Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags

Subject: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:09 PM

Only beggars dressed in rags
Or vetrans old with sin
Mistake themselves for carpet bags
And shovel vituls in.

Circa 1900 - Midwest USA

Frequently quoted when someone forgot their table manners at dinner.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:34 PM

"Eat slowly; only men in rags
and gluttons old in sin
Mistake themselves for carpet-bags
And tumble victuals in."
Sir Walter Raleigh, 'Instructions to His Son', 1632
(Consuming Passions, Jonathan Green, ed. (1985)

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jan 08 - 07:37 PM

Sir Walter Raleigh

Stans Puer ad Mensam

Attend my words, my gentle knave,
And you shall learn from me
How boys at dinner may behave
With due propriety.

Guard well your hands: two things have been
Unfitly used by some;
The trencher for a tambourine,
The table for a drum.

We could not lead a pleasant life,
And 'twould be finished soon,
If peas were eaten with the knife,
And gravy with the spoon.

Eat slowly: only men in rags
And gluttons old in sin
Mistake themselves for carpet bags
And tumble victuals in.

The privy pinch, the whispered tease,
The wild, unseemly yell --
When children do such things as these,
We say, "It is not well."

Endure your mother's timely stare,
Your father's righteous ire,
And do not wriggle on your chair
Like flannel in the fire.

Be silent: you may chatter loud
When you are fully grown,
Surrounded by a silent crowd
Of children of your own.

If you should suddenly feel bored
And much inclined to yawning,
Your little hand will best afford
A modest useful awning.

Think highly of the Cat: and yet
You need not therefore think
That portly strangers like your pet
To share their meat and drink.

The end of dinner comes ere long
When, once more full and free,
You cheerfully may bide the gong
That calls you to your tea.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: Newport Boy
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 03:59 AM

Thanks for that, Peace. I hadn't come across this one before.

This could well be the origin of "Children should be seen and not heard", which I've usually found quoted as early Victorian.

Phil

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 09:48 AM

Thank you, Phil. However, I'd never come across it before Gargoyle's post. It is rather neat. Wonder if it's been set to music?

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:29 PM

Thank you PEACE !!!

.

It was used by my mother at the dinner table - who probably got it from her mother generations adnausium....back to Lyden.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jan 08 - 05:33 PM

Good one. Hope things are well with you. My grandma used to give me the fork in the arm.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 08:30 PM

According to Representative Poetry Online -- a site operated by The University of Toronto -- the author of that poem is Walter Alexander Raleigh (1861-1922), not to be confused with the more well known Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552 – 1618). This distinction seems to have been missed by many sites that have quoted it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: Peace
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 08:32 PM

Good eye, Jim. I missed that ALL THE WAY.

Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Only Beggars Dressed in Rags
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 19 Jan 08 - 09:06 PM

Furthermore, Sir Walter Raleigh's "Instructions to His Son and to Posterity," is a prose work of some 14 pages and 10 short chapters, treats of nothing so mundane as table manners, and is nowhere near as funny as the above poem.