Guillermo y Catalina

...as Prince William and his Kate, el duque y la duquesa de Cambridge, are known in Spain, have welcomed this evening a bambino a papoose un niño pequeño, that is, the most darling little boy in the history of the entire world, to hear the folks in the media tell about it. The still-namesless waif weighed in at
8 lbs., 6 oz., and simultaneously made a grandmother out of
the late Princess Diana, a step-grandma out of the Duchess of Cornwall, a grandpa out of the Prince of Wales, and a great-grandmum out of another simple English girl, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Rumour (note British spelling) has it that another family, Middlebrooke or Middlesex or something, is also peripherally involved.

The hoopla has already begun.

It is being reported that the inhabitants of the British Isles have gone on a huge bender, purchasing three million bottles of champagne for the occasion.

We may not be hearing from Yorkshire Pudding, All Consuming, klahanie, or Elizabeth Stanforth-Sharpe for some time.

And eventually we will learn whether the new little prince is a Carlos, a Felipe, an Arturo, or a Jorge.

If a certain person manages to keep the old ticker going for 28 more days...

...she will have been the Queen of England for 60 years.

Let’s hear it for Her Majesty!

And if she doesn't, this fellow will take her place:

Note that he appears to be listing a bit to starboard at the prospect.

And if for any reason he is unable to complete his reign, the first runner-up will be named Miss America King of all England, and a few other places besides.

The first runner-up is:

(Photo by Robert Payne, 12 June 2010, used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)

Prince William!

He appears to be a little verklempt. Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic: Palmolive - it’s neither palm nor olive. Discuss. [Editor's note. This paragraph was brought to you courtesy of Linda Richman, a character of actor Mike Myers on the Saturday Night Live television show. --RWP]

Or maybe Prince William is tight-lipped at being asked to ride in the same carriage as the Duchess of Cornwall. One never knows, does one?

But it’s good to know that the succession process is all taken care of, isn’t it?

In the meantime, on this side of the pond, we wish Her Majesty a long, long life (even longer than it has been already) and congratulate her on tying the 60-year reign of George III (1760 - 1820), although she is still four years short of the 64-year reign of Queen Victoria (1837 - 1901) and twelve years short of the 72-year reign of King Louis XIV of France (1643 - 1715).

Here she is on her coronation day in 1953, with Prince Philip:

This post should make up for my recent U.S.-centric post about 2011 in review. I’m, well, you know.

[Editor’s note. For a recent photo of Her Majesty, go to yesterday’s post (January 9th) and click on the links in the formula for the pascal until you find her. --RWP]

But one has to consider...

Carole Middleton:

Carole’s daughter Kate (with a friend):

Carole’s daughter Pippa (with two friends):

and Carole’s son James:

Maybe there’s something to that heredity thing after all.

Qongqothwane (The Click Song)

The other day in my post on the 175th anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, I mentioned that actress Betty White pronounces it the Spanish way (“San Hah-cheen-toh”) and Texans pronounce it the Texas way (“Sanja Sinta”). In the comments section, Egghead (Vonda from Oregon) said that when she doesn’t know how to pronounce the name of a place she just begins speaking in African click language. She then said of course she didn’t know what she was saying but she can do a mean click. I am not making this up. She closed her comment by saying, “Another great post for you to do research on, Bob!”

There’s an awful lot I do not know about an awful lot of things, but I didn’t have to do any research whatsoever to know that Vonda was probably referring to the Xhosa language of South Africa. I first learned about it way back in the mid-sixties when singer Miriam Makeba, whose musical career was going great guns in the United States until she married Stokely Carmichael, sang Qongqothwane.
I think I also recall that in those days the word Xhosa was spelled X!hosa with the exclamation point indicating the click.

According to Wikipedia, Qongqothwane is a traditional song of the Xhosa people of South Africa. It is sung at weddings to bring good fortune. In the Western World it is mainly known as The Click Song, a nickname given to the song by European colonials who could not pronounce its Xhosa title, which has many click consonants in it. The Xhosa title literally means “knock-knock beetle,” which is a popular name for the Xestobium rufovillosum, a woodboring beetle that makes a distinctive ticking sound. This beetle is believed by the Xhosa to bring good luck and rain.

The song is known world-wide thanks to the interpretation of South African singer Miriam Makeba (herself a Xhosa). In her discography the songs appears in several versions, both with title Qongqothwane and as The Click Song.

Here it is. Enjoy! (3:15)

After viewing and hearing the video, please join me in wishing Prince William and his Kate good luck and rain.

We few, we happy few.

The nuptial day of the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is apparently an even happier occasion than we thought. Either that or the groom’s family arrived already sloshed.

In what is surely a stroke of journalistic brilliance, at the exact moment when the next Prince of Wales was saying, “I, William Arthur Philip Louis, take thee, Catherine Elizabeth,” and the eyes and attention of the entire civilized world were fixed on the happy couple, our roving reporter today turned and pointed his camera at another part of Westminster Abbey and managed to capture the reaction of his grandmother, father, and stepmother.

The late Queen Victoria, however, the great-great-great-great-grandmother of the groom, in an attempt to maintain a modicum of royal decorum, issued a statement from beyond the grave through her publicist, saying, “We are not amused.” This is hardly surprising, as she died in 1901 and thus is unable to grasp fully the complexities and nuances of maintaining the monarchy in the twenty-first century.

Sharp-eyed viewers will note that although Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales sat upon exquisite Royal Blue Portable Wicker Thrones created especially for the occasion by Thrones ’R’ Us, the Duchess of Cornwall was relegated to a Royal Aluminum Lawn Chair. The Duke of Edinburgh, typically, was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he slipped away to find more bubbly.

Better late than never

Last Saturday -- a whole week ago -- Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) would have been 75 years old, and nary a word about it did I hear. Must have been pre-empted by all the William and Kate specials.

One of the people in the preceding paragraph will be king, God willing, but one of them already was.

(Photographs by Mario Testino)