Petards and Hoisting

I have been, as they say, hoisted by my own petard.

For those who are unfamiliar with this, somewhat archaic, saying an explanation is in order.

A very, very long time ago when guns were, largely, science fiction, an army may think to end a siege by blowing up the gates to the castle they were attacking with the use of a small bomb. This bomb was called a petard.

The first trick was to light the fuse. They had no ‘Zippo’ lighters in those days.

The second trick was to deliver it to the gates of the castle. This could only be done by a ‘volunteer’ on foot. Someone who, of necessity, needed to be very fleet of foot.

The prospects of survival of the bomb carrier varied from none to zero.

The bomb itself was not very stable and the manufacture of fuses at that time was not a science.

We should also consider that the persons defending the castle were unlikely to watch with impartial interest as the hero runs up to the gate and deposits the bomb. They will, very likely, decide that they should kill him before he reaches the gate. Crossbows, longbows, rocks and boiling oil spring to mind.

It is also likely that the path to the gate is strewn with obstacles—rocks, bodies, arrows, bolts from crossbows and slippery with oil, too. Perhaps there are also disembodied parts of previous attempts to carry a petard to the gate.

Should the bomb go off prematurely it was said that the carrier had been ‘hoisted by his own petard’. Something William Shakespeare was familiar with:

There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows,

Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd,

They bear the mandate; they must sweep my way

And marshal me to knavery. Let it work;

For 'tis the sport to have the enginer

Hoist with his own petar; and 't shall go hard

But I will delve one yard below their mines

And blow them at the moon: O, 'tis most sweet,

When in one line two crafts directly meet.

After modifying the letters (line 1), Hamlet escapes the ship and returns to Denmark. Hamlet's actual meaning is "cause the bomb maker to be blown up with his own bomb", metaphorically turning the tables on Claudius, whose messengers are killed instead of Hamlet. Also note here, Shakespeare's probable off-color pun "hoist with his own petar", i.e., flatulate (fart!), as the reason for the spelling "petar" rather than "petard".

(Courtesy of Mr. Frederick Finn, English Literature teacher at Exmouth Grammar School, 1956-1962.)

So. I have been hoisted by my own petard.

Why?

Because my son said that he has times at work when things are slack. He is, he tells me, bored during these occasions.

Might I be so kind as to print off a couple of stories that he could read during these ‘work-free’ times at work?

Right. No problem.

Well, there was. My printer hasn’t been used for a really long time so I was unaware that it was about to run out of ink.

Fortunately it scraped together enough, just, to complete the task although the print was getting a shade pale by the end.

Son leaves for work with stories clutched in hand.

I had given him two stories that are complete in themselves but join together to form a whole. There are no more in this sequence; those two stories are the whole thing. There are to be no more in this ‘series’ of two.

That night he comes home. He has read the stories. His girlfriend has read them, too.

Her English is exceptionally good. That wasn’t the problem. The problem is that she is now curious as to when the third story is coming out because she wants to know what happens next.

There is nothing happening next. That’s it.

Apparently I have to write a third one. My son says so. I was so sure, so positive, that those two were ‘it’ that I let them read the stories.

I have been hoisted...