Alfred (Lord) Tennyson, 200, loved mad little tits

And the N.Z. heir to his barony is a birdlover too

The famous British poet Alfred (Lord) Tennyson, whose 200th birthday will be celebrated worldwide on August 6, was a great birdlover. One of his lesser-known poems, called "Ay", names half a dozen bird species ranging from the cuckoo to "the mad little tits."

Ay! Be merry, all birds, to-day,

Be merry on earth as you never were merry before,

Be merry in heaven, O larks, and far away,

And merry for ever and ever, and one day more.

Why? For it's easy to find a rhyme.

Look, look, how he flits.

The fire-crown'd king of the wrens, from out of the pine !

Look how they tumble the blossom, the mad little tits !

'Cuck-oo! Cuck-oo!' was ever a May so fine?

Why? For it's easy to find a rhyme.

O merry the linnet and dove,

And swallow and sparrow and throstle, and have your desire!

O merry my heart, you have gotten the wings of love,

And flit like the king of the wrens with a crown of fire.

Why? For it's ay ay, ay ay.

This poem, and many others, can be found in a 1903 book, The Birds of Tennyson, http://tinyurl.com/kpfvwq
by Watkin Watkins, B.A. Cantab, of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-law, Member of the British Ornithologists' Union.

He says "Tennyson exhibits a knowledge of birds and their ways which is considerably greater than that displayed by the majority of British Poets, and which entitles him to take a place in this respect by the side of Chaucer, Wordsworth and Shakespeare."

Queen Victoria liked Alfred's poems so much that she made him a hereditary baron, with a seat in The House of Lords.

He seems to have transmitted some of his genes to Alan Tennyson, the Heir Presumptive to his title, who is a distant relative (in lineage and geographically) living in New Zealand's capital city, Wellington. Alan is co-author of a book, Extinct Birds of New Zealand.

[Heir Presumptive is an archaic term for the person thought to be next in line for the barony.]

Alan was born in Wellington in 1965, and first worked for the Forest and Bird Protection Society. Then he moved to the Department of Conservation. Apart from watching birds (feathered variety) he's Curator of Fossil Vertebrates at New Zealand's national musem, Te Papa. http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/pages/default.aspx

The book, "The Extinct Birds of New Zealand" by Alan Tennyson and Paul Martinson [Te Papa Press 2006] received a rave review from Rebecca Priestley in the New Zealand Listener http://tinyurl.com/m7hkg3
She wrote:

The story of the huia, a poster bird for extinct New Zealand species, has been well told. Last seen in 1907, the beautiful huia, with its black body and distinctive orange wattle, had been collected to death by 19th century dealers and ornithologists for display in museums and fashionable drawing-rooms -- and
for its white-tipped tail feathers, which made quite the jaunty hat decoration.

Icon maybe, but the huia has plenty of company -- 58 of our bird species, or 26 per cent -- have become extinct since humans arrived here in the 13th century. To celebrate those species, and to remind us of the continuing threat , Te Papa fossil vertebrates curator Alan Tennyson and wildlife artist Paul Martinson have together made a magnificent book, Extinct Birds of New Zealand....

The bulk of the book is made up of accounts of the 58 extinct species, including nine species of moa. Even th giant moa, the tallest bird ever known to have lived -- oustretched, its neck could reach up to three metres high -- was at the mercy of
Haast's eagle... The moa fell victim to human hunting around AD1400, and Haast's eagle soon followed, suffering from loss of prey.

As Heir Presumptive, Alan Tennyson is thought to be next in line for the Tennyson barony, now held by his older brother, David, the sixth Lord Tennyson.

David Tennyson , a modest man who lives quietly in Christchurch and apparently never uses his ancient title, celebrated his 49th birthday on June 4, 2009.

Asked whether either he or his brother writes poetry, Alan replied: "David is more involved in the Tennyson Society than I."

The sixth baron seems to be more interested in recreational cycling, as he is president of the Canterbury Recreational Cycling Club. Christchurch has thousands of cyclists, because the city stands on very flat ground. You can ride 100 miles (160km) over the Canterbury Plains http://www.nzescape.com/photo-3.html without having to climb a single hill.


The six Barons Tennyson are a mixed bunch, several achieving fame in fields far removed from poetry. Alf's son, the second baron, Hallam Tennyson, became Australia's second Governor-General, and Hallam's son Lionel Hallam Tennyson captained England's cricket team in 1921, and became the third Baron seven years later.

Lionel's son, Harold Christopher Tennyson, (1919–1991) became the fourth Baron, and his youger son became the fifth Baron. When he died three years ago, "the line of the eldest son of the first Baron failed," and the title passed unexpectedly to David Tennyson, in faraway New Zealand.

Here's a list of the six Barons, and links to websites where you can read about them:

Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson (1809-1892) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tennyson,_1st_Baron_Tennyson
Hallam Tennyson, 2nd Baron Tennyson (1852-1928) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallam_Tennyson,_2nd_Baron_Tennyson
Lionel Hallam Tennyson, 3rd Baron Tennyson (1889-1951) http://www.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/21499.html
Harold Christopher Tennyson, 4th Baron Tennyson (1919-1991)
http://tinyurl.com/mwh4bv
Mark Aubrey Tennyson, 5th Baron Tennyson (1920-2006) http://www.thepeerage.com/p8285.htm (scroll down)
David Harold Alexander Tennyson, 6th Baron Tennyson (b. 1960)http://wapedia.mobi/en/David_Tennyson,_6th_Baron_Tennyson

Alfred (Lord) Tennyson, as he is usually referred to these days, was reluctant to accept a baronetcy (far less important than a barony) when Britain's Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli offered one to him. Another PM, William Gladstone, finally talked him into accepting a peerage.

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tennyson,_1st_Baron_Tennyson says the poet was "a passionate man with some peculiarites of nature, he was never particularly comfortable as a peer, and it is widely held that he took the peerage in order to secure a future for his son Hallam."

Still quoting Wikipedia:

Tennyson wrote a number of phrases that have become commonplaces of the English language, including:
Nature, red in tooth and claw
'Tis better to have
loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all
Theirs not to reason
why, / Theirs but to do and die
My strength is as the strength of ten /
Because my heart is pure
Knowledge comes, but Wisdom lingers
The old
order changeth, yielding place to new

He is the second most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare

Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849-1928), a famous British critic who remembered having met an aged Lord Tennyson when he (Gosse) was a small boy, wrote these words about the poet:

We still look to the earlier masters for supreme excellence in particular directions: to Wordsworth for sublime philosophy, to Coleridge for ethereal magic, to Byron for passion, to Shelley for lyric intensity, to Keats for richness.

Tennyson does not excel each of these in his own special
field, but he is often nearer to the particular man in his particular mastery than anyone else can be said to be, and he has in addition his own special field of supremacy.

What this is cannot be easily defined; it consists, perhaps, in the beauty of the atmosphere which Tennyson contrives to cast around his work, molding it in the blue mystery of twilight, in the opaline haze of sunset: this atmosphere, suffused over his poetry with inestimable skill and with a tact rarely at fault, produces an unfailing illusion or mirage of loveliness.

Further interesting details about the poet, written by Professor Glenn Everett, of America's Northeast Victorian Studies Association, can be found on the Victorian Web:
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/tennyson/tennybio.html

END

A for Horses, B for Mutton

A clever Ode to a Scarecrow was included in Anu Garg's popular AWADmail newsletter, sent last week to 750,000 wordlovers in 200 countries . You could call it a surreal alphabet. Read it aloud: Hey be seedy, eh, effigy, hate shy jakey yellow man; oh, peek, you're rusty, you've double, you ex-wise head.

A slightly different version can be found on the internet: Hay be seedy, effigy, age-eyed jakey lemon-yellow man. O peek you! Arrestee! You've double! You ex-wise he!

The Ode was first published many years ago in The Scientific American . It was in a column called "Mathematical Games," written by Martin Gardner, a gifted American word spinner now 94 years old.

He calls himelf a mathemagician, and is famous for his popular mathematics, stage magic, puzzles and debunking of myths.

Before reading on, please look at this hilarious sketch by British comedians The Two Ronnies, Swedish Made Simple: FUNEX? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkWMcRlE1mQ

Back in the 1930s, another famous British comical duo, Clapham and Dwyer, recorded another surrealist alphabet. This is how it went:
A for 'orses (hay for horses)
B for Mutton (beef or mutton?)
C for th' highlanders (Seaforth Highlanders)
D for 'ential (deferential)
E for Adam (Eve or Adam)
F for 'vescence (effervescence)
G for Police (Chief of Police)
H for Respect (age for respect)
I for Novello (Ivor Novello, film star)
J for Oranges (Jaffa oranges)
K for 'ancis (Kay Francis, film star)
L for Leather (hell for leather)
M for Sis (emphasis)
N for Dig (infra dig)
O for The garden wall (Over the Garden Wall, a popular song)
P for a Penny (pee for a penny)
Q for a Song, or Q for Billiards (cue for a song, or cue for billiards)
R for Mo (half a mo)
S for You (it's for you)
Tea for Two (Tea for Two, a popular song)
U for Films (UFA films)
V for la France (Vive la France)
W for a Bob (double you for a bob - a bob was a shilling)
X for Breakfast (eggs for breakfast)
Y for Gawd's sake (why, for God's sake)
Z for Breezes (zephyr breezes
)
In the 80 years since that sketch was performed in music halls and recorded on vinyl discs, various wits have come up with variations. Here are some of them:
C for Miles, or C for Yourself (see for miles, or see for yourself)
D for Dumb (deaf or dumb) D for Kate (defecate)
E for Brick (heave a brick) or E for 'ning Standard (Evening Standard newspaper)
H for Consent (age of consent)
I for the Engine (Ivor the Engine)
K for 'teria (cafeteria)
O for the Wings of a Dove (O for the wings of a dove -- hymn)
P for Relief (pee for relief)
Q for a P (queue for a pee) or Q for a Theatre (queue for a theatre)
P for Relief (pee for relief), P for a Whistle (pea for a whistle) or P for 'ming seals (performing seals).
U for 'mism ( euphemism) or U for Me (you for me).
W for Quits (double you for quits) )
Y for Girlfriend (wife or girlfriend? or Y for a Husband (wife for a husband)

Going back to the remarkable Martin Gardner, he has written more than 70 books in the last 70 years, which must be a world record. At the age of 94, living in Norman, Oklahoma, he is still writing and being interviewed.

In March 2006, he recalled his early days as a columnist for The Scientific American, in an interesting interview http://www.maa.org/columns/colm/cardcolm200610.html with Professor Colm Mulcahy, who writes a monthly column for The Mathematical Association of America.

At 94, Gardner is one of the world's oldest (and liveliest) bloggers, with a page on MySpace http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=267546396

DISCLOSURE OF INTEREST. I'm copy editor of Anu Garg's A Word A Day (AWAD) newsletter http://wordsmith.org/awad/ Serendipitously, Anu and I each live in one of the two picturesque places rightly called The Emerald City, http://www.bdb.co.za/shackle/articles/emerald_cities.htm -- on opposite sides of the Pacific.
END

Australia's Funniest Ghost Writer

This story was first published by OhmyNewsInternational. To read their version, with interesting illustrations and live links, please cut and paste this address: http://tinyurl.com/ct5z7s

Oscar Brittle stirred and disturbed his readers

Animal lovers, rejoice! Oscar Brittle has been gagged at last. He would have upset you had you read this letter to the Sydney Morning Herald:

I believe that I have eaten more types of animal than anybody else on the planet. I have eaten (not necessarily in this order): cow, sheep, pig, shark, goat, camel, horse, kangaroo, wallaby, wallaroo, potoroo, bandicoot, duck, chicken, pigeon, whale, wild dog, wild cat, cat, fish, catfish, dormouse, python, toad, turtle, monkey, impala, sea urchin, slug, jellyfish, fox, grouse, alligator, llama, vulture, mole, lobster, mongoose, daddy-long-legs, salamander …"

That letter was just one of hundreds Oscar sent to the editors of Sydney's four daily newspapers in an 18-month writimg frenzy. Like many other letterwriters, talkback radio callers and bloggers, Oscar was an opinionated blowhard who wrote stacks of provocative nonsense and misquoted facts.

Here are extracts from a few of his letters, which often drew heated replies, mostly as email comments to the newspapers that had published his rants:

o Dear editor, I turned on the television on Saturday morning and saw a video clip for the first time in years. I have discovered that 68 per cent of Federal MPs are obese, showing off the tops of their bottoms with apparent impunity.

o Tomorrow, I and I suspect many of my ilk, will once again firmly stamp my ecological feet and take the car to town. Climate change is one thing, but passenger comfort is not to be undervalued.

o Whatever happened to manners on the road? At present, there seem to be more road rages than ever.

o Recent research shows that young people are having sex younger and younger. … Dear, oh dear!

o Video clips have come a long way in 25 years. For three horrible hours, I watched in disgust and denial as young women gallivanted about the place in tiny swimsuits, braziers, underpants and other garments that a man should only see in the boudoir.

o Does anyone have any information about shutting the internet down for good, or is it too late?

But Oscar wrote too many letters for his own good. Eventually, Amanda Meade, aptly-named media diarist in The Australian newspaper, became suspicious. She wrote:

An Oscar for Best Actor.

DIARY calls on prolific letter writer "Oscar Brittle of Killara" to identify himself. After a series of curious letters were published in The Daily Telegraph, we tried to verify that Brittle was a real person. Here is Brittle on public transport: "The morning trip was pleasant enough, as I sat next to a handsome, lightly perfumed young woman, read the paper and even attempted a Sudoku puzzle" ...The opinionated Brittle is not listed in the White Pages and he does not exist on the electoral roll. But he has popped up in Column 8 in The Sydney Morning Herald and on the letters pages of The Australian. So beware, letters editors everywhere, there may be another phantom on the loose.

Meade was right. It turned out that Brittle was a ghost, the brainchild of three young Canberra writers, Glenn Fowler , Christopher Smyth and Gareth Malone

Interviewed in Australia's ABC-TV Stateline program, http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/act/content/2006/s2535731.htm author Fowler described Oscar Brittle:

He is generally a fairly conservative, indignant older chap from the leafy, neat, established northern Sydney suburb of Killara. Very opinionated.

What we tried to do was create somebody who has that combination of ignorance and outspokenness. He's got an opinion on anything. He's got ideas about anything and he's quite prepared to share them. He doesn't check things very often. He gets things wrong.

We tried to create maximum confusion and maximum offence with many of the letters, and we wanted the readers of the letters to be shocked. Obviously, first of all, that would be the editors doing the reading, and if they then got published and other people read them, we wanted to provoke responses, we wanted people to write letters back. And, fortunately, that happened in a lot of cases. So, Oscar offends virtually everybody on the planet in his letters, unless they're exactly like him.

Dear Editor... The Collected Letters of Oscar Brittle have now been published as a highly entertaining book.
http://www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/9781742230115.htm

The publisher's blurb says:

In an eighteen month campaign to wrest control of the debates in the nation’s newspapers and magazines from the wishy-washies and the weaklings, Oscar Brittle became (arguably) the most significant and powerful contributor to public debate in contemporary Australia.

This book is a collection of published letters and their originals, published replies from various correspondents, email exchanges between Oscar and editors, as well as the rejected letters, all interspersed with gorgeous illustrations throughout.

There really was a man who devoted much of his life to tasting as many different animal species as he could find. Dr William Buckland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckland (1784-1856), Dean of Westminster and a professor at Oxford University (UK) tried to eat specimens of every living thing.

He was a frequent visitor to London Zoo, as he lived nearby. When an exotic animal died, he took the opportunity to taste its flesh. On one occasion, a leopard died and was buried while he was away on holiday. Returning to London, he dug it up, to taste leopard steak in the name of science.

The dean pronounced moles and bluebottles (flies) to have the worst flavors.

He taught his son, Francis Trevelyan
Buckland http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Trevelyan_Buckland (1826-1880) to enjoy the flesh of exotic animals by participating in banquets of ostrich, crocodile, hedgehog and mice on toast.

Frank inherited his father's interests. While studying at Oxford, he complained of the “horribly bitter” taste of earwigs. Frank became a popular scientific author and lecturer.

END