Robert E. Howard had a wide variety of interests. and nowhere is this more obvious than in his poetry. He wrote poems on many subjects and his extraordinary ability for description often made words and images jump off the page. These details breathed life into his poems. For example, in “The Isle of Hy-Brasil” he mentions fourteen different types of ships, including galleons, coracles, triremes, and the Viking Serpent. And, he didn’t stop there. He also describes their scarlet courses, bridges, prows and poops. To highlight this talent for detail, over the next few months Word of the Week will have a slightly different format. Each month will have a different theme and the Word of the Week will be selected based on that.. The upcoming theme for May will be MYTHICAL BEINGS, June will be SHIPS and July will be GEMS.

The basic format for each word will remain the same.

werewolf

noun

1. a person who transformed into a wolf or is capable of assuming a wolf’s form.

Background: Historical legends describe a wide variety of methods for becoming a werewolf. One is the bite of another werewolf. Others include wearing a pelt made of wolf skin, rubbing the body with a magic salve, or drinking water from the footprint of a werewolf, or from certain enchanted streams.

The curse could be removed by an enchanter, or by reproaching the werewolf with being a werewolf, saluting it with the sign of the cross, addressing it thrice by its baptismal name, striking it with three blows on the forehead with a knife, or drawing at least three drops of its blood. Cures also included removing the animal pelt or skin, or kneeling in one spot for a hundred years.

[Origin: before 12th century; Middle English, from Old English werwulf (akin to Old High German werewolf werewolf), from wer man + wulf wolf ]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Up, John Kane! Why cringe there and cower?
The pact was sealed with the dark blood-flower;
Glut now your fill in the werewolf’s hour!

Fear not the night nor the shadows that play there;
Soundless and sure shall your bare feet stray there;
Strong shall your teeth be, to rend and to slay there.

Up, John Kane, the thick night’s falling;
Up from the valleys the white fog’s crawling;
Your four-footed brothers from the hills are calling:
Will ye come, will ye come, John Kane?

[from “Up John Kane!”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 192]

We know a lot more about Robert E. Howard these days, and in particular we know a lot more truths about the man from Cross Plains than ever before. For this, we have many sources to thank, including the recent excellent work done by Rusty Burke in his A Short Biography and Mark Finn’s biographical work Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard. There’s also plenty of places to find important critical analyses of Howard’s works, including collections of essays like The Dark Barbarian and The Barbaric Triumph.

But if you want to get a look inside Howard’s mind—how he thought, what he believed in passionately, and what he raged about—I can’t recommend The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard highly enough. Editor Rob Roehm deserves our utmost praise for putting together this three volume collection, available for purchase from The Robert E. Howard Foundation.

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interjection

1. alas, woe; sorrow, regret

[Origin: ca. 1470; ScotGael ochan, Ir ochon; cf. och; Gaelic ochoin]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Oh the men of the isle are all loyal and bold
And the women are lovely and fair to the eye;
Ochone for the ones who left with a sigh.
(Betrayin’ their friends for the Englishmen’s gold.)

Oh never the love of that island shall slack
As long as her sons shall roam the world round,
For a country so beautiful n’er will be found.
(God pity the bastards that have to go back.)

[from the untitled poem “There’s an isle far away on the breast of the sea”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 624]

noun

1. knob on the hilt of a sword or saber

[Origin: 14th century; Middle English pomel, from Anglo-French, from Vulgar Latin pomellum ball, knob, from diminutive of Latin pomum fruit]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Harald leaned against the taffrail and gripped it with his hand;
The blood streamed from his arm and head, and he could scarcely stand.
When Eric saw his foeman’s plight, with laughter loud he roared,
Like a buffalo bull he charged to meet—the point of Harald’s sword!
For Harald’s strength for an instant returned and he put it all in a thrust;
To the hilt it sank in Eric’s breast and Eric bit the dust.

Over the hilt and pommel the red life blood did run,
And the star of Eric of Norway went down with the setting sun.
Hasting stood by a stanchion with Ragnar at his feet,
And deep in his heart he had believed that Eric could ne’er be beat.

[from “Eric of Norway”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 536 and A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 76]

noun

1. narrow passages or gorges

[Origin: 1865; French défilé, from past participle défiler]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

From Sonora to Del Rio is a hundred barren miles
Where the sotol weave and shimmer in the sun—
Like a horde of rearing serpents swaying down the bare defiles
When the scarlet, silver webs of dawn are spun.

There are little ’dobe ranchos brooding far along the sky,
On the sullen dreary bosoms of the hills;
Not a wolf to break the quiet, not a desert bird to fly
Where the silence is so utter that it thrills.

[from “The Grim Land”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 302]

bale

noun

1. great evil; 2. woe, sorrow

[Origin: before 12th century; Middle English, from Old English bealu; akin to Old High German balo evil; Old Church Slavic boli sick person]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

His hair was black as the wings of night,
Coarse as a black bear’s fell;
His eyes were blue as the fire that roars
On the molten floors of hell.

My hair is black as a midnight sin,
My eyes are blue bale-fire;
My heart would sear a naked stone
With its hate and mad desire.

[from “Alien”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 431]

spindrift

noun

1. sea spray; especially spray blown from waves from a gale; 2. fine wind-borne snow or sand

[Origin: 1823; alteration of Scots speendrift, from speen to drive before a strong wind plus English drift]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Sailing-ships are anchored about that ancient isle,
Ships that sailed the oceans in the dim dawn days,
Coracles from Britain, triremes from the Nile.
Anchored round the harbors, anchored mile on mile,
Ships and ships and shades of ships fading in the haze.

And there’s a Roman galley with its seven banks of oars,
And there’s a golden bargeboat that knew the Caesar’s hand,
And there’s a somber pirate craft with shattered cabin doors,
And there’s a sturdy bireme that sailed to Holy Land.

Main-trees lifting like a forest of the south,
Beaked prows looming, and the wide courses furled,
Dim decks heel-marked, marked by rain and drouth,
Spindrift in the cross-trees, drift of southern seas,
Dim ships, strong ships from all about the world.

[from “Ships”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 295 and Always Comes Evening, p. 39]

Previous Posts In This Series:

1. Donn Othna in “The King’s Service”

As we’re all aware on the Shieldwall, there seems no limit to the scope for discussion offered by even minor fragments and stories of REH’s. Last week I considered his character Donn Othna, the British prince, quite likely to be a prince of Demetia, and also quite likely to have Irish Gaelic blood from either his mother or father, due to the Irish invaders and settlers who were regarded by the Cymric Welsh as being an obnoxious problem at that time.

Donn Othna appears in “The King’s Service.” Perhaps in the REH poem, “Where Are Your Knights, Donn Othna?” as well. He may be intended to be the same character or may not. But I’m taking it that he was born around 427 A.D. and grew from infancy into boyhood during as wild a time as Britain had ever seen. His home was probably south-western Wales, or Demetia, and he came of princely blood.

At an uncertain date, but I’m positing around 440, that semi-legendary character Prince Cunedda came south with his war-band and sons from the north of Britain. Some scholars have taken the view that they were imported by the remnants of Roman authority and settled in the Gwynedd region to fight off the Irish, but I have a feeling Cunedda did it with no authority from anybody. Before his folk settled in Gwynedd, their first stronghold and base of operations was Chester. Just one more opportunistic chieftain seeking to carve a kingdom for himself out of the chaos around him. Donn Othna, at thirteen, found himself caught with his clan between the Irish raiders and Cunedda’s followers, and had all the fighting he could handle at that early age.

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riven

transitive verb

1a. to wrench open or tear apart or to pieces; 1b. to split with force or violence; 2a. to divide into pieces; 2b. fracture

[Origin: 14th century; Middle English, from Old Norse rifa; akin to Greek ereipein to tear down]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

For I’ve hidden my loot in the winds and the surges,
Where the keel breaks the waves and soft surges croon,
It’s the gems o’ the skyline where sea and sky merges,
It’s the gold o’ the sun and the silk o’ the moon.

It’s the silver o’ starlight, the mist o’ the morning
All gossamer webs, and the deep coral caves,
The winds and the wonder o’ reef-riven thunder,
The emerald sheen o’ the snow-crested waves.

The gold that I gathered that mankind had minted,
It slipped through my fingers like sands on the beach;
But the silver o’ starlight was ever unstinted,
And the gold o’ the sunset was ever in reach.

[from “A Dying Pirate Speaks of Treasure”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 477]

lambent

adjective

1. playing lightly on or over a surface; flickering; 2. softly bright or radiant; marked by lightness or brilliance especially of expression.

[origin: 1647; Latin lambent, lambens, present participle of lambere to lick]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Rank, shambling devils chased him night on night,
And caught and bore him to a flaming hall,
Where lambent in the flaring crimson light
A thousand long-tongued faces lined the wall.
And there they flung him, naked and a-sprawl
Before a great dark woman’s ebon throne.
How dark, inhuman, strange, her deep eyes shone!

[from “Fragment”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p.212; and Always Comes Evening, p. 18]