KING GUBU.

July 1, 2004 by 4 Comments

In a sort of raucous melange of my recent posts Braw and witty (the Scotticizing of Aristophanes) and Patapoufs! Anthropophages! (the comic use of French puns and insults), I bring you King Gubu, the Irishization by Tom Quinn of Alfred Jarry’s scandalous 1896 play Ubu Roi, whose famous opening exclamation “Merdre!” and the following lines are rendered:

Mister Gubu – Gobshites!

Missus Gubu – Oh, would you ever whist with yur Gubu-ulations, Mister Gubu, ya big eejit ya!

Mister Gubu – Ooh! Ooh! Careful now! Don’t have me to do ya in now, Missus Gubu!

Missus Gubu – It isn’t me ya should be doin’ in, Mister Gubu, it’s another fellow altogether.

Mister Gubu – Green shite, m’dam, I don’t understand a word yur saying.

Braw and witty stuff, to be sure! (Via wood s lot.)

Comments

  1. Aidan Kehoe says
    July 2, 2004 at 11:04 am

    Is “whisht” in your language? OED says “now dial.” and cites RL Stevenson and Scott. Hmm.

  2. joe tomei says
    July 4, 2004 at 10:33 pm

    I sent this to an Irish friend and he replied
    Jumpin Jayzus, is it having a go you’re at? Holy shite (what, pray, is this “green” nonsensicalisimus?) isn’t it soon I’ll be putting a stop to your gallop and sending ye back to the ha’penny seats with your head forninst you on the table askin ye to your face if you’re not a right feckin bollix, or wha’ …….?
    It did seem to take him a few days to compose that though…
    And a bit of serendipity, Yeats attended the premiere of Ubu Roi and in his autobiography, (with hindsight) in remembering this, he makes his famous comment ‘What more is possible? After us the Savage God’.

  3. languagehat says
    July 21, 2026 at 8:18 am

    Is “whisht” in your language?

    I realized I didn’t actually know what “whisht” meant; Wiktionary says:

    1. (Ireland; UK, especially Scotland, Northumbria) Shush, silence, be quiet!
    2. A sound often used to calm livestock, cattle, sheep etc.

    The origin is given as “imitative.” OED’s citations:

    [(a1382) Whisht [a1425 MS Corpus Christi Oxf. Thei answerden, Whist, and put fynger vpon thi mouth; a1425 L.V. Be thou stille].
    Bible (Wycliffite, Early Version) (MS Douce 369(1)) (1850) Judges xviii. 19]
    [Composed a1382]

    1684 Wheesht, wheesht, my Mother’s coming up.
    G. Meriton, York-shire Dial. 53

    1725 But whisht! it is the Knight in Masquerade, That comes.
    A. Ramsay, Gentle Shepherd iii. i. Prologue

    1815 But whisht, I hear the keeper coming.
    W. Scott, Guy Mannering vol. III. vi. 112

    1893 ‘Wheesht!’ said he, ‘this is my affairs.’
    R. L. Stevenson, Catriona xxx. 359

  4. Jerry Friedman says
    July 21, 2026 at 9:19 am

    Cf. English English “whist”, as in “Curtseyed when you have and kissed / The wild waves whist”* in The Tempest, and possibly the origin of the name of a card game (Wikt).

    *Whatever that means. I gather that maybe there should be a comma after “kissed”.

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