The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #77932   Message #1395515
Posted By: GUEST,Mrr
01-Feb-05 - 08:35 AM
Thread Name: BS: Ring Around the Facts - Create-a-History
Subject: RE: BS: Ring Around the Facts - Create-a-History
Ooh, I like this game. I don't feel responsible for morons. How about the little ditty from James Thurber's The Thirteen Clocks:
Hark, hark,
The dogs do bark,
The Duke is fond of kittens.
He likes to take their insides out and use their fur for mittens!

This is a pre-Christian midwinter rhyme, from serfs about their master. The "hark hark" was taken over when the Christians wanted their holiday to match the ones they were replacing, and that is why so many Christmas carols say Hark. When the lord came to claim his "droit de seigneur" with the recently-married village girls, the dogs set for alarms would bark; the "kittens" of course are slang for the women's parts the lords were after. The "he likes to take their insides out" is a reference to the early abortion techniques the villagers would practice to prevent keep their children their own. It is possible that one famous lord liked to make mittens out of the pubic hair of the ladies he got to deflower, but that part of the history is possibly allegorical.