A chortle, as here given, is an endless prayer uttered by the faithful gathered around a chorten, I presume. Alternatively, and more commonly mayhap, it is a Scots Gaelic song as in ‘ Sing me a Gaelic song, Daddy, a thousand verses long, Daddy...’
‘Dirge’, ‘Ossian’ and ‘Fingal’ are all words which spring readily to mind in this context. Damn it, wasn’t it Juvenal who wrote ‘Difficile est saturam non scribere.’ How right he was!
Perhaps, of course, in my case Hoffman is more appropriate: “Silly little Johnny, look,/ You have lost your writing book.”
Then again, there’s always Homer in the Iliad, isn’t there? Really, it’s all “winged words”, isn’t it?
But this, this post, is nothing more than “the arts babblative and scribblative,” (Southey, for those who want to know), so I’ll ramble on here by reminding you of Moliere’s immortal words: ‘Un sot savant est sot plus qu’un sot ignorant.’
Aargh! That’s me!
Strangely, when you think about it, that’s also all those educated, but in only one way, Imams and Islamic so-called scholars, also!
Perhaps we should all endeavour to stay grounded – as modern parlance has it – and keep a firm hand on our
spurtles!
What say you, Mary?
