Mots d'Heures

Mots D'Heures: Gousses, Rames: The D'Antin Manuscript (Mother Goose Rhymes), published in 1967 by Luis d'Antin van Rooten, is purportedly a collection of poems written in archaic French with learned glosses. In fact, they are English-language nursery rhymes written homophonically as a nonsensical French text (with pseudo-scholarly explanatory footnotes); that is, as an English-to-French homophonic translation. The result is not merely the English nursery rhyme but that nursery rhyme as it would sound if spoken in English by someone with a strong French accent. Even the manuscript's title, when spoken aloud, sounds like "Mother Goose Rhymes" with a strong French accent; it literally means "Words of Hours: Pods, Paddles."

Here is van Rooten's version of Humpty Dumpty:

Nursery rhymes
The original English nursery rhymes that correspond to the numbered poems in Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames are as follows:


 * 1) Humpty Dumpty
 * 2) Old King Cole
 * 3) Hey Diddle Diddle
 * 4) Old Mother Hubbard
 * 5) There Was a Little Man and He Had a Little Gun
 * 6) Hickory Dickory Dock
 * 7) Jack Sprat
 * 8) Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater
 * 9) There Was a Crooked Man
 * 10) Little Miss Muffet
 * 11) Jack and Jill
 * 12) There Was a Little Girl She Had a Little Curl
 * 13) Little Jack Horner
 * 14) Ride a Cockhorse to Banbury Cross
 * 15) Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor
 * 16) Rain Rain Go Away
 * 17) Pat-a-cake Pat-a-cake Baker's Man
 * 18) Mistress Mary Quite Contrary
 * 19) Roses Are Red Violets Are Blue
 * 20) Tom Tom the Piper's Son
 * 21) Mary Had a Little Lamb
 * 22) Cross Patch Draw the Latch
 * 23) See Saw Margery Daw
 * 24) The Queen of Hearts She Made Some Tarts
 * 25) One Two Buckle My Shoe
 * 26) There Was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
 * 27) Ladybird Ladybird Fly Away Home
 * 28) Monday's Child
 * 29) Lucy Locket
 * 30) Curly Locks
 * 31) Here Is the Church Here Is the Steeple
 * 32) Simple Simon
 * 33) I Do Not Like Thee Doctor Fell
 * 34) Pussycat Pussycat
 * 35) Little Bo Peep
 * 36) Baa Baa Black Sheep
 * 37) Polly Put the Kettle On
 * 38) Lock the Dairy Door
 * 39) This Little Pig Went to Market
 * 40) Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Secondary use
Ten of the Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames have been set to music by Lawrence Whiffin.

Similar works
An earlier example of homophonic translation (in this case French-to-English) is "Frayer Jerker" (Frère Jacques) in Anguish Languish (1956).

A later book in the English-to-French genre is N'Heures Souris Rames (Nursery Rhymes), published in 1980 by Ormonde de Kay. It contains some forty nursery rhymes, among which are Coucou doux de Ledoux (Cock-A-Doodle-Doo), ''Signe, garçon. Neuf Sikhs se pansent (Sing a Song of Sixpence) and Hâte, carrosse bonzes (Hot Cross Buns)''.

A similar work in German-English is Mörder Guss Reims: The Gustav Leberwurst Manuscript by John Hulme (1st Edition 1981; various publishers listed; ISBN 0517545594, ISBN 978-0517545591 and others). The dust jacket, layout and typography are very similar in style and appearance to the original Mots D'Heures albeit with a different selection of nursery rhymes.

Marcel Duchamp draws parallels between the method behind Mots d'Heures and certain works of Raymond Roussel.

Publication history

 * 1967, USA, Viking Adult, ISBN 0-670-49064-4, hardcover, 40 pp.
 * 1967, UK, Grossman, ISBN 1-299-26218-X, 43 pp.
 * 1968, UK, Angus & Robertson, ISBN 0-207-94991-3, May 1968, hardcover, 80 pp.
 * 1977, UK, Angus & Robertson, ISBN 0-207-95799-1, De Luxe Ed edition, November 17, 1977, 40 pp.
 * 1980, US, Penguin, ISBN 978-0-14-005730-0, November 20, 1980, paperback, 80 pp.
 * 2009, UK, Blue Door, ISBN 978-0-00-732469-9, 29 October 2009, hardcover, 48 pp.