A Cloudish Word-Hoard, by Michael Swanwick

Being a By No Means Comprehensive Selection of Obscure

and/or Interesting Words of Particular Interest to the Reader of Greer

Gilman’s Moonwise (1991 Roc; 2005 Prime Books).

A

airt: A direction, or point of the compass. [The tinker had marked

from what airt of heaven Mally’s cloudgeese had flown, and had set

out contrary.]

aldercarr: The alder, Alnus glutinosa, is a tree related to the beech

and common to wet places. A carr is a fen or bog.

Anthelion: One of Sylvie and Ariane’s invented (or, possibly,

discovered or intuited) worlds. Literally, “a luminous, white,

halolike area occasionally seen in the sky opposite the sun on the

parhelic circle.” However, the word is derived from the Greek

anthelios, meaning “opposite the sun,” which is the more likely

meaning.

anyroad: Modern Northern dialect for “anyway.” [“Don’t

trouble. Time I were up fort milking anyroad. Phoebe’s up.”]

arain: The North country word for spider. It is hardly a

coincidence that Ariane, mazed and patient and wandering, has a

name only a letter away from Ariadne. Arainwebs are of course spider

webs.

arfish: Old Norse and Northern dialect meaning cowardly,

pusillanimous, timid, fearful; but also inert, sluggish, lazy, slow,

loath, reluctant; as well as unwilling, indisposed, disinclined.

[“Hedgehogs’ll say owt. They’s arfish.”]

arval: A funeral-cake. Capitalized, it is the name of an invented

king.

arveth: Difficult or hard. This word appears only once in

Moonwise, capitalized, as the name of a king.

ash-keys: The fourteenth definition for “key” in the OED is “A

dry fruit with a thin membranous wing, usually growing in bunches, as

in the ash and sycamore.” The entry also cites Turner’s Herbal: “They

are called in Englishe ashe Keyes, because they hangh in bunches after

the manner of Keyes.” In the Vermont of my childhood, maple-keys

were called “helicopters.”

attercap: A spider; also an ill-natured or foolish person.

 

B

Babylon: Of this ancient city, Gilman writes, “It’s not the

Babylon of the hanging gardens, but the Babylon of the nursery

rhyme: ‘Can I get there by candlelight? Yes, if your legs are long and

light, there and back again.’ In my head, anyway, it’s Elsewhere and

Otherwise, the place beyond the fields we know; and if the candle

should go out, it never was. Could be that the traveller vanishes as

well. It’s a riddle and a danger and a will o’ the wisp.”

bearward: A bear-keeper, one who leads a bear about for

exhibitions, public display, and the like.

The Beano: A British children’s weekly comic book. A much-loved

and emphatically childish miscellany, it debuted in 1938 and is still

published today.

belantered: Belated or benighted. [All ways were dark;

belantered and amazed, he lapsed into stumbling forgetfulness and

babble, hush ba and lilly ba, fa and lillylow.]

bield: A shelter.

bodhran: A traditional Irish hand-held drum with a wooden

body and a goatskin head. It is played with a double-headed stick.

bojangles: In context, dancing globules of quicksilver. Taken

from the great dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, whose nickname

may have meant happy-go-lucky or else squabbler or even been a

vulgarization of the name of a Frenchman in Robinson’s home town

whose missing beaver hat, in an apocryphal tale, mysteriously appeared on Robinson’s head.

bosky: Literally, having trees or shrubs. Figuratively, tipsy.

breastknot: A knot of ribbons worn on the breast.

broch: A fortified dwelling in the form of a circular stone tower,

found in Scotland, the Orkneys, the Shetlands, and the Hebrides.

brock: As a verb, to crumble, as an adjective grey, and as a noun a badger.

brumal: Belonging to winter, wintry.

budget: A pouch or bag, usually of leather.

Burd Ellen: The sister of Childe Rowland, who in the fairy tale

and ballad bearing her name runs around a church the wrong way

and is captured by the fairies. In “Burd Ellen and Young Tamlane”

she (or another of the same name) is an unwed mother betrayed by her lover.

bourdon: The drone of a bagpipe.

burr: The circle of light around the moon. The original sense,

according to the OED, “seems to have been merely ‘circle, halo’; but

in modern use there is usually the notion of a nebulous or nimbous

disc of light enfolding the luminary.” In Moonwise, it is applied not

only to the moon, but also to candle flames and even to green nuts

“burred in their prickly husks.”

 

C

Caedmon: A seventh-century English poet and saint. The

Venerable Bede relates that when Caedmon was a laborer at the

monastery of Whitby, he left the company of his fellows one evening

in shame because they passed around a harp and he had no skill in

poetry or song. That night an angel appeared to him in his sleep and

told him to sing of Creation. His spontaneous verse, called Caedmon’s

Hymn, survives to this day.

Caldbeck: Literally “cold brook.” In our world, a village in the Northern Fells of the English Lake District.

canny: Clever, of course, but also prudent [“Best go canny, lad;

tha’st drunk five hundred year already.”], and agreeable to the eyes

[Poor awd attercap, she thought, poor Mally: thowt I’d look canny

on thy shelf, didsta?]. It also means supernatural or endowed with

occult power, as does its negation, uncanny.

cat-ice: Thin ice that would not support the weight of a cat.

Hence, dangerous ice to try to cross.

ceint: A girdle, a belt.

celadon: A pale shade of green, like that of the willow’s leaf.

According to Littré (or so says the OED), the color was named after

Celadon, the hero of Honore d’Urfé’s pastoral romance Astrée.

cere: To wrap something, especially a corpse, in a cerecloth.

[Cered in mortality, she would dwindle, mute, translating tallow

briefly into flare and reek, devoured and devouring.]

clabbery: Muddy.

clagg: To stick mud upon.

clarty: Smeared with sticky mud; dirty, nasty.

clew: A clew is both the yarn and the ball into which it’s wound;

the thread itself and its function as a guide through mazes, both

literal and metaphoric; and of course it is also a hint as to the true

nature of things.

cloud: A hill.

cludder: To crowd together.

cobbish: A cob is a spider, whence the term cobweb. Thus, cubbish means spiderlike. [The children ran, dragging their cobbish sacks like shadows, imps and urchins of the dark; their old, wild, joyful terror flying out behind, like fire from a shaken brand.]

coinstruck: Minted.

collop: A small slice of meat.

corbel: A stone bracket projecting from a wall and supporting a

ceiling, beam, or shelf. The word is ultimately derived from the Latin

corvus, raven, for its beaklike appearance.

corpse-candle: Our old friend Will-o’-the-Wisp or ignis fatuus,

the misleader and sometime drowner of travelers, often identified as

marsh gas. In Welsh superstition, a small flame foretells the death of

an infant and a large flame that of an adult.

craobh: Irish for branch or bough. Pronounced “creeve.”

Capitalized, the name of the lightborn child Ariane finds.

cratch: A crib to hold fodder, a manger.

cromlech: This word applies with equal validity to a stone circle

or to a single dolmen. In Moonwise it has the latter meaning.

crowd, crowdy: A musical instrument, a fiddle.

crumhorn: A curved wooden wind instrument.

cruck: A pail or can.

cuddy’s egg: Cuddy is a name for the hedge sparrow or dunnock,

also for the moor hen, as well as the donkey. [Sploshing in the shoals,

he halted laughing: the child had set his feathered hat sailing bravely

down the beck. It foundered, overfraught. “Hey up, yon duck’s rigged

ower. Were hatched frae cuddy’s egg.”]

 

D

Dhurry: In Moonwise, the name of a sheep dog. That it is

named after a type of Indian cotton carpet with fringes suggests it is

particularly shaggy.

donkey-stone: A scouring stone, originally used in the textile

mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire, to clean stone surfaces such as

stoops and doorsills.

dotish: Foolish.

doucely: In English, sweetly, but in Scottish, soberly or sedately.

dowce: Sweet.

draggle: To make wet or dirty or both by allowing (a cloak,

etc.) to drag through muck or wet grass; also to drag something in

the dirt.

dragonsblood: There are many substances with this name,

derived from the juices or resins of the dragon-tree, Dracaena draco;

the palm, Calamus draco; Pteroparcus draco; Croton draco, etc., etc.

Some of these substances are (or were) used by apothecaries. One was

employed to color the wooden stairs in my house. However, Gilman

employs it literally, if only in a figurative turn of phrase.

dubbin: A combination of oils and waxes used to soften and

waterproof leather.

duergar: Old Norse for dwarf.

Dulle Griet: “Mad Meg” is the old woman so fierce and

formidable that the Devil himself fears her. Pieter Bruegel the Elder

painted a marvelous picture of her harrowing Hell.

dunnock: The hedge sparrow.

dunt: To strike with a dull sound; spoken of the heart, to beat

violently. [Stiff and shy, the ghostly Ariane of years ago still fumbled

with her scarred unwieldy ranks of silver, knives and forks, her heart

dunted with amaze.]

dwine: To waste away, wither, or decline in strength.

 

E

eddered: Bound together by flexible wood worked into the top

of hedge stakes.

elfshot: A disease supposed to be caused by evil spirits; also small

stone arrow-points which the medievals, finding in their fields after

a rain, believed had been employed by malicious elves to inflict said

disease on passersby.

etenish: Like an eten, gigantic. The taxonomic distinction

between etens (or ettins) and common giants is probably lost in the

elaborations of literature. Tolkien populated his Ettenmoors with

stone giants.

eyot: A variant of “ait,” a small island.

 

F

faas: Gypsies, tinkers. This is a proper noun turned common,

like valentine or hamburger. “The Faas have long been accepted as

the ‘royal house’ of the Scottish gypsies, but it is possible that at one

time they had rivals in the Baillies.” Also, “A.D. 1756 Frances Heron

King of the Faas a sort of gypsy people living near the Borders was

buried in Jarrow churchyard.” Sylvia Townsend Warner writes of the

Queen of the Faas, and Davie Faa shows up in ballads.

fairing: A present or gift bought at a fair, and hence a

complimentary gift of any kind.

fallow: Fallow has many definitions. Among others, it can

mean a piece of plowed land; farmland that has been left uncropped;

anything that has been left fallow; or even a pale brownish or reddish

yellow color, as of sere grass or leaves. Moonwise employs all four of

these meanings.

fardel: A bundle and hence a burden.

farouche: Fierce, wild. Also, of withdrawn and shy temperament

coupled with a cranky and even sullen fey charm.

Farrander: The adjective “farrand” applied to a person means

comely, handsome, well-favored (applied to an object it means

becoming, dignified, and pleasant); so the Farrander family may be

construed to be well-beloved by their author.

fell: A hill or mountain; also a wild, elevated stretch of waste or

pasture land, a moorland ridge, a down; also a marsh or fen.

fettle: To make oneself ready, to prepare, particularly for a battle.

[“Is tha fettled? Tha mun travel light.”]

fey: Though those of us in the fantasy biz tend to use (and

overuse) this word to mean unworldly or even elfin, it originally

meant doomed or fated to die, with secondary meanings of accursed

or unlucky, and feeble, timid, and sickly. Moonwise combines the first

and second meanings to suggest madness.

flacker: To flap, flutter, throb, as do a bird’s wings.

flapdragon: Flapdragon (originally snapdragon) is an

amusement in which raisins are snatched out of burning brandy

and the flames extinguished by closing one’s mouth about them

and eating them, and also the raisin itself. Hence, the nonce-word

means to swallow something as one would a flapdragon.

Flawing: Ruffling, as a flaw (a sudden gust or blast) of wind does.

[Flawing wildly and furling, the fire dwindled to a sullen squint.]

flaycraw, flaycrow: A scarecrow and also, by association, Tom

a’ Dreams. The Flaycraw is a Cloudish constellation as well. “Flay” is

a variant of fley, to frighten.

fleer: To make a contemptuous face at; also to laugh at mockingly

or scornfully. Poul Anderson, whose first-rate fantasies were

overshadowed by his science fiction, loved this word to excess.

forby: Like most prepositions, forby is a multi-purpose word. It

can mean close by, past, near, or beside.

foxfell: A fell is the skin or hide of an animal, “but often associated

(in my mind anyway)” Gilman says, “with ‘a hill, mountain . . . a

wild, elevated stretch of waste . . . land; a moorland ridge.’ The beast

and its terrain.”

frails: A frail is a kind of basket, woven of rushes, used for

packing figs, raisins, or the like. It holds thirty to seventy-five pounds

of dried fruit.

frowst: A warm stuffy atmosphere in a room. Hence, frowsty

means unpleasant-smelling, musty.

frouncing: Gathering into plaits or wrinkles.

furbelow: A flounce; the pleated border of a petticoat or gown.

Often employed contemptuously in the plural for excessive decorations

or trimmings, especially of a lady’s dress. [The next that comes in is Awd

Nan Furbelow; she’s as ragg’d as a sheep and as black as a crow.]

 

G

gabbleratchets: Ratchets were spectral hounds, akin to the

guytrash; a pack of them was known as gabbleratchets for the gabbling

sound they made as they chased across the sky.

gan: The obsolete infinitive of go.

garth: A small piece of enclosed ground, usually by a house, used

as a yard, garden, or paddock.

gauded: Ornamented, decorated with gauds. [Or a witches’

castle, a hold for such ill-fated sheep as they’d seen lying dead and raven-worried on the moor, with rings and gauded hair.]

ghyll: A deep wooded ravine; also a mountain stream. It is derived

from the Norse gil. The variant spelling was apparently invented by

Wordsworth.

gingernuts: There are many recipes for ginger nuts. Pretty much

all they have in common is the presence of ginger.

girning: (Scots) Complaining whiningly, or else grimacing.

goatstar: Capella, in the constellation of Auriga, the

Charioteer.

goose-summer: A late and unseasonable warm spell (Indian

summer, essentially) occurring in November. “Goose summer” gave

rise to the word “gossamer,” describing the delicate strands of spider

webbing common during spells of warm, calm weather in autumn.

gowk: A cuckoo.

gramarye: Magic. Originally, grammarie meant simply booklearning.

But in the Middle Ages, learning fell into disrepute and

became associated with the black arts.

greylagged: Anserine.

grough: A deep gully in a peat moor.

grykes: Exposed limestone pavements such as those dominating

the Burren in the West of Ireland, are made up of clints and grykes.

Clints are the blocks of limestone that constitute the paving, their size

and shape directly dependent upon the frequency and pattern of the

grykes. Grykes are the fissures that separate the individual clints.

guisers: Mummers.

 

H

hag: An infernal being in female form, of course. But also a peat

bog (as in Soulsgrave Hag), a hedge, wooded enclosure, coppice or

copse (as in “a weaver of thorn-hags”), a solid bit of ground rising out

of a peat bog, and many other things as well. Its usage in [“Moon’s

hagging,” he said. “A’ but dark.”] evokes, as Gilman writes, “a

Cloudish usage: of the moon on its way from gibbous to sickle, bent

over like an old witch with a bundle of sticks on her back,” but draws

upon its meanings of to torment or terrify as a hag; to trouble as the

nightmare (Samuel Butler: “That makes ’em in the dark see Visions,

And hag themselves with Apparitions”), to fatigue, tire out, “fag”

(“I’se fair hagged off my legs”), to go wearily (Byron: “We hagg’d

along the solitary Road.”), and a touch of (obs.) a kind of light said to

appear at night on horses’ manes and men’s hair (“In my head,” Gilman

notes, “the horses are nightmares”) and (dial.) a white mist usually

accompanying frost. “Inexhaustible word, hag,” the author observes.

“The witch/frost/light/nightmare/fog/thorn/hedge complex is

pretty well entangled in my head: one thing.”

hagged: Either bewitched or haglike. In Cloud, the distinction

is moot. [“As lief gan mowing hell wi a moonbeam. And I dare not.

Hay’s hagged, right enough.”]

hagtree: A tree that is regularly coppiced for firewood.

Hallows: All Hallows Day, when Annis wakes and hunts souls.

November 1 or Samhain, depending on which calendar one uses.

Hallow means holy or sacred; but to hallow is to chase with shouts

or even to rouse to action with a sharp cry.

hallybairns: Literally, holy children.

handfast: Pledged or contracted by the joining of hands. In a

handfast marriage, the couple pledge their troth privately and decide

a year later whether to continue the marriage formally.

the Harp of Bone: This is, Gilman relates, “A constellation, a

fiddle made of a dead girl’s body, pegged with her fingerbones and

strung with her hair. It plays of itself, the same tune always: the true tale

of her death; also the Totentanz, the skeletons that dance to Death’s

fiddler.” In “Jack Daw’s Pack,” it is called the Crowd of Bone.

horse and hattock: The words of a traditional spell to make

broomsticks fly. According to Margaret Murray’s The Witch-Cult in

Western Europe, Isobell Gowdie, in a confession of witchery made

in 1662, testified,

I haid a little horse, and wold say, “Horse and Hattock, in

the Divellis name!” And than ve vold flie away, quhair ve

vold, be ewin as strawes wold flie wpon an hie-way. We will

flie lyk strawes quhan we pleas; wild-strawes and cornestrawes

wilbe horses to ws, an ve put thaim betwixt our foot, and say, “Horse and Hattok, in the Divellis name!”

The fairies also employed this phrase. In the seventeenth century,

the Laird of Duffus was walking in the fields when he heard a

whirlwind and voices crying “Horse and hattock!” Injudiciously, he

repeated the cry and found himself transported through the air by

the fairies to the French king’s wine cellar in Paris, where all drank

copiously. He was discovered there alone the next day, with a silver

cup in his hand and explanations to be made.

harled: Tangled, twisted, and confused.

haver-bread: Oat-bread.

headrail: In medieval times, a woman’s kerchief or headdress.

[“Cawd night to walk abroad in,” she said, heeling off her pattens;

and she twisted up her flagging headrail, her elbows jutting and

jerking.]

headwark: A headache.

Hecate: A Greek goddess of the moon, earth, and underworld,

associated with witchcraft and sorcery, and often depicted with the

heads of a dog, a snake, and a horse. She was the goddess of crossroads,

the “Hag of the Dead,” and was also called “the most lovely one,”

a title of the moon. In the Middle Ages, she became the goddess of

witches.

hempen hampen: Reginald Scot, in Discovery of Witchcraft

(1584) wrote,

Your grandam’s maids were wont to set a bowl of milk before

him . . . for grinding of malt or mustard and sweeping the

house at midnight. He would chafe exceedingly, if the maid

of the goodwife of the house, having compassion of his

nakedness, laid any clothes for him. For in that case he sayeth,

“What have we here? Hempen, hampen, here will I never

more tread nor stampen.”

Most likely, this is a reference to the fairy practice of stealing hempen

stalks from the field and converting them to riding horses.

King Herla: Herla, a king of the Britons, went with his men to

the underworld and when he returned, centuries had passed. Some

say that he and they are now the Wild Hunt.

Hedge-backward: From the phrase, “pulled through a hedge

backwards” to connote bedraggledness.

hob: A part of the fireplace where things are left to keep warm;

[“Could yer gi’s a hand wi sheets folding? Tea’s been stood out hob.”]

Also a shortening of hobgoblin (unless, of course, hobgoblin is a

lengthening of hob). [“There’s hearthtales telled by fires, rimes and

ballads sung o’t lightborn, though they call us out of our names, hobs

and hallybairns.”]

Hodge and Tib: The common folk, specifically common country

folk, Hodge being the familiar for Roger and Tib a shortened form

of Isabel or Tibet. “As fit . . . as Tibs rush for Toms fore-finger,” says

Master Shakespeare.

hollins: Hollies.

hoodie-crow: A crow with a grey body and black head. The

hoodie-crow has deep roots in folk mythology. The Irish for hoodie

crow, babhbh, also means a fairy and a scold. “The Hoodie Crow” is

to be found in Andrew Lang’s Lilac Fairy Book.

holly-warded: The holly is a plant with strong pre-Christian

associations. Planted near a house, Pliny tells us, it repels poison,

lightning and witchcraft. Useful stuff.

 

I

Irene: Not the goddess of peace but Princess Irene of George

MacDonald’s Curdie books.

 

J

jack-in-the-wanleaf: “Wan-” is a negating prefix, so this would

be a leafless jack-in-the-green. The jack-in-the-green is a woodland

guardian spirit, most commonly encountered in Britain in the form

of a shrubbery-covered mummer on May Day. In the winter he

presumably, like the robin, retreats into the deep wood.

jackstones: A precursor to the game of jacks. Take five pebbles

and toss them into the air, trying to catch as many as possible on the

back of the hand. If none are caught, the turn is over. If a few were caught, they are tossed back in the air from the back of the hand, and then caught in the palm. If at least one stone is caught, the rest are thrown on the ground and the game proceeds.

jauncing: Prancing.

Lang Jenny-wi’t-lantern: Will o’ the Wisp is only one of a great

family of supernatural light-bearers who lead travelers astray. Lang

Jenny is one of his more obscure relations

jennywrens, jenny wren, Jenny Wren: Jenny Wren is the

sweetheart of Robin Redbreast. Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and

Fable reports that:

Robin promised Jenny, if she would be his wife, she should

“feed on cherry-pie and drink currant-wine”; and he says:

“I’ll dress you like a goldfinch,

Or any peacock gay;

So, dearest Jen, if you’ll be mine,

Let us appoint the day.”

Jenny replies:—

“Cherry-pie is very nice,

And so is currant wine;

But I must wear my plain brown gown,

And never go too fine.”

 

K

keeping-room: The sitting room, the parlor. [Here was the

keeping-room, with its wide cracked boards and blood-of-nightingales

scabrous rug, on which she and Sylvie and Cat and Thos, Nan’s

grandchildren, had played wild scrabbling flighty games of cards]

keld: A fountain or spring. Also a deep, still part of a river.

kist: a chest or coffer

kittle: Ticklish or tickling. [Cold and ticklish perplexity: a throng

of holly-leaves, hailsharp as a whirlwind of witches, as thick as hell’s

thatch, with quickset thorn, a cross-grained wicked crowd of twigs

and knees and jostling elbows, firs prickly as frieze; and cold kittle

feathers everywhere, or eider-drifts of snow.]

kizzened: Parched or over-roasted.

knarry: knotted or gnarled.

knarl: A tangle or knot.

knop: A knob or nub, especially of an ornamental nature. [By one

and one, derisive, loving, wary, they dropped what they had brought,

from beaks and talons: sallow heavy knops of bronze, that scattered

where they fell, on ashes, rushes, slutswool, or in her standing cup.]

knowe: The Scottish and Northern English form of knoll—a

hillock, rising ground.

knucklebones: A game played with the metacarpal or metatarsal

bones of sheep, tossed up and caught in various ways. Also called

huckle-bones or dibs. Suspected by many—but who knows?—to be

derived from some ancient means of divination.

 

L

lagman: As Gilman explains, this is the hindmost, the guy

bringing up the rear, with the devil nipping at his heels. [“Come, lagman, all are folded; come, by the star I bid you sleep . . .”]

laik: To play or sport, occasionally in an amorous or obscene

sense. Children laik and so do adults; but in different manners. Also,

dialectically, to take a holiday from work or to be unemployed, and

hence in Moonwise, occasionally, used in the sense of idling or abiding.

From Old Norse.

lait: To search for or seek after.

laithe: A type of barn. Gilman notes, “The Brontës use that one.

In Yorkshire, out back of beyond: you can’t get a wain up those hills,

and it’s just too difficult to drag the hay to the farmstead, sledge by

sledge, they have field barns.”

Langneb: “Long-nose,” an epithet name for Tom a’ Dreams.

lappet: A streamer or loose piece of cloth hanging from any kind

of headwear.

law: In Yorkshire, a roundish hill, also a word for a monumental

tumulus, a cairn of stones.

lief: Depending on the context, either willingly or dear.

ligging: Lying. “By t’water I were, all my lone, ligging i’t leaves

and laiking, cracking nuts.”

Lightfast Kindling: Candlemas.

Long Meg: Long Meg and her Daughters is the name of the third

largest stone circle in England, after Avebury and Stanton Drew. The

largest of its outlying stones is Long Meg, the “mother stone.”

lowse: Lose.

lullayed: Lullabyed.

lyke: A corpse. A lyke-wake is the watch kept over a dead body.

Lyonesse: The legendary land, emblematic of all things lost

and yearned after, which sank beneath the sea, destroying Merlin’s

army after the death of King Arthur. The westernmost kingdom of

Arthur’s realm, it originally joined Cornwall with the Isles of Scilly.

On the day when Arthur returns, Lyonesse shall rise again from

beneath the waters.

 

M

Mad Maudlin: “Mad Maudlin’s Search for Her Tom of Bedlam”

was published 1720 by Thomas D’Urfey in Pills to Purge Melancholy.

It begins:

To find my Tom of Bedlam

Ten thousand years I’ll travel,

Mad Maudlin goes on dirty toes

To save her shoe from gravel.

Chorus: Still I sing,

Bonny boys, bonny mad boys,

Bedlam boys are bonny,

For they all go bare and they live by the air,

And they want no drink nor money.

maggot: A maggot is not only the larva of a fly but also an odd

whim or notion. A head may be as maggoty as a fruit, but with ideas

rather than insects.

mandrake, mandragora: The mandrake, or mandragora, is

an actual plant used for various medical purposes in classical and

Medieval times, due to its high levels of scopalamine, mandragorin, and

hyosciamine. Because the root was roughly homuncular in form, the

folkloric belief arose that the root screamed when it was pulled from the

ground and that the sound of that scream could deafen or even kill its

auditor. Gilman appears to employ mandrake when evoking its mythical

properties, and mandragora when referring to the actual plant.

mawks: Maggots. Hence, mawky means maggoty.

Mawk-town Strutters’ Ball: A play upon the “Darktown

Strutters’ Ball,” one of earliest jazz songs to become a standard. The

version recorded in 1917 by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band may

be the first commercial jazz recording.

missel-thrush: Turdus viscivorus. A common member of the

thrush family found in open woods and cultivated land all over

Europe. Its diet includes insects, worms and berries. A great number

of missel thrushes feeding upon a hawthorn foretells a harsh winter.

mollock: An alteration of “morlock,” to frolic, dance, cavort, or

play. Specifically to engage in sexual play.

mow: To make a wry face.

moonbow: Though less common than solar rainbows, a bright

and full moon in a dark sky can produce a moonbow if the moon is

less than 42o high and it’s raining on the opposite horizon. Because it

is rarely strong enough to activate the color receptors in human eyes,

the moonbow almost always appears white.

 

N

neave: Var. of “nieve,” a clenched hand, a fist.

noll: The head, and specifically the crown of the head.

numen: A divine power or spirit, a numinous creature.

 

O

oatstraw pipe: Musical, rather than for tobacco. This may come

from a poem by Edward Taylor:

A shadow, Lord, not such as types show here

Nor such as Titerus his broad Beech made

In which he with his Oat straw pipe’t there

A Forrest march, such his dark blackish trade.

ogham: Ogham is a twenty-five-character alphabet used for stone

and wood inscriptions in Celtic lands, a group of twenty sacred trees

that give names to those letters, a calendar of thirteen months named

for some of those trees, and a system of divination in Celtic paganism

that may or may not be related to the runic alphabet.

Orion: The Cloudish Orion, Gilman writes, is called by many

names: the Hanged Lad in Hallows and the Fiddler at Lightfast,

when he plays for the guisers and the starry hey to dance. (In a ballad,

Jack Orion is a fiddler “who could fiddle the milk from a maiden’s

breast”; he played the lord asleep to bed his lady, but his knavish boy

forestalled him: for which he hanged the boy.) In spring, he is the

Flaycraw, who wards the seeded sky; and in summer, the Sheaf, whose

binding is a belt of stars.

owled after: To hunt as the owl does, silently, stealthily, and with

a sudden swoop upon the prey.

 

P

pace-eggs: Pace-eggs are an ancient Lancashire custom. The

eggs are wrapped in onion skins and boiled, giving them a mottled

golden color, for Easter.

pancheon: A wide earthenware bowl or vessel, larger at the top

than the bottom, most commonly used for setting milk in to separate

out the cream. But of course, all kitchen tools are put to multiple

purposes.

parkin: A kind of gingerbread made from oatmeal and treacle.

patten: A kind of overshoe or sandal, consisting of a wooden sole

with a leather loop around the instep attached to an oval iron ring

or the like, to raise the wearer’s feet out of the mud or wet. Mally’s

pattens are of course made of cold iron.

Phebe: See Silvius.

Phoebe: The feminine form of the Greek work for bright or

radiant, and hence the name for Artemis or Diana in her persona as

goddess of the moon; the moon personified. Phoebus is of course

the god of the sun.

pibrochs: A series of variations for the bagpipe, primarily martial

but also dirges.

pinchbeck: An alloy of zinc and copper which makes a fair

imitation of gold, and is used in making cheap jewelry, watches,

and the like. It was named for its inventor, Christopher Pinchbeck

(1670–1732), a watch- and toy-maker of Fleet Street, London. The

term has since been extended to apply to all substitutes for gold.

pluff: To blow out or swell up, to puff. [There was a criss-crossing of

scarves and pairing of great ill-assorted hollow boots that dropped and

pluffed at every step, and a fierce brief skirmish over the tinker’s hat.]

poddish: Pottage or porridge.

Pyewackett: A traditional name for a witch’s feline familiar.

Matthew Hopkins, the self-styled Witch-Finder General of Essex

and author of The Discovery of Witches, declared that Pyewackett was

a name “no mortal could invent.”

pyke: to peck

 

Q

quain: A variant of quoin, a corner-stone or angle-stone.

[There were fans of cloud, pale as Thule or louring, and quains

of broken stone, of bronze-veined greyish-black, all splashed with

drops of crimson; it was bound with Lapland witches’ knots, that

rein the wind.] Hence quaining, the stonework making up the

angle in a wall.

quern: A small hand-mill for grinding corn, made up of two

stones. [Somewhere, everywhere, dull and dreadful, was a roaring, a

rumor of the querns of giants, grinding bones.]

quickset: A hedge, particularly of whitethorn, created by setting

slips or cuttings in the ground to grow.

 

R

Rach: Proper name. Perhaps derived from Middle High German

rach “rough” or “stiff,” a nickname for someone affected by hard

work. [Rach was not the attendant spirit of the bath, but an older

child, mole-dark and greyer eyed, with a knotted dangling red ribbon

clenched in a very skimpy lock of hair.]

rache-hound: A hunting dog which tracks its prey by smell.

rade: Variant of “ride,” meaning a group or procession of

horsemen. [They were good mugs, a little crazed, but handpainted:

Titania and her green rade, horsed upon swift-running hares; and the

babes in the wood, dying rosily beneath their coverlet of birds.]

ramp: To rush about in a wild and excited manner.

rant: In dialect, “to be jovial, boisterous, uproariously gay or

merry; to lead a gay or dissolute life; also, to sing loudly” [OED] or

to dance.

rantipole: in a romping, rude, or noisy fashion; In the canting

tongue, “to ride rantipole” means to jig it wench uppermost, the

dragon on St. George.

ratted: Rutted. [Turning from the ratted lane, they went up

onto the bare rigg behind the farm, scrunching and backsliding on

the sheep-gnawed brittle grass. ]

rattlebag: A rattle in the form of a bag. By transference,

something rattling or reckless. [Old rattlebag, old scarecrow, rags

and bones.]

rede: As a noun, counsel or advice. As a verb, to counsel or

advise.

reet: A variant of right. [“Forby you’re reet mucky fort

house.”]

Rianty: Riant means cheerful or gay. It seems unlikely that

Ariane’s nickname in Cloudlaw is anything less than meaningful.

riddle: Both the Sphinx’s enigma and a kitchen sieve. The latter

meaning is why we say that something is “riddled with holes.”

rigg: A ridge.

riving: Tearing at or asunder.

roke: Steam, smoke, vapor, fog, mist, drizzling rain—which is to

say that a roke is none of these things but their visual impression.

rolag: A roll of cotton or wool fibers prepared for spinning. [Her

wolf-toothed carding combs lay by the hearth, ensnarled with rolags

of stormcloud.] Capitalized, it is the name of one of Maire’s cats.

roof-tree: A ridgepole.

Childe Rowland: Cunningly enough, Rowland’s name

(“Childe” is an archaic term for knight) evokes two separate

poems in Moonwise, first, by proximity to that of Burd Ellen, his

sister, to the ballad “Childe Rowland” and second, by mention

of his tower to Robert Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark

Tower Came.”

rune: Both a riddle and a running onward, a flow, such as a rune

of blood or a rune of stars: which is their rise and turning.

runestave: A runic letter or symbol. Not to be confused with

a runestaff.

rush-candle, rushdip: A dipped candle with a rush for its wick.

The common Candle Rush grows in wet meadows, and along brooks

and ponds, and has a round, green stem filled with a soft, white pith.

The outer skin is peeled and the center dried and then dipped in a

boiling mixture of saved household fats and grease, with beeswax or

mutton suet added to the mixture if available. When skillfully made

a rush candle would last for hours and burn with a clear light. Hence,

rushlight, rushlit.

Tom Rynosseros: Tom O’ Bedlam’s characterization of himself

as a fierce and dangerous fellow in “Tom O’Bedlam’s Song.”

 

S

sadcake: So called because the cake falls during baking and comes

out looking flat and “sad.” Here’s an untested recipe:

Beat 4 eggs and 2 1/4 cups packed brown sugar until

creamy.

Add 2 cups biscuit mix, 1 cup flaked coconut, 1 cup

chopped pecans, and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, and mix

thoroughly.

Pour into a greased and floured pan. Bake in a preheated

oven at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes. Let cool before

cutting.

sain: To make the sign of the cross, and hence to bless.

sallowed: Grown sallow; turned a sickly yellow color.

saltbox: The saltbox, a frame house two stories high in front and

one in back with an uneven pitched roof, is quintessential vernacular

New England architecture. [Illyria, caught spare and sailing into light,

was a saltbox, slanted house among tall trees and a hodge-podge of

sheds.]

sark : Shirt.

scarry: Depending on its context, covered with scars, rocky and

precipitous, or thin and meager.

scried: Saw images in crystal, water, or the like, of the future or

of distant affairs. But also, simply, descried or perceived. It may not be

entirely coincidental that a scry is, like a riddle, a kind of sieve.

scutter: To move hastily, with much fuss and bustle. [He bent

toward Craobh, and all his throng of shadows swaled and scuttered,

goblin-beaked and backed, and etenish.]

seely: Holy or right. Unseely, therefore, means unholy, evil, or

unnatural

Shawn: A musical instrument, a woodwind.

Silvius: A young shepherd in love with the disdainful Phoebe in

Shakespeare’s As You Like It. [Their bodies were exalted by their act,

their mooncurved cheeks and chins turned silver, their faces and their

flying hair to gold; each Phebe and her Silvius to sun and moon.]

sithe: To sigh. It is perhaps a coincidence that a sithe is also a

sieve.

skirring : Sliding or skating swiftly.

skirret: Sium sisarum, a species of water parsnip, formerly much

cultivated in Europe for its tubers.

slather: This appears to be a back-construction from slathery,

which means slippery. [They stood all of a row like mummers, in the

cloudy raw of winter, in the goose-green slather of the yard.]

slutswool: A slut was originally nothing more than a slovenly

housekeeper. Hence the term “slutswool” for what we now call dust

bunnies.

smallpipes: A Northumbrian instrument, bellows-driven

bagpipes essentially, with distinctive features that make it much

beloved by its advocates.

sneck: The latch of a door or gate. As a verb, to latch.

spinney: A small wood or copse, especially one planted or

maintained for sheltering game birds.

splodge: A thick, heavy splotch, a dollop.

springe: A snare for catching small game.

squinny: To squint, to peer.

stane: Stone (dial.). The Hill o’ Many Stanes in the Scottish

highlands, has some 250 neolithic standing stones, not a one of them

taller than your knee.

strake: To whet. [He straked his knife against the stones, trying

its edge, and let it fall.]

stravage: To wander about aimlessly.

stridor: A harsh, grating, or creaking sound.

sunwise: Clockwise, anti-widdershins. But also, in a separate

usage, wise in the ways of the sun.

swale: To move or sway up and down or from side to side. But

also to be consumed with fire, and specifically of a candle, to melt

away, to gutter. So that the answer to the first half of the riddle

Malykorne poses to Ariane (“What’s wick i’t shadows? Swale-anddie.

What’s sharper nor thorn? Sword i’t leaves. See tha don’t cut

thysen”) is a candle, whose flame dances as it dies and which is both

wick/quick/living and tallow around a bit of rush or flax.

syne: Like many small and simple words, syne has many

meanings. The two employed in Moonwise are “directly after” and

“long time later.”

 

T

tabor: A small and shallow hand-held drum.

tatterwag: Defined by Gilman as: “A fluttering tatter or rag;

the tinker or trollop or beggar wearing same, or turning into them.

Probably, in my private iconography, with reference to autumnal

trees.”

teind: Literally, a tenth. Among Christians, the portion of one’s

income it is thought proper to give to one’s church. Hence, a spiritual

offering of any kind.

thole: To endure, bear, or suffer.

thrang: A variant of throng [a thrang of birds] or thronged [The

nuts were brown and ripe; they clustered, thrang as stars] but also

meaning busy as well [Mally went owling about her hovel, thrang at

her obscurer wintry tasks]. “She’s thrang as Throp’s wife” is idiomatic

for being over-ears in work.

thrawed: Twisted, turned awry.

thrawn: Crooked or misshapen.

thruff: Through.

Thule: The ancient Greek and Roman name for the uttermost

northern land in the world. Though it has been variously identified

with Iceland, the Shetlands, and so on, its true identity is uncertain,

and it may in fact be mythological. [There were fans of cloud, pale

as Thule or louring, and quains of broken stone, of bronze-veined

greyish-black, all splashed with drops of crimson; it was bound with

Lapland witches’ knots, that rein the wind.]

Tib’s eve: Of St. Tib’s Eve, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and

Fable says, “Never. A corruption of St. Ubes. There is no such saint

in the calendar as St. Ubes, and therefore her eve falls on the “Greek

Kalends” (q.v.), neither before Christmas Day nor after it.”

Tib’s Maggot: A maggot is a whimsy and it is in this sense that

it enters into the titles of many dance tunes. This particular title is of

Gilman’s own invention.

Timour the Tartar: This is taken from a British folk song of the

same name. Timour was none other than Tamburlaine.

tisane: An herbal infusion; a medicinal tea.

touse: To tussle, or to worry at.

tumbril: A cart so constructed that the body tilts backwards to

empty out the load; nowadays chiefly identified as the vehicle that

served Lady Guillotine.

tup: A male sheep, a ram, from whence come the verb for

fornication and that for placing horns on a cuckold’s head.

 

U

un-: In Moonwise the negative prefix is featured in more

than two hundred seventy separate words and variants (unable,

unadorned, unafraid, unamazed, unassailable, unattended,

u n aw a r e , u nb a l a nc e d , u nb a ne f u l , u nb a r r e d , u nb e i ng ,

unbidden, unbind, unbinding, un-unbinding, unbirth, unblind,

unblinding, unbodied, unbraided, unbranched, unbreaking,

unbroken, unbrooched, unburning, unborn, unborne, unbound,

unbowered, uncalled, uncanny, uncarved, uncaught, uncertain,

uncertainly, unchance, unchancy, unchanged, unchanging,

unch ild, unch ild ing, unch ild like, uncircled, unclenched ,

u ncloa ked, u nclose, u nclosed, u ncloud ish, u ncloud i ng,

unCloudish, uncolored, uncombed, unconcerned, unconsciously,

u nconsented, u nconsidered, u nconsumed, u nconsum i ng,

u nconstel lat i ng, u ncor r upted, u ncor r upt i ng, u ncoveted,

uncreated, uncreating, uncrumpling, uncurtained, uncrystal,

uncurl, uncurled, uncurtained, undanced, undark, undarkly,

undarkfast, undead, undesiring, undid, undo, undone, undoing,

undreamlike, undreaming, undying, unearthed, unearthing,

unearthly, unearthliness, unease, uneasy, unencumbered,

unending, unendurable, unenskied, unentangled, unestranged,

unexpectedly, unfallen, unfamiliar, unfast, unfelled, unfestive,

u n f l awe d , u n fo c u s e d , u n fold i ng , u n folde d , u n fo nd l y,

unforeseeing, unfull, ungarlanded, ungainly. unglazed, unglazen,

unglinty, unglutted, ungraved, ungreen, unhallowed, unhallows,

unhappily, unharvest, unheard, unheavens, unheeded, unheeding,

unhinged, unholding, unholy, unhooked, unhorned, unhorsed,

unidyllic, unimpassioned, unirised, unislanded, unjudging,

unkempt, unkindling, unknotting, unknowing, unknown,

unlaired, unleaf, unleapt, unleaving, Unlethe, unlidded, unlight,

unlightborn, unlightfast, unlight ning, unlike, unlookedfor,

unloosing, unmade, unmantled, unmoon, unmoonwise,

unmoving, unmoved, unnamed, unnaming, unnumbered,

unnuminous, unpatterned, unpatterning, unpinned, unplayed,

unpleat ing, unpossessed, unquenched, unquiet, unrailed,

unravel, unravelled, unravelling, unravelment, unread, unreal,

unreason, unrecallable, unregarded, unregretful, unremorseful,

unresolved, unrestful, unreversed, unriddle, unriddling, unrimy,

unripe, unrooted, unrucked, unruefully, unsalt, unscathed,

u nseei ng, u nseely, u nseen, u nseen foreei ng, u nseizi ng,

unshadow, unshadow y, unshadowed, unsha ken, unshells,

unshrouding, unsight, unsilvering, unskein, unskied, unsleeping,

unsought, unsoul, unsouled, unsorting, unsought, unspeaking,

unspell, unspelled, unspells, unspelling, unspelt, unspilled,

unsprung, unstarred, unstarry, unsteadily, unsteady, unstony,

unstrangely, unsummoned, unsunwise, unsure, unsuspecting,

unswept, untaken, untelled, unthinking, untold, untrampled,

untranscended, unturned, unturning, unvengeful, unvented,

unvexed, unvoiced, unwadded, unwadding, unwaking, unwaked,

unwa lk ing, unwa lled, unwa ning, unwa nt ing, unwa rd ing,

unwary, unwearied, unweaving, unwedding, unwieldy, unwilling,

unwilled, unwindowed, unwinged, uwink ing, unwitched,

unwithering, unwitting, unwittingly, unwondering, unwood,

and unwove) and while some of these were surely unavoidable in

an English-language novel, taken together they suggest that in

Cloud a thing’s negation is as real as the thing itself.

urchin: A hedgehog

Urne Burial: The full title of Sir Thomas Browne’s book is

Hydriotaphia, Urne-burial: Or, A Discourse of the Sepulchral Urnes

lately found in Norfolk. Together with the Garden of Cyrus, or the

Quincuncial Lozenge, or Net-work Plantations of the Ancients,

Artificially, Naturally, Mystically, considered. With Sundry

Observations. The discovery of Bronze Age burial urns in Norfolk

during the seventeenth century prompted Browne to meditate on the

burial customs of ancient races and on the inevitability of death and

led to this famously difficult but rewarding book.

 

V

Vallombrosa: From Milton’s Paradise Lost, I. 303ff, wherein

Lucifer:

stood and called

His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced

Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks

In Vallombrosa.

The name means “shady valley” in Italian, and echoes “valley of the

shadow of death” in Psalm 23. Gilman notes, “Rather a portentous

chord for a basket of darning, which is the joke of it; but remember

that Mally’s washing is souls. Clothwork—weaving, washing, ironing,

or mending—tends to be magic in my stories. All part of the numinous

commonplace.” Also that, “the Milton goes with the glances at Dante:

‘selva oscura’ / Sylvie / unselving.” [Mrs. Owlund and Mrs. Woodfall

were darning stockings, thick as leaves in Vallombrosa, with the basket

set between them.]

 

W

waft: An apparition or wraith.

waking: An essential pun here, both arising from sleep and

mourning the day. Waking wood means both to bring the wood to

consciousness and (because “wood” also means “mad”) waking up

insane. Gilman explains: “Tom a’ Cloud was told to ‘wake wood.’

That is, to rouse himself, to rise up mad. Another essential pun. To

wake wood is to call from sleep the Wood Above, the Unleaving: the

pack of tales that is Cloud. It is also to keep watch, to shepherd it; and

also to mourn its passing. His dream is this world.”

wakerife: Indisposed to sleep, wakeful, vigilant. [“Peace, hawd

thy clack. Tha’s like a cat I’ pattens, back and forth. Gan spin, an

tha’s wakerife, but let be.”]

St. Walpurgis: An eighth-century English missionary to

Germany and abbess of a Benedictine nunnery which she founded.

Because her feast day is May First (“Walpurgisnacht”), the same as a

heathen festival marking the beginning of summer, she has become

associated with witchcraft and is regarded as the protectress against

magic arts. [But that was all at first, when caught, baffled, she had

thumbed through the ruined palimpsest of tape, hearing islands

in unmeaning tumult: a grand daemonic St. Walpurgis station,

beneath the iron and the veniced glass of northern lights; a stridor

and a gibbering—light leaves—of spectral geese, of daws—and

catch—a cry of gabbleratchets; witches’ sabbats, hurling backward

on the whirlwind—turn—and raving; tumbrils of apocalypse, and

the rancor of the horns.]

wanleaf: Leafless.

wan-wood: The prefix wan- means without. Ariane’s fugitive

thought, “Though worlds of wan-wood leafmeal lie” is taken from Gerard

Manley Hopkins’s “Spring and Fall,” dedicated to a young child:

MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves, líke the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Áh! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

wark: Dialect for work.

weal: Wealth, riches. [It was a heron-grey morning, in the

backend of the year; cold and bright the springs of water ran, and

wealed the moor with silver.]

welter: As a noun, a state of confusion, disorganization, or

turmoil. As a verb, to roll or twist the body, to turn, writhe, or

tumble about.

wethers: Male sheep, particularly gelded rams.

wherret: To give a blow or slap to. [Mally wiped her moonblank

rimy glasses on one of her petticoats, perched them on

again askew, and unrucked her skins, wherreting them with the

whirr and flap of sparrows in the dust.]

whinnymoor: John Aubrey, he of the Brief Lives, wrote: “The

belief in Yorkshire was amongst the vulgar (perhaps is in part still) that

after the person’s death the soule went over Whinny-Moore . . .”

the Abbess of Whitby: St. Hilda presided over the double

monastery (men and women lived in adjoining quarters) of Whitby.

The herdsman Caedmon was one of her subjects.

windeye, wind door: Window.

wind-egg, windegg: An imperfect or sterile egg, from the

popular superstition that such an egg was fathered by the wind. Thus,

an enterprise with little chance of success.

winsey: A cotton and wool mix cloth resembling linsey.

woodwose: A wild man of the wood.

wraprascal coat: A long-obsolete type of coarse overcoat with

a delightful name.

“Wreck of the Deutschland”: A poem by Gerard Manley

Hopkins, dedicated “To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns

exiles by the Falk Laws drowned between midnight and morning of

Dec. 7th. 1875.”

wren: A Cloudish constellation, and a power as well. Of this bird,

Gilman writes: “The wren is the winter king, the sun that dies and is

reborn at solstice. So they say. The wren is sacrosanct, tabu: it is the

blackest of bad luck to do him harm. But at the turning of the year

he must be hunted, caught, and killed. His corpse is then displayed

with pomp, ‘in ribbons so rare,’ and borne from door to door with

the bidding, ‘Please to see the king.’ (In Ireland, boys have been

known to take round a potato stuck with feathers.) For their pains,

the wren boys are given ale or coins or cakes: the sort of offerings

one gives the dead.”

wried: The past tense of “wry,” in the sense of contorting one’s

features, making a face.

writhen: Either subjected to writhing, twisted out of shape, or

plaited, twined, convoluted or coiled. The word is used in both senses

in Moonwise.

wrying: Turning aside from the correct course, twisting,

bending. [Stubbornly, with all her wiry strength, she bent the wrying

ends together, warping, sliding, biting deep into her hands.]

wuther: A variant on “whither,” to tremble, shake, quiver, or to

make a rushing noise, to whizz, to bluster and rage, as a wind. This

is the derivation of the title of Wuthering Heights.

wyrm: A worm, in Old English, was any serpent, snake, reptile,

or dragon, though the title has since devolved upon their lowly, soilcreating

cousin. Beowulf died of wounds incurred fighting a wyrm.

Michael Swanwick lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.