The comic possibilities of Leap Year inspired Gilbert & Sullivan in writing The Pirates of Penzance. Young Frederick, mistakenly apprenticed to a pirate instead of a pilot -- nursemaid Ruth, in charge of the apprenticeship, was a little hard of hearing -- has finally reached his twenty-first birthday, upon which he can be released from his indenture. Just as Frederick begins to celebrate the happy occasion, the Pirate King reminds him that, being a Leap Year baby, he is the victim of a clumsy calendar:
King.
…And so, by a simple arithmetical process, you'll easily discover,
That though you've lived twenty-one years, yet, if we go by birthdays,
you're only five and a little bit over!
Frederic.
Dear me!
Let's see! (counting on fingers)
Yes, yes; with yours my figures do agree!...
How quaint the ways of Paradox!
At common sense she gaily mocks!
Though counting in the usual way,
Years twenty-one I've been alive.
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
Yet, reckoning by my natal day,
I am a little boy of five!
Ruth & King.
He is a little boy of five!
All.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
A paradox, a paradox,
A most ingenious paradox.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,
A paradox.…
The poet Howard Nemerov, born on this day in 1920, was another to note the young-old paradox built into his birthday. Counting by fours, he turned fifteen in 1980; thus, "The Author to His Body on Their Fifteenth Birthday, 29 ii 80":
Dear old equivocal and closest friend,
Grand Vizier to a weak bewildered king,
Now we approach The Ecclesiastean Age
Where the heart is like to go off inside your chest
Like a party favor, or the brain blow a fuse
And the comic-book light-bulb of Idea black out
Forever, the idiot balloon of speech
Go blank, and we shall know, if it be knowing,
The world as it was before language once again….
"
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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