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poliphiloThere were six or seven jackdaws coming and going around a neighboring chimney stack. Noisy critters. My guess is they were newly fledged and trying out their wings in the vicinity of the maternal nest- a bit like kids riding bikes with stabilisers up and down the drive.
Around the same time Wendy, who lives 30 miles away, rescued two grounded jackdaws that were being mobbed by crows. She rescued one in the evening and the second the following morning. She thinks the crows had turfed them out of their nest before they were ready to fly. Mary wants to keep one as her "familiar".
Since I had jackdaws on the mind I thought I'd re-read "The Jackdaw of Rheims"- an "Ingoldsby Legend" by that cunning and amusing mid-19th century rhymester R.H. Barham- who is all but forgotten these days, but shouldn't be. It's inconsequential and clever and discursive- and the virtuosity of the rhyming is comparable- no surpasses- that of better loved writers like W.S. Gilbert and Cole Porter. The word Rheims is unrhymable if you insist on the correct French pronunciation so Barham is John Bullish about it and pronounces it so that it rhymes with schemes and dreams.
Around the same time Wendy, who lives 30 miles away, rescued two grounded jackdaws that were being mobbed by crows. She rescued one in the evening and the second the following morning. She thinks the crows had turfed them out of their nest before they were ready to fly. Mary wants to keep one as her "familiar".
Since I had jackdaws on the mind I thought I'd re-read "The Jackdaw of Rheims"- an "Ingoldsby Legend" by that cunning and amusing mid-19th century rhymester R.H. Barham- who is all but forgotten these days, but shouldn't be. It's inconsequential and clever and discursive- and the virtuosity of the rhyming is comparable- no surpasses- that of better loved writers like W.S. Gilbert and Cole Porter. The word Rheims is unrhymable if you insist on the correct French pronunciation so Barham is John Bullish about it and pronounces it so that it rhymes with schemes and dreams.
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Date: 2022-06-08 09:14 am (UTC)We have ridiculous numbers of jackdaws locally
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Date: 2022-06-08 12:14 pm (UTC)I latched onto Barham as a kid when I discovered that Ingoldsby was Alan Quatermain's favourite book. There's a sly joke at his expense in King Solomon's Mines where he wrongly attributes to Barham a passage from Walter Scott.