Alabama and Arkansaw

Sorry. A dreadful mistake, to confuse those two countries. As bad, I suppose, as it would be for a North American to confuse Cork and Cracow simply because they are both in Europe and are mutually alliterative. And I am so crassly ignorant that I don't even know which of the two would be the more irritated to have been confused with the other. And now I'm so befuddled that I can't recall which of the two it was that the late Richard Millhouse Clinton came from. He, by the way, was President of some confederacy of North American political units; as our Public Orator described him here a couple of years ago, "Praeses Civitatum Americanarum Foederatarum, ipse Oxoniensis et perspicax meriti existimator".

It must be dreadful being Public Orator; facing the temotation to describe Clinton as "qui bacillum nicotianum quid sit et unde depromatur optime novit" and not being allowed to do so. Oops: like Dr William King, I'd better add here "Spero me impetrare posse ab eruditorum omnium aequitate, ut nequis, me invito, hanc orationem in sermonem patrium vertat". You know about King, Principal of S Mary's Hall? In the Oxford of 1749 he had just made a rabidly "Jacobite" speech, the deft verbal ambiguities in which, if translated into English, would have been lost (the Whigs were still in a murderous mood). He had spoken at the opening of the Radcliffe Camera before both the University and Jacobite luminaries from far and wide, who included Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, known to his contemporaries and to the whole of Human History as The Great Sir Watkin ... not that Sir Watkin will have been able to read the published version of the speech; he died just in time for Dr King to include a flowery footnote to this greatest of all Welshmen " eheu! qualis vir et quantus interiit! ... quam diligens libertatis publicae propugnator! Reipublicae Parens, ac Patriae Pater .... Generis Humani decus ... Qui enim haud quenquam unum vivus habuit inimicum, nisi qui huic reipublicae et Britanno nomini esset inimicus, homo flagitiosissimus, ferreus et inhumanus ..." BTW, if you think I'm rambling again, do stop me and say so.

But what is the Latin for USA? If the Oxford Orator renders it (vide supra) CAF, as far as the Vatican is concerned, it is SFAS (Status Foederati Americae Septentrionalis). I get this from a decree at the beginning of my fascinating copy of the 1957 "S Antonii" ORDO; the American bishops had asked for the Feast of S Joseph Opificis to be transferred in America from May 1 to the beginning of September. In a decree dripping with disdain (" ... festum civile operariorum vulgo 'Labor Day'" ...) Cardinal Cicognani declined to do this, but did allow an External Solemnity.

SFAS is a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? When the admirable John Luce was the Dublin Orator, he called the USA Confederatio Civitatium Americanarum. At Cambridge, the versatile if wayward Dr Diggle appears to have ducked the question - although he did once refer to the European Union as Communitas Nationum Europaearum foedere Romae icto Consociatarum. But even the Oxford Orator can't always avoid syllabic diarrhoea. In 2008 he had to refer to some woman called Widnall (why Oxford was honouring her nobody explained) as "apud Institutionem Technologiae Massachusettiensium professor".

Not a phrase to try to declaim after stoking up on claret. Some years ago I had a letter from a previous Orator with whom I was collaborating on a piece of Latinity which had some delicate red-wine patterns all over it. But Richard Jenkyns is sterner stuff.

Do I ramble?