LANGUAGE ON THE LOOSE

Years ago when I worked in Personnel and edited a news bulletin for Knapp Hall, the home of Louisiana Agricultural Extension Service, Marjorie Arbour, Editor of Agricultural Publications, LSU, read my informal, interoffice news sheet and invited me to audit her Ag Journalism Course 150. The class was a graduate course for Ag Extension workers, but she slipped me into the class. For the concluding exam, I was called upon to give my first oral book review as an example of a special interest feature story.  I chose to review It's Easy To Increase Your Vocabulary by William Morris. This past week, I re-read the review and enjoyed a few laughs, especially while perusing the part of the review in a chapter concerning specialized language entitled “Grandfather’s Political Slang.”

At that time (the 1950’s), Morris stated that the “relatively mild epithets exchanged by candidates for public office in recent campaigns contrasted sharply with the brash, colorful, and occasionally libelous language of campaigns in the 19th century…” Ha! Fast forward another two-hundred years, and it appears that we’ve recovered our “brash…libelous language;” e.g., Morris’s description of a “buncombe artist”: “a specialist in deceit, especially dealing with hifalutin’ promises he has no intention of keeping,” or “cock and bull story,” which is “a fanciful, rambling yarn.” And here’s one that we hope will become a reality: “hoist by his own petard,” a figurative expression meaning “to destroy by one’s own trickery or inventiveness.”

A word Morris introduced to his readers, coined by Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, was one that could be included in the political slang section: “snarky.” Snarky falls “between sneering and snide” in meaning and could easily describe several of today’s political candidates. Then there’s “tell it to the marines,” which means “tell your preposterous story to someone gullible enough to believe it.” Or how about “tinker’s dam,” which refers to “something utterly without value.” Not to mention “whipping boy,” who is “a person punished for the mistakes made by someone else.”

The list of specialized words was long, and I leave it to the reader to apply the words to whomever they wish, since I’m not in the habit of writing political columns and am more inured to writing book reviews, travelogues, agricultural treatises, etc. My review of Easy To Increase Your Vocabulary brought in a “Red Apple,” or the equivalent of an A+, and was hardly a propitious reference for the hard news story, but it was a fun exercise explaining the trade vocabularies of cowboys, politicians, baseball players, and circus clowns (the latter reminiscent of the politicians’ vocabularies).

One more phrase Morris described that may belong in the political realm is “crocodile tears.” It seems that crocodile tears originated in Greek and Egyptian folklore. The legend is that the great lizard, the crocodile, attracted its victims by loud moaning and then shed tears while it devoured them. And with that description and, in the word of H. L. Mencken, American humorist and critic, I’ll put a “kibosh” to this diatribe about words that are created to fit special needs in a colloquial paradise.

PODOPHYLLUM: MAYAPPLE MAGIC

Mayapples along Templeton Way

Yesterday, following Sunday Eucharist at the Chapel of St. Mary’s, we rode past a patch of plants with peculiar green leaves, and I asked resident botanist, Dr. Victoria Sullivan, to turn around and make an identification of the patch for me. At first, I thought we had come upon a group of plants unlikely to be growing on the Mountain – pitcher plants prevalent in south Louisiana bogs. However, when we retraced our steps and examined the colony of green plants with their umbrella-like leaves, Dr. Sullivan identified them as a colony of Mayapple, minus the flowers that appear in early May. The umbrella-like leaves protect large white flowers that bloom this month and in May.

Mayapples were once called “witches umbrellas,” and some believed that the plants were poisonous, apart from the ripe fruit that can be used as a cathartic and purgative. Actually, the fully-ripe fruit, which turns yellow in late summer and is often called wild lemon, can be made into jams and jellies, even pies. But rinds and seeds are poisonous.

When I first glimpsed the colony of Mayapple, I thought immediately of my mother who believed in fantastical beings – mystical-like gnomes, elves, and other wee folk she painted into oil renderings and who could have taken shelter under the umbrella-like Mayapples. She would have believed the stories about the English version of this plant, the Mandrake, one of which reports that the mandrakes are alive and scream when pulled from the ground. Their screams were reputed to drive people insane. Mother believed in magical beings, but she shied away from stories about dragons and mermaids, thinking that the dragon with its fish scales, giant horns, and alligator tail might frighten us. Instead, she chose to read aloud to us each night chapters from Peter Pan, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and a story that ultimately did frighten me – that of Snow White – and was the Mayapple the apple she consumed that caused her to fall into a sleep from which no one except a prince could rouse her?

Mother Dorothy wasn’t too far off base in her perceptions about magical creatures. After Dr. Sullivan had identified the Mayapple, I found a poem entitled “Mandrakes” by Minnie Wait that could have been written by my mother:

“Down in the shady woodland

Where fern fronds are uncurled

A host of green umbrellas

Are swiftly now unfurled.

Do they shelter fair people

From sudden pelting showers

Or are the leaves but sunshades

To shield the waxen flowers?”

Scientists are now studying and deriving anti-tumor drugs from the toxic tubers of the Mayapple. American Indians often boiled the roots from this plant and used the water to cure tummy aches. Also, the Podophyllum peltatum can be applied topically to warts. I wonder if the south Louisiana traiteurs have used it as a remedy to cure warts – a healing for which they are famous.

Whatever the uses of this magical-looking plant, my sighting provided fodder for a blog about a field of bumbershoots along the path to St. Mary’s on a sunny Sunday morning and inspired photography by Dr. Sullivan.