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Jeff,
Just reading this here book you may be interested in, written by Jaroslav Hasek in 1930, "The Good Soldier Svejk", Cecil Parrott translation, with, of course, the original illustrations by Josef Lada. Penguin Books. p.260:
"He [Sergeant Flanderka] had the greatest trouble over the instructions on how to recruit paid denouncers and informers from the local population. Finally, as he considered it impossible to find anyone in the region of Blata, where the people had very thick skulls, he hit on the idea of taking into his service the village herdsman. He was a village idiot who always jumped in the air when people called out to him: 'Pepek, ups-a-daisy!' He was one of those unfortunate figures whom nature and humanity have neglected, a cripple, who for a few guilders yearly and a little food pastured the village cattle.
And so the sergeant had him fetched and said to him: 'Do you know, Pepek, who old Prochazka is?'
'Meaeaea,' Pepek bleated.
'Don't bleat but remember that this is how they call His Imperial Majesty. You know who His Imperial Majesty is?'
'That's Sperial Madesty.'
'Well done, Pepek! Now remember that when you go begging for food from house to house, if you should hear anybody say that His Imperial Majesty is an ox or something like that, then come and inform me at once. You'll get six kreutzers. And if you hear anyone say that we shan't win the war, then you must come to me, you understand, and tell me who said it. Then I'll give you another six kerutzers. But if I hear you're concealing something fom me, then it'll be all up with you. I'll have you arrested and sent off to Pisek. And now, us-a-daisy!' When Pepek had jumped, he gave him twelve kreutzers and happily wrote a report to the district gendarmerie command saying that he recruited an informer.
The next day the vicar came to him and told him in secret that that very morning outside the village he hed met the village herdman, Pepek Vyskoc, who told him:'Your revrence, the sergeant told me yesteday that His Sperial Madesty is is an ox and that we shan't win the war. Meaeaea. Ups-a-daisy!'
After further explanation and discussion with the priest Sergeant Flanderka had the village herdsman arrested. Afterwards Pepek was condemned at the Hradcany to twelve years' imprisonment for treasonable subversion, incitement, lese-majesty and several other crimes and offences.
He conducted himself in court as he did on the pastures and among the neighbors. In reply to all question he bleated and after the sentence had been pronounced he uttered the sounds: 'Meaeaea. Ups-a-daisy!' and jumped. For this he was given the disciplinary punishment of a hard bunk, solitary confinement and three days' fast.
From that time onwards the gendarmerie sergeant had no informer and had to content himself with inventing one, giving him a ficticious name and raising his own salary by fifty crowns a month, which he spent on drink in The Old Tom Cat. When he had drunk his tenth glass he had a fit of conscience, the beer grew bitter in his mouth and he always heard from his neighbors the same remark: 'Today our sergeant is rather sad, as though he wasn't in a good mood.' Then he went home and after he had left somebody always said: 'Our men must have been caught with their pants down in Serbia somewhere. That's why the sergeant hasn't got anything to say.'
But at home the sergeant could at least fill in one more questionaire: 'The mood of the population: I.a.'"
Bounced Czech
(An uncensorable opinion.) |
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