Thanks to David Carlisle for the why:> 
> 
> 
> '$N' is the string $N.  You want $N which is the value of the variable N
> 
Thanks to Nikolai Grigoriev for the how:

> Remove the quotation marks

It works fine!

... and opens a vista of transformation glory

<xsl:template name="many_many_thanks"/>
<xsl:variable name="N" select="string(Thanks again)"/>
<xsl:value-of select="substring-before($N,'again')"/>
<xsl:value-of select="substring-after($N,'Thanks ')"/>
<xsl:call-template name="many_many_thanks"/>
</xsl:template>

-- 
Francois Lachance
Post-doctoral Fellow
projet HYPERLISTES project
http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~hyplist/


 XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list