Monkey Meets Pontius Parrot
(With glorious  memories of Macarronic Latin)

Pontius Parrot is very clever
and very pontifical.
“Pretty Polly!”
He pontificates from his pulpit.

His name isn’t Polly
and he doesn’t have a pulpit
but he parrots words
in Macaronic Latin:
“Caesar adsum jam forte.”

Pontius Parrot is perky at the podium
and bounces up and down,
preening himself self-consciously,
rattling his chains,
shaking his bars,  and speaking Latin:
“Brutus aderat.”

He is marked with shame and scandal.
A dysfunctional family of feathered friends
 has henpecked him until he is black and blue
and he has thrown up copiously:
 “Caesar sic in omnibus.”

He dips his wings in holy water,
calls for some soft soap, 
and washes his feathers and claws.

Poor Pontius Parrot,
he can only say “Repent!”
“Brutus sic in at.”

Commentary:

I asked Moo if he had ever painted a parrot, but he told me that he hadn’t. However, one of his favorite viewers, had once called this painting a pile of spaghetti wriggling in tomato sauce and he thought that spaghetti was close enough to macaroni for it to serve as a painting for Bony Macaroni Latin.

I had to explain to him what we mean when we say Macaronic Latin. Back to that boarding school and we used to invent all sorts of Macaronic Latin phrases. They used to cane us with bamboo canes. So here’s the verb paradigm in Latin for ‘to cane a student’. Bendo – whackere- ouchi – sorebum. Of course, it helps if you know what Latin verb paradigms look like. They are easy to remember and are aide memoires for the four main parts of the verb. Bendo – I bend over – first person singular, present tense – whackere – to whack or cane – infinitive – ouchi – I said ‘ouch’ – past tense – sorbum – the inevitable result – past participle.

Now, if we look at the italics in the poem we see a poem within a poem, and that smaller poem is written in Macaronic Latin.

“Caesar adsum jam forte.
Brutus aderat.
 Caesar sic in omnibus.
Brutus sic in at.“

Translation

Caesar had some jam for tea.
Brutus had a rat.
Caesar sick in omnibus.
Brutus sick in hat.

Oh never underestimate the ingenuity – linguistic and / or otherwise (and we won’t go into that one right now) – of the bored-to-tears Public Schoolboy. Especially if he is not destined to be a Perfect Prefect like Perfect Prefect Plod – who was never any good at Latin, if I remember well. Neither was I come to think of it. Horrible language, dead and reeks like the dead rat that Brutus ate.

As for the ‘repent’, well, usually, just before he beat you, the master doing the beating would enquire as to your health and ask you if you repented of your sins, crimes, bad language, being cheeky to Perfect Prefect Plod, or whatever else you had done (like smoking or holding a girl’s hand in public instead of a boy’s). You always said ‘yes, of course I do, sir,’ in the vain hope of avoiding a beating. But, bad luck, the cane descended anyway, ouchi was heard, and the victim retired to the bath room to examine his past participle, also known as his sorbum.

I bet you never imagined any of that. Wow! What a great lesson I have taught you today. Think about it all and think about it carefully. Now you know why Pink Floyd sang “We don’t need no education.” But what an education it was. And remember, the Duke of Wellington, Old Nosey, once said ‘my battles were won on the playing fields of the pubic schools of England.’ Oh dear – I hope I got that right. I fear there’s a letter missing somewhere.