Learning New Words with Lymond: G is for Gimcrack

"Ever since I first read them in college, as a writer I've been in dialogue with the Lymond books," Kushner says. They captured her imagination from the beginning: "As I read, I kept trying to figure out, 'How did she just do that?' I learned a lot." ~ "All the Writers You Love Probably Love Dorothy Dunnett," Alyssa Dawn Johnson, NPR

Welcome back to another chapter of Learning New Words With Lymond, my attempt to understand and appreciate the intersection of word choice and character development in the work of the Scottish novelist Dorothy Dunnett. Earlier this year, I reread her first novel, The Game of Kings, and wrote down the many words and references I wanted to look up; put them in alphabetical order; and began the process of analyzing and enjoying how Dunnett does what she does with language.

The Trial of Gilles de Rais, BNF Latin 17663 (Wikimedia Commons)

We continue our journey with words beginning with the letter 'g'...

galloon

"Mine all have whole necks, and go to bed with me for joy, not for lions on their quarterings and galloon on their underwear." p. 276

A galloon is "a kind of narrow, close-woven ribbon or braid, of gold, silver, or silk thread, used for trimming articles of apparel; a trimming of this material." (OED) The confrontation between Lymond and Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, serves to illustrate magnificently, mostly through dialogue, their previous history and respective characters. 

gib-cat

"--But even a gib-cat has claws," said Lymond, returning the smile and answering the thought. "Where is Samuel Harvey?" p. 314 

A gib-cat is a neutered tomcat or a term of abuse for an older woman; the former is clearly what is meant here. (OED; see also the entry The Dorothy Dunnett Companion, vol 1.) In  Lymond's adversaries---here Sir Robert Bowes and George Douglas--ignore the threat of his claws, and are deservingly and entertainingly shredded over the succeeding pages.

Gilles de Rais

I'm used to being taken for a cross between Gilles de Rais and a sort of international exchange in young mammals, but I draw the line somewhere. p. 348 

Gilles de Rais (c. 1405-1440) features in neither volume of The Dorothy Dunnett Companion. Born into a powerful Breton family, he became Marshall of France and fought alongside Joan of Arc. Accused of summoning demons and convicted of raping and murdering over a hundred children, he was executed in 1440. Alongside that, "international trade in young mammals," is a bit of a damp squib, aside from being a glaring anachronism: mammalia isn't used as a zoological classification until the eighteenth century; mammal wanders into the dictionary in the nineteenth; and international trade in young animals would not then have been the moral outrage it is today. Lymond is speaking figuratively, not literally; since his audience is the hapless Will Scott, he could well be referring to his attempt to capture Margaret Douglas's son and use him as a bargaining chip. To say nothing of the other exchanges of hostages going on in Part 3, Chapter 2. Layers within layers!

gimcrack

"In a day of gimcrack cannibalism and snivelling atrocities, we have now touched rock bottom. God send," pursued the voice as Scott, descending, made his way to a trestle by the well, "God send that somebody else is about to flay the gristle from your inestimable backbone." p. 348

A gimcrack is either a "a fanciful notion; also, a ‘dodge’, underhand design;" a knicknack or ornament or insubstantial thing; a fop, especially a female one (noun); or as an adjective "trivial, worthless; showy but unsubstantial; trumpery." (OED) Lymond, in taking in Will Scott and attempting to teach him, runs a risk most teachers will ruefully recognise: a pupil who learns some unintended lessons. Will is a delightful point of view character and this scene in the cellar at Threave is a crucial turning point for him and for us as readers in discovering who Lymond is and what he really wants. And it's a delightful example of Lymond's ability to scourge with words alone.

girasol

There was a gleam of steel: a solitary, agonized, breathless moment in which the irony of the thing struck him like a cannon ball, and then the circle of dark heads above him opened out like a girasol to the sun. p. 476

A girasol can be either a fire opal or a sixteenth-century name for a sunflower, from an Italian portmanteau of the word girare (to turn) and sole (sun). (OED) If the repetition of sounds in "like a sunflower to the sun" bothers you (it wouldn't have bothered late Latin poets, who made an Olympic sport of alliteration and assonance), and "like a flower to the sun" feels to hackneyed and overused, try "like a girasol to the sun" today!

Glasgerion

There was a pause. Then Lymond, rather helplessly, began to laugh. "Strike on, strike on, Glasgèrion. Prophète de malheur, babillarde..." And as once before, was betrayed by the uncertain, wanton luxuriance of voice. p. 361

"Prophète de malheur, babillarde" is translated in The Dorothy Dunnett Companion. Come, let us add "prophet of misfortune, chatterer" to our mental libraries of French invective. The Companion doesn't list a literary source but a Google search suggests Lymond is quoting "L'Hirondelle et les petit oiseaux," a poetic retelling of Aesop's fable of the swallow and the other birds by Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695). The swallow, warning the other birds to eat up a farmer's hemp seeds before they can grown into plants that will be made into rope for nets, is roundly rebuffed by the other birds.

Prophète de malheur, babillarde, dit-on,
        Le bel emploi que tu nous donnes!
        Il nous faudrait mille personnes
        Pour éplucher tout ce canton.
        La chanvre étant tout à fait crue

A full version of the text, with light commentary, can be found here.

Glasgèrion is a late medieval ballad, known to Chaucer, in which a king's daughter falls in love with a harper, Glasgèrion, and is deceived and raped by his servant.

Strike on, strike on, Glasgèrion,

Of thy striking doe not blinne:

Theres never a stroke comes oer thy harpe,

But it glads my hart withinne.

The ballad is partially quoted in The Dorothy Dunnett Companion; the full text can be found here. Lymond, wounded and physically exhausted, mocks himself for being a day late for a meeting that would been a crucial step towards proving his innocence.When and why Lymond engages in verbal acrobatics is always revealing for his character; to his interlocutor, Gideon Somerville, it seems a sign of inebriated insouciance; as readers, we can see how desperately Lymond is trying to keep it together, and how he compounds his self-reproach for being "too little, too late." Lymond's verbosity also distances and delays the melodrama of his situation, which makes it feel earned rather than excessive.

Glaucus

"Ah!" said Lymond, airy and stylish in dark blue. "There's a but. Like Galucus, we have a but, but no honey in it. Lord Grey has changed his mind?" p. 313

Not the Greek god of fisherman, but a mythological character, the son of King Minos. He accidentally drowned in a jar (aka, a butt) of honey and was brought back to life by Polyidus using a magic herb. (Wikipedia; see also The Dorothy Dunnett Companion.) The prince was promised and then deprived of the gift of prophecy, paralleling Lymond's own situation of being promised and deprived of a key witness to his innocence.

gomerel

Sir Wat said: "Ye gomerel: if that's right, why the devil didn't you watch that first letter?" p. 523 "That boy," bellowed Sir Wat, "was a shilpit, shiftless, shilly-shallying gomerel before he met up with Francis Crawford." p. 525

Clearly, a term of abuse favoured by the redoubtable Wat Buccleuch; a Scots and northern dialect word for a silly person, fool, or simpleton. (OED) A ninteenth century word, as far as the dictionary says, rather than an early modern one; its earliest print user was Christian Isobel Johnstone (1781-1857) (ODNB), an important Scottish novelist, journalist, and editor; another early user was the great Scottish historical novellist, Sir Walter Scott.