''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 A nursery rhyme is a traditional poem or song for children in Britain and many other countries, but usage of the term dates only from the late 18th/early 19th century. The term Mother Goose rhymes is interchangeable with nursery rhymes. From t ...

written homophonically as a nonsensical French text (with pseudo-scholarly explanatory footnotes); that is, as an English-to-French

homophonic translation Homophonic translation renders a text in one language into a near- homophonic text in another language, usually with no attempt to preserve the original meaning of the text. In one homophonic translation, for example, the English "sat on a wall" ...

. 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 Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. ...

'':

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 "Frère Jacques" (, ), also known in English as "Brother John", is a nursery rhyme of French origin. The rhyme is traditionally sung in a round. The song is about a friar who has overslept and is urged to wake up and sound the bell for the mati ...

) 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 Raymond Roussel (; 20 January 1877 – 14 July 1933) was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, and chess enthusiast. Through his novels, poems, and plays he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French liter ...

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.

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References