Saturday Rave: Mix a Pancake by Christina Rossetti.

The poet Christina Rossetti was well-known for being correct and unemotional. This is quite an unusual thing for a poet, but was a respectable and desirable thing for a Victorian lady.

Her brother William wrote:

'In innate character she was vivacious, and open to pleasurable impressions; and, during childhood, one might readily have supposed that she would develop into a woman of expansive heart, fond of society and diversions, and taking a part in them of more than average brilliancy. What came to pass was of course quite the contrary.'

Quite the contrary? Poor Christina!

Having noted that, even in childhood Rossetti seems to have valued the solemn and the solitary. 

'If anything schooled me in the direction of poetry,' she said, 'it was perhaps the delightful idle liberty to prowl all alone about my grandfather's cottage-grounds'.


Dante Gabriel, Christina, Mrs Rossetti, William. Photo by none other than Lewis Carroll.

I note the perhaps, but can see that it might be true, in a way. But I mourn for that passionate, noisy, fun-loving child.

Never mind. Despite her deliberately dry rectitude she has left us some chinks of sunshine. Here's a bit of seasonal nonsense. I've known it since my children were very small, though didn't know until recently that it was by the great poet Christina Rossetti until now.

Mix a pancake,
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in a pan;
Fry the pancake,
Toss the pancake -
Catch it if you can.

Catch it if you can!

Word To Use Today: pancake. A pancake is called a pancake because it's a sort of cake you make in a pan. Duh...

Cake comes from the Old Norse kaka, and pan comes from the Old English panne.