Most everyone does “Jabberwocky” wrong

Like many annoying people, I memorized “Jabberwocky” at a young age and am precious about it. Such as, well, now. Imagine me typing this with a shrewish self-righteous face that looks eminently punchable. Few things send me into a rage so quickly as when someone pronounces “borogoves” as “boro-groves”, inserting a second “r”. Not news about genocides, insults to those I love, nor essays on how the Star Wars prequels are okay movies.

Rationally, I know the story takes place in a forest and so it’s liable to trick minds into thinking of a “grove”. However, if a person recites a poem, and gets a word wrong, then stands there like he/she actually got the whole thing right, it’s an aesthetic crime. You don’t have it memorized. Get the fuck off the stage. Though I have never a read anything he wrote, I have read & listened to many Neil Gaiman interviews and find him charming. But even Gaiman fucks it up:

He messes up on another word, too, but I’ll forgive him that. The full poem:

Jabberwocky
Lewis Carroll
(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought —
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

“And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!’
  He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

Kate Burton starred in Alice in Wonderland in a fun production on PBS’ Great Performances in the early 1980s that I watched many times as a kid. It features famous (and soon-to-be-famous) actors in sets and costumes drawn from John Tenniel’s illustrations. She even has a scene with her father, Richard Burton, who plays the White Knight.

Kate Burton, to her eternal credit, gets “Jabberwocky” right. If you ever catch someone fucking it up, bring this up on your smartphone and play it to the person with your most pointed pointy finger: