"An pris caruns flucuthukh"; Mr. Cardan beckoned to the guide. "Bring the lamp a little nearer," he said in Italian, and when the light had been approached, he went on slowly spelling out the primitive Greek writing on the wall of the tomb: "flucuthukh nun tithuial khues khathc anulis mulu vizile ziz riin puiian acasri flucuper pris an ti ar vus ta aius muntheri flucuthukh." He straightened himself up. "Charming language," he said, "charming! Ever since I learned that the Etruscans used to call the god of wine Fufluns, I've taken the keenest interest in their language. Fufluns - how incomparably more appropriate that is than Bacchus, or Liber, or Dionysos! Fufluns, Fufluns," he repeated with delighted emphasis. "It couldn't be better. They had a real linguistic genius, those creatures. What poets they must have produced! ‘When Fufluns flucuthukhs the ziz' - one can imagine the odes in praise of wine which began like that. You couldn't bring together eight such juicy, boozy syllables as that in English, could you?"
"What about ‘Ale in a Saxon rumkin' then?" suggested Chelifer.
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