Aesop Channel'd 'n Chopp'd: Array Eleven

Commentary to come: a work in progress

Aesop Channel'd 'n' Chopp'd: Array Ten

Commentary

Critics have suggested that "condoled" or "consoled" be substituted for the fable's "cajol'd," but no mss have been found to support such readings. In any case, the moral, that the gold is useless if never used, remains the same. 

Cott is an abbreviation for Cotta who, as the second frame's footnote states,  is the archetypal miser appearing in a satirical epistle by 18th-century poet Alexander Pope.

Aesop Channel'd 'n' Chopp'd: Array Nine

Commentary

Perry Index number for this fable is #140.

Aesop Channel'd 'n' Chopp'd: Array Eight

Commentary

The J fable's Perry Index number is #364.

The K fable's Perry Index number is #44. The specifics of the fable are from a later revised version of that number's text.

Aesop Channel'd 'n' Chopp'd: Array Seven

Commentary

The Perry Index number for this fable is #285. 

The text for the second panel in this array has puzzled many a critic. Why "Shan't be troll'd"? What sort of diety would it be who would consider prayer addressed to it as trolling? Alternate texts are found in various earlier mss of the whole composition -- "Uncajoled," "Remains cold," and "You're on hold" being but a few of the less outre. In any case, on what basis the selection extant was ultimately made remains something of a mystery.  

Aesop Channel'd 'n' Chopp'd: Array Six

Commentary 

The Perry Index number for this fable is #226. 

That there appears to be no data provided in any of the several available vitae of Justice Fortas suggesting or even implying that the caveat "Never sleep!" was or should have been applied to the Justice  tends to suggest that the original line for the fourth panel of this array, "Not before rigor mortis," is to be preferred as the wrap-up text for the array. However, there remain extant no mss featuring that line. Thus the editors felt compelled to instruct the illustrator to provide a visual reflecting the text ending with Homer's query concerning the scandal-plagued jurist.

Colloquialisms Gone Awry: a New Poetic Form (and an Aside)

This historical archetype, composed by an anonymous six-year-old at some point during the 50s, has been referred to in certain quarters as a "knock-sequitur." It may also in time become recognized as one pre-Oulipian example of anticipatory plagiarism.

Knock, knock! Who's there?

Chair. Chair who?

Chair table.

(To meander from the subject at hand for a brief moment: one is left wondering what young Anon, had he or she been old enough or savvy enough to grasp how knock-knock jokes work, might have originally had in mind.

Chair-...dar Cheese? 
Chair-...choslovakia? 
Chair-...ries Jubilee? 
Chair-...istiction? 
Chair-...assic Park? 
Chair-...on Osbourne?
Chair-...man Mao?
Chair-...(and Sonny)? 
Chair-...okee? 
Chair-...ismatic?
Chair-...ibdis (and Scylla)? 
Chair-...red Kushner?
Chair-...nobyl? 
Chair-...ry Lee Lewis? 
Chair-...ity stripe? 
Chair-...'n' chair alike? 
Chair-...ubim and Seraphim? 
Chair-...iff of Nottingham? 
Chair-...che la femme? 
Chair-...ley's Aunt?

But I digress.)

Recent examples:

Workin' hard? Or barely workin'?

Hey! This isn't rocket surgery.

Aesop Channel'd 'n' Chopp'd: Array Five

Commentary

This F fable's Perry Index number is
#351.

The G fable's Perry Index number is #137.

Thirteen and Six BotchuLits (aka Reopening Gambits)

The world is so full of a number of things.

But lufteleformofishornoshwaldings...?
A slap-happy thought from RLS.                                                         -- GFH

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree 
But, alas, opiate receded, kinky sex mandala hauled under.
(Person from Porlock punctures pipe-dream pagodas.)                         -- GFH

Now is the winter of our discontent

with two countertenors done -- finis!

("The Falsettos in the Tower" or "Gloucester Doesn't Go for Baroque.")  -- GFH

              

When in April the sweet showers fall, 

herself wilts; whiner aslop; a wet hen.

(The Wife takes a Bath)                                                                     -- GFH 

'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house,
when Father's big car met its host, he won the URL "Hugo's Health."
(This year, St. Nick's gifting every Mother's child with the web address it's always wanted.) 

"They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars:

has street appeal; healthy, dry canal; thin, foul rooms."

(Weird real estate listing from Ray Bradbury)                                        -- GFH

In the beginning God created
bengo diced thin 'n' ginger tea.
(Ginger and bengo being plants which thrive in gardens east of Eden.)

Once upon a time
out pie men a con
did play on a trio of bears (some stories substitute pigs for bears) the pie men had met while attending a gay pride fair.

Somewhere in La Mancha,
a hale Chinese worm-man...
...is heard singing, "To dleem the impossibrer dleem…"

You don't know me without you have read a book
about Woody the Wooky, Han, Outed Auk Ivor...'n' me.
(Not to mention Lord Vader, Miss Watson's Jim and that Sawyer boy.)

"Take my camel, dear," said my Aunt Dot.
"Eat a dread Mummy Lite Snack daily."
(Offbeat amenities in The Towers of Trebizond.)                                    -- GFH

Alice was beginning to get very tired
being given tainted grey-water coils.
("Girls just want to have fun," Miss Liddell clarified.)

On Monday, when the sun is hot...
Oh, no! One's death must whinny?
(Lines Written by a Bear of Very Equine Brain
or, Pooh plus Pooh equals Eeyore.)                                                       -- GFH 

Oh, East is East, and West is West...

Ah, India’s stews taste so sweet!
(Kipling just loved his curry.)                                                               -- GFH 

It was the best of times:

I hit me two tsetses. Fab!
(I'd just legally purchased my AK-47 swatter.)

Arma virumque cano.
Or, "Quem carmina, Vau?"
(We asked a Portuguese city glee club what they'd chosen to sing.)

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan:
pick up muy-tall nutmeg balls!
(Stephen Dedalus's bodega shopping list.)

For a long time I went to bed early.
Forgotten? My ball...tee...wine...radio...
(Young Marcel possessed more than a few bad habits.) 

We the people...in order:
Theo, Pepe, Lew, Dr. Roe 'n' I.
(Followed, several steps behind, of course, by Indira, Miyoshi, Peaches, the current Mrs. Roe and my own ex-.)


Source materials: 

"Happy Thought" from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson 
"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge 
Richard III by William Shakespeare 
"The Wife of Bath's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer 
A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Moore
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Old Testament by various Hebrews 
Nearly every fairy tale ever told, many related by Anon
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes 
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain 
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay 
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll 
"Lines Written by a Bear of Very Little Brain" by A. A. Milne 
"The Ballad of East and West" by Rudyard Kipling
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Aeneid by Vergil
Ulysses by James Joyce
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
Moby Dick by Herman Melville
The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States

Aesop Channel'd 'n' Chopp'd: Array Four

Commentary to come; a work in progress

Aesop Channel'd 'n' Chopp'd: Array Three

Commentary 

Also called "The Cock and the Pearl," this fable's "frills" are the gleanings of the field, seen by the cock as of value to him. The fool is, of course, the cock himself -- in not recognizing the greater value of his chance discovery.

Its Perry Index number is #503 

Like "Belling the Cat," "The Dog in the Manger" is well known, whether as fable, metaphor or meme.  

Its Perry Index number is #703.