The try harder if ye want a second joke thread thread.

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A bit Keats and Chapman from Flann O'Brien


When Keats and Chapman were at Greyfriars, the latter manifested a weakness for practical jokes—'practical jokes' you might call them, indeed, of the oddest kind.

One afternoon Chapman observed the headmaster quietly pacing up and down in the shade of the immemorial elms, completely submerged in Dinforf's Poetae Scenici Graeci. It was late summer, and the afternoon stood practically upright on the scorched lawns, weaving drunkenly in its own baked light. Sun-struck pigeons gasped happily in the trees, maggots chuckled dementedly in the grasses, and red ants grimly carried on their interminable transport undertakings. It was very, very hot. Chapman, however, had certain fish to fry and mere heat was not likely to deter him.

He wandered off to an old tool-shed and emerged very casually, carrying a small bucket of liquid glue. He took up an unobtrusive position near the pacing headmaster, and waited patiently for his chance. The headmaster approached, turned, and moved again slowly on his way. Instantly Chapman darted out, ran up noiselessly behind the pedagogue, and carefully emptied the bucket of glue all down the back of his coat. In a flash the young joker was back again in the shadow of the elms, carefully studying the results of his work. The headmaster continued his reading, wondering vaguely at the sound of aircraft; for the shining brown mess on the back of his coat had attracted hordes of wasps, bluebottles, gnats, newt, and every manner of dungfly. Chapman from his nook decided that the operation had been successful.

But the end was not yet. Two fifth form bullies (Snoop and Stott, as it happened) had observed the incident from the distance, and thought it would be funny to turn the tables. They approached Chapman under cover, leaped on him, gagged his mouth, and lifted the little fellow in their arms. The pacing headmaster paces on. When his back was turned, the two fifth form ruffians ran up behind him, jammed Chapman on to him back to back on the gleaming glue, and were gone before the wretched headmaster had time to realise the extraordinary facts of his situation. That a howling small buy was glued to him high up on his back did not disturb him so much as the murderous punctures of the wasps, who were now angry at being disturbed.

There was hell to pay that evening. Nobody would own up, and every boy in the school was flogged with the exception of Chapman, who was regarded at a victim of the outrage.

After Keats had received his flogging like the rest, he was asked for his opinion of the whole incident, and particularly what he thought of Chapman.

'I like a man that sticks to his principals,' was all he would vouchsafe.