Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript (Mother Goose's Rhymes), published in 1967 by Luis d'Antin van Rooten is purportedly a collection of poems written in archaic French with learned glosses. In fact, they are English-language nursery rhymes written homophonically as a nonsensical French text (with pseudo-scholarly explanatory footnotes); that is, as an English-to-French homophonic translation. The result is not merely the English nursery rhyme but that nursery rhyme as it would sound if spoken in English by someone with a strong French accent. Even the manuscript's title, when spoken aloud, sounds like "Mother Goose's Rhymes" with a strong French accent.
Here is van Rooten's version of Humpty Dumpty:
Video Mots d'Heures
Sources
The original English nursery rhymes that correspond to the numbered poems in Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames are as follows:
- Humpty Dumpty
- Old King Cole
- Hey Diddle Diddle
- Old Mother Hubbard
- There Was a Little Man and He Had a Little Gun
- Hickory Dickory Dock
- Jack Sprat
- Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater
- There Was a Crooked Man
- Little Miss Moffat
- Jack and Jill
- There Was a Little Girl She Had a Little Curl
- Little Jack Horner
- Ride a Cockhorse to Banbury Cross
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor
- Rain Rain Go Away
- Paddy Cake Paddy Cake
- Mistress Mary Quite Contrary
- Roses Are Red Violets Are Blue
- Tom Tom the Piper's Son
- Mary Had a Little Lamb
- Cross Patch Draw the Latch
- See Saw Margery Daw
- The Queen of Hearts She Made Some Tarts
- One Two Buckle My Shoe
- There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
- Ladybird Ladybird Fly Away Home
- Monday's Child
- Lucy Locket
- Curly Locks
- Here Is the Church Here Is the Steeple
- Simple Simon
- I Do Not Like Thee Doctor Fell
- Pussycat Pussycat
- Little Bo Peep
- Baa Baa Black Sheep
- Polly Put the Kettle On
- Lock the Dairy Door
- This Little Pig Went to Market
- Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep
Maps Mots d'Heures
Secondary use
Ten of the Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames have been set to music by Lawrence Whiffin.
Similar works
An earlier example of homophonic translation (in this case French-to-English) is "Frayer Jerker" (Frère Jacques) in Anguish Languish (1956).
A later book in the English-to-French genre is N'Heures Souris Rames (Nursery Rhymes), published in 1980 by Ormonde de Kay. It contains some forty nursery rhymes, among which are Coucou doux de Ledoux (Cock-A-Doodle-Doo), Signe, garçon. Neuf Sikhs se pansent (Sing a Song of Sixpence) and Hâte, carrosse bonzes (Hot Cross Buns).
A similar work in German-English is Mörder Guss Reims: The Gustav Leberwurst Manuscript by John Hulme (1st Edition 1981; various publishers listed; ISBN 0517545594, ISBN 978-0517545591 and others). The dust jacket, layout and typography are very similar in style and appearance to the original Mots D'Heures albeit with a different selection of nursery rhymes.
Marcel Duchamp draws parallels between the method behind Mots d'Heures and certain works of Raymond Roussel.
Publication history
- 1967, USA, Viking Adult, ISBN 0-670-49064-4, hardcover, 40 pp.
- 1967, UK, Grossman, ISBN 1-299-26218-X, 43 pp.
- 1968, UK, Angus & Robertson, ISBN 0-207-94991-3, May 1968, hardcover, 80 pp.
- 1977, UK, Angus & Robertson, ISBN 0-207-95799-1, De Luxe Ed edition, November 17, 1977, 40 pp.
- 1980, US, Penguin, ISBN 978-0-14-005730-0, November 20, 1980, paperback, 80 pp.
- 2009, UK, Blue Door, ISBN 978-0-00-732469-9, 29 October 2009, hardcover, 48 pp.
See also
- N'Heures Souris Rames
- Homophonic translation
- Mondegreen
- Phono-semantic matching
References
Source of article : Wikipedia