MacPetty- the Scottish Play. A Forumshire Tragedy.

A travesty of the worst kind! Typical Scotshobbit stuff! In Little Forumshire we don't allow this kind of thing. Excites people, you know. I keep a close eye on things that excite. It's unrespectable stuff usually. Nasty business, but someone needs to keep an eye on it!

halfwise wrote:Isn't it like 4 AM over there?

2. or 1.58 am to be precise.

odo banks wrote:A travesty of the worst kind! Typical Scotshobbit stuff! In Little Forumshire we don't allow this kind of thing. Excites people, you know. I keep a close eye on things that excite. It's unrespectable stuff usually. Nasty business, but someone needs to keep an eye on it!  

You mean you don't find jelly or Our Lady of the Ankle-Length Frock to be excitable?

{{{We're not in Little Forumshire which means I can get away with this! }}}

The green banner of Forumshire crested a low hill, beneath it came the Admin Eldo with Lance and Malick riding by his side and his entourage following behind, including three wagons of clothes and two just for hats.

He was currently sporting a large pink fedora hat with a single massive pink flamingo feather sticking out the back which was blowing vigorously in the strong breeze which blew in sharply off the nearby crabbit sea.

Before them Buckie Castle came into view, glinting green. Eldo sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose.

“This castle has an odd air to it, sharp and a bit tangy, like it is burning the back of my nostrils,” he commented.

Lance who was riding beside him pointed to the scrubby heather covered hillside to their left where haggis scuttled among the short hoary branches, “The famous haggis approves, the air here is full of buckie fumes, its smell makes one woozy, but the haggis make it its home. Where they most breed and live I have observed, the air is always buckie laden.”

They followed the road until they approached the castle gates which rolled aside and apart to allow them access.
From a tower a bell rang out in greeting and within the courtyard the Castle household were lined up in welcome and at their head was Lady Figg.


Eldo saw her as he approached and dismounted, she was hard to miss as she was wearing a bright,  wide dress of pale yellow with a fine bustle that had its own train which two maids held the ends of.

Around the edges of the courtyard Ginger Meg prowled and growled, unhappy at the influx of newcomers and sensing, as all cats do, of terrible crabbit acts to come.

“See, see,” Eldo cried grinning widely at Lady Figg and embracing her, “Our honoured hostess! But where is the Thane of Needlehole? We were at his heels, and though he stopped at every pub along the way his great love for his own buckie, sharp as any spur, has driven him home before us.”

“I shall take you to him,” Lady Figgs replied with a gentle smile that concealed much, not least her annoyance at Petty for not being here to greet the Admin on his arrival.

In the main banqueting hall of Buckie Castle Petty paced.

Around him servants bustled and ran laying out plates and drinking vessels, putting more pizza's in the deep fat frier’s that lined one wall of the room and rolling in the dozens of barrels of buckie that would be needed to see the night through and stacking them against the opposite wall until they reached the high stone vaulted ceiling where the chandelier hung.

But Petty was not paying them any heed.

“If I am going to do this, I'd be best doing it quickly, and preferably without thinking about it,” he thought, he paused at the end of the long main table which had already been laid out with bottles of buckie.

Petty picked a bottle up by its neck, weighing it in his hand as if it were a short blunt club, which it also was, “a single blow,” he mused, “that would be the be-all and end-all of it,” suddenly he put the bottle back down on the table with a thud, “No, I'm not so pissed yet nor so crabbit that I have forgotten all the rules, acts like these come back to haunt the instigator. This is not the true use of crabbit, he is here in double trust; first, as I am a Moderator and Thane of Forumshire, then I am his host, who should against his murdered bar the door, not bear the buckie bottle myself,” he wandered down the long corridor adjoining hall to the kitchens and into heat, clamour and chaos, but he did not really notice that either so lost in his own thoughts was he, “And Eldo is so popular too,” he was thinking, “there's many in Forumshire will clamour out at his murder so that tears will drown out the drink, despite all his tax scams and that holiday island everyone knows he has got,” Petty absent-mindedly turned round and walked back towards the main hall, having grabbed an open bottle of buckie from the kitchen before leaving, which he now took a long gulping drink from in order to think about the problem better, immediately the buckie did its job and his thoughts arranged themselves into the problem at the source of it all, “I have no spur,” he realised, “to prick the sides of my crabbitness, but only a vague desire for infinite buckie, which would only lead to falling over.”

Just then Lady Figg came hurrying down the hall towards him like an angry thunders storm that caught up a tornado on the way and which wore a bustle.

Petty suddenly came back into the moment and out of his drunken thoughts and was aware of the sound of revelries under-way in the Main Hall.

“Um, hi,” Petty said weakly in a vain attempt to placate the oncoming angry Lady Figgs, “What's new?”

“Eldo is at the table, where the bloody hell have you been?” she demanded her face so angry it was pure white.

“Has he asked for me?” Petty asked backing off slightly.

“Of course he fucking has!” Figg replied furiously.

“Look,” Petty said with some semblance of determination, “I've had a few buckies and I've been thinking about this whole thing, and I'm calling it off. We will proceed no further.”

Lady Figg's face hardened as if it had become marble chiselled by a very angry sculptor determined to make a point, and her eyes had the power of Medusa as they bore into Petty.

“He has been nice to me lately,” Petty said, “He gave me a new title, ok he didn't actually pay me, again, but that doesn't mean it should be cast away so soon.”

Figg's eyes bore into him, and he felt very small and sober before that gaze, finally she said scornfully, “Were you truly drunk when you talked of doing this?  And are you waking up sober now, that might explain why you have suddenly become a coward when you think of it.”

Petty cringed at that accusation and was about to attempt to defend himself but Figg cut him off, “From this time such I account your drunkeness. Are you afraid to be the same in drunken action as you are in your drunken desire? Letting 'I am not drunk enough' wait upon “I'm up fir it?” Like the poor drunkard in the folk song?”

This was too much for Petty who suddenly seized Figg and snarled crabbitly at her, “I dare drink all a man may, he who drinks more is none.”

“What amount of drink was it then that made you tell me about this?” Figg demanded angrily and wrenched herself from his grasp, “When you were drunk enough to do it, then you were a man; and, to be more drunk even than that, you would be so much more the man,” she thrust a buckie bottle into his hand and he took it, staring into her eyes, “I have put the baby to the barrel tap,” she went on, “and know how tender it is to love the bairn that drinks my buckie; I would, while it was smiling at the barrel, have plucked the tap from its boneless mouth, and dashed its brains out, if I had sworn as drunkenly as you have done to this.”

For a moment Petty said nothing but continued just to stare into her eyes, “If we should fail?” he asked her.

“We fail!” she cried in response, “but get the bevvy in you, fire up the crabbit and we'll not fail,” she took the buckie bottle from Petty's hand and cracked open the top of it with an eel wranglers trick and pressed it to Petty's lips, “When Eldo is asleep his two assistants I will with buckie and wrangling so screw up, that memory will become a fume, then what cannot you and I perform upon the unguarded Eldo? And his assistants shall bear the guilt of our outrage.”

Petty drank from the bottle then with a tone close to that of awe at the strength Lady Figg bore that he knew he lacked, he said in the tones of the impressed, “Bring forth violent drunkard children only; for your undaunted crabbit should compose nothing but violent drunkards,” he embraced her and then said, “My mind is made up, every drop of buckie shall now bend up my nerve to this deed,” he emptied the bottle he held and threw it aside where it smashed against the stone flagon floor, then he took Figg by the hand and led her back towards the Main Hall, “Let us mock the time with show; false crabbit must hide what the false drunk does know.”

btw, shouldn't this be titled "MacPetty" or "MacTyrant"?

Fair point actually, I shall amend it. McTyrant probably sounds better but not sure if I like or dislike the double meaning it gives to this particular stroy. What do you think?

Shamelessly bumping incase anyone misses it on the last page- (I think Ive been working for the NotP for too long  )






The green banner of Forumshire crested a low hill, beneath it came the Admin Eldo with Lance and Malick riding by his side and his entourage following behind, including three wagons of clothes and two just for hats.

He was currently sporting a large pink fedora hat with a single massive pink flamingo feather sticking out the back which was blowing vigorously in the strong breeze which blew in sharply off the nearby crabbit sea.

Before them Buckie Castle came into view, glinting green. Eldo sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose.

“This castle has an odd air to it, sharp and a bit tangy, like it is burning the back of my nostrils,” he commented.

Lance who was riding beside him pointed to the scrubby heather covered hillside to their left where haggis scuttled among the short hoary branches, “The famous haggis approves, the air here is full of buckie fumes, its smell makes one woozy, but the haggis make it its home. Where they most breed and live I have observed, the air is always buckie laden.”

They followed the road until they approached the castle gates which rolled aside and apart to allow them access.
From a tower a bell rang out in greeting and within the courtyard the Castle household were lined up in welcome and at their head was Lady Figg.


Eldo saw her as he approached and dismounted, she was hard to miss as she was wearing a bright,  wide dress of pale yellow with a fine bustle that had its own train which two maids held the ends of.

Around the edges of the courtyard Ginger Meg prowled and growled, unhappy at the influx of newcomers and sensing, as all cats do, of terrible crabbit acts to come.

“See, see,” Eldo cried grinning widely at Lady Figg and embracing her, “Our honoured hostess! But where is the Thane of Needlehole? We were at his heels, and though he stopped at every pub along the way his great love for his own buckie, sharp as any spur, has driven him home before us.”

“I shall take you to him,” Lady Figgs replied with a gentle smile that concealed much, not least her annoyance at Petty for not being here to greet the Admin on his arrival.

In the main banqueting hall of Buckie Castle Petty paced.

Around him servants bustled and ran laying out plates and drinking vessels, putting more pizza's in the deep fat frier’s that lined one wall of the room and rolling in the dozens of barrels of buckie that would be needed to see the night through and stacking them against the opposite wall until they reached the high stone vaulted ceiling where the chandelier hung.

But Petty was not paying them any heed.

“If I am going to do this, I'd be best doing it quickly, and preferably without thinking about it,” he thought, he paused at the end of the long main table which had already been laid out with bottles of buckie.

Petty picked a bottle up by its neck, weighing it in his hand as if it were a short blunt club, which it also was, “a single blow,” he mused, “that would be the be-all and end-all of it,” suddenly he put the bottle back down on the table with a thud, “No, I'm not so pissed yet nor so crabbit that I have forgotten all the rules, acts like these come back to haunt the instigator. This is not the true use of crabbit, he is here in double trust; first, as I am a Moderator and Thane of Forumshire, then I am his host, who should against his murdered bar the door, not bear the buckie bottle myself,” he wandered down the long corridor adjoining hall to the kitchens and into heat, clamour and chaos, but he did not really notice that either so lost in his own thoughts was he, “And Eldo is so popular too,” he was thinking, “there's many in Forumshire will clamour out at his murder so that tears will drown out the drink, despite all his tax scams and that holiday island everyone knows he has got,” Petty absent-mindedly turned round and walked back towards the main hall, having grabbed an open bottle of buckie from the kitchen before leaving, which he now took a long gulping drink from in order to think about the problem better, immediately the buckie did its job and his thoughts arranged themselves into the problem at the source of it all, “I have no spur,” he realised, “to prick the sides of my crabbitness, but only a vague desire for infinite buckie, which would only lead to falling over.”

Just then Lady Figg came hurrying down the hall towards him like an angry thunders storm that caught up a tornado on the way and which wore a bustle.

Petty suddenly came back into the moment and out of his drunken thoughts and was aware of the sound of revelries under-way in the Main Hall.

“Um, hi,” Petty said weakly in a vain attempt to placate the oncoming angry Lady Figgs, “What's new?”

“Eldo is at the table, where the bloody hell have you been?” she demanded her face so angry it was pure white.

“Has he asked for me?” Petty asked backing off slightly.

“Of course he fucking has!” Figg replied furiously.

“Look,” Petty said with some semblance of determination, “I've had a few buckies and I've been thinking about this whole thing, and I'm calling it off. We will proceed no further.”

Lady Figg's face hardened as if it had become marble chiselled by a very angry sculptor determined to make a point, and her eyes had the power of Medusa as they bore into Petty.

“He has been nice to me lately,” Petty said, “He gave me a new title, ok he didn't actually pay me, again, but that doesn't mean it should be cast away so soon.”

Figg's eyes bore into him, and he felt very small and sober before that gaze, finally she said scornfully, “Were you truly drunk when you talked of doing this?  And are you waking up sober now, that might explain why you have suddenly become a coward when you think of it.”

Petty cringed at that accusation and was about to attempt to defend himself but Figg cut him off, “From this time such I account your drunkeness. Are you afraid to be the same in drunken action as you are in your drunken desire? Letting 'I am not drunk enough' wait upon “I'm up fir it?” Like the poor drunkard in the folk song?”

This was too much for Petty who suddenly seized Figg and snarled crabbitly at her, “I dare drink all a man may, he who drinks more is none.”

“What amount of drink was it then that made you tell me about this?” Figg demanded angrily and wrenched herself from his grasp, “When you were drunk enough to do it, then you were a man; and, to be more drunk even than that, you would be so much more the man,” she thrust a buckie bottle into his hand and he took it, staring into her eyes, “I have put the baby to the barrel tap,” she went on, “and know how tender it is to love the bairn that drinks my buckie; I would, while it was smiling at the barrel, have plucked the tap from its boneless mouth, and dashed its brains out, if I had sworn as drunkenly as you have done to this.”

For a moment Petty said nothing but continued just to stare into her eyes, “If we should fail?” he asked her.

“We fail!” she cried in response, “but get the bevvy in you, fire up the crabbit and we'll not fail,” she took the buckie bottle from Petty's hand and cracked open the top of it with an eel wranglers trick and pressed it to Petty's lips, “When Eldo is asleep his two assistants I will with buckie and wrangling so screw up, that memory will become a fume, then what cannot you and I perform upon the unguarded Eldo? And his assistants shall bear the guilt of our outrage.”

Petty drank from the bottle then with a tone close to that of awe at the strength Lady Figg bore that he knew he lacked, he said in the tones of the impressed, “Bring forth violent drunkard children only; for your undaunted crabbit should compose nothing but violent drunkards,” he embraced her and then said, “My mind is made up, every drop of buckie shall now bend up my nerve to this deed,” he emptied the bottle he held and threw it aside where it smashed against the stone flagon floor, then he took Figg by the hand and led her back towards the Main Hall, “Let us mock the time with show; false crabbit must hide what the false drunk does know.”

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Fair point actually, I shall amend it. McTyrant probably sounds better but not sure if I like or dislike the double meaning it gives to this particular stroy. What do you think?

McPetty carries a more humorous vein.

Done.

Good stuff, Petty! Although when I saw another long block of text on this page I thought for a second you'd posted another update. Get on it!

I ca't post the next bit because there is a blank in it- I need a Fleance, and that means I need the name of one of Odo and Primula's children- can anyone remember their names?  

Bungo's like a nephew, right? His is the only name the comes to mind.

No I do remember Odo declaring Primmy had twins at some point and he told us their names, but I cant for the life of me remember what they were. Unless I imagined it all of course in a drunken haze, always possible.

fili and kili

Dont think so, was something more, Banksian than that.

fundle and kindle?

Are you actually trying to remember or just making names up?  

oh, you're actually being serious?

Shady and Sunny?

http://www.hobbitmovieforum.com/t2p15-note-the-dead-easy-rules#3138

Thanks Eldo thats exactly what I was thinking of.  

sucky names.

The moon was up and hung a cold crescent in a frost bitten night air. Distantly the sound of continued revelry echoed through the castle, but in the courtyard Odo and his boy Sunny were heading to their beds, Sunny bore a torch aloft.

“Staying up to all hours drinking buckie,” Odo muttered with a disapproving shake of his head at the sounds still emitting from the hall,“Its not respectable Sonny my boy, you remember that when you grow up, always do what is respectable, and do it respectably, and most important of all, make sure everyone knows how respectfully you did it. That last bit is the most important.”

“Yes, father,” Sonny said nodding his head which was tall and long like his fathers and bore the same slightly disapproving down-turned mouth. He was ten years old, and his mother Primula had died in a tragic jelly brewing incident on his seventh birthday.

“What time is it?” Odo asked.

“After twelve I think,”

Odo hefted something rounded from his back and handed it to Sonny, “Here, take my jelly mould,” he said and stretched, staring up at a sky which was darkening with thick cloud that was quickly eating up the moonlight on a fierce wind.

“There is trouble in the air,” he remarked, “the stars are all going out. And I feel as weary as after a late night class teaching the Sixth Form girls of the Ankle Length Frock Restrained Bouncing in Public,” he yawned and stretched again, “and yet I cannot sleep, especially not with all the disrespectful revelry that goes on around here and now I'm thinking about all those sixth form girls bouncing,” he went into a highly personal and specialised momentary silence and came out of it with a grumbled realisation of something always in his mind linked with thoughts of the Sixth Form, “And I haven't had my jelly yet.”

A door opened further down the courtyard and Petty entered with a servant who bore a torch, the flickering yellow danced over the cold stones as they approached and illuminated in sudden dancing flashes dark arches and sharp angles of stone.

“Petty,” Odo greeted, “I thought you would still be drinking the night away? Our Admin has shown some respectability at least, I hear he has gone to bed, I have not seen him so drunk since he lost his Tower of Lore to Elthir, but he was full of praise for you and Lady Figg.”

“Well, we did the best for him with what we had at short notice, perhaps not as respectable as some would have it,” Petty replied with a smile.

“And lacking somewhat in jelly too, if I may say so,” Odo restored with a similar smile.

There was an awkward silence and then Odo said in a low voice, “I dreamt of the weird sisters.”

“Are you sure it was them?” Petty said dismissively.

“One of them called me Dildo-Head,” Odo said solemnly and with a shake of his long head, “but to you they have shown some truth,” he went on.

“I don’t think about them,” Petty said, cutting him off but then he seemed to reconsider and added, “but we could spend some time on that subject, over a buckie, if you have the time that is.”

“Of course,” Odo replied, “whenever you like.”

“Well,” Petty said drunkenly clapping his hands together and only nearly missing, “I bid you a good night.”

“And to you,” Odo replied and he and Sunny made their way to their accommodation, which was in the stables.

Petty watched them go until the light of Sunny's torch vanished into the stable yard and then he turned to his own servant and said, “Go and tell Lady Figg when all is ready to strike upon the bell, and then you are dismissed.”

The servant nodded and hurried off.

The night was late and only the most keen party goers could still be heard from the Hall, the rest of the castle sat in a brooding darkness under a sullen sky and its inhabitants wandered helpless in a sleep of drunken buckie oblivion.

Petty weaved his way up the steps onto the battlement, at the far end of which was the turret door which in turn would lead him up to the rooms in which Admin Eldo was quartered with his attendants.

As he turned the corner at the top to step out onto the battlement a sharp wind from the sea sobered him by up to a tenth of a degree and he stopped suddenly brought up short by the strange sight before him.

There, hovering in the air was a buckie bottle. He stared at it and then blinked, “Is this a buckie bottle I see before me?” he muttered to himself and then he reached out to grab it but his hand passed through it, “I have you not and yet I see you still,” he said moving his head from side to side and still seeing it hovering there, “are you real? Or a false creation proceeding from my buckied brain?” he swayed slightly on the spot and staggered towards the bottle, it moved ahead of him through the air and he stopped again, “I can see you still,” he marvelled and reaching behind himself he drew out from among the folds of copious tartan an identical buckie bottle, “you look just like this one, which I am to use.”

He took another few staggering steps towards it and again it wafted ahead of him along the battlement, “you are leading me the way I was going,” he observed and shook his head but still he could see it, “my eyes are the drunkest of my senses, or else worth all the rest, I can still see you!”

Suddenly there was a soft sharp sound, the sound of glass cracking and along the phantom bottle cracks appeared and on the dull rounded end globules of blood formed and began falling to the flagstones.

Petty stared at and then he spun away, “Hah” he cried in triumph, “that was not there before, its a drunken illusion, there is no such thing. Its my misuse of crabbit and buckie that manifests itself before my eyes.”

He sighed and looked out from the battlements over the coastal road, in the night the wind grew in strength and it chilled his flesh, somewhere in the dark the high haunting cry of the haggis sounded and a distant dull rumble of thunder rolled out.

Spots of rain began to fall. It pattered on the flagstones.

“Hear not my steps, which way they stagger, for fear that the very stones tell of my weaving whereabouts,” he stood as straight as he was capable and squared his shoulders as best as was possible and then turned and looked at the tower door at the end of the battlement, his gaze went upwards to where a faint light flickered in the chambers of Eldo, “Whilst I make crabbit noises, he still lives, words to the heat of drunken deeds too sober breath gives.”

In the darkness of the night a single bell peal rang out.

“I go, and it is done and I can have a drink, the bell invites me,” Petty said, then as he set off grimly for the tower he added, “Hear it not Eldo, for it is a knell, that summons you to Eru or to a hatless hell.”

hatless hell? you mean hat-hair?  

For all eternity as he obviously has a hat for sleeping in so he would go to a place with no hats, with hat hair forever  

*shudder*