There Was an Old Person Called Lear... Quiz

Answer: Runcible

From 'The Owl and the Pussycat':

'They dined on mince and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon,
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon.'

Although 'runcible' is a nonsense word invented by Lear, attempts have been made to define what exactly a 'runcible spoon' is. For instance, the 2000 edition of the American Heritage Dictionary describes it as being similar to a spork: 'a three pronged fork...curved like a spoon and having a cutting edge', while the Collins English Dictionary describes it as a fork with two broad prongs and one sharp, curved prong'. However, in Lear's artwork, it resembles a ladle.

According to Lear, not only spoons can be 'runcible'. For instance, in 'How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear!', the poet is described as wearing a runcible hat, and in 'Mr. and Mrs. Discobbolos', Mr. Discobbolos calls his wife a 'runcible goose'.

Answer: The Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo

From 'The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo':

'On the Coast of Coromandel,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.'

Unfortunately for the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo, the Lady Jingly Jones is already engaged to a Mr. Jones, who keeps her supplied with Dorking hens. However, when the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo rides away on a turtle, she realises that he is the one she really loves.

The Coast of Coromandel, incidentally, is a real place. It's in southeast India and is located between Kanyakumari and False Divi Point. There is also a Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand's North Island; it was named after a British ship, the HMS Coromandel.

Answer: A sieve

From 'The Jumblies':

'Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live.
Their heads are green and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.'

Amazingly, the sieve did not sink, and the Jumblies returned home with such souvenirs as a pig, a hive of silvery bees, and a 'lovely monkey with lollipop paws'.

Answer: The Akond of Swat

We never find out just who the mysterious Akond of Swat is in the poem. However, there was a real Akond of Swat: the Akhund (a type of religious leader) who ruled over the Princely State of Swat in the British Indian Empire. The state was dissolved in 1969, and was situated in what is now Khyber Pankhtunkhwa in Pakistan.

Answer: Lock him in a box of Zinc

From 'Alphabet Poem' (not to be confused with 'An Alphabet Poem'):

'Z said, "Here is a box of Zinc! Get in, my little master!
We'll shut you up! We'll nail you down!
We will, my little master!
We think we've all heard quite enough of this sad disaster!"'

Lear wrote quite a few alphabet poems, including several 'nonsense alphabets' for his friends' children. One of said friends was Edward Stanley, the 13th Earl of Derby, who became interested in Lear's work while looking for an artist to draw the menagerie at his estate, Knowsley Hall. Lear was working as a natural history illustrator at the time, and after seeing his drawings of parrots, the Earl offered him a residency at Knowsley Hall. During his time there, Lear wrote poems, menus and alphabets for the Earl's children. When Lear fell ill in 1837, he moved to Rome, with the Earl's help, and set up a studio there. As well as writing poetry, he also painted landscapes and Roman ruins.

Answer: The Dong with a Luminous Nose

'The Dong with a Luminous Nose' is like a companion poem to 'The Jumblies', and is one of Lear's sadder poems. The Jumblies pay a visit to the Dong's homeland whilst on their travels, and he falls in love with one of them. After spending their nights dancing to the music of the Dong's pipe, the Jumblies sail away and leave the poor Dong pining for his lost love.

He spends his days and nights wandering around looking for her, and in order to help him search for her at night, he makes himself a fake nose from the bark of the Twangum Tree with a lamp inside it.

Answer: His toes

From 'The Pobble Who Has No Toes':

'And when he came to observe his feet
Formerly garnished with toes so neat,
His face at once became forlorn,
On perceiving that all his toes were gone!'

The Pobble never finds out just how his toes disappeared, and who stole them. At least, when he comes home, he gets a nice feast of eggs and buttercups fried with fish to make up for losing his toes (and his aunt Jobiska says that Pobbles are happier without their toes anyway).

Answer: The Quangle-Wangle

In 'The Quangle-Wangle's Hat', the Quangle-Wangle is a spindly-legged creature whose hat is 'a hundred and two feet wide' and covered in all sorts of adornments. He's pretty lonely until a pair of canaries build their nest on his hat. All manner of creatures follow them, from a snail and an owl to 'the small Olympian bear', a blue baboon who plays the flute, and two characters that Lear fans might recognise - the Pobble who had no toes and the Dong with the luminous nose.

Another Quangle-Wangle appears in the short story 'Four Little Children Who Went Round the World'. It is not to be confused with the Clangel-Wangel, a dangerous beast which appears in the short story 'The Lake Pipple-Popple' and causes a group of kittens to die of exhaustion.

Answer: The Scroobious Pip

From the fourth verse of 'The Scroobious Pip':

'Every insect curled the tip
Of his snout, and looked at the Scroobious Pip.
At last, they said to the Ant - "By far,
You're the wisest insect, you know you are!
Creep close to the Scroobious Pip and say -
Tell us all about yourself, we pray,
For we can't find out, and we can't tell why -
If you're beast or fish or a bird or a fly."'

The British electro / hip-hop duo Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip got their name from this poem. (The other answers are also names of bands.) David Meads, aka Scroobius Pip, chose the name because he liked the story of the poem, how the Scroobious Pip doesn't know what it is, and how it realises by the end of the poem that it can simply 'be its own creature' without having to be pigeonholed.

Answer: A bear

The full limerick is as follows:

'There was an old person of Ware
Who rode on the back of a bear;
When they asked, "Does it trot?"
He said, "Certainly not!
He's a Moppsikon Floppsikon Bear!"'

This is one of my favourite Lear limericks (and I always wondered what kind of bear a Moppsikon Floppsikon Bear was). This limerick, and many others, can be found in Lear's 'Book of Nonsense', which was first published in 1846. Each limerick comes with an illustration by the poet. The 1861 edition contained 43 new limericks.

On the subject of animals, two birds are named after Edward Lear: Lear's Macaw, a dark blue Brazilian macaw, and Lear's Cockatoo.