Learning New Words with Lymond: F is for Fustic

Welcome back to Learning New Words with Lymond, a series of blog posts about word choice and storytelling in the works of Dorothy Dunnett, an internationally beloved historical novelist. Like Ellen Kushner, when I first read the Lymond Chronicles, my immediate reaction was "How did she just do that?"

Dorothy Dunnett, The Game of Kings

This project attempts to answer this question by analyzing Dunnett's use of rare and obscure words. What do these words mean in context? What do they reveal (or conceal) about character and plot? We continue our journey through The Game of Kings with words beginning with the letter 'f'...

feal 

"All right, but remember, although you've bought the rights of fuel, feal, and divot, I shan't be lying here like an upset sheep forever." p. 461 

Dunnett's recondite vocabulary functions like a camera obscura of the past: through the tiny hole of one now-obsolete word, we get a shadow-picture how and why that word was once common. At first sight, feal looks at first like it might simply be a misprint. It's not. Feal can be a noun, meaning a feudal tenant or vassal, or a payment to a feudal lord; an adjective, meaning faithful or constant; or a verb meaning to hide or conceal. And that's not getting into the possibilities that feal is, in older spellings of English, another way to write feel, fall, or fail! This particular sentence, spoken by Lymond to his brother Richard, has already come up once before, when I looked up the word divot, thinking that this had to be a new-to-me use of that word. And it was. "Feal and divot" comes from Scottish law: it is "a rural servitude, importing a right in the proprietor of the dominant tenement to cut and remove turf for fences or for thatching or covering houses or the like purposes, within the dominant lands." (OED).

 

fenestration

Something--hardly laughter--glimmered in the heavy eyes. "Neither do I. But the fenestration seems fairly extensive." p. 438 

The first thing that comes to mind when I see the word "fenestration" is the Defenestration of Prague, which involved the people of Bohemia tossing Habsburg officials out a window into a refuse-choked moat for failing to keep their promises. According to the dictionary, it can refer both to "the arrangement of windows in a building," and also "the process of becoming perforated; the formation of small holes." (OED) The first attested use of fenestration is nineteenth century, but since the word comes directly from the Latin word for window, fenestra, it's not inconceivable that it was in use earlier. I think I've looked up more words from these scenes where Richard Crawford tends his brother than any other part of the book--Dunnett does absolutely fascinating things with subtle revelations of character through language. "My injuries seem fairly extensive" and "the fenestration seems fairly extensive" are the statements of two very different men.

flamens

Lymond looked over his shoulder and back. "Spaniard? Behold," he quoted sadly, "my countenance and my colour. It's only Sweet Cicely awaiting the bees, and blushing in young modesty like a seraphim, two wings over the eyes, and the other four pinned with some some damnably hard knots: God save Flamens and keep all the knotless from high winds and short memories." p. 316 

Lymond, in temporary captivity to a group of Englishmen whom he tricked and soundly humiliated by pretending to be Spanish, proceeds to drive them to distraction by making ceaseless, subtle fun of them. He quotes King Herod's speech from the fifteenth- century Coventry Nativity play:

Behold my countenance and my colour,
Brighter than the sun in the middle of the day!
Where can you have a more greater succour,
Than to behold my person that is so gay;
My falchion and my fashion with my gorgeous array?

The reference to Sweet Cicely is partially explained by the site of Lymond's captivity--a kitchen garden; in Isaiah 6:2 the seraphim in cover their feet and faces with their wings and fly with the third set. In Roman culture, a Flamen is a priest of a god. Surely in this case, Lymond propitiates Momus, the god of ridicule, mentioned on the previous page. The rest of his  mockery is unfortunately lost on me; as far as I can tell from skimming the Spanish episode (pp 111-7, if you want to see for yourself), there is nothing that would make these particular words into the carefully aimed insult they undoubtedly are. If either the penultimate (God save Flamens) or final clause (keep all the knotless from high winds and short memories) are references to literature, they have thus far escaped me. Knotless, in any event, means "like a thread without knots, smoothly, without check or hindrance," in other words, the opposite of how Lymond's hapless opponents' plans have gone. (OED)

fleshers

The fleshers and brewers and smiths and weavers and skinners and saddlers and salters and cappers and masons and cutlers and fletchers and plasterers and armourers and porters and water carriers, and the one-eye man who had called at Bogle House selling fumigating pans. p. 138

A flesher is a Scottish word for a butcher. (OED) Names of historical occupations are such an evocative window into how people lived.

fossorial

But whatever happens, you have from these fossorial depths my unstinted gratitude and fondest applause. p. 304

A synonym for burrowing, used to describe an animal that burrows or is capable of doing so. Lymond's admiration and gratitude for the help of Christian Stewart, to whom he is speaking, goes a long way down.

frangible

A frangible and archaic courtesy reigned at Flaw Valleys. p. 378 

Frangible is a word I've seen before but have trouble remembering because it doesn't sound at all like its meaning, which is breakable, or capable of being broken; it can be used as an adjective or a noun. I was delighted to discover that it's an old word, dating back to at least the late fifteenth century, with roots in Old French. (OED) Not a load-bearing word, since the sentence would have much the same flavour if it were "A fragile and archaic courtesy reigned at Flaw Valleys," although breakable (frangible) is subtly different from easily broken (fragile). The sentence does start to change into something very different if one plays with alternatives for "archaic." A fragile and old-fashioned courtesy reigned at Flaw Valleys is something out of a comedy of manners, which this is decidedly not.

froissèes

The men watching, unable to breathe, heard the click and clash and slither of contes, froissées, beating and binding: saw first one man and then the other bring his art to the pitch of freeing his blade for the ultimate perfection, only to bow before the other's defence. p. 419

While froissées is the feminine past participle of the French verb froisser, which can mean "to take offence, to be hurt" or "to crumple or crease," it is clearly has another meaning here. As happened when I looked up contes, I am unable to identify the precise technique described--no joy from my beloved Oxford English Dictionary or a damnably AI-infested Google search. A quick word search of Mahon's English translation of L'Abbat's The Art of Fencing, or, the Use of the Small Sword (1735) and George Silver's Paradoxes of Defence (1599) turns up neither term. However, the Wikipedia article on martial arts manuals shows that there was a whole industry of seventeenth century Scottish fencing manuals. These are of course, a century too recent, but one assumes Dunnett had the linguistic facility and curiosity to consult early modern fechtbücher (fight books) in the original. Digging into them all goes beyond the scope of these posts, but hopefully, at some point, someone who is both a Dunnett fan and a practitioner of historic martial arts will investigate. In the meantime, one need not be able to follow the precise technical terminology of the duel between the Crawford brothers to appreciate the story it tells.

fustic

Sir Robert Bowes straightened, nodded, and surveyed the Master at leisure from fustic head to silver spurs. He smiled. "Is this the fellow?" p. 314

Fustic refers to a yellow dye made from the wood of either the Venetian sumac (Rhus cotinus) or Cladrastis (Chlorophora, Maclura) tinctoria. Those who are deep into their Dunnett will be delighted to learn that one of the earliest published uses of the word is by royal Latin tutor Roger Ascham in Toxophilus, the schole of shootinge (1545). (OED) We are told a few times that Lymond is very blond; Bill's Dunnett Blog has a recent post which gathers a number of physical descriptions of the character. Impossible that anything male should be as fair as that, memory whispers; there is a more than superficial resemblance between Lymond and Peter Wimsey. It interests me how often Dunnett uses action to described character, and how selectively she uses details of physical appearance. Descriptions of how characters speak are perhaps rarest of all. Without being told anything, we are shown that Bowes thinks he has the upper hand.

Spoiler: he doesn't.

A Note on Links

Because I work at a university, I have access to the subscription version of Oxford English Dictionary, and indeed the luxury of the online Oxford Reference series at my fingertips. As a matter of principle, I try to use and link to material that anyone can access when writing for public audiences. However, the OED has features--like the ability to explore the etymology, frequency, history of use, and meanings of words, that free online dictionaries simply don't have. Thus, I quote relevant bits of entries, and include open access links wherever possible, so that anyone who wants to do so can retrace my steps for themselves.