The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Friday, April 14, 2006

Omdubom the Crafty

During the early seventy-fives, the antagonism between the rival houses of Ungulum and Glisterbean threatened to break out in full fury when Grumbo the Importunate, a scion of Ungulum, broke into the Abbey at Gluttonward and fetlocked the monks with a brace of cummerbunds. This rapacious and impious act shocked even the Muttocks of Gluttonward, who were themselves no conventional respecters of clerical sensibilities. Indeed, it was young Falchion Muttock, the seventeenth Earl of Gluttonward, who eighty years earlier had seized forty monks of that very same Abbey, and ordered them "dangeld bye theyre pious unwrinkel'd Scrotes from the Gargoyles of yonder church". Nevertheless, local loyalties prevailed, and a delegation of monks and Muttocks was dispatched with all speed to Mumbelminster to demand that Grumbo answer for his actions. Meanwhile the clan of Glisterbean, under the leadership of the wily Omdubom, took advantage of the general uncertainty by laying siege to the Great Hummock at Addleborough and, famously, taking it after three days "with no thynge more thanne twenty Knyghtes and some Shoutynge", as one contemporary chronicler put it. Having once secured the Hummock, Omdubom made his peace with the Ungulums, placating the Muttocks by having Grumbo the Importunate varnished and displayed for seven days and nights on the battlements of Mumbelminster Minster, and in turn pacifying the Ungulums by promising them his aid in their ongoing dispute with the Bulgroynes of Catteldrop - a purely temporary and indeed Machiavellian expedient, as Omdubom was simultaneously planning to marry Malbronchia, the second least ineligible and third most intelligible daughter of Spurling de Bulgroyne, that very Easter. Still, the reign of Omdubom was largely a stable one, aside from the Hambone Riots when a large piece of salted meat was discovered among the common people, resulting in a hue and cry that lasted several weekends; and his rule was noted by later chroniclers for its contrast with the chaos and confusion which were to follow. Today, Omdubom is noted mainly for his enclosure of the badger setts at Throttlesham (unprecedented at the time) and his deathbed threat to turn all Scotland into a park for the cultivation of mangelwurzels. He died, ironically, of an infection resulting from a mortified fetlock, and was succeeded by his second son, Piggleswade the Disastrous.

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