Port parables from canonical sources
Posted: 21:07 Mon 11 Nov 2013
This thread is to hold quotations from canonical sources that could be interpreted as parables about Port.
A. A. Milne wrote:As soon as [Winnie-the-Pooh] got home, he went to the larder; and he stood on a chair, and took down a very large jar of honey from the top shelf. It had HUNNY written on it, but, just to make sure, he took off the paper cover and looked at it, and it looked just like honey. ‟But you never can tell,” said Pooh. ‟I remember my uncle saying once that he had seen cheese just this colour.” So he put his tongue in, and took a large lick. ‟Yes,” said, ‟it is. No doubt about that. And honey, I should say, right down to the bottom of the jar. Unless, of course,” he said, ‟somebody put cheese in at the bottom just for a joke. Perhaps I had better go a little further! just in case! in case Heffalumps don’t like cheese! same as me! Ah!” And he gave a deep sigh. ‟I was right. It is honey, right the way down.”
Having made certain of this, he took the jar back to Piglet, and Piglet looked up from the bottom of his Very Deep Pit, and said, ‟Got it?” and Pooh said, ‟Yes, but it isn’t quite a full jar,” and he threw it down to Piglet, and Piglet said, ‟No, it isn’t! Is that all you’ve got left?” and Pooh said, ‟Yes.” Because it was. So Piglet put the jar at the bottom of the Pit, and climbed out, and they went off home together.
!
Some hours later, just as the night was beginning to steal away, Pooh woke up suddenly with a sinking feeling. He had had that sinking feeling before, and he knew what it meant. He was hungry. So he went to the larder, and he stood on a chair and reached up to the top shelf, and found nothing.
‟That’s funny,” he thought. ‟I know I had a jar of honey there. A full jar, full of honey right up to the top, and it had HUNNY written on it, so that I should know it was honey. That’s very funny.” And then he began to wander up and down, wondering where it was and murmuring a murmur to himself. Like this:
He had murmured this to himself three times in a singing sort of way, when suddenly he remembered. He had put it into the Cunning Trap to catch the Heffalump.
- It’s very, very funny,
’Cos I know I had some honey:
’Cos it had a label on,
Saying HUNNY,
A goloptious full-up pot too,
And I don’t know where it’s got to,
No, I don’t know where it’s gone
Well, it’s funny.
‟Bother!” said Pooh. ‟It all comes of trying to be kind to Heffalumps.” And he got back into bed.
But he couldn’t sleep. The more he tried to sleep, the more he couldn’t. He tried Counting Sheep, which is sometimes a good way of getting to sleep, and, as that was no good, he tried counting Heffalumps. And that was worse. Because every Heffalump that he counted was making straight for a pot of Pooh’s honey, and eating it all. For some minutes he lay there miserably, but when the five hundred and eighty-seventh Heffalump was licking its jaws, and saying to itself, ‟Very good honey this, I don’t know when I’ve tasted better,” Pooh could bear it no longer. He jumped out of bed, he ran out of the house, and he ran straight to the Six Pine Trees.
!
‟Bother!” said Pooh, as he got his nose inside the jar. ‟A Heffalump has been eating it!” And then he thought a little and said, ‟Oh, no, I did. I forgot.”
Indeed, he had eaten most of it. But there was a little left at the very bottom of the jar, and he pushed his head right in, and began to lick!.