| Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript | |
| Author: | Luis van Rooten |
| Publisher: | Grossman Publishers |
| Pub Date: | 1967 |
| English Pub Date: | 1967 |
| Media Type: | book |
| Pages: | 76 |
| Oclc: | 1208360 |
| Congress: | 67-21230 |
Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript (Mother Goose 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.[1] 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 Rhymes" with a strong French accent; it literally means "Words of Hours: Pods, Paddles."
Here is van Rooten's version of Humpty Dumpty:[2]
Humpty Dumpty Sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty Had a great fall. And all the king's horses And all the king's men Can't put Humpty Dumpty Together again. | Un petit d'un petit S'étonne aux Halles Un petit d'un petit Ah! degrés te fallent Indolent qui ne sort cesse Indolent qui ne se mène Qu'importe un petit d'un petit Tout Gai de Reguennes. | A child of a child Is surprised at the Market A child of a child Oh, degrees you needed! Lazy is he who never goes out Lazy is he who is not led Who cares about a child of a child Like Guy of Reguennes. |
The original English nursery rhymes that correspond to the numbered poems in Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames are as follows:[3]
Ten of the Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames have been set to music by Lawrence Whiffin.[4]
An earlier example of homophonic translation (in this case French-to-English) is "Frayer Jerker" (Frère Jacques) in Anguish Languish (1956).[5]
A later book in the English-to-French genre is N'Heures Souris Rames (Nursery Rhymes), published in 1980 by Ormonde de Kay.[6] 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;, 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.[7]