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Welcome to Wiser Now’s weekly email blast which reflects my eclectic interests and, I hope, yours. This week, my focus is on lambs and lipograms because the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was published on September 1, 1830. That was several months after it was written by Sarah Josepha Hale, a woman who was influential on multiple fronts in the 1800s, including the promotion of a national thanksgiving day. As for lipograms, the term comes from a Greek word meaning “missing letter.” One if its most famous practitioners rewrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb” in several versions, including one without the letter “A” which isn’t easy, considering there are 4 A’s just in the title.
I hope you find these offerings fun, and perhaps even useful, and welcome your feedback. (Kathy@WiserNow.com) And if you haven’t yet pressed the subscribe button so this newsletter doesn’t go to spam, please do so now.
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The Quirky Quote
When I was a child, my father used to recite this rhyme:
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was black as soot,
And everywhere that Mary went,
Its sooty footie put.
It’s a fond memory, because I thought “sooty footie put” was hilarious, and my father was not usually funny. I hope you find it amusing, too.
The Quirky Facts
As a lover of the oddities of English, I was fascinated by Mark Dunn’s 2001 book Ella Minnow Pea (l-m-n-o-p, get it?). It’s a novel that combines lipograms with pangrams. A pangram is a sentence that uses all the letters of the alphabet concisely. Most languages have them. In English, the most famous is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," which takes 35 letters to create a sentence that uses all 26 letters and makes sense. It has been widely used for generations by people learning to type or practice cursive writing (showing my age here) and people designing fonts.
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In Mark Dunn’s book, the supposed creator of that pangram was Nevin Nollop, and it’s memorialized on a monument to him on a fictitious island off the South Carolina coast. The local government takes the monument extremely seriously, and when the letter tiles begin to fall from the inscription beneath the statue, the government leaders, seeing it as a message from the late Mr. Nollop, ban the use of the fallen letters in written or spoken communication. The first letters to fall were J, Q, and Z, which wasn’t too bad, but the letters kept falling until near the end, only (fittingly) LMNOP remain. Citizens were given three chances to live within the restrictions of the ever more challenging lipograms, but after the third offense they were banished from the island, and soon the island’s population vastly diminished.
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The only way to change the rigid government council members’ minds was to find an alternative pangram of 32 letters in place of Nollop's 35. All ends well, of course, and along the way is the fun of the notes passed between two of the characters who remain on the island, Ella and her friend Tom, who are forced to rely on ever more creative spelling. Can you tell, for example, which letters have been banned in this sentence that’s part of a note Tom wrote to Ella? “Please tont worry apowt me.”
To order Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn, click here.
But if you can’t wait to see the pangram that restored order to the island, check out the answer section.
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The Quirky Observation
Another book in which a lipogram is a key element is James Thurber’s The Wonderful O. It centers on a man who hated the letter “O” because his mother was once wedged in a ship’s porthole and when her would-be rescuers couldn’t pull her in, they pushed her out. It’s a story about pirates and the takeover of an island where “O” is banned, which meant:
- Cnfusin reigned and chas
- A man named Otto Ott, when asked his name could only stutter
- Ophelia Oliver was ashamed (Take out the O’s to see why)
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While the premise is obviously silly, there is an important moral within it.
Eventually the islanders decided that there were four words with an “O” that must not be lost. Three were:
The fourth is the most important one and the whole point of the book. As a hint, it’s behind a lot of current protests.
You can order The Wonderful O or once again, if you can’t wait to know the fourth word, check out the answers at the end of this document.
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The Featured Product for Enhancing Family Relationships
It’s All Relative is the newest Wiser Now slide show, and it’s jam-packed with 16 distinct exercises that provide quizzes and discussion topics for life engagement professionals, family reunions, and other intergenerational gatherings, or just to keep dinner conversation interesting.
The topics range from names (How many people share your name?), birth order, childhood freedoms, and family stories, to your creative legacy and what to call grandparents. Reminiscence ideas cover ancestors, siblings, and other current relatives. One of the word games is on related (but opposite) proverbs, and one of the trivia quizzes is on famous siblings. Intrigued yet? This is just one of several related and relatable slide shows that are worth checking out. See also Love and Marriage and Mothers and Fathers.
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Please Spread the Word
WNW is now a 4-time award-winning publication used by activity professionals, teachers, aging adults and their grandkids, and lots of people in between. Please share it, and if you represent an organization that would like a customized version or that would consider becoming a sponsor, send me a note at Kathy@WiserNow.com.
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Directions for Sharing
Each week, the links to the current and seven previous Wiser Now Wednesdays are provided in the archive (“WN Wed Archive” on the far right of the menu bar). Click on the issue you want to share, and when it appears, at the top of the screen you will see “Share” with an f for Facebook and a bird for Twitter. Click on them to share to your contacts or just copy the URL at the top of your screen and send it to them in an email. Thank you!
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The Questions
- Are you familiar with the idea of lipograms and pangrams?
- Have you ever written one of your own? (It’s easy to try, but sometimes hard to do. For lipograms, start with a famous quotation such as another nursery rhyme or a proverb like “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched,” and choose one or more letters to leave out.)
- Do you like the idea of such writing challenges or do prefer to simply enjoy reading what others have done with the idea?
- Are there other word games you enjoy?
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The Quiz – Lipogram Challenge
Here is the original version of Mary and her lamb:
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.
It followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule;
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb in school.
As noted above, lipogram expert A. Ross Eckler wrote several versions of the nursery rhyme. Here is his rewrite without the letter “A”:
Polly owned one little sheep,
Its fleece shone white like snow,
Every region where Polly went
The sheep did surely go;
He followed her to school one time,
Which broke the rigid rule;
The children frolicked in their room
To see the sheep in school.
Leaving out a vowel is challenging, and results can be mixed. Mr. Ekler’s version minus all e’s (the most common letter in English) doesn’t have the appeal of the original, but leaving out a consonant can be more fun. Try writing the nursery rhyme without the letter T and then check the answers to see how your version compares with Mr. Ekler’s.
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The Resources
Photo credits unless otherwise noted are purchased from iStock.
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Mary had a pygmy lamb
his fleece was pale as snow
and every place where Mary walked
her lamb did also go
he came inside her classroom once
which broke a rigid rule
how children all did laugh and play
on seeing a lamb in school
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My multiple goals are to amuse and inspire you, to share what I and people whom I admire are doing, to stimulate your curiosity, and spur you to action. I hope you enjoyed this offering. You can access previous issues here. I welcome your feedback. (Kathy@WiserNow.com) | | | | | |
