Further to my post on Morris dancing and the controversies it provokes, here’s a new English haiku—to follow the original one, as well as my own ode to the 94 bus and garbled reference to a popular graffiti.
It should be read in a strong Lancashire accent. The opening line (for a variant, note comments below!) would be a headline, rather in the style of “Ping-pong ding-dong“. And the “rhyme that doesn’t quite work” doubtless has one of those fancy names that they try and teach you in school:
Trouble at t’Morris
‘As PC gone mad? Ey-up—
T’Nutters of Bacup!
For Stewart Lee’s trenchant rebuke of “PC gone mad gone mad”, see here; and for “Ey-up!” in Venice, here,
Stephen Jones: a blog 
Pingback: Ethnography at home: Morris dancing | Stephen Jones: a blog
Pingback: A new headline | Stephen Jones: a blog
Pingback: Some Venetian greetings | Stephen Jones: a blog
I discovered recently that Bacup is pronounced Bay-cup. It’s only a few miles into Lancashire from where I was brought up (Yorkshire) and we often went to the Amateur Astrological Society in Bacup (we pronounced it back-up) to gaze at stars through their telescopes. Set up by hippies and visited by the same. . .
LikeLike
[In response to my original posting “Strife at t’Morris”—SJ]
Now then, the thing with t’ is it’s not really voiced but more in the nature of a glottal stop and as such doesn’t (I reckon) count as a syllable, so
‘Trouble at t’Morris’ (cf ‘trouble at t’mill’) would perhaps be a better first line. ‘Like’ the almost rhyme though…
Sent from my iPod
LikeLike
Hm OK I’ve gone with that now—yes it’s more suggestive. It was my first idea, but feeling that the “t’ ” is usually sounded as a pretty heavy separate syllable, I resigned myself to “Strife at t’Morris”. You should know, though…
LikeLike
Not really a syllable on our side of the Pennines, but then they do talk a bit funny ‘ovver t’top’…
LikeLike
Pingback: The first English haiku | Stephen Jones: a blog
Pingback: Another haiku | Stephen Jones: a blog
Pingback: Some posts on Japanese culture | Stephen Jones: a blog