Corrections to the blogosphere, the consensus, and the world

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Lascivious beasts

Selina Hastings in the Observer reviewing Mad World by Paula Byrne, an account of the family who inspired Brideshead Revisited, says that the author "might like to know that Waugh's jokey habit of substituting the words "lascivious beast" for "priest" in his letters to the Lygons derives from the following limerick:

There was a young lady of Devon
Who was had in a garden by seven
Itinerant priests,
The lascivious beasts,
And of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

As I remember it, that went

There was a young lady of Devon
Who was had in a garden by seven
High Anglican priests,
Lascivious beasts -
Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."


And I think Waugh did use it specifically of Anglicans. Still, it is something that the author should certainly have googled.

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