FROM THE ARCHIVES:Quidnunc (probably Bertie Smyllie) paid a nostalgic visit to the comics of the day in this Irishman's Diary and found many of the characters of his pre-first World War youth – when the baddies were French anarchists and Swiss spies – still going strong, but speaking a new language he did not recognise. - JOE JOYCE
IT IS a long time now since I was a regular reader of the children’s comic papers, but the other day, in the hope of recalling my vanished youth, I braved the astonished gaze of my newsagent, and bought two or three of the once-familiar coloured papers. They cost a penny each. In the old days I used to buy them for half the price, but the child of to-day has more money to fling about, I suppose.
To my great relief I found that the relentless hand of time has been fairly merciful with these papers. True, the stories are mainly concerned with modernities like dirt-track racing, flying, and “Flickers and his Film Friends”, but the fine old Wild West tradition is not dead and there are still tales of fun and mystery at school, in which the French master is an anarchist, and the headmaster a spy in the service of the Swiss Government.
But the most important thing is the pictures, and great was my joy to find that not all my old friends were dead. I searched in vain for Inspector Spot (always on the spot), and the care-free tenants of Mulberry Flats, who for years never failed to concoct a new scheme every week for the discomfiture of their landlords; but Homeless Hector (the hound of Hampstead Heath) still holds the field at bay, and Weary Willy and Tired Tim are as weary and tired as ever. Time can scarcely weary them further, nor custom stale their infinite variety.
But, though my old friends still live, something extraordinary seems to have happened to their mode of expression. My recollection of the letterpress in the old days may be a trifle hazy, but I certainly did not think the comic papers took such liberties with the well of English undefiled. The stories are told in powerful and vivid prose – “Zoooom! Like fiery rockets ridden by robots the powerful motor-bikes streaked down the straight” – and that is a good example, quite in the Anglo-Saxon alliterative manner, but the captions under the pictures follow a different model.
For example, “A boy heard me say this,” is rendered, “A boylet heard me parp this piece of speech”; and Homeless Hector, about to take a nap, expressed himself thus: “If this spot wasn’t specially made for a snoozing-ground I’m muchly mistooken!”
Mr. St. John Ervine has compiled a list of the American equivalents for the word “yes,” but what would he say if confronted with this? “Guffed, yawped, gushed, sniffed, tiffed, bubbled, smoled, fluted, yodelled, chortled, twittered, prattled, chuffered, yowled, clucked, yummed, tootled, piped, nayed, rasped, hooted,” and, of course, “parped.” Yet these extraordinary words are only a few of those used to convey the simple word “said” in the Comic Press!
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