|
 What’s
in a name, then?
It has
been reported to me (with more self-satisfied glee, I
might add, than I would have thought Bikwilian good
manners permit) that ours is not the only enterprise to
have appropriated the word “Bandersnatch” from Lewis
Carroll’s Jabberwocky poem.
Indeed it
isn’t. Yet, like Bikwil, none of them is using the word in
Carroll’s sense — “a fleet, furious, fuming, fabulous creature, of
dangerous propensities, immune to bribery and too fast to flee from . . .”
(OED).
On the
other hand, it looks as if Bikwil is the only project that uses the
word to describe a language. (Or, to be more precise, a variant of
English. For, as regular fans of Larick & Co. will know, the secret with
Bandersnatch is to retain the “syntactic markers” of English, as linguists
call them — prepositions, articles, word endings, etc. — while inventing
your own plausibly English “content words” — nouns, verbs, adjectives, and
so on).
Anyway,
who are they, these other Bander-snatchers? Here are just a few. I’m
delighted to announce that every one has a droll quality about it.
To
start with, there’s The Frumious Bandersnatch, a weekly satirical
newspaper emanating from Tucson, Arizona. By the look of it, it’s only
available on the Internet. Apart from sending up current events, it also
claims to be “Home of General Delivery University, America’s only genuine
diploma mill. Complete with downloadable diplomas.” Dare you to slip one
into your résumé portfolio.
In New
York, the Scarsdale High School yearbook goes by the name of Bandersnatch.
(Its literary magazine’s title is Jabberwocky.)
They say
there’s a Brewery and Restaurant in Tempe, Arizona called The Bandersnatch.
I hope so.
In
Sacramento, California you can hire a blues/folk vocal duo called Acoustic
Bandersnatch.
Fair
enough, I suppose, for American activities, but this brief list would
incomplete without an Aussie Web site. So what about Bandersnatch Bears,
run by one Adam Jenkins in Adelaide? It features info on “artist-designed,
hand-made teddy bears”. Let’s face it, you always wanted your own Indiana
Jones bear, didn’t you?
Not as
much today language-wise as you’ve come to expect from Pink Shell-like,
perhaps, but this issue of Bikwil does at least have some more
about the adventures of Larick and the Aratronts.
O
frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
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