The news from the Royal Family in London continues to be horrid. The holidays at the end of 2003 have become a disaster not only for the English Royal Family, but for the rest of the civilized world as well.
On Christmas Eve, wire services such as BBC and the Associated Press were kept hopping by a report that Princes Anne’s bull terrier, Dotty, had fatally bitten Pharos, Queen Elizabeth’s favorite corgi.
This is that that grim news bulletin evinced from New Jersey:
Now comes another piece of horrid news from London, only one week later, on New Year’s Eve. In this case, we have an issue of misidentifying which of Princess Anne’s bull terriers was at fault. In the Christmas Eve massacre, the dog was identified as Dotty. Now we know that that in the New Year’s Eve attack, the bull terrier owned by Princess Anne was Florence who was also responsible for Pharos’s death. Dotty only bit two children as they walked near Windsor Castle.
The New Year’s Eve debacle took place at Sandringham Castle in Eastern England. The Royal Family owns Sandringham in addition to their own estates and castles. On New Year’s Eve, that bad bull terrier Florence, bit a 50 year old maid. The woman was treated for the dog bites and luckily, did not have to be hospitalized.
It is deeply regrettable that Florence bit a female maid. It would have been more appropriate for Florence to bite a footman belonging to Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales. This footman is responsible for squeezing toothpaste onto the Prince Charles’s toothbrush every day. He could perform this vital service to the Crown even if he lost a leg to Florence’s bite, whereas the maid must carry trays of English Champagne to serve members of the Royal Family at the castle at Sandringham. As far as the world knows, the footman is still able to squeeze the paste onto the Prince of Wales’s toothbrush.
A further report from the world wide reaches of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) also tells us that on New Year’s Eve, a giant boa constrictor was captured in one of England’s former colonies in Africa. News reports say that the boa is somewhere near 50 feet in length and weighs at least 500 pounds. Its main food is dogs. Not rats or squirrels or Alpo. It eats only dogs, up to five per meal.
To establish peace in Blighty, my idea for the Nobel Prize for Peace is that the giant boa is to consume some of the obstreperous dogs of Her Majesty, Princess Anne. Boas have no teeth. They simply swallow the dogs and gastric juices do the rest. There are no teeth marks and the process is completed quickly. When the boa consumes its five Princess Anne’s dogs, peace will return to that mighty realm supervised by Queen Elizabeth and her royal brood.
It will be astonishing if the Nobel Committee does not vote me as the unanimous winner of the 2004 Peace Prize.
MORE ABOUT THE ENGLISH VIEW OF THINGS
It is fairly clear that the British upper class have always viewed the Irish as vassals. As a matter of fact, the English word “vassal” means a servant of Celtic origin who owes homage and fealty to the Crown. Those Irish vassals sing and dance in grave contrast to the dour outlook of their former English overseers.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a conservative English poet and writer. Curiously, in later years he converted to Catholicism, the religion of Ireland and its Gaelic vassals.
In Chesterton’s “The Ballad of the White Horse,” he wrote in Book II,
“For the great Gaels of Ireland
Are the men that God made mad,
For all their wars are merry,
And all their songs are sad.”
This is a fine poem, but if he thinks all Irish songs are sad, it would be our pleasure to invite Lord Chesterton’s descendants to come to New Jersey to hear a CD concert of the Tommy Makem and the Clancy Brothers. I’m sure some minds would be radically changed on that sad song part of Book II of “The Ballad of the White Horse.”
Chesterton’s poem must have inspired a parody. Another poet, Arthur Guiterman (1871-1943) must have had Lord Chesterton’s poem in mind when he wrote these lines in “The Young Celtic Poets”:
For the young Gaels of Ireland
Are the lads that drive me mad;
For half their words need foot notes,
And half the rhymes are bad”
Not bad poetry, but it won’t bring Queen Elizabeth’s corgi Pharos back and it won’t erase the bite on the maid’s leg at Sandringham.
Now before we leave our discussion of Royalty and upper class citizenship in England, a burning question hangs out there. Doesn’t anything belong to Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh? For example, the dogs and the estates and the castles are all ascribed to the Duke’s wife, Queen Elizabeth. It is well known that the Prince was born on Corfu, a Greek island. Being of Greek origin, does that render him incapable of ownership of Royal Family canines? And one other question. What is this Greek born gentleman doing as the Duke of Edinburgh which is one of the homes of the Celtic race? Do you think his dukedom might secretly include Dublin? Or perhaps Boston?
These are monumental questions that must be cleared up promptly. Perhaps, if the Duke composed poems as clever as Chesterton or Guiterman, we might invite him to a St. Patrick’s Day parade, providing he left the Royal dogs back at the Castle. He could also leave Queen Elizabeth and Princess Anne and the Prince of Wales at home as well.
E. E. CARR
January 3, 2004
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Editor’s note: Spellings have been changed from the original essay, where Pop thought the dog’s name was “Pharoe” — however, CNN and other sources confirm that it is in fact “Pharos” the corgi. Source: http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/12/24/queen.corgi. I can also verify that Florence was indeed at fault, after Dotty was incorrectly accused at first.
I’ll also take this opportunity to point out that this type of correction is just one example of the high journalistic standards we maintain here over at EzrasEssays.com. If you are ever in need of this degree of diligence in the reading of tongue-in-cheek essays, I’m your man.