Beinn a’Chlaidheimh, a Scottish mountain, by Phil Burns
AnElephantCant climb up high mountains
He is not built like a svelte Mountain Goat
He does have strange views
On hearing the news
Beinn a’Chlaidheimh1 is now two feet short
It was always considered a Munro2
Which you a’ ken* must be 3,000 feet
Now technology says
It is 30 inches less
That’s enough to make a poor wee Ben greet
AnElephantCant help but feel sorry
For a mountain that’s been treated this way
Aw jings and oh no
I’m no’ a Munro
I am just a wee Corbett3 they say
But there are still 282 Munros
If you fancy going out Munro bagging
Each 900 plus meters
They quickly deplete us
Leaving all of our saggy bits sagging
But is there a story behind Beinn a’Chlaidheimh?
Is there something that gave it the chop?
Did some UFO plummet
And slice off the summit
To leave it a tad short on top?
Is it really the tallest of mountains
With its peak somewhere off in the stars?
Did a little green chap
Give its apex a zap
To build his own Munro on Mars?
1 The Hill of the Sword, a mountain in Scotland
2 A Munro is a mountain over 3,000 feet high
3 A Corbett is a mountain between 2,500 and 3,000 feet
*a’ ken – all know
anelephantcant 
This is great. What a wonderful way to think of a mountain being a little too short (ufos indeed, lol). Mountain out of a Molehill for certain. Only an elephantcan’t could come up with this clever and whimsical method of introducing (thru his rhymes and words), the scottish manner and mindset of one of the many natural beauties of Scotland. 🙂
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AnElephantCant get to 3,000 feet
He is not that good at counting
But once again
That poor wee Ben
Is a molehill made out of a mountain
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I think you are better at making such wonderful farce than our American groundhogs are at predicting spring. We’ve two local ‘lodgers’ and as the tradition goes, and at the moment I can’t remember which is which…if seeing his (or her) shadow predicts and early or late spring.
This year we had conflicting reports, one said early spring the other said ‘it’s delayed’.
Nothing at all to do with your verse I suppose, except that a groundhog is an animal.
Cheers!
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AnElephantCant deny it
He is as funny as he is bonnie
But he has to say
There is no way
He can find a rhyme for Punxsutawney
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🙂
Clever Elephant. Made me laugh out loud!
From the Urban Dictionary:
The Meaning of the name Punxsutawney:
Small town in Pennsylvania about 80 miles Northeast of Pittsburgh. Home of Punxsutawney Phil, the famous groundhog (woodchuck). Every Feb. 2 (Candlemas), there is a huge gathering at Gobbler’s Knob to see if Phil will see his shadow. This predicts whether there will be 6 more weeks of Winter or and early Spring. The nickname for the town is “Punxsy”. “The Ramblers”, a singing group in the 1950s, had a pop song called “Punxsutawney Rose”. The word Punxsutawney is originally a Native American word. Punxsutawney was first settled by the Delaware Indians in 1723 and its name comes from the Indian name for the location “ponksad-uteney” which means the “town of the sandflies.” The name woodchuck also has Indian origins, coming from the legend of “Wojak, the groundhog.” The groundhog’s full name is actually “Punxsutawney Phil, Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators and Weather Prophet Extraordinary.” It was so proclaimed by the “Punxsutawney Groundhog Club” in 1887, the same year they declared Punxsutawney to be the weather capital of the world. The 1993 film “Groundhogs Day” starring Bill Murray was based on life in Punxsutawney.
I would have just put in the link, but the second entry was rather unpleasant, an no need to be relayed to such a kind-hearted Elephant.
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Mountains are big indeed… but one thing bigger than mountains and bigger than life is my favorite pachyderm 😉
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AnElephantCant deny he is tall
He is also surprisingly sweet
But no matter what
You might have thought
He is not three thousand feet!
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Matilda struggled to craft a short rhyme,
Thought she needed it to jump start her mind.
But alas there’s no way
She can learn Gaelic in a day
To make heads or tails of Beinn a’Chlaidheimh.
“The Hiker’s Guide to the Pronunciation of the Gaelic Tongue” (1897)
pairs Chlaidheimh with straidheimh.
“Mountain, Moor and Loch” (1894) pronounces the sword loch
Loch-na-Clive.
Hamish Brown later has a say and in 1980
says the sword hill is pronounced ben a clay.
What’s a girl to say!
*“The Hiker’s Guide to the Pronunciation of the Gaelic Tongue,” Scottish Mountaineering Club Journal, Volume 4 (1897) looks like great fun to read aloud. But it assumes a knowledge of Gaelic pronunciation! It’s available in Google books as are the other two sources mentioned.
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Lots of people try to learn
Gaelic and find they hate it
That is why AnElephant
Thought he would translate it
Or have you forgotten
The notes at the bottom?
But sweet Matilda
Decided to build a
Brilliant rhyme
One more time
Thanks and hugs
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Is it time to re-triangulate
Or perhaps re-calibrate?
To avoid confusion
Just lower expectations.
🙂
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You’d think the height
Would be just right
If they ignore the shape
And use a measuring tape
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All those who talk of doing the Munroes have done one more than they needed to – but I guess they do it for fun anyway…… 🙂
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One man’s fun is AnElephant’s torture!
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It seems the top has been lopped off
But walking up there will make your voice shrill
When you finally reach the top
And discover you have to stop
You’ll still call it a mountain and not a hill
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Spot on! 🙂
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Or, as it is a Ben, it could just have shrunk in the cold, perhaps?
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