In December I began rereading the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. This series of six novels follows the career and (mis)adventures of their eponymous character, Francis Crawford of Lymond, a sixteenth century Scottish nobleman "of crooked felicities and murderous talents, possessed of a scholar's erudition and a tongue as wicked as rapier. In The Game of Kings, this extraordinary antihero returns to the country that has outlawed him--to redeem his reputation at risk of his life," as the back cover of my copy has it. (I own used copies of the 1997 American reprint for Vintage Books.)
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The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett
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I love these books. I love these books so deeply I can hardly bear to write about them, because whatever I say will inevitably fail to convey everything I love about the experience of reading them: the dense layers of historical and mythological and literary allusion; the sheer baroque opulence of their use of language; the intricacy of the plots; the deepest imperial purple of their melodrama; the depth and variety of the characters; their wicked, subtle humor; and the way they make me feel. Putting it this way, if "when bad things happen to good characters" is your idea of laissez les bons temps roule as a reader--and it often is mine--you may enjoy Dunnett. I feel absolutely evangelical about these books--I want them to reach everyone who would love them and I want them to be loved by everyone they reach.
Welcome to Learning New Words with Lymond, a series of posts in which I will blog about re-reading the Lymond Chronicles focusing on Dunnett's language and vocabulary. In my reread of the Game of Kings, I made a note of words or references I wanted to look up in the dictionary or encyclopedia and put them in alphabetical order. I hope these posts will function as my own personal Dunnett Dictionary, a way to more deeply appreciate her writing through an in-depth look at the language she uses.
We begin with words beginning with the letter 'a'...
Al-Mokanna
It's
a sad world, and the candle is going, so unless like Al-Mokanna you can
cause moons to issue from our well, we are destined to sorry together
in the dark. (The Game of Kings, p. 352)
Al-Mokanna is a variant spelling of al-Muqannaʿ
(“the veiled one”), an eighth-century messianic prophet in Sogdia. He was the leader of
syncretic religious movement that blended Islam with other
religious traditions including perhaps Buddhism. He and his followers,
the Mubayyiḍah, resisted the Abassid caliphate for fourteen years. In
the eyes of his followers, he had the power to perform miracles,
including making a moon rise and set at his command; Islamic sources
attributed this to an illusion involving quicksilver and a well, or an
illusion crafted with mirrors, lights, and water. How Lymond (and his
author) knew this story, I cannot say.
Incidentally, the use of the word sorry here--"to sorry together"--is not a typo, but a use of the word sorry as a verb meaning "to sorrow" that comes from Old English.
Further Reading
Here are two open access resources if the above has piqued your interest.
Adam Ali, "Al-Muqanna‘: The Veiled Prophet of Transoxiana", Medievalists.net, 2022 available at https://www.medievalists.net/2022/04/al-muqanna-veiled-prophet-transoxiana
Crone, Patricia “Moqanna," Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2011, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/moqanna
amoretti
Plump
clouds like amoretti hung in a blue sky; shining rooks cawed among
shining leaves and an otter with a half-eaten fish shivered the bog
orchis with his shoulder as he passed. (The Game of Kings, p. 360
Not cookies, but a very old word for cupids. (OED).
Anent
And
here's his father, worried yellow in case the poor creature scandalizes
the nation and promotes an international incident anent the Buccleuch
family. (The Game of Kings, p. 165)
A preposition, coming from Old English and used
in Scottish, Irish, and regional English dialects (especially
northern). Has an amazing variety of meanings, but the one that makes
the most sense here is "with reference to, in relation to; regarding,
concerning, about", used in Scottish legal writing from the fourteenth
century onwards. OED
Apollyon
No appointment with Apollyon. (The Game of Kings, p. 539)
This
one went on my list because, although I've seen it before, I wanted to
look up its meaning and origins. Apollyon comes to English from Latin
via the Greek word ἀπολλύων ("destroying"); to quote the dictionary, "The destroyer, a name given to the Devil." OED
See also Revelation 9:11. I would swear "an appointment with apollyon"
is an idiom, but none of the free dictionaries of sayings on the
internet yield results.
aposteme
The Dowager reached Ballaggan on the first of August, carying the date in her breast like an aposteme. (The Game of Kings, p. 484)
This is a medieval and early modern word for a large and severe abscess. OED.
Dunnet may have conciously or unconciously recalled a line from a poem "Of the Progress of the
Soul: The Second Anniversary" by John Donne ("a dangerous Apostem in thy
brest").
Asmodeus
Other than apologizing for not being Asmodeus, what can I do? (The Game of Kings, p. 339)
Again,
I was vaguely familiar with this name, but wanted the pleasure of
looking up exactly what it means. Asmodeus is a character from the Book
of Tobit, a wicked angel who kept murdering the husbands of a woman
named Sara until the prophet Tobit exorcised him and drove him into
Egypt. See Elspeth Morrison, The Dorothy Dunnett Companion (New York, 2001), p. 28.
atavistic
It made him feel uneasy, the prey of dark and atavistic caprice. (The Game of Kings, p. 459)
I've
seen this used as an adjective modifying the word greed, but wanted to
look up what it means. The dictionary helpfully says, "Of or pertaining
to atavism; atavic"; the latter word means "of or pertaining to a remote
ancestor." OED
In other words, atavistic is used as a fancy synonym for primal.
atous
"My pretty atous," he said, and admired them, his broad fingers spread across the painted backs. (The Game of Kings, p. 534)
Surprisingly,
no joy from the OED, and it was singularly hard to convince the Google
algorithm that I was in fact searching for a real word and not misspelling the word autos. Pulling together the French Wikipedia
entry on tarot français; this phenomenal post on the Tarot History Forum attempting to trace the etymology of the word tarot; and the board game manuals wiki on "Tarot, tarock and tarocchi games",
this is either simply the French word for tarot cards (and the game of
tarot as whole); or, as seems more likely, a set of twenty one numbered
cards in the total deck; their numbers correspond to their value, with
one being weakest and twenty-one being strongest. If I think too hard
about how much research went into writing the scenes where Will Scott
and Thomas Palmer play tarocco, I might need to lie down on the floor
for awhile.
Audhumbla
I
have licked you like the cow Audhumbla from the salt of your atrocious
upbringing and am watching the outcome with fearful joy. (The Game of Kings, p. 350)
No joy from Oxford Reference or the OED, but there is a Wikipedia entry. Auðumbla is a character from Norse mythology, mentioned in the Prose Edda. She is the primordial cow who fed the frost giant Ymir with her milk and licked away salt from the rocks to reveal Búri, grandfather of Odin and other gods. Auðumbla is a deeply obscure character--she only appears in the Prose Edda, of which only seven manuscripts survive today. I wonder how Lymond knows of her, let alone thinks of this simile.
azulejos
No rushes covered the floors: these were set with Spanish azulejos and covered with rugs from Turkey and the Levant. (The Game of Kings, p. 124)
Mirabile dictu, the (online) Oxford English dictionary has an error. The OED
entry for azulejos reads "a kind of Dutch glazed tile painted in
colours" and cites a book from 1845 as the earliest use of the word. But
in the Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance we read,
"Azulejo, The Spanish and Portuguese name (from Arabic al-zulayj, ‘the tile’) for a glazed polychrome tile used in Moorish architecture for exterior and interior walls and for
floors. The tiles were typically about 15 centimetres (6 inches) square
and brightly coloured, sometimes with geometrical patterns. The
reflective surface of azulejos caught the sun, and in Spanish gardens and Portuguese gardens they were used to reflect water. After the reconquista the manufacturing of azulejos continued, often in mudéjar designs." (Campbell, G, "Azulejo," The Oxford Dictionary of the
Renaissance (Oxford, 2003), Available from
https://www-oxfordreference-com.proxy.library.uu.nl/view/10.1093/acref/9780198601753.001.0001/acref-9780198601753-e-271.
Hey, I'd have those in my house, they sound gorgeous. The fact that the character, Dame Catherine Hunter, who owns the house being described, has azulejos installed and then piles luxury carpets on top of them, tell us something about who she is and who she wants to be.
A Note on Links
Through my university, I'm incredibly lucky to have access to the Oxford
English Dictionary, and indeed the entire Oxford Reference series of
dictionaries and encyclopedias. It is a principle of this blog to try
to use and link to sources that anyone can access, but 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. My plan is to quote relevant bits of entries, and to include open access links wherever possible, so that anyone who wants to do so can geek out with me, paywalls be damned.
