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]

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]

maws

noun

1. a receptacle into which food is taken by swallowing; 2. the throat, gullet or jaws especially of a voracious animal

[Origin: before 12th century; Middle English, from Old English maga; akin to Old High German mago stomach; Lithuanian makas purse]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Shoulder to shoulder and leg to leg,
Red maws agape for gore,
Futile to cringe to kneel or beg,
One leap—and the chase is o’er.

Fierce on my flanks your hot breaths burn
And the weak must serve the strong
And the weak must die but here I turn—
I have fled you overlong.

[from “A Warning to Orthodoxy”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 422; and Shadows of Dreams, p. 20]

pibroch

noun

1. a set of mournful or martial variations for the Scottish Highland bagpipe

[Origin: 1719; Scottish Gaelic piobaireachd pipe music]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Let Saxons sing of Saxon kings,
Red faced swine with a greasy beard—
Through my songs the Gaelic broadsword sings,
The pibrock [sic] skirls and the sporran swings,
For mine is the blood of the Irish kings
That Saxon monarchs feared.

[from “Black Harps in the Hills”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 58; and Night Images, p. 52]

kraken

noun

1. legendary Scandinavian sea monster

[origin: 1755; Norwegian dial.]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Were there figures unnamed in the seas of the West?
Were there scale-crusted dragons that rend Viking ships?
Were there ocean-fiends riding the dark billow’s crest
Or icy sea-women with death on their lips?

“Bare stretch the seas to the set of the sun;
“No mermaid or kraken opposes the keel—
“Of the lies of the women and priests are they spun—
“To naked winds only the blue billows reel.

[from “The Return of the Sea-Farer”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 64]

gyve

noun

1.  fetter, shackle

[Origin: 13th century; Middle English]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Serfs and barons, knights of the lists,
Silver shackles upon their wrists
(But silver is sister to rugged steel);
Though proudly they wear their gleaming gyves,
And proudly they strut, they live their lives
Chained to the chariot wheel.

[from “Custom”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 298]

ceorls (carles and churls)

noun

1. a free peasant that formed the basis of society in Anglo-Saxon England. His free status was marked by his right to bear arms, his attendance at local courts, and his payment of dues directly to the king. His wergild, the sum that his family could accept in place of vengeance if he were killed, was valued at 200 shillings. Although frequently represented as a typical peasant laborer in a kind of Anglo-Saxon democracy, he was a member of the peasant elite that was gradually extinguished between the seventh and the twelfth centuries. Also referred to as a churl or a carle.

[origin: before 12th century; Old English]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

“—A voice came out of the throng saying: ‘Good rede, good rede! Slay ye the Bishop!’ The bishop was forthwith slain.” —The Norman Conquest

“Good rede, good rede! Slay ye the Bishop!”
Roaring through the gloom like a rousing tiger’s snarl.
Bugle call and drum beat pale and fade before it,
Pale before the growl of a nameless Saxon carle.

Little love I bear for the surly ceorls of England—
A black blight befall them! The first of all my name
Breathed the breath of life in the grey Norse mountains,
Rode with Iron William when the Norman came.

[from “The Cry Everlasting”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 465 and A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 87]

Now I am but a simple churl
Who loves the kine and grass,
To watch the burning dawns unfurl,
And the fleecy clouds that pass.

[from “The Road to Bliss”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 479 and A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 88]

rath

noun

1. circular fort protected by earthworks, used by the ancient Irish in the pre-Christian era as a retreat in time of danger. Some of the larger raths such as that at Tara were important in early Irish history and were used by chieftains or kings. Many raths still exist throughout Ireland.

[Origin: ancient Irish]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Up over the cromlech and down the rath,
Treading a dim forgotten path,
Past the ancient, vague monolith,
Out of the past of tale and myth,
Where the bat wheels silent ’round walls of might,
The phantoms gather from out the night.

[from “The Phantoms Gather”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 199; and A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 124]

harries

transitive verb

1. To make a pillaging or destructive raid on; 2. to force to move along by harassing; 3. to torment by or as if by constant attack

[origin: before twelfth century; Middle English harien, from Old English hergian; akin to Old High German herion to lay waste, heri, army, Greek koiranos ruler]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

From the Baltic Sea our galleys sweep
To South and West and East,
We bring our bows from the Northern snows
That the great grey wolves may feast.

To the outmost roads of the plunging sea
Our dragon ships are hurled,
We have broken the chains of the Southern Danes
And now we break the world.

Out of the dark of the misty north
We come like shapes of the gloam
To harry again the Southland men
And trample the arms of Rome.

The ravens circle above our prows
And our chant is the song of the sea.
They hear our oars by a thousand shores
And they know that the North is free.

[from “The Song of Horsa’s Galley”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 57 and Echoes From an Iron Harp, p. 77]

and

The sword is broken, the shield is bent—
Our backs are at the wall;
Stark and silent they lay who went
To harry the coasts of Gaul.

From the north’s blue deeps our galleys sweep
To south and west and east;
We bring our bows from the northern snows
That the great grey wolves may feast.

[from “The Dust Dance (1, ‘For I, with the . . .’)”; for the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 133 and Echoes From an Iron Harp, p. 25]

and

When the first winds of summer the roses brought,
And the fields were a-blossom again,
The warriors went riding from green Connacht
To harry the Oliad men.

Cail of the Sword, we called our lord,
He harried the East and the North—
Oh, the blades dripped red and the ravens fed
When Cail and his wolves went forth.

The war-cloud rolled like the wind before—
And the gods of the North were old—
The sea-folk fled from the purple shore
As the white birds flee the cold.

[from “To Harry the Oliad Men” this is the complete poem as listed in The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 41 and Night Images, p. 63]

And “harries” also appears in the following poems:

“Dreaming in Israel”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 485 and Shadows of Dreams, p. 53
“Eric of Norway”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 536 and A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 76
“Flight”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 510 and Night Images, p. 74
“The Grey Lover”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 431
“Nancy Hawk-A Legend of Virginity”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 576
“The Riders of Babylon”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 5 and Always Comes Evening, p. 29
“The Skull in the Clouds”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 42 and Echoes From an Iron Harp, p. 68
“Surrender (2, ‘Open the window and let me go’)”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 447 and Shadows of Dreams, p. 92
“To a Woman (1, ‘Ages ago…’)”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 394
“To a Woman (Draft) (1, ‘Ages ago…’)”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 395
“Zukala’s Hour”; The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 129 and Singers in the Shadows, p. 15