GR translation: And when the mice run down...

[Paul Mackin]

Might it be that the sentence requires a verb in the subjunctive mood.

who knows but what tonight the mice MIGHT have run down for good

Nope, ruins it.

P

On 5/31/2011 4:35 AM, Michael Bailey wrote:
> It's idiomatic and also a reference to a nursery rhyme:
>
> idiom:
> "who knows but what" like Phillip Grayson said, essentially means "who
> knows whether or not"
>
> the nursery rhyme goes like this:
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickory_Dickory_Dock)
> hickory dickory dock
> the mouse ran up the clock
> the clock struck one   (the clock made whatever sound it makes upon the hour)
> and down he come    (that is, the mouse)
> hickory dickory dock
>
> so, see, Roger and Jessica are riding out to get a dog for Pointsman's
> sinister purposes.
> The atmosphere is being set
> -- they want to be cozy in bed but instead are riding out
> -- Roger is hunched over like Dracula in his Burberry (a very English
> looking coat)
> --- Jessica wearing a wool coat and the melted snow on it is striking,
> psychedelic, beautiful (like Jessica herself is to Roger)
> -- it's late at night and therefore the clock of St Felix is "striking
> one" (http://www.saintfelix.org.uk/History.html)
> --- the theme of London filled with chiming cathedrals brings Orwell's
> book _1984_ to mind
>
> if the clock is striking one, then poetic license not only allows, but
> insists upon, a mouse that has run up the clock and now will be
> running down!
>
> *BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE* --
>
> a) if the mouse runs up and/or down the clock at a certain time, isn't
> that another example of Pavlovian conditioning?
>
> b) and, if the mice "run down for good" -- idiomatically, "run down
> for good" means "run down for the last time - indicating a sort of
> dramatic finality, the machine standing triumphant over the animal at
> last
>
> c) but, also idiomatically, "run down" means to "succumb to entropy"
> as a battery when drained is said to have "run down", or a person when
> tired is said to "have that run-down feeling" and so the mouse's
> attempts, like those of the human characters, cost it time and life
> and energy, and leave it in a greater state of disorganization than it
> started at
>
> --- so overloaded is this trope with foreboding that the overloading
> itself is a source of humor! (at least, it makes me snicker, among all
> the other reactions)
>