Antique Fragment
Oho, o-hey, a doodle-a-day 1
I haven’t written
In many a day
My muse 2 is far away
There’s nothing to say
The days fly away
Like little birds in spring
To Canada, eh, 3
A dinner tonight
In true Roman fashion
The ones I invite
Have to bring all the ration 4
No food in the pantry
No ideas in the head 5
Unlike the waters of Bantry 6
The city is dead
o-ho, o-hey, o nonny 7
*
1. Professor B. X. FitzFatrick suggests this might refer to the habit of certain North American peoples, in the early years of the 21st century, to consult the ritual tablets, (Reconst. “G * lg [ius]”) as a source of divine inspiration. These tablets had prefatory drawings that were said to change according to the day and season.
2. Emend. “Mouse” ?
3. The dialect continuum of American, at the time of Pinguis, included certain Northern forms that appended a suffix “-a” as a clause-ending marker. This form was chiefly found above the Sinlaurence (Clas. “Sanctus Laurentius”) in the East and the Butter Cline in the West.
4. Meaning obscure. Roman hospitality seems to have required the host, not the guests, to provide the food for a meal. Conjecture missing proverbial source?
5. The Americans used spatial metaphors to enforce a separation between “ideas” which were “inside” the head and “reality” which was “outside” the head.
6. An unusual geographic reference for a classical Americanan. Only one “Bantry” is attested by geographers, which is located in the Southwest of what was then called Eire, now Angerturf.
7. Contraction of “nonnullus”:”many”