Exchange of Pentelopes

Here is a letter I received from my super-erudite French colleague, GH, followed by my response. They both feature "pentelopes", an invention of Alfred (Dilly) Knox, a Cambridge classics scholar and a cryptographer in both World Wars. I first introduced them on this blog in May 2018: see Dilly's Pentelopes.

I hope that you and your family are fine and freer now that the lockdown has ended.

We are well and have been staying in the Lot since June, but it's a bit sad and we were glad that we could have our daughter's family with us for a while for nothing is happening. All the festivities among neighbours and music festivals have been (wisely) cancelled and we barely leave our garden, but for food shopping. We're lucky to have a swimming pool in the present heat. What deters us is the carefree attitude of holiday makers who need to be reminded to keep distances and wear a mask inside shops. Being "persons at risk", we tend to become wary, regular stay-at-homes.

Partly because of that, I have practically finished assembling the dictionary of English-speaking Catholic writers, although if it were done when it is done, it would be well : evey other day someone in the team unearths somebody that we had overlooked. As a sub-title, I have suggested the French phrase humorously used when unexpected things keep cropping up : "C'est comme les cheveux d'Éléonore, Quand y'en a plus, y'en a encore !".

I have come up with a slangish pentalope in French, inspired by that quintessential summer activity, the barbecue ("barbok" in present day young people's lingo :

Basta le véganisme et vive la barbaque !

Mais la cuire parfois fait tomber sur un bec.

Agneau, porc et poulet ou bien cuissot de bique

(Attention, cependant, surtout jamais de bouc !),

Rien ne vaut entre amis un succulent barboque.

Translation :

Enough of veganism, hail meat (barbaque is slang for meat)

But cooking it sometimes presents a snag (tomber sur un bec = hit a problem, Not slang)

Lamb, pork, chicken or a goat's leg (une bique/ une biquette : affectionate child's speech for goat. My grandfather had a sister called Blanche like M. Seguin's goat and her brothers called her "Biquette").

Beware, though: never ever a billy-goat !

There's nothing like a succulent barbecue among friends.

Here is my response:

It was a pleasant surprise to receive your message from out of the blue. I'm delighted to hear you are keeping well and that you are making good progress with your dictionary. I can only begin to imagine how tricky it might be to determine and to apply criteria for eligibility; how important it might (or might not) be to pay due regard to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum; to have a filter that works for CINO (Catholics in name only), heretics, apostates, schismatics, cafeteria Catholics and so on, and so on: : - )

I'm making slow but steady progress on a number of fronts, the current major operation is to complete a page turn of l'Abbé Fouard's splendid (two volume) Life of the Christ the Son of God.

A week or so back, I completed an English translation of the last poem written by Sainte Thérèse a few months before her death: Pourquoi je t’aime, ô Marie! It was quite a challenge as I aimed not only to stay fairly close to the French original but to retain the alexandrines and the same rhyming scheme of the 25 stanzas.

I enjoyed reading the Pentelope, your first since they locked us down into our new normality. I have just written in fairly quick time the following:

Lèse-majesté

"All hail to us!" "We've got it in the bag!"

We clever men God's help no more did beg;

But for our boots we boasting were too big

And swamped with pride we sank into a bog

Of viral madness crowned "Corona Bug"...

I suspect we may have divergent views on the global "virus" and the draconian measures enforced worldwide (for our health and safety). I find it inconceivable that the massive destruction of economies, jobs and small/medium enterprises, the incoherence, self-contradictions, data-manipulation and mainstream censorship, accompanied by the relentless maintenance and progression of fear-mongering, do not all point to very dark days ahead.

Let us pray on this, the Vigil of the Assumption, that Our Blessed Mother will watch over her children and grant us her protection.

[9] Quae est ista quae progreditur quasi aurora consurgens, pulchra ut luna, electa ut sol, terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata?

Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array?

Kindest regards. etc.