Pirates

I've had a very draining day, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Rather than dwelling on this, and in the hope that it might be cheerful for other people as well as me, I have decided to put up something strangely comforting: a pirate's speech from the early eighteenth century, sounding just like pirates ought to. Captain Bellamy, the pirate, has captured a sloop, and would like to give it back to Captain Beer, its commander, but his pirate crew won't have it.

'Damn my beard', says he, 'I am sorry they won't let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do anyone a mischief, when it is not for my advantage; damn the sloop we must sink her, and she might be of use to you. Though, damn ye, you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by Laws which rich men have made for their own security, for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they get by their knavery. But damn ye altogether. Damn them for a pack of crazy rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numskulls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they rob the poor under cover of Law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make one of us, than sneak after the arses of those villains for Employment?'
Capt. Beer told him that his conscience would not allow him to break through the Laws of God and man.
'You are a devilish conscientious rascal, damn ye,' replied Bellamy. 'I am a free prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world as he who has a hundred sail of ships at sea, and an army of 100,000 men in the field, and this my conscience tells me. But there is no arguing with such snivelling puppies, who allow superiors to kick them about deck at pleasure and pin their faith upon a pimp of a parson, a squab, who neither practices nor believes what he puts upon the chuckle-headed fools he preaches to.'

It's from one of John Julius Norwich's Christmas Cracker anthologies. Equally good, and a great deal less verbose, is Sir Thomas Beecham's comment after conducting the Dance of the Cygnets from Swan Lake for the ballet of the Camargo Society at about twice the normal speed:

That made the buggers hop.