T—­oo (two)—­either shillings or pence—­and L—­oo:  no pounds!

This may or may not be right, but the research and ingenuity deserve the immortality we now confer upon it.  The other line, the

  “Whack! fol-de-riddle lol-de-day!”

has, perhaps, given rise to far more controversy, with certainly less tangible and satisfactory results.

The scene of the poem not being expressly stated in the original or early black-letter translation, many persons—­whose love of country prompted their wishes—­have endeavoured to attach a nationality to these gordian knots of erudition.  An Hibernian gentleman of immense research—­the celebrated “Darby Kelly”—­has openly asserted the whole affair to be decidedly of Milesian origin:  and, amid a vast number of corroborative circumstances, strenuously insists upon the solidity of his premises and deductions by triumphantly exclaiming, “What, or who but an Irish poet and an Irish hero, would commence a matter of so much consequence with the soul-stirring “whack!” adopted by the great author, and put into the mouth of his chosen hero?” Others again have supposed—­which is also far more improbable—­that much of the obscurity of the above passage has its origin from simple mis-spelling on the part of the poet’s amanuensis—­he taking the literal dictation, forgetting the sublime author was suffering from a cold in the head, which rendered the words in sound—­

  “Riddle lol the lay;”

whereas they would otherwise have been pronounced—­

  “Riddle—­all the day”—­

that being an absolute and positive allusion to the agricultural pursuits of Giles Scroggins, he being generally employed by his more wealthy master—­a great agrarian of those times—­in the manly though somewhat fatiguing occupation of “riddling all the day:”  an occupation which—­like this article—­was to be frequently resumed.

* * * * *

A NEW THEORY OF POCKETS.

    DEFINITION Pocket, s. the small bag inserted into
    clothes.—­WALKER (a new edition, by Hookey).

We are great on the subject of pockets—­we acknowledge it—­we avow it.  From our youth upwards, and we are venerable now, we have made them the object of untiring research, analysis, and speculation; and if our exertions have occasionally involved us in contingent predicaments, or our zeal laid us open to conventional misconstructions, we console ourselves with Galileo and Tycho Brahe, who having, like us, discovered and arranged systems too large for the scope of the popular intellect, like us, became the martyrs of those great principles of science which they have immortalized themselves by teaching.