vegetarian
by Chesterton · Cluster: Wine and Drink · Ballad Ballade · Road
Abstract
A comic nonsense song (from The Flying Inn) mocking faddish vegetarianism and abstract logic through a drunkard who calls himself a rigid vegetarian; light satire built on wine, the inn, and paradox.
Testo / Text
Connections
Archetypes: Fool
Topoi: World Upside Down
Characters: Dalroy
Motifs: Wine and Drink, Inn Tavern, Food and Feasting Themes & Concepts: Paradox, Satire of Society, Critique of Progress, Fanaticism, Self-Deception Forms & Genres: Comic Verse Song, Satire
Testo integrale / Full text
THE LOGICAL VEGETARIAN
G.K.Chesterton
“Why shouldn’t I have a purely vegetarian drink? Why shouldn’t I
take vegetables in their highest form, so to speak? The modest
vegetarians ought to stick to wine or beer, plain vegetable drinks,
instead of filling their goblets with the blood of bulls and elephants,
as all conventional meat-eaters do, I suppose”—Dalroy.
You will find me drinking rum,
Like a sailor in a slum,
You will find me drinking beer like a Bavarian
You will find me drinking gin
In the lowest kind of inn
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.
So I cleared the inn of wine,
And I tried to climb the sign,
And I tried to hail the constable as “Marion.”
But he said I couldn’t speak,
And he bowled me to the Beak
Because I was a Happy Vegetarian.
Oh, I know a Doctor Gluck,
And his nose it had a hook,
And his attitudes were anything but Aryan;
So I gave him all the pork
That I had, upon a fork
Because I am myself a Vegetarian.
I am silent in the Club,
I am silent in the pub.,
I am silent on a bally peak in Darien;
For I stuff away for life
Shoving peas in with a knife,
Because I am a rigid Vegetarian.
No more the milk of cows
Shall pollute my private house
Than the milk of the wild mares of the Barbarian
I will stick to port and sherry,
For they are so very, very,
So very, very, very, Vegetarian.