Album Leaflet No. 2

Conjectural Rendering

into Thornhaugese

by M. Y. CATSWISKA, B.A. (Bloomsb.)

of a copy of Latin verses dug up by a Dog

in Woburn Square

and brought by the sagacious Animal to

M–ss –nn Br–db–1

together with

Mr. CATSWISKA’S Notes

Elucidating the obscurer parts.

Tarantula of a Tarantula! (Tzing Boom.) Tarantulas of Tarantulas! (Tzing Boom.) Authors of ambushes, despoilers of flies, masters at hocus pocus, lying hid in a binary2 place for most horrid feasts, for whom nothing is not food3 except4 glowing with thought and not indulgent to hairs, as it were the sun in the south, appearing in the binary binary5 (silent is his formidable name) is an omen threatening to spiders. Wherefrom take warning, sons and daughters of little Tarantula, and keep your mouths shut, while the Man himself, the supreme Triumvir, emits sonorous voices and takes the nocturnal hours captive. So and only so may you have license for these your worthless burblings, because to FABER is given power over the scabrous. Ye have heard a clear word. Now is the scuttling time for all Tarantulas.6

[Geoffrey Faber]

Notes
  1. 1.

    JDH note: ‘Miss Anne Bradby, secretary to Mr E.’

  2. 2.

    bino. What the hell? [This text appears as a footnote in the original printing of Noctes Binanianae.]

  3. 3.

    cibus. What the hell? [This text appears as a footnote in the original printing of Noctes Binanianae.]

  4. 4.

    JDH’s proof copy insertion here: ‘the impavid bird gravid with genuine art, whose head’.

  5. 5.

    bino bino. What the double hell? [This text appears as a footnote in the original printing of Noctes Binanianae.]

  6. 6.

    See further ‘Ref. Album Leaflet No. 2: important intimation’, Faber K44:

    Dr Catswiska regrets that dogged endeavours notwithstanding on his part to positively secure an accurate transcription of his circulated and recirculated translation to fellows of the Scribblerus Foundation Inc. errors do still persist in creeping somehow in.

    Dr. Cattswiska (whom he would like to take this opportunity of informing the foundationers in question has been informed is about to be admitted without consideration to the Degree of Doctor of Illegitimate Letters in the University of Tallahatta) as he cannot afford going on paying overtime to his private secretary, who has every too good reason for suspecting of not being the simpleminded person his innocent goodness of nature was imagining her of being and consequently is entrusting the typing of this Intimation to another hand, therefore is very anxious lest somebody is not maybe trying to do him down with the Tallahattan Senate not having paid the usual what-for from prospective Doctors being the kind of trouble keeps on standing in the way of men like he with no money to speak of. Anyway that translation does keep on getting off the keys. So will you all please take kind notice that Dr Catswiska’s name is with S’s in it which it is’nt in line nine of the aforesaid Album Leaflet. And will you also please take kind notice that six words have got left out now in the line before the last of the translation which gave the Doctor so much Hell meaning that the whole thing gave him Hell and he hopes it gave a lot more Hell to everybody else including the bloody author who he wants to see there and paid him nothing for going it anyway. Lo the poor Indian seems to be the said authors motto. Dr Catswhiska don’t beat about bushes more than he feels obliged but he feels that alright. Please will Foundationers that like things right add in their best penmanship an omitted sentence coming after the full stop after scabrous. Ye have Heard a clear word?

    God save the Duke of Windsor!