Mad King Ruprecht: Jabberwock Slayer. Saxony, 1300. It was late summer in the year of 1300 and as close to the middle of the Middle Ages as to make no odds. This was a dark and dangerous era, cursed with virulent plagues, power hungry landowners, pointless territorial feuds and an unexplainable infestation problem with goblins, dragons and other assorted creatures of dubious authenticity. I had adopted the garb and trappings of the Knight Errant, sworn an oath of chivalry to uphold honour, courage and justice for all, and applied myself to hunting down said goblins, dragons and assorted creatures on the understanding that, if naught else, it may at least prove to be a sure fire method of bedding multitudes of gullible wenches. To this end, I had chosen to track down and vanquish that most fell of diabolical lusus naturae.... the Jabberwock itself. Described in the Bestiary Diabolus as having the head of a starfish, the fur of a salamander, the tail of an ape, the legs of a dolphin and the arms of a garden snail; the Jabberwock would indeed present a most diverting challenge by which to test my mettle. This expedition would also mark a departure from my customary approach to narrative documentation; all too aware that I may fall foul of the dread monster I had entrusted my personal journal to the hands of a hired third party. Widely regarded as the finest working minstrel throughout the land; Louis the Caroller was a man blessed with the finest grasp of metrical composition, an imaginative flair that would surely do justice to this epic struggle, and moreover a willingness to work for an extremely agreeable one penny per rhyming couplet. So imagine my indignant antipathy upon perusing the opening verse and discovering the words, Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogroves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Meteorological phenomena are well outside my sphere of knowledge and so I would have to take it on faith that it had been a brillig day as I set out in search of the legendary creature; and would be the first to concur that my toes had been extremely slippery after several days rambling cross-country in a suit of plate armour and thick woolly socks. I accede that these apparent typographical errors were understandable given the emotional trepidation of this quest but must profess that at no time did said toes gyre or gimble in the wabe - or anywhere else for that matter. Supplanting mincy for mimsy and desperately reaching for an alternative to borogroves I eventually came to the equivocal conclusion that all the bolognese was mincy - a far cry from the original intention I fancy. As to what was intended by mome raths I really could not say, but judging from the deplorable efforts to date I considered that it had all been tuppence badly invested. I would not be placated so easily with this verbal stream of diarrhoea and this two-bit charlatan Louis was going to have to get up much earlier in the morning if he had serious aspirations to out-grabe me. Reading further in a state of flabbergasted disbelief I scanned the next witless scribings of my alleged biographer with dismay. It appeared as though some disgruntled psychopath with a personal grudge against the entire English language had attempted to parody my heroic exertions with all the subtlety and finesse of a crossbow enema. Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird and shun The frumious Bandersnatch! In its essence, the general gist of this passage was not overtly erroneous. The Jabberwock was indeed a beast to be wary of and was possessed of deadly grasping talons and more teeth than an all comers Bee-Gees lookalike competition. However, the minstrels obtuse attempts at amateur ornithology were laughable to say the least. I recall in detail the alleged Jubjub bird that Louis had spotted and shook my head in sorrow at this boeotian case of mistaken identity. The Jubjub was a peaceable creature that fed exclusively on berries and lived in a state of perpetual dread at the perilous end of the food chain. It was a timid, unassuming avian beauty and little deserved the harsh report that Louis had subjected it to. Besides, as far as I remember it, it had actually been a squirrel. With a gesture of unmistakable rage I tore the offending page from my journal, complete with its derisory chaff, and cast it into the flames of the camp fire. At least in this way the reports of a furious banter snatch would not be without foundation. Crestfallen, I noticed that the following page had also been assaulted in the same manner as I read, He took his vorpal sword in hand: Long time the manxome foe he sought- So rested he by the Tumtum tree, And stood awhile in thought. I have not, do not and never will own a vorpal sword; an audacious statement based largely upon the fact that the damned thing does not exist. Louis grasp of elementary weaponry would, it seem, be even more pitiable than his inability to discern between the average Jubjub bird and a squirrel. Perhaps the fellow had been confused for my predilection for wielding a reinforced combat umbrella in place of the recommended brand of cold steel and had panicked somewhat in the translation. Even so, this did not excuse the remainder of the verse. What in Gods name was a manxome foe? Was this the breed of antagonist that came at you swinging a battleaxe, poisoned you in your sleep with a phial of deadly snake venom or arrived at your doorstep and inquired as to whether you had ever really considered the love of Jesus? It was just one more example of how the words of the Caroller could impose mental tortures that only theoretical physics had the right to inflict. On the other hand, there was a certain truth to the report of my repose in the forest. So it was a Tumtum tree? I had stood in thought for over an hour trying to decide on that one and had been grudgingly gratified to read of the verification. Nonetheless, the whole transcript to date had been a merciless torture of the English tongue which, to its credit, had resisted all efforts to reveal its meaning. My literary collaboration with Louis the Caroller had been based largely on my faith in his sterling reputation. It had also been based, as these things often are, on the false assumption that the other fellow was able to spell and string together a coherent sentence. So far I had been disappointed on all counts and my opinion was in no way altered by the following; And as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came. I can only imagine the affronting paraphrase behind the word uffish, but was reasonably certain that it symbolised some thinly veiled slight to my intelligence. Damn the fellows eyes! I had so much mind in my possession that it could take upwards of a fortnight to make it all up. Conversely, my fearful oik of a biographer appeared to have an ignorant streak so wide that there was barely room either side of it for his body. His flagrant misrepresentation of the attack by the Jabberwock made a mockery of objective reporting as the facts had been distorted beyond all recognition in the service of dramatic license. Far from whiffling through the forest with flaming eyes, hell bent on wreaking death and destruction; the unfortunate specimen had more or less plummeted through the canopy after having stared directly into the midday sun. The only whiffle to my recollection had emanated from the unsuspecting underwear of Louis himself, as with a childlike burble he had dived for cover amongst the cover of a nearby tulgey spinney. One may have been inclined to excuse this cowardly display, were it not for certain documentary omissions that failed to enlighten the casual reader that said Jabberwock was a mere two feet long from snout to tail tip. Coupled with the fact that the hopeless animal had expired almost immediately upon impact, the entire passage had been needlessly melodramatic and only served to demonstrate that a little well contrived inaccuracy was able to save a veritable deluge of honest explanation. The following mystifying prose had me at a total loss. From his position cowering in the tulgey woods, Louis had presumably fabricated the entire verse and I had been astonished at his ability to report the exact opposite of the facts with such masterly precision. One two! One two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. As previously intimated, I am devoid of vorpal sword, instead favouring my reliable slip hinge frame Storm Shelter travel umbrella. I have carried this indispensable travel accessory at my side throughout all my globetrotting exploits and never once has it displayed a disposition to snicker or snack; and certainly not twice during the course of a single afternoon. I had hazarded an experimental prod toward the deceased Jabberwock which had left it no more dead than it had been following its unheralded nose dive amid the tulgies. Sullenly, I took the sorry excuse for a head from the fallen beast, retrieved the terrified minstrel from his woodland repository and dragging my heels like a glum thing I headed for home, secretly vowing to hunt down the goose that had provided Louis with his quill and throttle it for being an affront to literature. Unfortunately, as I had suspected, matters were going to take a turn for the worst before they became worse. And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! Oh frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! He chortled in his joy. By this time I had decided that enough was enough. This was the final straw that had proverbially paralysed the dromedary. This odious, oily little toad of a man needed a short, sharp lesson in literary criticism and out of a sense of duty I fell upon him in a series of heavy handed blows. As the greasy fellow begged for his very life I produced a sharp bladed sword typical of the era and went on to awkwardly perform an amateur surgical procedure that any self respecting eunuch would be horribly familiar with. As Louis the Caroller fled for his life, screaming in a high pitched soprano; I sighed in satisfaction, took up a fresh quill and made a brief note in my somewhat bloodstained journal. I was brawling with the slimy toad, Who cried and mumbled like a babe; As clumsily his lower globes, I did slowly hack with glaive.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 08:17:59 +0000
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