Eh! dites-le, dites-le,
De quatre et méfie de le.1
Haine de caoutchouc2 me Douvres3 de mou.
Le lit le dos que l'a fait de4
Tous s'y sèchent à c'port5
Et de digérant,6 ohé! Ouida7, ce pou.
In this fragment our poet reveals himself as an incurable Anglophobe. Note well the many inferences:
1 Four as a mystic number has had, in the superstitious lore of many countries, a sinister or unlucky quality. I point out two instances in literature to bear out this premis. "The Sign of the Four," Arthur Conan Doyle, 1889. And the interesting fact that Dumas titled his novel about Athos, Porthos,, Aramis and D'Artagnan, "The Three Musketeers." Sheer superstition. In this case, however, it is obvious that the reader is warned against the four major divisions of Britain, i.e., England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales.
2 Guttaperchaphobia. A morbid dislike for cleaning fish. (Rich. Holland, Univ. of Chi., 1945.) A barbed comment on British culinary practices.
3 A seaport, 76 miles E.S.E. of London, famed as one of the Cinque-Ports, pop. 39,950 (1938). This, the usual port of entry from France, is also noted for its soft chalk-white cliffs.
4 They've made their bed, let them lie in it!
5 This may be a reference to the dry, phlegmatic character in the traditional concept of the English "milord," or a comment on the notorious roughness of a Channel passage.
6 On the other hand, this may be a play on words--and the port of the kind used by the British as a digestive, imported at Dover.
7 Oiuda is the pen name of Louise de la Ramée, 1839-1908, English novelist. Both her pseudonym and patronymic indicate French origin, and it muyst be one of her male antecedents (because of the gender) that our poet calls a louse. Probably for migrating to England.
---discovered, edited, and annotated by Luis D'Antin Van Rooten, Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames (London: Angus and Robertson, 1967.)