Tweedledee and Tweedledum

Walking along a beautiful elevated path with stunning views over the two bays, you come across this surprisingly wacky discovery. 

Llandudno has long capitalised on tenuous links to Lewis Carroll and there are cedarwood statues of his characters, including the  Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat, and the Mad  Hatter scattered around the resort, all of which could be described as ‘wacky’, but these Tweedle twins are probably the wackiest of them all. In non-Covid times there is also a Miss  Alice role filled by a local schoolgirl  each year, and an annual jam tart  eating contest linked to the Victorian Extravaganza. Wacky. 

The resort was the holiday destination of the real Alice in Wonderland, Alice Liddell. Whilst there is no evidence  to prove Carroll actually met  Alice Liddell in Llandudno, it has not been disproven.  He did become a close friend  of the family and it is  believed by some that it  was Alice’s adventures  in Llandudno, later  recounted to Lewis  Carroll, that  influenced him when  he first made up the  story he told Alice and  her sisters. 

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of the Alice books, but here’s a brief taste of their wackiness. 

Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

THEY were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other's neck, and Alice knew which was which in a moment, because one of them had "DUM" embroidered on his collar, and the other "DEE". 'I suppose they've each got "TWEEDLE" round at the back of the collar,' she said to herself.

They stood so still that she quite forgot they were alive, and she was just going round to see if the word "TWEEDLE" was written at the back of each collar, when she was startled by a voice coming from the one marked "DUM".

'If you think we're wax-works,' he said, 'you ought to pay, you know. Wax-works weren't made to be looked at for nothing. Nohow.'

'Contrariwise,' added the one marked "DEE", 'if you think we're alive, you ought to speak.'

Interestingly, five years after the pair showed up in Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, the anti-war nursery rhyme ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee’ was published in Extraordinary Nursery Rhymes (1876):

Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Had a mighty battle,
And what was it all about, think ye?
About a penny rattle.

So nations foolishly make wars,
And loud their cannons rattle; 
 When oft they have as little cause,
As Tweedledum for battle.

Probably the least wacky thing about them. 


Thanks to random_angel for hosting!