noun

1. any of the three virgin goddesses of fate, who predestine the lives of the gods and men

[origin: Old Norse norrna Norwegian, from northr north

HOWARD’S USAGE:

We, the voice of man and nation,
Time’s unchanged reiteration
Since the dim dawn of Creation
We have sought man’s lore.
Harken to our mystic song;
On our flight we bear along
Voices of a shadow-throng,
Shades of deeds of yore.

From the vast, dim seas of Morn,
Where the dawns of Time are born,
Fraught with lore of sage and Norn,
Wise with unthought age.
Whirling over far-flung trails
Whisperings o’er crags and vales
With our wondrous age-old tales,
Lore of Time and sage.

[from “The Winds That Walk the World”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 277 and A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 157]

noun

1. a form of wall construction consisting of interwoven twigs plastered with a mixture of clay, lime, water, and sometimes dung and chopped straw

[origin: Middle English wattel, from Old English watel]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

I never walked there waking, in dream alone I trod,
But Devon is my heritage by tree and hill and sod.
Beyond the years of yearning, and lust and blood and flame,
My people rode in Devon before the Saxon came.

Oh, wattle hut and barley, oh, feast and song and tale!
Oh, land of dreamy legend, and the good brown British ale!
My heritage is barren, my feet are doomed to roam;
I may not drink from Devon springs nor break the Devon loam.

But when the kings are fallen and when the empires pass,
And when the gleaming cities are wasted stone and grass,
When the younger peoples topple and break their gods in vain,
They that were lords of all the earth may get them home again.
Gods, hurl the haughty deathwards and shake the iron thrones
That my kin shall ride in Devon above the Saxon’s bones.

[from “Heritage 1. (‘My people came …’)”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 250; Echoes From an Iron Harp, p.41; and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 25]

noun

1. small stream or brook

[origin: 1538; Dutch ril or Low German rille; akin to Old English rīth rivulet]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

You were the wind’s song, (starlight in your hair!)
I harkened to your singing, with wonder all a-stare.
Then to my forge I whirled and I gripped a mighty sledge
And I smashed the mighty anvil and flung it to the hedge.
I whirled on high the hammer and I hurled in the rill,
And the bellows and the forge I tumbled down the hill.
In the gold of the morning, my soul soared free,
And I laughed like a giant, and you laughed with me.
* * * * * * *
And your laughter was a chime, was the ripple of the rill,
As through the golden morning, we strode down the hill.
Your lyre was a breath from the far, far seas!
(Ah, your hair in the sunlight as it floated in the breeze!)
On my bow-legs I followed, wonder in my eyes,
All a-gape with wonder at your songs and your lies,
Tales of sea and city, and far, strange lands,
(Music of the gods from your slim, strong hands.)
Poems at your finger tips, jests on all you saw,
And each jest I greeted with uproarious guffaw.
As through the sapphire woodland we strode to meet the dawn
On the roads o’ morning like a satyr and a faun.

[from “Arcadian Days”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 256]

noun

1. a small drum with one head of soft calfskin used to accompany a pipe or fife played by the same person

[origin: 14th century; Middle English, from Anglo-French, ultimately from Persian tabir drum]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

I leave to paltry poets
The tabor and the lute;
I sing in drums and tom-toms
The black abysmal brute—
My voice is of the people,
That giant wild and mute.
…
I toiled in Tuscan vineyards,
I broke the beaten loam;
I strained against the mallet
That drove the chisel home;
I sweated in the galleys
That broke the road to Rome.

Oh, khan and king and pharaoh!
In cold and drouth and heat
I bled to build your glory,
An ant beneath your feet—
But always rose a morning
When blood ran in the street.

[from “Echoes From an Anvil”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 346; Night Images, p. 26; A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 11; and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p.115]

noun

1. hag; evil looking old woman

[origin: 1520; Middle English beldam grandmother, from Anglo-French bel beautiful + Middle English dam]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Ah, beldame Death, old beldame Death!
We’ve tripped it many a time!
Our flying feet have weaved their beat
From the line to the Arctic clime.
I’ve felt your kiss in the gulf’s abyss
And the ooze of the tropic slime.
Your barren bones
Gleam a dreary white.
Through your lank ribs drones
The wind of the night.
An eery glimmer gleams and lies
In the empty sockets of your eyes,
Bleached as white as the wings of a gull
And you wear a garland upon your skull
Of ferns that grow through the swampy fen
Through the hidden bones of murdered men;
Of moss from the shores of the midnight sea
Where hulls of ships strew the silent lea.

Now first with the left foot,
Then with the right;
Footing it featly through the night.
Soul to demon and fiend to man
We’ve danced this dance since Time began.

[from “The Adventurer’s Mistress 2.(‘The fogs of night.’)”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 261 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 217]

noun

1. the condition of waiting for something to happen; subdued breathing due to high emotions

[origin: 14th century; Middle English, short for abaten to abate]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Men fled before the flying twain or shrank with bated breath,
And they saw on the face of Adam Brand the seal set there by death.
He reeled on buckling legs that failed, yet on and on he fled;
So through the shuddering market-place, the dying fled the dead.

At the riverside fell Adam Brand with a scream that rent the skies;
Across him fell John Farrel’s corpse, nor ever the twain did rise.
There was no wound on Adam Brand but his brow was cold and damp,
For the fear of death had blown out his life as a witch blows out a lamp.

His lips were writhed in a horrid grin like a fiend’s on Satan’s coals,
And the men that looked on his face that day, his stare still haunts their souls.
Such was the doom of Adam Brand, a strange, unearthly fate;
For stronger than death or hempen noose are the fires of a dead man’s hate.

[from “Dead Man’s Hate”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 186, Always Comes Evening, p. 24; and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 299]

transitive verb

1. to stupefy, daze; confuse, bewilder

[origin (amaze): before 12th century; Middle English amasen, from Old English amasian, from a- (perfective prefix) + masian to confuse]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

A beggar, singing without:
“Now are the stars upbraiding!
Strange and futile and fading—
This is a moon-mazed world!
Ere ever the stars were raiding
Or the first faint sail unfurled,
The gods were mazed at the riddle
And the priests made dreams and lies
That man should fry on a griddle
Or ride the horse of the skies.
And what is life but a vision,
And what are the rules of the game
But a cynical high derision
That laughs at glory and shame?”

[from UNTITLED (“A beggar, singing without:”); this is the complete poem as seen in The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 439 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 106]

past participle; past tense of reave

1. archaic. rob, despoil; deprive one of

[origin: before 12th century; Middle English reven, from Old English rēafian; akin to Old High German roubōn to rob, Latin rumpere to break]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Now bright, now red, the sabers sped among the racing horde,
The Afghan knife reft Hindu life and leaped the Rajput sword.
Oh, red and blue, the keen swords flew where charged the hosts in whirls,
And as in dreams rang loud the screams of ravished Hindu girls.
And through the strife, where sword and knife clashed loud on spear and shield,
With sword in hand, Yar Ali Khan rode o’er the battle-field.
From heel to head the chief was red, the blood was not his own.
In crimson tide his sword was dyed that had so brightly shone.

[from UNTITLED (“Now bright, now red, the sabers sped…”); to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 60]

(Viking style lap strake)

noun

1. a continuous band of hull planking or plates on a ship; a part of the shell of the hull of a boat or ship which, in conjunction with the other strakes, keeps the sea out and the vessel afloat. It is a strip of planking in a wooden vessel or of plating in a metal one, running longitudinally along the vessel’s side, bottom or the turn of the bilge, usually from one end of the vessel to the other.

[origin: 14th century; Middle English; akin to Old English streccan to stretch]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

Let poets seek the tinted reek,
Perfume of ladies gay,
Of winds of wild outlands I speak,
The lash of far sea spray.

Of drear swamp brakes, of storm whipped lakes,
Dank jungle, reedy fen,
Of seas that pound the plunging strakes,
Of men and deeds of men.

Prospector; king of battling ring;
Tarred slave of tide’s behests,
Monarchs of muscle shall I sing,
Lords of the hairy chests.

[from “Roundelay of the Roughneck”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 31 and Echoes From an Iron Harp, p. 62]

adverb

1. always, continually, ever

[origin: 13th century; Middle English, from Old Norse ei; akin to Old English ā always, Latin aevum age, lifetime, Greek aiōn age]

HOWARD’S USAGE:

About me rise the primal mists
The road is eery, dim and grey
Strong shackles load my weary wrists
I see no light to lead my way.
No gleam that heralds coming day.
Far out, far out beyond my ken
The mazy stars, they whirl and sway
But I must tramp a sullen fen
That clogs my weary feet with clay.
Oh, world of men, oh, world of men.
I laughed, I dreamed my dreams and then
I started on my road, the way
O’er which my feet ever must stray,
Must tread forever and for aye.

[from UNTITLED ("About me rise the primal mists”); this is the complete poem as it appears in The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 451 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p. 108]