The Tale of Custard the Dragon · Class 10 English · First Flight Poetry: 60 flashcards

A humorous ballad, close to a parody — a ballad being a song or poem that tells a story. Students are asked to read it aloud, paying attention to the rhythm.

Belinda, the girl who owns them all; Ink the little black kitten; Blink the little grey mouse; Mustard the little yellow dog; and Custard the dragon.

Because the kitten is black, and ink is the blackest thing in an ordinary house.

Because blinking is what a small nervous animal does, and because it rhymes with Ink — the poem is choosing for sound as well as sense.

The dog is yellow, like mustard — and the poem also says he is sharp as mustard, so the name carries a pun on his character.

Because custard is soft, yellow, sweet and entirely harmless, and slides off a spoon. Nothing could be less like a dragon.

No. It simply says that the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Big sharp teeth; spikes on top of him and scales underneath; a mouth like a fireplace and a chimney for a nose; and daggers on his toes.

That not one item in it is comic. Teeth, spikes, scales, fire and daggers make a genuinely alarming animal, and the poem gives a whole stanza to establishing it.

So that the next stanza can knock it down. The gap between how Custard looks and how Custard behaves is the joke the first half of the poem runs on.

That Belinda has the courage of a barrel full of bears; that the kitten and the mouse would chase a lion downstairs; that the dog is as brave as a tiger in a rage — and that Custard asked for a nice safe cage.

Because he was frightened and wanted to be safe.

Because he was the only member of the household who admitted to being afraid. Everybody else claimed to be brave, and he asked for protection instead.

None of the boasts has been tested. No lion has ever come down those stairs and no tiger has ever been in the house — all four claims are made before the pirate arrives.

Because it was enjoyable, and because he would not fight back. Nobody teases somebody likely to retaliate.

They rudely called him Percival, sat laughing at him in the little red wagon, and — in the case of Ink and Mustard — rudely asked his age.

Because it is long, grand and knightly, so calling a frightened dragon by it makes the mockery sharper.

Weeck! — which the poem tells us is giggling for a mouse.

That it is entirely comfortable. People who are frightened do not spend their afternoons laughing in a wagon, and nothing has ever threatened this house — which is why its courage is so loud.

Grog, a drink typically drunk by sailors, and gyrate, to move around in circles.

They hear a nasty sound, Mustard growls, and they all look round — Ink crying Meowch and Belinda ooh — to find a pirate climbing in at the window.

So that it will rhyme with Belinda. It is exactly the sort of liberty Ogden Nash was known for.

A pistol in his left hand and a pistol in his right, a bright cutlass held in his teeth, a black beard and a wooden leg — the complete storybook villain, in four lines.

That it was clear the pirate meant no good. After two pistols and a cutlass in the teeth, saying so little is a deliberate piece of understatement.

She pales and cries Help! Help! — having been described earlier as brave as a barrel full of bears.

He flees with a terrified yelp. The poem is careful with the adjective: not a yelp, a terrified one.

He trickles down to the bottom of the household. Ink trickles, so the verb could not be used of any other animal in the poem, and a black kitten flowing away downstairs is exactly what it makes you see.

He strategically mouseholed — and 'mouseholed' is not a verb that exists outside this poem.

Because it is the word people use when they do not wish to say 'ran away' — the word of retreats, withdrawals and plans — and the poem attaches it to a mouse going down a hole.

He snorts like an engine; he clashes his tail like irons in a dungeon; and he goes at the pirate like a robin at a worm.

Because of the scale. An engine and a dungeon are large, noisy, iron things, and then the poem shrinks everything to a garden bird and a worm — making the pirate small and the attack quick and ordinary. A robin does not brace itself before taking a worm.

A clatter, a clank and a jangling squirm — all the noise the poem has been saving up through six quiet domestic stanzas.

The pirate gapes at the dragon; he gulps some grog from his pocket flagon; he fires two bullets, which miss; and Custard gobbles him, every bit.

A drink typically drunk by sailors. Reaching for it in the middle of a fight suggests he badly needs it.

Because gobbling is what somebody does to a sweet or a hurried plateful of food, and here it is used of eating a man. The poem refuses to be solemn even about a death.

Belinda embraces the dragon, Mustard licks him, and Ink and Blink in glee gyrate around him — gyrate meaning to move around in circles. And nobody mourns for his pirate victim.

Mustard says he would have been twice as brave if he had not been flustered, and Ink and Blink say they would have been three times as brave.

They go up. The dog claims double, the kitten and mouse claim triple — and the largest claim comes from the two smallest animals, who spent the fight inside the furniture and a hole in the wall.

He says he quite agrees that everybody is braver than he is. He has just eaten a pirate, and he does not argue, remind anybody or mention the two bullets fired at him — the only one who acted accepts the verdict of those who did not.

They repeat the first and the fourth almost word for word, with the tense changed to the present — Belinda still lives, she is as brave as a barrel full of bears, and Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage. Nothing has changed, and nobody has learned anything.

A song or poem that tells a story. The textbook adds that students will know ballads narrating tales of courage or heroism.

A parody imitates a serious form for comic effect. Here the shape of a heroic ballad is kept exactly — threat, monster, fight, victory — while the hero is the creature everybody mocks, the boasters run away, and the victory is forgotten within two lines.

A simple narrative, a handful of main characters, and a firm beat with rhyme to match, possibly a refrain, and division into verses — and this poem has all five.

aabb in every stanza — rhyming couplets. House and mouse, wagon and dragon; Ink and Blink, Mustard and Custard.

Winda with Belinda; household with mouseholed; gyrate with pirate; Mustard with flustered — and engine with dungeon makes five.

That he did not much mind breaking whatever poetic law the Medes and Persians laid down, that he uses long colloquial and prosy lines, and that at the end he presents you with a rhyme.

Bringing the informal and the formal together — and Burgess admits that he is imitating Nash in the tribute itself, and that Nash is probably inimitable.

Belinda gets her barrel full of bears; the dog is given a tiger in a rage; and Custard goes for the pirate the way a robin goes for a worm. The mouth like a fireplace and the snorting like an engine make five.

That the dragon clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon.

A chimney for a nose, and daggers on his toes — both in stanza three, and neither using a comparing word.

Because it contains both devices. 'Mouth like a fireplace' uses 'like', so it is a simile, while 'chimney for a nose' beside it is a metaphor.

Custard cried for a nice safe cage; a clatter and a clank; brave as a barrel full of bears. Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right is a fourth.

Weeck, Meowch, growled and yelp — with clatter, clank and snorting as three more.

'Little' six times in the first stanza; 'realio, trulio' three times across the poem; 'suddenly, suddenly' at the turn — and the cry for a nice safe cage, which returns three times.

Realio and trulio, which are childish stretchings of 'real' and 'truly'; winda, for window; and mouseholed, used as a verb.

Hyperbole: a barrel full of bears, and lions chased down the stairs. Understatement: the remark that it was clear the pirate meant no good, made about a man with two pistols and a cutlass in his teeth.

The coward is the hero, the brave ones hide, and the rescued mock their rescuer — who agrees with them. No line of the poem states any of it, and every line depends on it.

The little white house and red wagon; the dragon with spikes and daggers; the pirate with two pistols and a wooden leg; ink trickling down to the bottom of the household; and a robin taking a worm.

Light-hearted. The names are jokes, the words are invented and the rhymes forced, the rhythm bounces without a pause even through a killing, and the poem is cheerfully callous — a man is eaten, nobody mourns, and the household is dancing two lines later.

The serious idea underneath: courage is not loudness, the one who acted was the one who admitted to being frightened, and nobody in the poem notices — which is why the last stanza can repeat the fourth without changing a word.