confoundyous injective so to say, Shaun the fiery boy shouted, naturally incensed, as he shook the red pepper out of his auricles. And another time please confine your glaring intinuations to some other mordant body. What on the physiog of this furnaced planet would I be doing besides your verjuice? That is more than I can fix, for the teom bihan, anyway. So let I and you now kindly drop that, angryman! That’s not French pastry. You can take it from me. Understand me when I tell you (and I will ask you not to whisple, cry golden or quoth mecback) that under the past purcell’s office, so deeply deplored by my erstwhile elder friend, Miss Enders, poachmistress and gay re-ceiver ever for in particular to the Scotic Poor Men’s Thousand Gallon Cow Society (I was thinking of her in sthore) allbethey blessed with twentytwo thousand sorters out of a biggest poss of twentytwo thousand, mine’s won, too much privet stationery and safty quipu was ate up larchly by those nettlesome goats out of pension greed. Colpa di Becco, buon apartita! Proceding, I will say it is also one of my avowal’s intentions, at some time pease Pod pluse murthers of gout (when I am not prepared to say) so apt as my pen is upt to scratch, to compound quite the makings of a verdigrease savingsbook in the form of a pair of capri sheep boxing gloves surrounding this matter of the Welsfusel mascoteers and their sindybuck that saved a city for my publickers, Nolaner and Browno, Nickil Hopstout, Christcross, so long as, thanks to force of destiny, my selary as a paykelt is propaired, and there is a peg under me and there is a tum till me.
To the Very Honourable The Memory of Disgrace, the Most Noble, Sometime Sweepyard at the Service of the Writer. Salu-tem dicint. The just defunct Mrs Sanders who (the Loyd insure her!) I was shift and shuft too, with her shester Mrs Shunders, both mudical dauctors from highschoolhorse and aslyke as Easther’s leggs. She was the niceliest person of a wellteached non-party woman that I ever acquired her letters, only too fat, used to babies and tottydean verbish this is her entertermentdags for she shuk the bottle and tuk the medascene all times a day. She was well under ninety, poor late Mrs, and had tastes of the poetics, me having stood the pilgarlick a fresh at sea when the moon also was standing in a corner of sweet Standerson my ski. P.L.M Mevrouw von Andersen was her whogave me a muttonbrooch, stakkers for her begfirst party. Honour thy farmer and my lit-ters. This, my tears, is my last will intesticle wrote off in the strutforit about their absent female assauciations which I, or per-haps any other person what squaton a toffette, have the honour to had upon their polite sophykussens in the real presence of de-vouted Mrs Grumby when her skin was exposed to the air. O what must the grief of my mund be for two little ptpt coolies worth twenty thousand quad herewitdnessed with both’s maddlemass wishes to Pepette for next match from their dearly beloved Roggers, M.D.D. O.D. May doubling drop of drooght! Writing.
— Hopsoloosely kidding you are totether with your cadenus and goat along nose how we shall complete that white paper. Two venusstas! Biggerstiff! Qweer but gaon! Be trouz and wholetrouz! Otherwise, frank Shaun, we pursued, what would be the autobiography of your softbodied fumiform?
— Hooraymost! None whomsoever, Shaun replied, Heavenly blank! (he had intentended and was peering now rather close to the paste of his rubiny winklering) though it ought to be more or less rawcawcaw romantical. By the wag, how is Mr Fry? All of it, I might say, in ex-voto, pay and perks and wooden half- pence, some rhino, rhine, O joyoust rhine, was handled over spon-daneously by me (and bundle end to my illwishers’ Miss Anders ! she woor her wraith of ruins the night she lost I left !) in the ligname of Mr van Howten of Tredcastles, Clowntalkin, timbreman, among my prodigits nabobs and navious of every subscription entitled the Bois in the Boscoor, our evicted tenemants. What I say is (and I am noen roehorn or culkilt permit me to tell you, if uninformed), I never spont it. Nor have I the ghuest of innation on me the way to. It is my rule so. It went anyway like hot pottagebake. And this brings me to my fresh point. Quoniam, I am as plain as portable enveloped, inhowmuch, you will now parably receive, care of one of Mooseyeare Goonness’s registered andouterthus barrels. Quick take um whiffat andrainit. Now!
— So vi et! we responded. Song! Shaun, song! Have mood! Hold forth !
— I apologuise, Shaun began, but I would rather spinooze you one from the grimm gests of Jacko and Esaup, fable one, feeble too. Let us here consider the casus, my dear little cousis (husstenhasstencaffincoffintussemtossemdamandamnacosaghcusa-ghhobixhatouxpeswchbechoscashlcarcarcaract) of the Ondt and the Gracehoper.
The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity, (he had a partner pair of findlestilts to supplant him), or, if not, he was always making ungraceful overtures to Floh and Luse and Bienie and Vespatilla to play pupa-pupa and pulicy-pulicy and langtennas and pushpygyddyum and to com-mence insects with him, there mouthparts to his orefice and his gambills to there airy processes, even if only in chaste, ameng the everlistings, behold a waspering pot. He would of curse melissciously, by his fore feelhers, flexors, contractors, depres-sors and extensors, lamely, harry me, marry me, bury me, bind me, till she was puce for shame and allso fourmish her in Spin-ner’s housery at the earthsbest schoppinhour so summery as his cottage, which was cald fourmillierly Tingsomingenting, groped up. Or, if he was always striking up funny funereels with Bester-farther Zeuts, the Aged One, With all his wigeared corollas, albe — dinous and oldbuoyant, inscythe his elytrical wormcasket and Dehlia and Peonia, his druping nymphs, bewheedling him, com-pound eyes on hornitosehead, and Auld Letty Plussiboots to scratch his cacumen and cackle his tramsitus, diva deborah (seven bolls of sapo, a lick of lime, two spurts of fussfor, threefurts of sulph, a shake o’shouker, doze grains of migniss and a mesfull of midcap pitchies. The whool of the whaal in the wheel of the whorl of the Boubou from Bourneum has thus come to taon!), and with tambarins and cantoridettes soturning around his eggs-hill rockcoach their dance McCaper in retroph
oebia, beck from bulk, like fantastic disossed and jenny aprils, to the ra, the ra, the ra, the ra, langsome heels and langsome toesis, attended to by a mutter and doffer duffmatt baxingmotch and a myrmidins of pszozlers pszinging Satyr’s Caudledayed Nice and Hombly, Dombly Sod We Awhile but Ho, Time Timeagen, Wake! For if sciencium (what’s what) can mute uns nought, ‘a thought, abought the Great Sommboddy within the Omniboss, perhops an artsaccord (hoot’s hoot) might sing ums tumtim abutt the Little Newbuddies that ring his panch. A high old tide for the bar-heated publics and the whole day as gratiis! Fudder and lighting for ally looty, any filly in a fog, for O’Cronione lags acrumbling in his sands but his sunsunsuns still tumble on. Erething above ground, as his Book of Breathings bed him, so as everwhy, sham or shunner, zeemliangly to kick time.
Grouscious me and scarab my sahull What a bagateller it is! Libelulous! Inzanzarity! Pou! Pschla! Ptuh! What a zeit for the goths! vented the Ondt, who, not being a sommerfool, was thothfolly making chilly spaces at hisphex affront of the icinglass of his windhame, which was cold antitopically Nixnixundnix. We shall not come to party at that lopp’s, he decided possibly, for he is not on our social list. Nor to Ba’s berial nether, thon sloghard, this oldeborre’s yaar ablong as there’s a khul on a khat. Nefersenless, when he had safely looked up his ovipository, he loftet hails and prayed: May he me no voida water! Seekit Ha-tup! May no he me tile pig shed on! Suckit Hotup! As broad as Beppy’s realm shall flourish my reign shall flourish! As high as Heppy’s hevn shall flurrish my haine shall hurrish! Shall grow, shall flourish! Shall hurrish! Hummum.