Speccie Twas Brillig
 

A lovely Kipling from Bazza runs away with the fiver. Frank and Bill are in hot pursuit, Bill with a Belloc surely. Now for this week which ought to test you.

NO. 2714: jabberwocky
You are invited to supply a poem that begins ‘’Twas brillig...’ and continue, in the spirit of Lewis Carroll, using your own neologisms, for up to 16 lines. Please email entries, if possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 14 September.

Twas brilling and the cryptal ball
besparkled unctious lobotome;
and lorned across the vauxy haul
conspurred the perignome.

“Aright the ship!” the lardok shawt,
“or fumile vauxness all will be!
Reload! Reblast!” The lardok’s caught
the perignomes’ mallee.

And piffed, the last mallee pergoes,
“Oh sprae my gra!” The lardok glees.
With vix he barrel-locks its toes
and chobbles down the keys.

I question "the" in line four, and prefer "by" at that point.

"Shart" instead of "shawt"?
"Refress" instead of "reblast"? "Reblast" is too granular and objective.

"Pergoes" reminds of "pergola"; I offer "bergoos".
"Piffed" ... ?
"Thift" instead?

I think "Oh sprae my gra" is too delightful to discuss outside of a Victoria's Secret catalogue.

Also, too many "k"s. "Lardoc."
And something less fatty-sounding. "Lard"?

Superabundance of "x"s.

Good luck with this.

A Jaffa at the Waca

'Twas brillig when the googly seams
In badman Bradman’s dobber dreams.
It was the beamer deftly steered
That parted Grace’s bushy beard.
Yahoo that yorker, man alive,
With chinese cut and harrow drive,
And make an outing of an innings,
Building a tonk from small beginnings
By giving humpty to the offie.

Alas, I cannot slog for toffee.
I’ve got the yips, I’m out of luck.
A golden gazzer spells a duck.
A double teapot spells a sledge.
The doosra takes my leading edge.
Though three short legs are out of joint
I dolly it to silly point.

Full marks for general incomprehensibility, John. But do you suppose The Reverend Dodgson actually hung out with a secret sect of religious fundamentalists who plied their deviant divinity with ritualistically slithied offerings borne aloft by Mom(e) Rat(h)s, through the sacred (boro)groves? A branch of the Variety Club, perhaps?

Howzat?

The difficulty with this competition is not inventing words - any fool can do that - but inventing words that sound as if they exist. My piece contains no invented words but plenty not in the dictionary. I am glad it is incomprehensible to you. It is practically incomprehensible to me. 'Let's give it some humpty' is the best known saying of the prophet Fat Iron Bottom. And of course he did.

Find it incomprehensible? Moi?

You wrong me - every way you wrong me, Brutus!

I meant a sort of a smug of a "caviar to the general" sort of a...

I left you a clue in my final word.

John, I don't know whether your offering is 'in the spirit of Lewis Carroll' but it has some very memorable lines and will be a contribution to cricketing comedy whatever its fate in the comp.

'Twas brillig, with the glibral Clegg
All torque and tongue-trip on TV
So mullient his polly-egg
Grease-poles refulged in ecstasy.

A challenging competition, with the danger of incomprehensible tedium on one side and a lapse into Unwinese on the other. Hmm . . .

Unwinese. Ah deep joy!
The previous comp (malapropisms) comp risks raising the ghost of the great Stanley in a similar way.

John,

I have committed this gaff myself: shouldn't you begin with "Twas brillig"?