bookkeeping

[truepenny]

The Second Son
Wednesday: 199 words
Today, so far: 347 words

And I've got some of the plot worked out. I know who did it and why, and I know some of the clues to scatter in my poor protagonist's path.

Some of you will be pleased to hear that the wombat and the tube of mummy will not only appear in this story, they will also be thematically significant when they do. (The stripling Kipling, however, is a no go.)

And I need to know, is there anything I can do with the names Lancelot and Galahad to defamiliarize them, like Medraut for Mordred and Genevieve for Guinevere? *looks hopefully in papersky's direction* Because those two fall right in the crack between SO familiar that the name has other associations (like Arthur) and obscure enough that there isn't a preconceived set of opinions among the unwashed masses (as, for example, Bors and Lamorek). Also, I just have trouble with Lancelot and Galahad as names; to me, they look ugly. Any tweaks anyone can think of will be very much appreciated.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Lelant strikes me as a nice substitute for Lance...Galahad, as far as a name goes, seems 'just right' as it is, but as far as distancing it from less desirable associations...Gedre, maybe.

Lancelot

[libskrat]

I'll ask my husband, but just off the top of my head...

There is some speculation that Lancelot is l'ancelot, 'the servant,' via French deformation (sorry, I hate French!) of Latin ancillus. That might be a semantic route toward a better name.

Galahad... eh. Just an ugly name. I would tend to cue off something else about him, maybe Red Cross Knight him after Spenser or something. I *think* I know the derivation of the name, but I'm not sure I'm right and I hate making a big idiot of myself, so I'll ask husband and get back to you.

Re: Lancelot

[libskrat]

Ha bloody ha. I was right. Galahad is also a French deformation, this time of Gilead. Which is a not intolerable name.

Re: Lancelot

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Not Gilead. It's Gwalchafed.

Re: Lancelot

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Bizarrely, I was just thinking this morning that I needed to tilt the table toward Spenser. (And now I'm talking about my writing as if it were a game of pinball ... enh, I think it's time for bed.) And the name Gilead Cross ... well, it suits him, doesn't it?

Lancelot remains a pain. No big surprise. But I'll think about ancillus and l'ancelot and see if it gets me anywhere.

Thank you--and thank your husband for me. Geekery-enablers are the best.

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

I keep trying to merge Galahad the grail knight with the Hon. Galahad Threepwood from Wodehouse's Blandings books. Which leads to thoughts of a Wodehousian retelling of the Arthurian legends, and then it all gets a bit silly.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Lancelot is a poncy French addition to the myth (though in point of fact, I find that once you've read The Ill-Made Knight it's a name that is quite easy to take seriously). Both Mary Stewart and Rosemary Sutcliff gave Bedivere, Arthur's last faithful knight, Lancelot's role.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

If I spend all day correcting the misconceptions in the other followups to this post I won't get anything else done. But do check people's sources before using anything you're not making up yourself, and don't use anything by Norma Goodrich or John and Caitlin Matthews.

Lancelot was accreted to the myth by Wace. Previously, Guinevere was abducted by Medraut, or by Melwas the king of the summer country. Marie de France first used the idea of seduction rather than abduction, interestingly enough, the difference can be argued as whether the woman is allowed a POV, from the husband's POV, abduction and adultery both "contaminate" the woman and her willingness isn't the point.

There is no Celtic original name for Lancelot, but the Welsh translation is Lanslod Lac, this is first found in the Triads, where he's listed as one of the Three Battle Knights, along with Cador of Cornwall and Ywain son of Urien Rheged. Ywain, lated Yvain in French, has the unusual distinction of being definitely historical, though of at least two generations post any possible Arthur -- excuse me, but I'm always easily distracted by the Triads. Source, Coe and Young, The Celtic Sources for the Arthurian Legend Llanerch, 1995.

(Well, Loomis, who isn't entirely a loon, thinks there was a Celtic original called Llenllewc or Lleminac, but I'm with Bromwich in thinking this is stupid. Besides, Lamorek is a version of that.)

The Celtic original of Galahad is Gwalchafed (it means "hawk of summer") and if you wanted this to go with names like Loheris, I'd bring that forward partway, to the Triad version Galath, where he's listed as one of the Three Virgin Knights, along with Bwrt son of Bwrt and Peredur son of Earl Efrog, (that's Percival ). Cor & Young, op. cit.

Don't use Gilead if you can possibly help it, that's a New Age misconception. I should be pleased people are still making up stories about this stuff, but I wish they'd label it fiction and not research because it's misleading to innocent people, and gives the whole thing a bad name.

Incidentally, the Celtic original of Guinevere is Gwynhwyfar (means "white shoulder) which is the same name as the Irish Fionnghulla. Modern versions include Jennifer, Finaver, and as well as Genevieve, Gaynor and Ginevra and the modern (well, the only one I know was born in 1905, but that's modern in context) Welsh short form Weavy. (Yes, my Auntie Weavy was christened Gwynhwyfar. What were her parents thinking?) This name has been in constant use since Geoffrey of Monmouth, you can find versions of it for every European country. Source: Coe and Young, name books, Coghlan's Encyclopedia of Arthurian Legend, in which I also checked that it was Wace and not Chretien who added Lancelot.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I've been paging through Mr. Withycombe (discovering in the process that I'd conflated Genevieve to Guinevere when it is in fact an entirely different name), and this is what he has to say about Galahad:

the name of the spotless knight, son of Lancelot, who alone achieved the quest of the Holy Grail. The name seems to have been invented by the author of La Queste del' Saint Graal; Galahad's ancestry as given there contains several Biblical names, and it has been plausibly suggested that Galahad, or Galaad as it is spelt in the earliest MSS, represents Hebrew Gilead. Rhys's attempted etymology from Welsh gwalch 'hawk' and hâv or hâf 'summer' is unconvincing. Galahad has occasionally been used as a christian name since Tennyson's Idylls of the King made the Arthurian legends generally known.

Now, I freely admit I am an unreconstructed ignoramus when it comes to Arthuriana, but E. G. Withycombe is the last person in the world I would accuse of New Age-ism (closely followed, as it happens, by cavlec and her husband). So, basically, I'm confused.

On the other hand, Withycombe's entry on Lancelot traces the name back to Old German landa 'land,' so that Lancelot du Lac resolves nicely into Lakeland. Which gets me part of the way to where I need to be.

Perhaps this is endemic to any attempt on my part to make sense of the accreted Arthurian etymologies.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

You're writing a story, not a paper, take what you want from wherever you want.

All the same, Gwalchafed is from the lists in Culwhch and Olwen and the Triads. I've only encountered the "Gilead" derivation in New Age contexts, Mr Withycomb may well be accepting "plausible suggestions" from anywhere. It's possible Loomis suggested it, in fact I have a dim memory that he did and that's where it came into Matthews and Goodrich. I don't know what grounds Mr. Withycomb has for dismissing Aylwyn and Brinley Rhys, but he'll need a lot more than his bare word that it's "unconvincing" to make me dismiss something that's in Culhwch and Olwen.

Gwalchafed, Galchaved, Galthahad Galathad Galahad.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You're writing a story, not a paper, take what you want from wherever you want.

Oh, yeah, right. I always forget about that bit.

Gilead-Galaad-Galahad

[libskrat]

With respect, it's not that simple. A common Greek form of Gilead is Galaad, and that form somehow got picked up in the Vulgate Bible.

So the connection *may* be New Age bullshit, but I'll believe a simple "h"-insertion and obvious Christ-figuring a lot faster than I'll believe Gwalchafed (where did you get this form from? I would like to investigate) --> Galahad.

Agree on Goodrich, by the way. How did her crap get published?

Is there balm in Gilead?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Gwalchafed is in Culhwch and Olwen, in a perfectly reasonable spot for Galahad to be, or for someone to be who is a Galahad precursor.

And yes, Galaad is in the Vulgate, but why would it have got out of the Vulgate to be someone's name instead of a placename when there's a precursor person's name right there?

I don't mean to be rude or abrupt to you or to anyone, and I was, and I'm sorry, I'm having a grumpy day. I didn't mean to imply you were a New Age nitwit in the slightest, but there are these books out there and they look like real books and sometimes sensible people use them without knowing the difference.

I think there are certain subjects which make people go mad, quite literally. I think working on the Holy Grail turns previously rational people into loons who espouse all sorts of bizarre ideas. Roger Loomis was a sensible historian until he wrote his grail book. I think it's like the fabled Necronomicon that makes you lose sanity, doing too much research on the grail has the same effect. (Robert Graves, too. Maybe it's the whole Celtic thing!)

On the Arthurnet mailing list once someone asked about a grail that was, in Victorian times, in a manor in mid-Wales. Everyone did a little research, and within an hour, posted to the list from seven perfectly respectable sources, we had seven utterly different answers about where that grail was now. Yes, it was largely a matter of most of them (including the one I found) being out of date, but isn't that just like the grail?

Maybe Galahad is contaminated with grail cooties.