English words from non-English places

Two books I read recently were goldmines of word origins, a subject I find interesting.

In Hero of the Empire, Candice Millard's account of Winston Churchill's daring escape during the Boer War, she mentions the possible origins of such words as:

Early trench coats

trench coat — So called because British soldiers wore a similar coat designed by Thomas Burberry in the trenches in France during World War I. Earlier Burberry made gaberdine coats for soldiers fighting in South Africa.

sniper — In India, riflemen skilled enough to kill small birds called snipes were termed snipers.

khaki — Derived from a Urdu word for dust.

corral — The Boers got their word kraal from the Portuguese word curral, meaning a circular livestock enclosure. The English turned it into corral.

Tony Horowitz serves up even more word origins in A Voyage Long and Strange:

saga — It "stems from a Norse word for 'say,'" says Horowitz.

canoe — From the native word canoa, heard by Christopher Columbus.

hammock — Caribbean islanders called this swinging bed a hamaca.

tobacco — Islanders smoked rolled-up weeds, which they called tabacos.

cannibal — Natives told Columbus about a man-eating tribe called the Canibales.

hurricane — From the Taino word huracan.

barbecue — From the Taino word barbacoa.

Appalachian — There was an Indian tribe in Florida called the Apalachee.

moccasin — From the Algonquin word mockasin

tomahawk - From the Algonquin word tomahack.

raccoon — From the Indian word aroughcun.

Horowitz also suggests, without much conviction, that the Indian chammay, meaning friend, may be where the English got the word chum.

Before the Pilgrims

Mid-November may not be the best time to mention it, but the settlement of North America by Europeans did not begin with the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. A whole lot of exploration and settlement took place before that, and all this is the subject of a fascinating book by Tony Horwitz, A Voyage Long and Strange (2008).

Americans make a big deal about the Pilgrims, and in a few days most of us will feast in their memory, but Horwitz wanted to know about those explorers and settlers who came before. He wanted to, as much as possible centuries later, walk in their footsteps and see what they saw.

It is not a pretty picture, which may be why most Americans, including most American history teachers, choose to ignore it, or at least gloss over it. By 21st century standards, these were not nice people. They lusted after gold. They robbed, raped, enslaved and massacred the native people they encountered. They didn't even behave kindly toward their own people, as in the case of the Roanoke settlers who were abandoned.

Horwitz begins with the Vikings, who explored and founded short-lived settlements in the northeastern regions of the continent around the year 1000, then turns to Christopher Columbus, who succeeded "because he was so stubbornly wrong." He died believing he had found a new route to India. After that Horwitz examines such explorers at DeLeon and DeSoto and the settlements in St. Augustine and Jamestown.

But Horwitz looks not just at the past but also at the present. He travels to places that may (or in some cases may not) have been visited by these people, looks for remnants of their time there and talks with both scholars and people who now live in these areas to get their take on the past. Much of this is written in the manner of Bill Bryson, full of information presented in a wry and whimsical way.

As important as history may be, Horwitz concludes by stating that myth may be more important. It feels good to ignore a "monstrous man" like DeSoto and failed settlements where so many people died and focus instead on myths about Pilgrims. (They weren't called Pilgrims until many years later, they had a feast but didn't make a big deal out of it, the Indians were uninvited guests, they probably ate venison and fish but not turkey, etc.) As journalists like to say in jest, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

Great American reading

Regarding the Great American Read concluded last month by PBS, some observations:

1. The selection of To Kill a Mockingbird as America's favorite novel should have surprised no one. Most of the books on the list of 100 finalists have a certain constituency: female readers (Pride and Prejudice, Little Women), male readers (The Hunt for Red October, The Godfather), younger readers (The Hunger Games, Ready Player One), older readers (The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath), black readers (The Color Purple, Invisible Man), Asian-American readers (The Joy Luck Club), Latino readers (Bless Me, Ultima, Dona Barbara) Christian readers (The Shack, This Present Darkness), romance readers (The Notebook, Outlander), mystery readers (And Then There Were None), science fiction readers (Foundation, The Martian) and so on. In fact, the majority of the books on the list appeal mainly to certain groups of readers.

Yet To Kill a Mockingbird seems to appeal to everyone who reads it (or has seen the movie starring Gregory Peck). Thanks to English teachers across the nation, it has been read by many, many people. This was an obvious choice.

2. Outlander as the second choice does surprise me. I know it is a very popular series of novels, but more popular than the Harry Potter series (third place) or James Patterson's Alex Cross books? I would have guessed Pride and Prejudice would finish second. In fact it was fourth.

3. Wisely PBS counted a series of books as a single book. I am wondering if this is why Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn did not make the list of 100 novels, though The Adventures of Tom Sawyer did. Were these books considered a series just because they have a few characters in common? If not, I would have thought Finn the more popular novel.

4. I spend a lot of time wandering in bookstores and leafing through book catalogs, so I was surprised at how many novels in that list of 100 I had never heard of. I'm speaking of books like The Coldest Winter Ever, Ghost and The Mind Invaders. Each of these novels finished near the bottom of the list, so maybe a lot of other people haven't heard of them either.

5. Everyone was permitted to cast one vote a day, whether for the same book or a different one. Thus the vote has almost as much to do with the commitment of its fans as with the popularity of the book itself. I did not vote at all, but if not To Kill a Mockingbird, which novel would have gotten my vote (or votes)? Lonesome Dove (22), perhaps, or the Narnia series (9), or The Catcher in the Rye (30) or The Grapes of Wrath (12)? I didn't vote mainly because I don't have a favorite novel. I love many novels, including many not on that list.

6. Although there were books on the list obviously written for adult readers, a surprising number were books for young readers, whether children (Charlotte's Web, The Little Prince, the Narnia series, etc.) or teens and young adults (the Harry Potter books, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Book Thief). Many of the books, in addition to To Kill a Mockingbird, are books commonly assigned in classrooms. Many of those listed books are novels I read for college classes. Many adults read few books, whether because of lack of time or lack of interest, but they remember, sometimes fondly, those books they read for school. I suspect the reading done in those early years greatly influenced the final tally of votes.

Living by the sword

In the fencing master's house, one had only to close the shutters in order for time to stop in its tracks.

Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Fencing Master

In a mystery-suspense novel about a man who teaches fencing, you know that sooner or later the fencing is going to be for real. Arturo Perez-Reverte does not disappoint in The Fencing Master, one of his earliest and best novels (1988).

Don Jaime, a man of advanced middle age, is a respected fencing master in Madrid in 1868, a time when a sword is no longer the weapon of choice. Fencing is being seen more as a sport or a physical fitness routine than as means of self-defense or the way to settle matters of honor. He misses the old days, but continues to teach a few students.

These are restless times in Spain as talk of rebellion against the queen is heard on the streets and in the cafes. Don Jaime has little interest in all that.

Then he gets an unexpected pupil, a beautiful woman, already skilled in fencing, who asks him to teach her a certain maneuver he has taught only a few, a dangerous but usually effective way to decide a fight with another skilled opponent. With some reluctance, for as a traditionalist Don Jaime believes swordsmanship is a man's business, he agrees. She is, after all, very beautiful.

When he introduces her to another of his students, he loses her to him. Then that man is found dead, a victim of a wound from a sword like what would result from the trick Don Jaime taught the woman. He doesn't tell the police, but suspects she might be the killer. That is, until a woman's body is recovered and identified as the woman in question.

From there the plot moves along at a fast pace, culminating in the most exciting sword fight not found in The Princess Bride.

Tapestry with loose threads

Linda raised her head and put on a smile. "A school is a tapestry of threads," she began.

Laurie R. King, Lockdown

Not only is a school "a tapestry of threads," but so is Laurie R. King's latest novel, Lockdown. Many different, seemingly independent and unrelated threads eventually come together to reveal a complete pattern or picture. Anyway that's the metaphor King plays with, and it works more or less.

Linda McDonald is the principal of Guadalupe Middle School, whose plans for a Career Day are coming to fruition. (Do middle schools really have career days?) In a series of mostly short chapters, mostly focused on a single character's thoughts and actions, King shows us the threads. An unbelievable (and I do mean unbelievable) number of these characters have troubled, even violent, pasts and could be the cause of the trouble we know is in store for this school on Career Day. Exactly who it is and what they will do is the picture the author withholds until this tapestry nears completion.

The school itself has a troubled and violent past. One student has been murdered, another is missing. Unfortunately King, best known for her popular Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mystery series, does not weave all these many threads into her completed tapestry. But the novel certainly is suspenseful.

Determined to become a hero

The name Winston Churchill causes most of us picture an old man acting heroically during World War II. In her 2016 book Hero of the Empire, Candice Millard gives us a new image to consider, a young man acting heroically during the Boer War.

As a young man, Churchill yearned to be a hero the way so many young men today yearn to be rock stars. He ultimately wanted a political career, but what better way to win a seat in Parliament than to become a national hero? To this end, he was willing to go anywhere in the world and face any risk, even to the point of riding a white horse into battle. As a journalist he helped start the Boer War, then went to South Africa to cover the war, but carrying a gun and intending to do more fighting than writing.

His chance for heroism came when he and others aboard a train were captured by the Boers and imprisoned. Churchill tried to convince the Boers that because he was a journalist he should be released, but too many of them had seen him with a gun in his hands. He was also, even then, too famous to release.

When he heard that others were planning an escape from the military prison, he wanted to be part of it. Yet they declined to tell Churchill the whole plan because of his habit of talking too much. They couldn't trust him with the secret. Some four decades later this would be British prime minister trusted with one of the greatest secrets of all time, the D-Day invasion.

On the night chosen for the escape, the others decided at the last minute the time was not right, but Churchill went ahead anyway and managed to get over the fence by himself. Thanks to his resourcefulness and a good deal of luck, he managed to travel hundreds of miles to safety. As a national hero, he was easily elected to Parliament.

As she did with the story of Theodore Roosevelt's narrow escape in the Amazon in The River of Doubt and the unsuccessful attempt to save the life of James Garfield in Destiny of the Republic, Millard makes this narrative as suspenseful as a thriller. Biographies of Roosevelt, Garfield and Churchill give these incidents brief attention. Millard inflates them to life-size to show her readers just how significant they actually were at the time they happened.

A dark knight

I cannot tolerate this age. And I will not.

Walker Percy, Lancelot

People who do terrible things always blame somebody else, usually their victims. Just read the accounts of recent atrocities, or much older ones. So it is with Lancelot Lamar, a prisoner in a mental facility in Walker Percy's 1977 novel Lancelot. He has done something terrible, though we do not find out what it is until late in the story.

The novel is a stream-of-consciousness monologue that, as Lancelot is talking to an old friend who has become a priest, is part reminiscence and part confession. Like a typical mental patient, he can't stay on  subject, so his narrative twists and turns over a broad area, making the novel a difficult read that readers may or may not find worth the effort.

Lancelot tells how he discovered that his wife has been unfaithful. His daughter has a blood type she couldn't possibly have if he were her father. Margot, a woman whom he once could not breathe without (as he says repeatedly), is now an actress in a film being shot partly on the Lamar estate in New Orleans. The film features a hurricane, and coincidentally a real hurricane is now bearing down  on the city. He sets up cameras in various bedrooms to determine exactly who is sleeping with whom. Then he takes action.

The name Lancelot is not the only allusion to King Arthur, Camelot and all that. "Guinevere didn't think twice about adultery," he says at one point. He makes frequent mention of the Holy Grail and his own quest for an “unholy grail.”

The story has an upbeat ending, or at least Lancelot thinks that it does. But isn’t he crazy?