You Know That Poem That The Cheshire Cat Recites In Alice In Wonderland? What Does It Mean?

Jabberwocky was a tale of derringdo.
My Grandfather had to depict the first verse in a game of charades one Christmas. Nearly did himself in, all that gyring and gimbling before someone got it!

T'was brillig, and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

-- would that be it?  In the Disney version of the Alice film the Cheshire cat sings a few verses of this.

It is complete and utter nonsense -- it's a few lines from the poem Jabberwocky, written by Lewis Carroll, but not actually in the text of the book.  Inclusion of this in the movie was just a kind of homage to him.

The poem simply has no meaning; it was meant to be nonsense and silly.  Read more about the history and study and fans of the entire poem (reprinted in its entirety).

The Cheshire Cat narrates an entire poem in the book 'Alice in Verse: The Lost Rhymes of Wonderland'. Google this title and you'll find a bunch links to quotes and illustrations. Best Wonderland book since the original (the sequel to 'The Walrus & the Carpenter', entitled 'The Walrus & the Carpenter Head Back', is absolutely astounding ;-)

The text of Alice in Wonderland is to be found several places online (she meets it in Chapter 6 for example, and again in Chapter 8), and I can't find an entry where the Cheshire cat recites any poems.  (Sorry, redirect me?)  There is some verse by the Duchesss, just before Alice meets the Cheshire cat the first time.

Most of the verses in Alice were parodies of children's rhymes and poems that were then popular.  The book was first written in 1865 -- before TV, before grammaphones or radio or recordings --  when the only entertainment was live music and verbal.  It was a culture where things were either spoken or maybe written down (lots of people were still illiterate, too).  So everybody, even children, knew many more rhymes, stories and pieces of poetry -- arguably we know as much about TV characters and the lives of celebrities, today.

Many if not most children in 1865 would have recognised the poems being parodied, or that the lines of poetry were little better than amusing nonsense, just like the characters that uttered the words.