A Mop Top flip-flop . . .
QUESTION Is there a poem about two shipwrecked gentlemen who ignore each other because they haven’t been formally introduced?
The poem etiquette was written by W. S. Gilbert, the lyrical genius of Gilbert & Sullivan fame. he wrote humorous poems for Fun magazine under the name Bab.
etiquette appeared in Fifty ‘ Bab’ Ballads, a collection of his poems in the 1880s. The opening lines give a flavour of the humour: The Ballyshannon foundered off the
coast of Cariboo, And down in fathoms many went the
captain and the crew . . . The passengers were also drowned,
excepting only two: Young Peter Gray, who tasted teas for
Baker, Croop & Co. And Somers, who from Eastern shores,
imported indigo. These passengers, by reason of their
clinging to a mast Upon a desert island were
eventually cast. They hunted for their meals, as
Alexander Selkirk used, But they couldn’t chat together —
they had not been introduced. For Peter Gray, and Somers, too,
though certainly in trade, Were properly particular about the friends they made; And somehow thus they settled it
without a word of mouth — That Gray should take the northern
half, while Somers took the South. On Peter’s portion oysters grew — a
delicacy rare, But oysters were a delicacy Peter
couldn’t bear, On Somers’ side was turtle, on the
shingle lying thick, Which Somers couldn’t eat, because it
always made him sick. Gray gnashed his teeth with envy as
he saw a mighty store, Of turtle unmolested on his fellow
creature’s shore. The oysters at his feet aside
impatiently he shoved, For turtle and his mother were the
only things he loved.
Jeff Gibbs, Greatstone-on-Sea, Kent.
QUESTION Was there once a shilling bounty for the tail of a grey squirrel?
FURTheR to the earlier answer, when I was a teenager in the mid-Fifties, I would get half a crown for giving up my Saturday to go pigeon poking.
I would join the local farmer and his labourers, armed with big sticks, to remove pigeon nests from trees. The farmer would finance the operation by shooting, for their bounty-raising tails, grey squirrels.
It certainly beat the 7s 6d that I earned for three months’ service in the church choir.
John Collins, Chelmsford, Essex.