The Magic of Words

Part One

Seventeen thousand years ago, the first talking man said ,"Gargh". This was the beginning of a long journey of many years wasted.

For the sake of simplicity, let us name our man Thefm. Now, Thefm was not your average guy. He was The First Talking Man who had made the first word "Gargh". This was regarded as a bad move by many, for until then their vocal chords had been of no use for anything other than screaming. Also they did not know what Gargh meant. Thefm told them what it meant but he only knew only one word so the way he explained it was unintelligible.

An excerpt from his famous speech, "Gargh, gargh, ga...gar.. gargh."

The speech was not met with much applause for it was the first of its kind in history. (Not that they knew what history was.)

Now Thefm was widely regarded as an idiot. This was conveyed to him by the rocks that connected with his head severely damaging it.

It was then that Thefm made his second word, a synonym of the first to explain what it meant. It was "Glug".

Thefm become famous for it wasn’t everyday that a man coined a new word for the second time that wasn’t the same as the first. Thefm was happy. He now was the most eligible bachelor in the world. He married a nice girl who was impressed by the shape of his head (the rocks had changed it). They had two children who he surprisingly named Gargh and Glug. Then he died.

Sadly his children had children and their children had children all possessed with a genetic disorder for languages (and a weirdly shaped head), probably caused by the rocks hitting their great ancestor’s head. All the children were named after the words their parents invented.

Part Two

After around 170 centuries, in 1883 William Norbury Biscuit was born. By the marvel of DNA analysis it can be conclusively proved that he was a lineal descendant of Thefm and had inherited his misguided penchant for languages, in particular, the English language.

(His parents had probably invented the word, ‘Norbury Biscuits’… though this fact cannot be proved.)

In 1953, Bill, now the Lord Biscuit, gave a speech which moved the very rocks and stones of the venue out. The people who stayed to listen died the next day of internal hemorrhaging.

He called it ‘The Magic of Words’, the people called him ‘The man who should be shot’. Surprisingly, no-one threw rocks at him. He lived for 9 years after he had made his infamous speech at the University of Leicester.

His speech was written down and preserved by some perverts at the University, for reasons I cannot fathom.

Readers looking for the content of this speech must look elsewhere. It, however, is easily summarized in a few words i.e. “Gurgh, glug”.

It may interest readers to know that with the demise of Lord Biscuit the line of Thefm failed. (Unless he or one of his heirs had an illegitimate son.)

This may well prove to be the case as the speech was mysteriously chosen to be a part of an English textbook. The person who chose it would have to be either a descendant of Thefm or just plain crazy.

However I leave it to you to speculate…

Note: The characters in this story are purely fictional. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead is purely coincidental and highly regretted ;).