Why? Well, not because the Lady B was particularly sweet.
She was always a bit too distant to know whether she was sweet or not. She
garnered more of my interest, affection and approbation than almost anyone else
I’ve known in my life, but sweet? I couldn’t say.
It was actually because my mother was fond of telling me
stories when I was a kid, and nearly all of them were dark or depressing in
some way. I suspect she was trying to train me to be sentimental, but she needn’t
have bothered. That sort of thing comes with the genes and my genes are replete
with sentimentality. (I’ve occasionally suspected that my inordinate fondness for
the Lady B had something to do with dogs and earthworms, but maybe there was
more. There was, in fact; there was the Hermione Granger tendency, too.)
Anyway, one of the stories my mother liked to tell me was a nasty
little tale about some hideous crone who captured children and roasted them for
dinner. Sounds a bit like Hansel and Gretel, doesn’t it, but I remember it was called
The Wig and the Wag and the Little Yellow Bag. (As far as I recall, the little
yellow bag was the repository in which the children were carried to their doom,
but just what wigs and wags were, and how they related to the plot, I never
discovered.) The point is, however, I liked the title. It had something strong,
well stressed, perfectly balanced and memorable about it. Seems I was an aficionado
of language for its own sake at an early age. And that’s why I want to add ‘sweet’
to the title of the Lady B post. It isn’t quite the same metrically, but it
carries the same level of balance and strength. So there you go.
And if you ever read this, Sal, no offence meant.
p.s.
I just realised that the idea of children going to their
doom in a bag finds an echo in Dracula.
Maybe that’s where it came from, although I think it unlikely. Just a
coincidence I expect. And it still doesn’t explain what wigs and wags are, does
it?
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