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'The Works'
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~~A Ballad~~
of the Two Knyghts, Robert le Plant and Frederick le Mad, and how they made Readye for a Test in their Knowledge of the Englysshe Tongue.
‘O jaevla skit!’ quoth Rob le Plant
A-writing in his book.
‘O jaevla fan!’ he quoth again
And took a backward look.
And he perceived there Fred le Mad,
A-sitting on his chair.
‘O Fred my friend’, quoth Robert then,
‘What art thou doing there?’
‘O bolshy yarbles to them all’,
Quoth Fredie angrily.
‘Why don’t we spit and go instead
A-jumping on the lea?’
‘O nay my friend’, quoth Robert sad,
‘We cannot thus depart:
Two monsters are awaiting us,
Unkeepable apart!’
And so the bonny knights did sigh
And took their swords in hand;
And prayed before the battle then,
Of which there was no end.
And so it went from day to day,
It went from dawn till dark:
But never could they win the Two
Unkeepable Apart.
For there is only weapon one
Against the monsters two:
And ‘tis to spit them in the eye
And bid them both Adieu!
© 2/6 - 1599
A bit hard to understand if you don’t know who the protagonists are - or those two Unkeepable Apart either. The bonny knights are myself (Fred le Mad - well, believe me, by June the 2nd you ARE mad if you’re a University student!) and my friend, whose nickname was Robert Plant (for the same reasons as made me Fred, that is). The monsters are the two teachers, or, rather, their particular subjects, which, in a sort of terrifying dialectical unity, made up our exam in English in 1999 (fourth year at the University, that is, out of five), and they were English Grammar and Ditto Stylistics.
Oh yes, and those 'jaevla fan' things... it's Swedish and it means 'bloody hell'. And the 'bolshy yarbles' is a quotation from A Clockwork Orange by Burgess, meaning about the same. (Bolshy=big, and yarbles=well, you know, erm, well never mind!)
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