Note 84 — Chapter V

Only contrast "Tom, Tom, the piper's son," with "There was once a piper's son," or think how comparatively uninteresting the enormities of another hero or not-hero would have been if he had been anonymous instead of being called "Georgy-Porgy Pudding-and-Pie!" ["Puddenum" is, or used to be, the preferred if corrupt nursery form.] In more elaborate and adorned narrative the influence, not merely of the name but of the beautiful name, comes in, and that of the name itself remains. In that tragic story of Ludlow Castle which was given above (Chap. iv. pp. 84-6), something, for the present writer at least, would have been lost if the traitor had been merely "a knight" instead of Sir Ernault Lisle and the victim merely "a damsel" instead of Marion de la Brière. And would the bocca bacciata of Alaciel itself be as gracious if it was merely anybody's?