Where do we start? The quaruped. The quadruped of the genus canis? It's just wordplay. A word reversed: the deformation of the word, used in profane oaths. By His precious wounds. Well. Maybe he does have precious wounds. Where do you hide out here anyway? But it's easy to imagine what he's capable of. We find: to fasten or secure by means of a dog. To extract or uproot with a dog. But, today. Coolly: seated, impatient, spotted. It's all a matter of temperament and temperament, says Mackay, is all a matter of geography. "The dog in the East is not as here domesticated, but outside the cities is more like a wolf prowling for prey." So we imagine. And we don't yet imagine what he imagines himself. Or what imaginations tug at him, the other end of the leash.
The leash, the line, the lead. Such singularity. The leash strains to hold them together, but it too splits. The leash is a set of three, the three of them, there. "A leash of hares to be potted by his wife" writes Johnson in 1750, intuiting our dilemma. The leash signifies such certainty. To have control over. To keep in bondage. Also likely (the view from the top): the department of the king's household concerned with the keeping of the hounds. Maybe that's too literal, though. Try, the lead. The consummate abstraction: an act, not a trio teetering down the street. An act: direction given by going in front. An act symbolic: the body moving in front. I like this, though; when you go down far enough, you get to the emotional. The first punch thrown. To submit to being led. To submit to being lead: to arm, load, or weight with lead.
Finally, of course, the monoped. The idiot. The person without learning. The simple man. The man the bisshop repreuyed...as unconnying and an ydeote. The one with the lead, the one on the steed. The one who keeps in bondage. The domesticator. The one who acts, who gives direction. The lead. The one with the quadruped, the lead. The weight, the load. The load, the log, the dog. We return, now, to the dog. The one armed by the idiot. Who waits and sits and sees. The idiot, the clown, a professional fool or jester, as in, as Will of T. Golidsburgh put it in 1526, anticipating our conundrum, "My idyot."
