The poet followed Luis d'Antin van Rooten in providing a scholarly apparatus in the notes. For the first two lines above he suggests: "Georgie the port-controller, undignified in straw [a rustic hat?] disgraces himself, no buts. [A] woman caws like a crow."
" The quatrain appears to contain a prophecy," runs the gloss, "like the quatrains making up the famous Centuries (Lyon, 1555) of the Provengal seer Nostradamus. The Georgian port control or port-controller may refer to Georgia in the Caucasus or Georgia in the United States."
The translation continues: "Where there is a hatred of buoys [i.e, of the British colonial administration, clearly making the line separating the safe channel of the established order from the danger-filled surrounding chaos], whoever so chooses has pounded [crushed, bruised, ground] everything to bits, and Georgie the port-controller reigns. How about that!"
Ormonde de Kay claimed that the verses had been found in the ruins of Coucy Castle, after its bombardment by the Germans in 1917.
There are 40 verses in N'Heures Souris Rames, including Tu i e-nickel, tu i e-nickel, lit tel se tare; Très bel a ï n' de mais; Salut, mon grandi / Borgne, non mandé; Coucou doux de Ledoux, / Madame a ce lot, cet air chou and Rabais dab dab / Trille, menine, taupe.
Others are Signe, garçon. Neuf Sikhs se pansent; Roc à bail, bey bis; Goussets, goussets, Gandhara; Dindon bell / Peu saisis Noël; Fille ... faille ... faux ... femme / Aie! Semelle de blaude évanouie (ne glisse manne); Docteur Fausse-terre / Huée ne tout glossateur; Hâte, carrosse bonzes and Tu i e de la dame Anne, tu i e de lady.
The better the French accent, the bettet the joke works. In general, however, the French have remained resolutely unamused by this quintessentially anglo~saxon humour.
Ormonde de Kay was born on December 17 1923 in New York, where his family had lived since the 17th century. His grandfather, Charles de Kay, was the founder of the National Arts Club, and for many years the art critic for The New York Times; and his great-uncle, Richard Watson Gilder, was a poet and editor of The Century.
Ormonde de Kay gave early indications of his literary bent at Harvard, as the editor of a magazine called The Advocate.
But such amusements were interrupted by the Second World War, in which — and again in the Korean War — he served aboard destroyer escorts.
In the late 1940s and for much of 1950s Ormonde de Kay lived in Paris and London, writing radio and film scripts, many for the Marshall Plan and several for the Central Office of Information in London. He was also a scriptwriter on Lost Boundaries (1949), a film about racism in a small New Hampshire town which won the Best Scenario award at Cannes.
He wrote biographies for schoolchildren of two American presidents, Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt, as well as historical articles for magazines such as American Heritage and Horizon.
Later, after helping to start Interplay, a publication about international affairs, he joined the staff of Horizon. And throughout his life he wrote light verse for such magazines as The New Yorker, Harper's and The Atlantic Monthly.
In 1971 Ormonde de Kay produced Rimes de la Mère Oie, a translation of Mother Goose that managed to retain the metre, rhyme schemes and humour of the English originals. Robert Graves called it "a remarkable achievement and a great gift to the French."
A debonair Manhattan boulevardier, Ormonde de Kay was one of the most popular men in New York. At one time he lived and entertained with elegant disorder in an apartment in Union Square which had a tree growing through the floor.
Daily Telegraph 17 October 1998
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