An Unheralded Xenia

The works of the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson or Lewis Carroll have often proved an inspiration for other authors. Some of his words have passed into the common quotation bank of the English language. We are all familiar with the walrus saying to the carpenter that the time has come to talk of many things - of shoes and ships and sealing-wax and cabbages and kings - and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.

The works of Lewis Carroll are usually dismissed as nonsense. It has recently emerged however that he was a lot wiser than most people realise. The Orthodox Church has a long tradition of Fools for Christ who appear mad to the outside world to conceal their great wisdom and virtue. Recent discoveries have proven that much of the nonsense of Carroll is in fact fundamentally true and that he made a conscious decision to hide his brilliant perceptions behind a cloak of nonsense for reasons of humility.

Etymologists have been researching insciptions found on some ancient tombs recently unearthed in the Luxor Valley as a result of roadbuilding. These tombs are not those of great emperors but of middle class people who did not have enough Nectar points to qualify for a pyramid. Their plain stone covers contain the remains of painted inscriptions remarkably well preserved inside the large charnel chamber they were found in. Several of them refer to the passing of the pigs. These inscriptions have been found before and have been assumed to refer to pigs being driven past or dying. On this occasion however there are drawings of what are clearly pigs in flight to accompany the text. More importantly the pigs are depicted with wings. The simultaneous discovery of a Greek manuscript in the remains of the library of Phocis sheds light on this apparent anomaly. It contains a list of townsfolk from 327 B.C. and lists their occupations. One is registered as Homing Pig Breeder. Analysis of the remains of particularly large birds discovered in previous archaological digs has revealed that they are in fact homing pigs. It is now believed that at one time pigs possessed the ability to fly in circumstances of extreme food deprivation. When pigs were first domesticated they lost the ability to forage and when taken away from their abode would fly back with residual wings to their only supply of food. This practice died out when pigs began to be farmed rather than kept as pets and consequently enjoyed a fine diet with no shortage of piggy delights. The residual wings of the pig gradually melded with the rest of the torso to become part of the back and flank. There are plenty of other ways of expressing the concept "pigs might fly". There is no need to refer to pigs. Folk memory of what had once been has formed the phrase and Carroll has anticipated the rediscovery of the residual wings of the pig by over a hundred years. It is yet to be seen whether pigs will once again be able to use their residual wings when deprived of food as current experiments seek to identify.

Scientists have also had to redefine the parameters of temperature. Previously heat and coldness have been seen as two extremes. Now it is clear that they are nothing of the sort. The most extreme heat yet manufactured by science is many million times hotter than the sun. Under those conditions anyone near the source of heat does not burn but freezes. Similarly extreme cold burns people as antarctic explorers have discovered and as children find when they try and handle glittering dry ice displays. The differential in science now is not between heat and cold but between developed temperatures and underdeveloped ones. What we think of as mild temperatures are simply underdeveloped temperatures which would reach an identical extreme state by going either up or down. The bottom of the sea is usually thought to be extremely cold but it is now recognised that freezing cold and boiling hot are the same thing. This explains how the apparent extreme coldness of the sea is unaffected by the heat of the earth's core which is right next to it. Lewis Carroll predicted this discovery in Victorian times. It would have been very difficult to conduct his clerical duties under the pressure that fame would have brought him had he not hidden his prediction in seemingly nonsensical verse.

Shoes, ships, sealing-wax, cabbages, kings - what do they have to do with the temperature of the sea or the residual wings of the pig? The answer to this has also recently been discovered. Shoes and ships and sealing-wax are the least receptive items to changes in temperature. On the daily weather forecast a temperature for the following day is given but we are then told that because of the wind chill factor it will actually appear to be a different temperature. Shoes and ships and sealing-wax will however remain at the actual temperature regardless of any wind chill factor for the longest time. Once again we are way behind the good Reverend. Cabbages and kings? Homing pigs appear to have fed on cabbages as the homing pig breeder in the Phocis inventory bought huge numbers of them. They cannot have been merely for personal consumption. It is also the case that horse racing has not always been the sport of kings. Homing pigs were bred to be raced by the rulers of the various Greek city states. When they got tired of chariot racing they would starve and then release their pigs at Astypalea and see who got home first. Indeed this new knowledge will help right a historical injustice. Pietri Dorando was disqualified from the Olympic Marathon in 1908 for being helped over the line by concerned spectators. It is improbable to assume that Pheidippides ran all that way in such a short time from the Battle of Marathon to bring the news. If he had hitched a lift on a flying pig it is time for Dorando to be given the posthumous gold medal he so richly deserves.

Scientists are now combing the rest of the works of Lewis Carroll to see what other truths he elliptically revealed. Already it has been conjectured that his so-called parodies of the verse of Southey were actually the unpublished originals. They are certainly superior to the versions Southey passed for the press and he may have been trying to encourage him to stick to his instincts. How playing cards and chess pieces make the decisions they do has never been satisfactorily explained. Are the answers like so many others right before our eyes all the time?