Wednesday, December the 13th, 2006

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Paupers' Drool

It was once believed that children frightened by thunderstorms could be emboldened by the application of a tincture of paupers' drool to their infant foreheads. When I say “it was once believed”, I mean to be very specific. This was once believed, by one person, for a very brief period of time.

The person was Prince Fulgencio, the so-called ‘prancing prince’, who one autumn day found his daughter, the Infanta Gertrude, cowering behind an arras in her playroom. One rarely finds an arras these days anywhere except upon the dramatic stage, but the prancing prince had thespian inclinations and his palace was littered with theatrical props.

“Whyfore art thou cowering so behind the arras as thunderclaps rend the sky?” asked the prince.

In reply, the Infanta Gertrude whimpered in terror as a fresh thunderclap rent the sky. Her playroom was on the topmost floor of the palace, and its ceiling had been removed, exposing the room to the mighty firmament overhead. The prince wanted to toughen up his daughter in preparation for a life of ruthless tyranny, and it dismayed him to see her milksop ways.

Thus it was that he strode off into the Weird Woods of Woobyhoobyhoo to consult with the Wise Woman. He found her, oblivious of the storm, tossing fallen and gathered crab apples to her team of pigs. The Wise Woman was a shape shifter, and on this particular day she could have been mistaken for Nova Pilbeam, that siren of the British screen who, in the 1930s, starred in Alfred Hitchcock's Young And Innocent and the first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much.

The prince explained his predicament. The Wise Woman, more intent upon her pigs than upon this strutting royal git, made up some blather about pauper's drool off the top of her head. Prince Fulgencio listened carefully, scribbled some notes down with a biro in his filofax, remarked upon the Wise Woman's resemblance to La Pilbeam, paid her with a pregnant pig he had found wandering disconsolate in the Weird Woods, and pranced princely and preening back to the palace.

There, he commanded his loathsome servants Odo and Udo to scour the countryside collecting drool from paupers. In the teeth of the still-raging storm, they did so, returning many hours later with two brimming iron pails. The prince took the pails and swept in to the kitchen down in the basement of the palace, and called for Old Ma Blunkett, his cook, to prepare a tincture from the paupers' drool, just as the Wise Woman had prescribed.

Lightning flashed and thunder roared. Up in the playroom, still cowering behind the arras, the Infanta Gertrude was startled to receive a message on her metal tapping machine. It was from Professor Sigismundo, the wild-haired, wild-eyed boffin who had been banished from the princedom a year before, and who was now based at an important research laboratory far, far away. The Professor suggested to Gertrude that she get her laptop and look up his website, where she would find an essay subtitled Paupers' Drool A Quack Potion And No Substitute For Rational Explanation When Emboldening Tiny Ones Terrified By Electrical Storms.

Twilight descended with no let up in the ferocious tempest. The prince pranced into the playroom bearing a tray on which was set a brightly gleaming goblet containing a tincture of paupers' drool, next to which lay some scraps of bandage pressed into service as pads with which to dab the tincture on to the forehead of the terrified quaking Infanta behind the arras. Yet she was gone!

At midnight, the prince found his daughter at last. She was skipping, laughing, gambolling and giggling in the open fields behind the palace as thunderbolts crashed and lightning raked the heavens.

And so never again did the Infanta Gertrude cower behind an arras during a thunderstorm, never again were Odo and Udo sent off with their iron pails to collect the drool of paupers, and never again did the prince believe a word he heard from the Wise Woman of the Weird Woods of Woobyhoobyhoo, who was, in any case, too busy with her team of pigs to twit the prancing prince from the crumbling palace in the faraway land of Gaar.