[PW] Postillion struck by lightning

[Sylvia Milne]

This rather puzzles me because I have actually seen a phrase book with that 
phrase in it.
My rather elderly memory seems to think that the phrase was, "help, my 
postillion has been struck by lightning!"
It was  a Dutch-English phrase book which would tie in with the Dirk Bogarde 
connection.
It belonged to a friend of mine who is half Dutch, but as luck would have 
it, she can't put her hand on it and thinks that it must have been lost 
during a house move.

Sylvia Milne

Please visit me at
http://www.sylviamilne.co.uk
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fuller, Thomas (US - Washington D.C.)" <tfuller at DELOITTE.com>
To: <list at project-wombat.org>
Cc: <nigel.rees at btinternet.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 6:54 PM
Subject: [PW] Postillion struck by lightning


> All right, you librarians.  It's time to find a book.
>
> Nigel Rees of the BBC has been searching for years for the origin of the
> phrase "our postillion has been struck by lightning", which was quoted
> in a poem by M.H. Longson in PUNCH in 1935 and mentioned in a James
> Thurber memoir in 1937.  (It was also the title of the first volume of
> Dirk Bogarde's autobiography, published in 1977.)  Nigel tracked down a
> book called LITTLE MISSIONS by "Septimus Despencer" (pen-name of Ralph
> Butler) from 1932 in which he describes his travels through the
> countries that arose when the Austria-Hungarian empire collapsed.  He
> was at a village shop in South Hungary and found a shelf of second-hand
> books that included a "Magyar-English Manual of Conversation" in which
> the sought-after phrase appeared.  (He commented:  "This is the sort of
> thing that only happens in Hungary;  and, when it happens, this is the
> sort of remark that only Hungarians would make.") Nigel's recent book
> BREWER'S FAMOUS QUOTATIONS has a whole column of references (dating back
> well into the Nineteenth Century) and discussion.
>
> Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find the elusive
> Magyar-English Manual.  It does not appear to be in either the Library
> of Congress or the British Library.  In the alternative, find any
> bilingual phrase-book that has this line;  it has been variously
> attributed to phrase-books in Dutch, Swedish, Russian, Portuguese, and
> heaven knows what other languages.
>
> Consider the gauntlet thrown down.
>
> -- Tom