We missed William Butler Yates’ birthday on June 13. He was born in 1865. Am I feeling like Irish poetry today? Not really. Not that there’s anything wrong with Irish poetry or famous Irish poets.

Let’s instead figure out who the author of today’s three readings was.

Nothing too remarkable. Born 1845 or ’46, died 1886. He married well. Four kids, one of whom went on to be a baseball statistician, another baseball writer. So we infer that he liked baseball. Created “a one-cent daily specializing in sensational news and scandals, and did not win favour with the educated public of Montreal.” And that’s about it for that infallible source.

What?

Maybe it’s just a stock photo. Who knows.

Daily Readings June 16

• The Villager and the Snake [Can’t find it online. Read it. Not missing anything.]
• The Amateur Orlando
• The Ahkoond of Swat

“The Ankoond of Swat” is not to be confused with The Akond of Swat.

The link to “The Ahkoond of Swat” provides this little gem:

Information on George Thomas Lanigan is hard to come by; her[e] is what The Oxford Companion to American Literature writes (according to answers.com):

Hard to come by. Indeed. But The OCAL offers hope! Except there’s no listing for Lanigan in my 1948 (2nd) edition. I cannot believe I am being reduced to answers dot com but here I go.

I’m back with nothing. Why don’t people include citations? All I wanted to know was the edition of the OCAL that was being referenced. I can’t find jack at answers.

The Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature (1962) has not only the Threnody entry but also an entry on Lanigan himself. Ahkoond is his most famous poem, but we also learn that a stanza in “The Amateur Orlando” became famous:

A squeak’s heard in the orchestra,
  The leader draws across
Th’ intestines of the agile cat
  The tail of the noble hoss.

That’s hilarious. I wonder if bows are still made with horsehair. Yes. “Even now, much of the horsehair used to make bowed instruments is collected in countries like Mongolia. This is because hair that comes from countries with cold climates is more coarse, helping it grip strings and produce the best sound.”

The Reader’s Encyclopedia also notes that

Lanigan dreamed of what H.L. Mencken called “the philological millennium” when he spoke of the day “when the singular verb shall lie down with the plural noun, and a little conjunction shall lead them.”

No. The crappy old books, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States and its two supplements (Mencken, 1919, 1945, 1948, respectively) are roughly 2250 pages. And I don’t even know for certain that is where “the philological millennium” occurs. Just a guess. (Checked Bartlett’s. Nothing.)

Trying to recreate in my brain why this happened earlier which led me all the way around to the Nonsense Lit site I found yesterday with Lanigan’s “Ahkoond of Swat” but I can’t quite.

I know it had something to do with a quote on statistics from Andrew Lang, that I accidentally found, and from there I went to !! Got it. I went to my newer edition of Bartlett’s and just opened it up by chance to Edward Lear, author of “Akond of Swat.” He also wrote the “Owl and the Pussycat” and when I searched for it online, what site should come up but Nonsense Lit!

Stay well. Stay safe. Keep reading. Wonder about some things. It’s good for the brain.