D'Oh! (was: Re: Multilingual translation exercise, part 1)

Roger Mills indulges in a little Schadenfreude with:

>Have you ever seen "Mots de Gousse Rhames" ?  Published back in the early
>70s or so.. unfortunately I never bought it. It's "Mother Goose Rhymes"
>using French words/grammar to approximate the English (cf. the title).  With
>copious scholarly footnotes to explain the weirder locutions and the
>mysterious author Gousse Rhames.  (Offline at the moment; I'll check Amazon
>later.)
Aargh! I've been carrying around "Un petit d'un petit, s'étonne aux
Halles....(et al.)" (which I memorized in toto as a kid) in my head
for *years*. I've asked and accosted native speakers since Junior
High about what the hell it means and have gotten rien from personne
except blank stares. I can die peacefully now, but it will only be
because, grâce à Roger, I can beat my head mercilessly on an anvil
about my own utter cluelessness.

D'oh! D'oh! D'oh!

Kou