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by Marriott Edgar (1935)
Illustrations by John Hassall
This poem is the Northern English flat-cap answer to the poem 'Excelsior!', which was written by the 19th century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The word 'excelsior' is Latin, meaning 'superior'. Its translation into Northern English is Up'ards.
(Up'ards is also the name of a team which plays an ancient version of football on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, hence the question in the third verse regarding football.)
The original 'Excelsior!' is reproduced at the bottom of this page for comparison, followed by some more ups and downs.
Incidentally, if you are like myself and forget whether it should be "upwards" or "upward", "downwards" or "downward", etc. for British or American style of English, this (British English) monologues's title should help you to remember.
UP'ARDS 'Twere getting dusk, one winter's night, His face was glum as he did pass, And people sitting down to tea, | |
A policeman on his lonely beat, "Don't go down t' clough." the policeman said, A young lass stopped him further up, Next day some lads had just begun, |
That set them digging all around, 'Twas very plain for to behold, This story only goes to show, |
EXCELSIOR The shades of night were falling fast, |
His brow was sad; his eye beneath, In happy homes he saw the light "Try not the Pass!" the old man said; "O stay," the maiden said, "and rest "Beware the pine-tree's withered branch! At break of day, as heavenward A traveller, by the faithful hound, There in the twilight cold and gray, |
Excelsior! |
It's easy to understand up, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake up? At a meeting, why does a topic come up? Why do we speak up and why are the officers up for election and why is it up to the secretary to write up a report?
We call up friends and we use the word to brighten up a room, polish up the silver, warm up the leftovers and clean up the kitchen. We lock up the house and some guys fix up the old car.
Impatient people who don't line up for tickets stir up trouble. We can work up an appetite and think up excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed up is special.
And up can mean not up, and vice versa. Quite befuddling: A drain must be opened up because it's stopped up. We open up a store in the morning and close it up at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed up and messed up about up! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of up, look up the word in a dictionary, where it can take up 1/4 of the page and can add up to about thirty definitions. If you are up to it, you might try building up a list of the many ways up is used. It will take up a lot of your time, but if you don't give up, you may wind up with a hundred or more.
Americans (especially) like to up things; saddle up and then gee-up, shape up and toughen up, all used to give those lacking normal machismo the ability to man up.
When it threatens to rain, we say it's clouding up. After rain, the sun starts to come out we say it is clearing up and wet things dry up.
(Interesting that slow down means the same as slow up, which goes to show that both down and up are often superfluous. It's up to you, but if you care to read up this page again, size it up and omit most of the ups, making no difference in the meaning.)
One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it up, for now my time is up, so I'll shut up.