Without any thought, I grab a book from one of the piles on my dining table. As it happens, it is the favorite book of my childhood in its Latin translation.[1] When I open it without looking, I find myself at the beginning of the chapter about Porcellus’s—that is, Piglet’s—troubles with high waters.[2] It rained and rained for days, and water kept rising around his abode. Worried, the little one was thinking about the best way to safety. In this context, he gave some thought to his friends, the main characters in the book, whom he could ask for help:

“Ecce Pu,” secum cogitavit. “Pu parum cerebri habet, ed nunquam aliquid ei incommode accidit. Puerilia tractat et in bonum exeunt. Ecce Bubo. Bubo non habet, quod cerebrum vocari possit, sed non ignorat res. Certo non ignorat quid aquis circumdatum facere oporteat. Ecce Lepus. Est homo nullius libri, sed semper consilia prudential capit. Ecce Canga. Non est ingeniosa Canga, Canga non est, sed de Ruo timens etiam inconsulto recte agat. Ecce etiam Ior. Ior iam adeo miser est, ut hoc fieri non curet. Sed scire aveo quid Christophorus Robinus conetur.”[3]

All of a sudden, I realize that this is the only place in the book where all of its main characters are presented without any embellishment. Here, their character traits are in plain view. And then I realize that Piglet is Milne in disguise. All the others are his best friends from real life, whom he knows inside and out. And the one represented by Winnie the Pooh is the luckiest of them all: little brains but plenty of good cheer. The winning combination, to be sure. The only mystery is that it has taken me no less than seven decades to figure out who Piglet actually is. The writer’s ruse at its most cunning, I reckon.

Footnotes

1. Milne, A.A., Winnie ille Pu, translated into Latin by Alexander Lenard, London: Penguin, 1991 (first published in 1962).

2. Capita IX: Quo in capite Porcellus ab omni part aquis circumdatus est, Op. cit., pp. 94-106.

3. Op. cit., p. 95.