From the Vision of Mac Conglinne

[Not Bill Joy]

_ Aniar Mac Conglinne (12th Century)
versified by Alfred Percival Graves:

Upon a vision of amaze
that met my eyes in bygone days
let all be listening now
a mighty coracle of cake
lay ready launched on new milk lake
well stored from stern to prow

We strode on board that battleship
twas meet a warrior crew should rip
the great sea dragon's scales.
Upon the monster's back she leaps
and O, our oars' tremendous sweeps
upstear from out his weltering heaps
like honey, his entrails

At last a royal fort we reached
with custards solidly impeached
were all its barricadoes
we safely crossed its butterbridge
its rubble dyke -- a wheatflour ridge
and porky palisadoes

A fortalice compact and good
in pleasant stateliness it stood
I opened, on my word
a hungbeef door of priceless cost
and then a breadcrumb crossed
twixt walls of white cheese curd

Smooth pillars of ancestral cheese
and alternating well with these
the sappy bacon prop
and silver post and stately beam
of yellow curds and mellow cream
the roof held safely up.

Founded on Prof. Kuno Meyer's prose rendering of the 12th century
burlesque of this name of his _Ancient Irish Poetry_

..from the Celtic Review, April 1906

-michael