Books: Maire, si d'hautes . . .

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MOTS d'HEURES: GOUSSES, RAMES: THE d'ANTIN MANUSCRIPT. Discovered, Ed/fed and Annotated by Luis d'Antin van Rooten. 55 pages. Grossman. $3.95.

Senior citizens now tottering through the din of pop and rock may nostalgically recall a ballad that went its maddening round a quarter of a century ago. It was different from today's Noise in that its nonsense was deliberate. It went:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats

And liddle lamzy divey.

Those who delighted in their day with the inside knowledge that mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy will be in the best position to deal with a book with the apparently recondite title of Mots d'Heures: Gousses, Rames, which purports to be a collection of medieval French ballads.

The audio-oriented type who can summon up his French accent and repeat the title aloud several times will be quick to grasp the fact that this slim and learned volume is nothing more than Mother Goose rhymes. The odd effect is created by arranging French words to form homonymic approximations of the familiar English rhymes; the literal translation is always something wildly nonsensical. Thus "Jack and Jill":

Chacun Gille Houer ne taupe de hile Tôt-fait, j'appelle an boiteur . . . Chaque féle dans un broc, est-ce erosne?

Translation by the author: "Each [man named] Gille, while hoeing, uncovers a mole and part of a seed. Quickly finished, I call to the limping man that every pitcher has a crack in it. Is it a Chinese cabbage?"

Thereafter, the reader may find the rest of Mots d'H cures compulsive, as one horrendous bilingual audio-pun follows another. L'lle deja accornee . . . Satinees cornees translates as "The [lord of the] island already has horns! Satiny corneas . . ." but it is really Little Jack Horner who sat in a corner.

After a few bouts with this infinitely fractured surrealist French, most readers will concede that Author Van Rooten, who is a polyglot Manhattan actor, has succeeded in three minor and un likely enterprises: producing a new parlor game, pulling the leg of all pedants everywhere, making a joke in French, of which, for once, only English speakers can see the point.