quotes_nov17_2013.htm

Then up and spoke the caulkyers bold,
Which was packing the pump in the afterhold:
“Since you with us have made so free,
Will you kindly tell what your name might be ?”

The old man kindly answered them:
“It might be japheth, it might be Shem,
Or it might be Ham (though his skin was dark),
Whereas it is Noah, commanding the Ark.

This is from “A Truthful Song” in Rewards and Fairies, which shows how very little since things were made, things have changed in the shipwright’s – or builder’s – trade.

It may be that the makers of Noah’s Arks know that their animals are likely to find their way into young mouths, and paint them accordingly. Certain it is that the common, weary next morning broke through the windows and found Black Sheep quite well and a good deal ashamed of himself, but richer by the knowledge that he could, in extremity, secure himself against Harry for the future.

This is from “Baa Baa Black Sheep” in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories.

Black Sheep, bullied and ,istreated beyond endurance by “Aunty Rosa” and her son Harry, decides to kill himself ny sucking the paint off the toy wooden animals of his Noah’s Ark. He fails, and the misery continues.

Saumarez gave a moonlight riding-picnic at an old tomb, six miles away, near the bed of the river. It was a ‘Noah’s Ark’ picnic ; and there was to be the usual arrangement of quarter-mile intervals between each couple on account of the dust. Six couples came altogether, including chaperones.

This is from “False Dawn” in Plain Tales from the Hills.

At a “Noah’s Ark picnic”, in which the young people ride two by two like the animals in the nursery rhyme, Saumarez plans to ask a young woman to marry him. In the dark and confusion of a dust-storm he proposes to her sister by mistake. With much embarrassment and unhappiness he corrects his error.