“It seems the whole world wants to read Constable Chumley’s poem–the sonnet he wrote on the wall when he was locked in the outhouse,” writes Violet Crepuscular, The Queen of Suspense, introducing Chapter DCCVI of her epic romance, Oy, Rodney. “In Manchuria alone, two readers, Mr. and Mrs. Hercule Columbo, passionately pled with me to publish the poem.”
“Here it is,” she continues, “in his own words as written:
Whan fithy gurs pertenteth yawl,
Tis mickle aethwy gebreckin hawl.”
She was a bit shy about offering a translation; but as Al Capone once said, “You can get more with a kind word, and a gun, than you can get with just a kind word.”
Here are the lines as spoken in English by persons who are not Constable Chumley.
“Here I sit, broken-hearted:
Paid my dime and only farted!”
(“It’s really quite a bit more elegant in its original dialect!” Ms. Crepuscular insists. “I tell you, that guy Chaucer’s got nothing on the constable!”)
We take this opportunity to remind Ms. Crepuscular that Pictish invaders have made off with Scurveyshire’s park bench and (!) the Royal Millipede Inspector who was sleeping on it at the time. She really must do something about this!