---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “At the Zoo” Down in the Dirt v210 (8/23) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing in the book On Stones and Bones the 2023 poetry & art collection anthology		get the 182 page poetry & artwork & photography collection anthology as a 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Scipio & Tuppence

Dee Artea

Words can be like songs.
The letters supplanting notes
and making teeny tunes.
Say them out loud,
and they sound like music.

Well, that’s my stab in the dark
at trying to understand why some words,
upon first hearing them,
get stuck in my brain, and I can’t shake them out.

You see,
I like their lilt,
the way they roll off my tongue,
how my lips purse – all when I say them vocally.

They grab my attention.
Linger in my head, and my ear.
Okay, so you want an example?
Well here goes ...

I don’t know why,
but of the myriad words I know
and I have learnt over these many years,
these two especially stand out:

scipio
&
tuppence

 
The first time I saw them
they jumped off the page
– for each compelled me
to hear myself say the words:

scipio

tuppence

out loud.

 
Take scipio: skip-ee-oh
sort of: skip t’ m’ loo
or ski-piddy do.
A happy-go-lucky lilt, eh?

 
And then there’s tuppence: tup-enss.
I liked the way my lips, as I say it,
make me sort of spit,
even blow bubbles with my saliva.

tuppence

scipio

 
At this point
I didn’t know anything else about these words
except that
I liked their sound and feel.

Otherwise
there was no connection between them
except in my mind
and through my mouth.

But it all made me want
to write something
– a poem, a short story, an essay or such –
about my two new little word-friends.

I thought and thought about how to do it.
Where could scipio & tuppence come together,
meet, and make sense? What’s the genre?
I was stumped.

Had writer’s block, as they call it.
Scratched my head, slept on it,
was driven to drink.
And still nothing came.

 
And then one day I had a thought.
I look into the words themselves for clues,
clues that might trigger an idea.
So, I did, starting with scipio.

Well, as far as I can recall,
I first heard that word when I was doing some
esoteric reading about Classical Antiquity.
Ya know, ancient Rome.

Specifically, it was in the title of Cicero’s book
The Dream of Scipio, c.50 BCE.
Ah ha, it was the name of a person
– what a neat name, I thought.

So: who is this guy? Was he real?
With a seemingly frivolous name like Scipio,
he might be a clown.
“Hi! I’m Scipio, here to entertain you kids.”

Digging further, I found that this Scipio
was indeed real.
But no clown, and no laughing matter.
Not at all.

Scipio was a Roman family name
and the Scipio in Cicero’s book was
Scipio Aemilianus, a Roman general
who destroyed Carthage in the 3^rd Punic War (146 BCE).

Also, he was the grandson
of the Scipio Africanus,
another general, and
who defeated Hannibal in the 2^nd Punic War (202 BCE).

What a disappointment,
two blood-thirsty Roman generals.
You’ve seen the blood-curdling movies,
the savage ways they killed their enemies.

Who knew that such nasty & brutal
tormentors
could bear the affable name
Scipio?

“Hi, I’m Scipio. I will first disembowel you,
then I’ll cut off your?”
Cripes! What a letdown.
Nothing frivolous about that!

What happened to whoopity-do, skipidy-do?
Depressingly, the sound of Scip-i-o will never be the same.
Well, that was disappointing – almost drove me back to drinking.

Geez, I hope tuppence too doesn’t disappoint me,
I thought.
How could it, with a word like that?
So, what did I find?

Well, there were several meanings.
First, tuppence was a combined way of saying
two pence, in British lingo,
pence being the plural of penny.

Ya know, the way those Brits combine words together?
I recall the cooking-show host,
who calls a sauce pan
a sauspin – one word, pronounced fast.

So, two pence, became
twopence (one word),
pronounced fast as
tuppence.

In North American English there’s: “Here’s my two-cents.”
In the UK there’s: “Well, it’s not worth a tuppence.”
So, tuppence, I found meant (across the pond)
cheap – not exactly as I planned.

Second, it was also a girl’s name.
Which made me scratch my head, again
for why would someone name a child
with a word meaning cheap?

In short, it seemed that tuppence was
sadly
going the way of scipio, namely,
– not in the direction that I had initially divined.

 
Then came the clincher:
digging deeper –
and in this case the digging deeper
(ya know, as in digging up the dirt)
was not a metaphor to me –
for, I found that a third meaning
of my (previously) beloved word tuppence,
was a slang way of speaking about
the female vulva.

Really! So how could someone
name their daughter Tuppence?
It would be like a Canuck naming her child
... uh, well, you fill in the blank.

At this point, to this Canadian gal,
it’s still not clear whether this third meaning
is a crude or a refined way
of speaking about this specific anatomy

For example, it seems it was often applied
to young girls,
as a polite word to use,
for their private parts.

It also may have its origin when
public toilets for women
were introduced in cities
and which charged two pence to use.

But, except for the fact that
woman had to wipe themselves, I can’t,
for the life of me, figure out why the term
would be coined that way ... do you?

Ultimately, for me, that was it!
Journey over.
Done.
Kaput.

My two endeared words were both
permanently
perpetually
degraded for me.

 
The duo, scipio & tuppence,
will never be the same.
The lilt, the charm, the music to my ears
– were gone, forever.

But I must say that, nonetheless,
my initial goal of finding a way
for these words to come together
was achieved.

Well, sort of.

Sadly, they did meet:
they met, if not in the gutter,
at least in the toilet,
and a trench filled with blood.

And I was left with
nothing more to say
or to write
... but lots to drink about.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...