Mots d'Heures

''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. 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.

Here is van Rooten's version of '' Humpty Dumpty'':

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 Muffet
# 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
# Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake Baker's Man
# 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

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; , 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, , hardcover, 40 pp.
* 1967, UK, Grossman, , 43 pp.
* 1968, UK, Angus & Robertson, , May 1968, hardcover, 80 pp.
* 1977, UK, Angus & Robertson, , De Luxe Ed edition, November 17, 1977, 40 pp.
* 1980, US, Penguin, , November 20, 1980, paperback, 80 pp.
* 2009, UK, Blue Door, , 29 October 2009, hardcover, 48 pp.

See also

* '' N'Heures Souris Rames''
* Homophonic translation
*Mondegreen
* Phono-semantic matching

Notes

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mots D'Heures
Homophonic translation
French nursery rhymes
1967 books
Books about cats
Pigs in literature

fr:N'Heures Souris Rames