Spanish dollars
Pieces of Eight
Silver 8 real coin of Philip V of Spain, 1739
Obverse
VTRAQVE VNUM M[EXICANUS 1739; "Both (are) one, Mexico [City Mint], 1739″; Displays two hemispheres of a world map, crowned between the Pillars of Hercules adorned with the PLVS VLTR[A] motto.
Reverse
PHILIP[PUS] V D[EI] G[RATIA] HISPAN[IARUM] ET IND[IARUM] REX; “Philip V, by the Grace of God, King of the Spains and the Indies”
Displays the arms of Castile and León with Granada in base and an inescutcheon of Anjou

noun

1. Pieces of eight were old Spanish coins which were in circulation between the late 16th and late 19th centuries. The coins were made of silver and known as a silver dollar. Early coins were made of precious metals such as silver and gold so the weight of the coin – and hence the metal content – was key in determining value. This also meant that coins were sometimes physically cut into pieces. That was the origin of the term “pieces of eight”. A full silver dollar was worth eight reales in the currency of the time. Thus it was frequently cut into up to eight pieces, or bits, each worth one reale. Rather confusingly the term “piece of eight” is used to refer to a full dollar coin rather than the individual pieces into which it could be cut. Sixteen of these full silver pieces of eight – 16 * 8 = 128 reales – were equivalent to one gold doubloon.

History: Many pieces of eight were minted in the US and then transported around the world by sea. For this reason they were often found on treasure ships targeted by pirates. The Spanish silver dollar was legal tender in the US until 1857 and formed the basis of the American currency. One US dollar was initially equivalent to one Spanish dollar. The practice of cutting the silver dollar into eight pieces gave rise to colloquial expressions such as “two bits” for a quarter of a dollar.

[origin: Spanish (peso de ocho), the real de a ocho or the eight-real coin]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

“Boots of Cordovan leather, chests of ash,
Damascus steel, rare silks and silver plate;
Rough-carven gems to match the starlight’s flash,
And gold moidores cresting a piece-of-eight!
Tuns of brown ale and barrels of black rum,
And many a pipe of sharp Canary wine;
Toledo blades that shimmer, gleam and hum,
And bales of spice and idols of odd design!

“Ah, such dreams grip and cut me like a knife!
Let others rest in sweet slumbering death—
I cannot sleep; I need the sting of life,
The pounding of my veins, the fire, the strife,
The slashing spray, the sea-wind’s blasting breath;
The joy, the pain, the peril, sun and snow,
The tavern, and the ale at Plymouth Hoe!

“I cannot rest in Nombre Dios Bay.
Up through the seething fathoms I arise.
When night reefs sails to drink the dying day
And stars are longboat lanterns in the skies,
Then sea to sea I live it all again—
My youth and manhood. . . Devon and the Main!”

I met the ghost of Drake one Devon night;
He sang of sail and sword and reaving stench—
And in his eyes there burned the sea-thrown light
Of life-loving life not even Death can quench.

[from “Drake Sings of Yesterday”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 466 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 412]

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post oak leaf

noun

1. a small deciduous tree of eastern and central United States having a hard durable wood and dark green lyrate pinnatifid leaves and tough moisture-resistant wood used especially for fence posts.

[origin: 1775; Latin: Quercus stellata]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Seven years behind the bars because they found my still;
He showed it to the snooping laws, the man I’m going to kill.
Then they’ll give me Life or the Chair, according to the judge’s will,
Death’s not so damned hard to a man that’s lived all his life on a post-oak hill.

(When my grandfather first came West
Was never a fence on the prairie’s breast,
There was land to choose, and he chose the best,
But it slipped through his fingers, like the rest,
Driving his sons to the sand-hills’ crest.)

The post-oaks stand up dull and brown against the tawny sky;
I hate them like I hate the man who’ll soon be passing by;
At fifty feet I can not miss, I’m going to watch him die.
Die like the dirty dog he is, where the drifted sand-beds lie.

[from “The Sand-Hills’ Crest”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 502 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 355]

noun

1. song of lamentation for the dead

[origin: 1634; Greek thrēnōidia, from thrēnos dirge + aeidein to sing]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

But the wind is out of the east and winter comes striding on brittle and sounding feet. What glory in the grey rain and the slanting sleet, the sullen ice and the brooding north winds? I have risen at dawn in the days of summer’s desire and gazed at the nodding grass when each blade was a flaming gem in the morning fire of the dew. When the cold winds come and the sleet is sharp in the air, when the fogs drift grey and frost glimmers; then the desire of me wings south and the song of the wild geese is a threnody which shatters my brittle heart with fierce longing.

Oh, seas and the ghosts of seas beneath the Southern Cross! I have sailed them in my dreams and in my dreams I have raced, springy-thewed and brown-limbed, along the wide white beaches between the palm trees and the lazy surf, my arms outstretched for a laughing golden-skinned nymph with a flaming hibiscus in her flying hair.

[from “The Gods That Men Forget”; to read the complete proem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 680, Etchings in Ivory, p. 14 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems p. 493]

noun

1. archaic; plan or solution; advice, counsel

[origin: before 12th century; Middle English]

According to The History of England, (pp. 193-194) the expression: “Good rede, good rede! Slay ye the bishop!” related to the Uprising at Durham. Walcher of Lorraine, a Norman, had been installed as Bishop of Durham. He boasted that he was equally skillful in repressing rebellion with the edge of the sword and reforming the morals of the English by eloquent discourse. But he was “a harsh taskmaster to the English, laying heavy labors and taxes upon them and permitting the officers under him and his men-at-arms to plunder, insult and kill them with impunity.” Ligulf, an Englishman of noble birth, who was much loved by the whole province complained to the Bishop after being robbed by some of Walcher’s satellites. Shortly after making this accusation, Ligulf was murdered by night in his manor-house, near the city of Durham and it was well proved that Gilbert (a relative of Walcher) and Leofwine (Walcher’s chaplain) were among those in the bishop’s service who were the “perpetrators of the foul deed.”

“Hereupon,” says an old writer, “the malice of the people was kindled against him when it was known that he had received the murderers into his house, and favored them as before.” The Northumbrians, who had lost none of their old spirit decided to take vengeance. On May 14, 1080, both parties met by agreement at Gateshead. The bishop, who protested he didn’t know about the homicide, came to the meeting with all the pomp of power and surrounded by his retainers. The Northumbrians met him in “their humble guise, as if to petition their lord for justice, though every man among them carried a sharp weapon hid under his garment.”

The bishop alarmed at the number of English that continued to flock to the place of rendezvous, retired with all his retinue into the church. The people then signified in plain terms that, unless he came forth and showed himself, they would fire the place where he stood. As he did not move, the threat was executed. Then, seeing the smoke and flames arising, he caused Gilbert and his accomplices to be thrust out of the church. The people fell with savage joy on the murderers of Ligulf and cut them to pieces.

Half-suffocated by the heat and smoke, the bishop himself wrapped the skirts of his gown over his face and came to the threshold of the door. There seems to have been a moment of hesitation; but a voice was heard among the crowd, saying, “Good rede, short rede! slay ye the bishop!” and the bishop was slain accordingly…Of all who had accompanied the bishop to the tragic meeting at Gateshead, only two were left alive, and these were menials of English birth. Above one hundred, Normans and Flemings, perished with Walcher.

William the Conqueror sent his half brother with troops. Without a tribunal, they beheaded or mutilated all the men they could find in their houses. People of wealth bought their lives by surrendering all their property.

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.

Yet I burn again at that savage cry for freedom,
Roaring down the ages at the crozier and the crown;
All the pagan eons speak in that mad bellow:
“Slay ye the Bishop—the tyrant in the gown!”
…
Dust, long dust are the men that heaved the axes;
William rent their land like a blinding blast of doom.
The great Norman horses splashed their blood to the fetlock—
But their word comes down to fire us in the twilight and the gloom.
…

[from “The Cry Everlasting”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 465; A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 87 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 187]

noun

1. a large leaf (especially of a palm or fern) usually with many divisions

[origin: 1785; Latin frond-, frons foliage]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Stay not from me, that veil of dreams that gives
Strange seas and skies and lands and curious fire,
Dragons and crimson moons and white desire,
That through the silvery fabric sifts and sieves
Shadows and shades and all unmeasured things,
And in the sifting lends them shapes and wings
And makes them known in ways past common knowing—
Red lands, black seas, and ivory rivers flowing.
How of the gold we gather in our hands?
It cheers but shall escape us at the last,
And shall mean less, when the brief day is past,
Than that we gathered on the yellow sand—
The phantom gold we found in wizard-land.
Keep not from me, my veil of curious dreams,
Through which I see the giant things which drink
From sensuous castled rivers—on the brink
Black elephants that woo the fronded streams.

[from “Shadow of Dreams”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 338 and Shadows of Dreams, p. 46]

noun

1. None of the standard dictionary definitions relating to trigonometry were applicable. The best definition comes from Howard Scholar Jeff Shanks:

 The Latin “sine” (pronounced SEE-nay) or “without” was the first thing that came to mind. That would be “without” as in “lacking,” not “without” as in “outside” so it doesn’t really make sense. Also, one syllable seems to fit the meter better than two. Another possibility is that it’s a variation of “syne” which is a Scot’s word for “since” (or “since then” according to Merriam-Webster online.)

[origin: Scottish; Middle English (northern), probably contraction of Old English siththan since]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Tum, tum, slam the drum!
I’m a migratory bum!
Sine I look between the bars,
Sine I wander midst the stars.
I’m the bum that roams the earth,
Godlings laughed upon my birth!
Slam slam! Hot damn!
I may be wrong but I’m what I am.
My feet are fast with a world-old rhyme,
I prance my ways to the edge of time.
Beggers and poets, all my friends
The world’s all mine if it gives or lends.
Tarum, thud.
I’m Gypsy blood!
Head in the clouds and feet in the mud!
I’m a giddy bum with a giddy head,
The Universe has known my tread.

[from “My Sentiments Set to Jazz”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 382]

(Photo: North Star Astrology website)

noun

1. a thicket

[origin: Old English bracu; related to Middle Low German brake, Old French bracon branch]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Great columns loom against the brooding sky
Like giants of another world they stand
Flinging their shadows far across the land—
Across the sunset’s path their shadows lie;
Above, between, the lone, gray sea-gulls fly.
And now the moon rides like a smoldering brand
And mid those shadows, hewn by Titan’s hand
Glides shades of eld, ghost shapes, dim-seen and sly.

The crimson moon rides higher o’er the brake,
The darkness fades, the shadows merge and melt;
Across the fen the sea-wind’s whisper comes
Bearing the discord of forgotten drums—
That speak to ghosts alone where bird and snake
Drowse in the last, lone stronghold of the Celt.

[from “Twilight on Stonehenge”; this is the complete poem as it appears in The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 293, Shadows of Dreams, p. 62 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 163]

noun

1. a brown earth that is darker in color than ocher and sienna because of its content of manganese and iron oxides and is highly valued as a permanent pigment either in the raw or burnt state

[origin: ca. 1568; probably from obsolete English, shade, color, from Middle English ombre, umbre shade, shadow, from Anglo-French, from Latin umbra]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Red swirls the dust
O’er the Plains of Gilban,
Stirred by the breezes that eddy the air.
Carpeted, mingled, crimsoned with sword rust;
Ages’ old relics of fierce battles there.
West turns to umber,
Ghastly the white east;
O’er the red desert sands
Sinks the sun dim.
Like an old high priest
Over the vague lands,
Whisper the winds from the horizon’s rim.

[from “The Plains of Gilban”; this is the complete poem as it appears in The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 280 and A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 140]

exclamation

1. a term of uncertain meaning found in the Hebrew text of the Psalms and Habakkuk carried over untranslated into some English versions; it is possibly a liturgico-musical mark or an instruction on the reading of the text, something like “stop and listen” or “pause, and think of that”. It can also be interpreted as a form of underlining in preparation for the next paragraph.

[origin: ca. 1530; Hebrew selah]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

The times, the times stride on apace and fast
They baffle our uncertain questing hands;
Our feet are straying ’mid illusion’s sands
Our day is over and our Time is past.
We knew an Age of thrones and trumpet peal
Through all our dreams the bygone Ages speak
To foil the powers drab that ever seek
To bind our restless spirits to the wheel.

Selah. Though all the pipes of Pan be mute
Yet shall we sail to seek the Golden Fleece
If we may dream awhile amid some trees
And through the drowsy hum of summer bees,
Faintly and far, hear yet again the lute
We heard upon the sapphire hills of Greece.

[from Untitled (“the times, the times…”); this is the complete poem as shown in The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 515 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 128]

(photo from 1925 Ben Hur with Ramon Navarro)

verb

1. to wash or bathe

[origin: Middle English laven, from Old English gelafian and from Old French laver, both from Latin lavre]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

I toiled beside you in the galley’s chains
Through long, long days of deathly toil the same.
North born, from some far Viking land you came;
The dark Milesian fury coursed my veins.
Then came a night of battle, blood and flame,
And we rose up and shook our tangled manes
And wiped out days and nights of fear and shame
With rage that laved the decks in gore and brains.

The years have stretched to eons—vanished quite
That day we burst the grim forecastle door.
Yet let them have a care who mock our might—
The hour may come as in those days before
When we shall rise and bellow to the night
And plunge our hands in hot red blood once more.

[from “To a Friend”; this is the complete poem from The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 523; Night Images, p. 98; and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 177]