The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #15249   Message #1888730
Posted By: Rowan
20-Nov-06 - 12:20 AM
Thread Name: Balls cried the Queen, if I had two...
Subject: RE: Balls cried the Queen, if I had two...
Jim Dixon's post above contains most of the lines I recall of this epic (and many I don't), which I first heard around 1960, in Melbourne. But where his version has

"This made the King exceeding angry, but the Queen only said, "Well, I'll be fucked!" --- more in hope than in indignation. But nobody moved, save a solitary senile seneschal, quietly masturbating in a corner into a silver teaspoon, and Daniel, who, taking her at her word, grabbed the Queen by her butt-cheeks and slipped her onto his dick like a well-worn jackboot."

I recall
""This made the King exceeding angry, but the Queen only said, "Well, I'll be fucked!" --- more in hope than in indignation. But nobody moved, save the Duke who, being a man of action and very few words, grabbed the Queen by the cheeks of her arse and drew her onto his dick like a wet Wellington boot."

I also recall most of the variations mentioned above of "They've torn down the pub!" from the same era and circumstances. I suspect the considerable variation in these epics (and others, such as "The bastard from the bush" is due to the fact that they were all orally tranmitted (now, there's an image) and aurally constructed, rather than written down.

Kel Watkins did a project about 20 years ago on what he called 'photocopied folklore'. I seem to recall that such items as "The sex life of an electron" (which was a narrative using all the technical terms used in basic electronics) displayed considerable variation when only typewriters were available to pass them on, and that this variation diminished when photocopiers came into frequent use in the 70s. Now that sources such as Jim's are now available digitally (another image to conjure with) I suspect the variation in these items will also diminish. Pity!

Cheers, Rowan