[Editor: A poem (possibly by “Dryblower” Murphy) published in the “Variety Vamps and Sunday Satires” column in The West Australian Sunday Times, 28 April 1901.]
Vice Versa.
News Item:— “The Government are considering the advisability of putting down bores on the site of all dams.” Exactly.
’Tis double edged, for ’gainst a pest
We love to slam the door,
So while we bore where dams we dig,
With comprehensive curses big
We also d——n the bore.
The same applies to Africa,
Where loud the lion roars,
For there the “REINS” we cannot get
Until we catch the slim De “WET,”
And so we d——n the BOERS.
Source:
The West Australian Sunday Times (Perth, WA), 28 April 1901, p. 1
Also published in:
The Sun (Kalgoorlie, WA), 28 April 1901, p. 4
Editor’s notes:
This poem was designed as a humorous item, with the inclusion of several puns: bore/Boer; rains/reins; wet/De Wet.
Boer = a South African of Dutch descent; Afrikaans for “farmer”; the Europeans in South Africa (primarily of Dutch and French Huguenot descent) who fought against the British in two major wars, the First Boer War (1880-1881) and the Second Boer War (1899-1902)
de Wet = General Christiaan de Wet, a leading Boer commander during the Boer War
d——n = damn (censored, as it is a swear word)
Vernacular spelling in the original text:
’gainst (against)
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