The first stanza of Jabberwocky first appeared in Misch-Masch (a series of private periodicals for his siblings, which Carroll wrote and illustrated) in 1855, when Carroll was 23, under the heading “Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry.”

 After interpreting the different words, he wrote:

 Hence the literal English of the passage is: ‘It was evening, and the smooth active badgers were scratching and boring holes in the hill-side; all unhappy were the parrots; and the grave turtles squeaked out.’

There were probably sundials on the top of the hill, and the ‘borogoves’ were afraid that their nests would be undermined. The hill was probably full of the nests of ‘raths’, which ran out, squeaking with fear, on hearing the ‘toves’ scratching outside. This is an obscure, but yet deeply-affecting, relic of ancient Poetry.

A Possible Interpretation

Stanza 1: Around 4pm, the toves spin and screw near a sundial, while the depressed birds turn up their noses and the foolish kneeling land-turtles whistle and sneeze.

Stanza 2: Words of caution in the Name of the Father, who warns to beware the Jabberwock, the thing that speaks incoherently, thereby destroying sense. Also, the Son should avoid the bird in passion that has no release as it lives in isolation, for this perhaps makes its thoughts muddled, as well as the raging Bandersnatch, which Carroll does not define possibly on account of its lewd origin

Stanza 3: So, wielding a vorpal sword, the Word as Gospel, he goes off seeking his foe. On the way, he stops by the monotonously rustling tree and contemplates awhile.

Stanza 4: But, unlike Buddha’s serene meditation under the Bodhi tree, the Son’s mind is turbulent, and suddenly the Jabberwock appears. It’s whiffling and burbling could be huffing and puffing (like the Wolf in Three Little Pigs), but could also mean that it’s whistling lightly, mumbling to itself, or just talking to itself in a silly way.

Stanza 5: One, two! One, two! The Son, through binary oppositional logic, slays the nonsensical metaphoric beast, his sword laughing as it feeds. Upon cutting off the Jabberwock’s head, the Son galumphs home, though this can mean either that he is galloping triumphantly as a hero, or that he moves clumsily and slow, in which case maybe the Jabberwock was no real threat and killing it was unnecessary.

Stanza 6: The Father welcomes the Son back, rejoicing with open arms. Yet the restraint of his laughter hints at insincerity, and his caveats on the Jabberwock’s danger may have been false.

Stanza 7/1: The story comes full circle and starts anew, perhaps this time with the hero in the role of the Father talking to his Son.

Limerick for Miss Vera Beringer (1869)
There was a young lady of station
“I love man” was her sole exclamation
But when men cried, “You flatter”
She replied, “Oh! no matter
Isle of Man is the true explanation.”

There are a couple of Gaelic words in the poem, particularly ‘rath’ and ‘manxome’. Carroll clarified that ‘rath’ rhymes with ‘bath’, hence it is a homonym with ‘wrath’. The limerick above makes a plausible case that ‘manxome’ is related to Manx (the Ancient Gaelic spoken on the Isle of Man, as well as a type of cat native to the island), and so could mean ‘of man’. In combination as ‘wrath of man’, this possibly hidden connection may refer to the violence done to meaning through binary opposition logic and blind obedience to the Name of the Father.