Friday, September the 2nd, 2005

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Give Me a Glossary

Dear Mr Key, writes Tim Thurn, I enjoy reading Hooting Yard and usually find it both instructive and enlightening. However, I must say that the piece entitled When Haddo-Haddo Becomes Musto [yesterday] left me somewhat jolt-brained. It is unlikely that you would write complete nonsense, so perhaps I am missing something. Could I prevail upon you to provide some sort of glossary to help in my appreciation and understanding? Yours perplexed, Tim Thurn

For you, Tim, anything. Here is a glossary of some of the crucial words and passages.

the times when haddo-haddo becomes musto : Usually between 4.00 and 4.30 p.m. on Wednesday afternoons, particularly when it is raining or about to rain.

the tocks : Suggestive of both toxin, a poisonous substance generated in an animal body (animals may include cows, crows, cormorants, squirrels and ducks, among many others) and tocsin, an alarm-bell. Dobson once began some notes on “the tocks of a toxin tocsin” but discarded them, and wisely so.

the greaves of way-o : Impenetrable.

an eel : The generation of eels has long been a mystery. Aristotle believed they “grew from the guts of wet soil”, that they emerged, unfertilised, from mud. We now know that all eels are spawned in the Sargasso Sea, but no one has ever seen it happen.

the cat : Note the definite article, signalling that a particular cat is being referred to. Teasingly, we are not given the name of the cat. Popular cat names include Tiddles, Marmalade, Napoleon, Bootpolish, and Gravitas, so it may be one of them.

fenland : Not Finland, fenland. Are there any fens in Finland? I don't know, but I'll find out.

a new biro : Writing implement named after László József Bíró (1899-1985), a Hungarian journalist, although his brother Georg, a chemist, played an important part in developing the ball-point mechanism. Bíró's birthday, 19th September, is celebrated as Argentine Inventors' Day in the Argentine. The Bíró brothers moved to that country in 1943.

ha'penny salt tokens : paper or cardboard tokens, worth one half penny in pre-decimal currency (worthless at today's prices, and though only thirty four years dead, seemingly as historically distant as the groat), which could be exchanged for salt. How many grains, or fistfuls, of salt you got for your ha'penny was subject to fluctuation. Some believed that the token-to-salt ratio moved in spooky parallel with planetary conjunctions, and at least one ha'penny salt token astrolabe is known to have been constructed, though by whom, when, where and why is not known, nor will it ever be known, yea, unto the umpteenth generation.

toads : probably natterjack, or golden, ah! all golden and poisonous.