IT HAS LONG BEEN my dream - or at least since Thursday two weeks ago - to bestride myself down to the Bank of Scotland, confront the manager there with a steely, green-eyed glare and, in stentorian tones, dismiss the blaggard as "thou churlish boil-brained bum-bailey." Or perhaps as a "dankish dismal-dreaming flap-dragon" if female.

(Actually, I'm not at all sure that a steely glare is even possible with green eyes. The result is more apt to be a sort of yucky verdant, like the downy covering on a piece of cheese that passed its sell-by date in September 1997. Anyway, you get my drift.)

This train of invective thought had its origin in the arrival via wheelbarrow of my latest MasterCard billing by the aforementioned Scottish institution, which included among other sorry items a charge of 55 bucks' interest on a debt balance of about $600 - a rate that would have seen the offending bank razed to the ground in olden days.

To convey my displeasure, I immediately consulted the mountains of malediction I have painstakingly accumulated over the years for appropriate terms. At one time, 'tis true, I could swirl a stream of scurrility for 22 minutes without repeating myself. Alas, time has served to dilute and diminish the potency of the language.

Words and phrases that once could have curled crowbars at six paces and stripped paint off a Boeing 747 now roll glibly off the tongues of 6-year-olds on skateboard kamikaze missions, barmaids unhappy that I didn't leave half my weekly salary as a tip, or checkout ladies alluding to sexual deviancy among my immediate kinfolk when it is suggested that $12.74 is a bit much for a pint of milk.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the Bank of Scotland manager had me by a very delicate portion of my anatomy, financially speaking, and that my storehouse of four- and seven- and even the occasional 12-letter terms of unendearment might bestir him to, well, squeeze a bit.

So if the present is past, it maybe the past can present the solution. I do enjoy Shakespeare, and I was reminded that the Bard and his buddies, Chris Marlowe and the Earl of Surrey (or was it Sandwich?) did a good trade in medieval invective - and examined today, it is a veritable new language, as yet unsullied by overuse.

I have now armed myself with this newly acquired linguistic weaponry, prepared to deal any "unmuzzled swag-bellied strumpet" or "weedy unchin-snouted barnacle" who spills my Coke at the bar, or the "errant fen-sucked fustilarian" who gives me a parking ticket, or to greet the electric meter reader as "thou beslubbering beef-witted bladder!"

The great thing about it is, you can go about calling people "thou surly tart-gaited varlet" or "thou fawning elf-skinned flirt-gill" or "thou cockered clapper-clawed canker-blossom" (old Shaky had a particularly good line in alliteration) to your heart's content, safe in the knowledge that neither you nor they know what in blazes you are talking about.

You might get hauled away by little men in white with butterfly nets and deposited in the local home for the terminally bewildered, but feel free to scream, "Thou spleeny spur-galled skainmates" and "thou impertinent full-gorged hedge-pig" at your captors as the padded van moves off. It'll serve to cleanse the spirit.

(I would recommend, however, taking it a wee bit easy with "thou pribbling plume-plucked moldwarp." That one seems to maintain a singular air of malice even after four centuries, and it might still get you a poke in the snout. Stick to "thou elvish-marked abortive rooting hog," that's a good lad.)

So enlightening has this been that I am now determined to take up "Proper Elizabethan English" as a second language. (Friends in Britain have suggested that I concentrate first on getting the cornpone out of my vocal cords and learn English as spoken in the 21st century. Craven common-kissing clotpoles, they are.)

To be sure, I haven't had a great deal of luck with foreign languages in the past. My Latin teacher, Mrs. Pace Moore Johnston, gave up when I translated "lapsus lingui" ("slip of the tongue") as "lopsided language," and my Spanish teacher allowed as how my pronunciation of "habla espanol" sounded like "I have the Spam in my oil."

Still I persevere. What I want is not the snooty, up-yer-nose stiff-upper-lip English stuff like what's spoken in plays and movies (Errol Flynn used to mangle it beyond belief, but he was Australian, so what could you expect. . .) I want to learn the Elizabethan accent of Shakespeare and Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmond Blackadder.

Actually, the true Elizabethan English of Shakespeare's time has - or had - more in common with the speech of remote communities in the southern U.S., particularly in tidewater Virginia and North Carolina's coastal Outer Banks.

Some residents of the Outer Banks, where contact with the rest of the U.S. was strictly limited, spoke a brand of English unchanged since the 17th century until well into the 1950s. Then some do-gooder built a bridge from the mainland, opening the floodgates to a tidal wave of 20th century slang, and the old dialect was rapidly diluted into near-oblivion. Sic semper loggerheaded hasty-witted joitheads.

But there are those of us determined to keep the ancient patois alive, and I am larynx-deep in "The Queen's English Pronunciation Drills." Such as the "owoo" in owl: "How now brown cow, a lousey mouse now i' the house doth be down with the sow by the plow - thou sour cow." Or the nasal "a" like "ah" in apple: "Father, I want to wash i' the water with Margaret Gardener, art thou walkin' and talkin' with Arthur?"

My next step, I'm told, is to load up on insults and words of praise and hit the streets, ranting away. Maybe I'll nip into the local boozer, start raving "Aye, Sire, and beneath my feet the earth did tilt, tossing my ale thither," and see how long it takes me to get tossed out, ale-less.

But I steadfastly refuse to follow the next instruction in the course: "Now smear your face with dung and try to find a date." Begone, thou dankish dismal-dreaming codpieces!

Thought for the Week: If all is not lost, where is it?

"Notes From A Tangled Webb" is syndicated by: