Re: Dweomer,etc.
- From: Larry Swain <theswain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 18:05:21 -0500
Tom Hook wrote:
On 2007-06-21 00:39:07 -0400, Dan Clore <clore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
Incidentally, everyone, I would be very happy to get more citations for any of these or related words. I'm not generally using gaming material (the glossary entry from the Dungeon Masters Guide is an exception), but just about anything would be of interest. I would be especially interested to find out where Gygax came across the word and derivatives. (Gygax would have encountered but probably not remembered Tolkien's use; as for Tolkien, he surely encountered them when working on _The Pearl_ and _Gawain and the Green Knight_, as the same poet used them in _Cleanness_.)
Dan
As difficult as it was to go back through this skein, I was pleased to see that you did want to pursue in some way, the intent of the original post rather than engage in angry arguments. I noticed that no one mentioned "The Ring of the Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary" by Peter Gilliver, Jeremy Marshall and Edmund Weiner. While much of this material has been cited, there is this passage on dwimmerlaik from which I quote in full (you readers better appreciate all the typing I have had to do to share this with you!).
Tom
From pages 108-110 (excuse any typos please):
Hi Tom,
Thanks for bringing this back to something substantive.
"At a dramatic moment (LR v. vi), Eowyn of Rohan confronts the Lord of the Nazgul with the words: 'Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion!' Dwimmerlaik is an obsolete word which Tolkien has restored to a more robust condition by the application of a little etymological paintwork.
The OED entry is headed with the spelling DEMERLAYK, and the word is defined as 'magic, practice of occult art, jugglery'. Such w-less spellings of the word were common by about 1400, e.g. in the poem 'Cleanness' (Deuinores of demorlaykes þat dremes cowþe rede - diviners of occult arts who could interpret dreams) and in the 'Wars of Alexander' (and all þis demerlayke he did bot be þe deullyis craftis - and all this sorcery he did only by the devil's crafts') The closest match to Tolkien's form, dwimerlaik, is attributed by the OED to the 'Wars of Alexander' although it is not found in the original text: nevertheless, the OED entry may have influenced Tolkien's spelling of the word, even though this particular example appears to be a phantom. His own earlier spellings (HME VIII 365, 368 and notes 2 and 6) were dwimor-lake and dwimmer-lake.
The word is derived from an old-English stem dwimer - which is found in gedwimor 'apparition, phantom, delusion; delusive practice, witchcraft'. The suffice layk, a northern spelling of the Old English suffix - lac survives in the modern English word wedlock. (The -lock in warlock is from a different OE root, -loga meaning 'liar'.) In ME the word was, it appears, mainly abstract, but Tolkien has made it a concrete noun, presumably meaning 'sorcerer'.
I'm not sure that this is the case. I think most of us take Eowyn's phrase as a "name" flung at the Witch-King meaning as here "Begone, foul Sorcerer, lord of carrion..." But there is another reading which I think might be what is meant. We forget sometimes that the W-K is as much an "object" of magic or the result of Sauron's practice of magic as he is a worker of magic himself. His very presence and his enhanced state at Pelennor Fields is the result of magic worked on him if you will. Viewed this way, one could restate Eowyn's statement as: "Begone, foul result of magic, master of living-dead (carrion in the 13th century could be used derisively of living-bodies as being no better than dead ones. But even more: þe bacbitere cheoweð ofte monnes flesch..& beakeð wið his blake bile o cwike charoines as þe þet is þes deofles corbin of helle. This is from the Ancrene Riwle, a text that Tolkien spent a great deal of time on in its various incarnations. The description there fits the W-K and the Nazgul to a T: the backbiter chews off a man's flesh and strikes with his black sword a living body (carrion) as he that is of the devil's raven from hell. So the W-K is a bit more than a back biter, but he and his Nazgul certainly strike with a black sword and the black breath and make living carrion, and are certainly hell's ravens flying about on their mounts. Eowyn isn't calling the W-K the Lord of the Dead, but rather describing him here too as "lord of carrion", or "master of the undead", a description, not an address. So I think the "foul dwimmerlaik" is also a description, not an address, and that the noun there may still be abstract (foul magic) rather than concrete (sorcerer). Just a thought that in the end may not work out.....
The root dwimer- is seen also in the adjective dwimmer-crafty, a derivative of OE dwimercraeft (OED dweomercraft) used by Eomere to describe Saruman (LR III. ii). It also appears in two place names, Dwimorberg (the Haunted Mountain at the rear of Dunharrow in Rohan) and Dwimordene (literally Vale of Illusion, the named used in Rohan for Lothlorien.) It may seem remarkable that the same word is used to refer to evil magic and to the benign powers of the Elves. However, it is clear from the words of Wormtongue ('webs of deceit were ever woven in Dwimordene': LR III.vi) that in the minds of the Rohirrim there was little distinction: both were extremely dangerous. The identification of the (essentially good) Elves with the power of evil magic is one of Tolkien's themes (see Elf).
Yes, I should read the book, its on my list, and would point to "faerie" and Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories". Faerie is dangerous, perilous in fact, whether the fairies are good guys or evil. (See Smith of Wooten Major in which the fairies are so depicted.)
Relatively few of the many old English words beginning with dw- survive in modern English (dwarf of course being one). It is notable that several obsolete ones had similar meanings, such as DWALE n.1 (error, delusion, deceit, fraud), DWALE n.2 (stupefying drink, deadly nightshade), DWALM v. (to swoon), and DWELE v. (to go astray, to swoon).
The dweomer is used in 'Dungeons and Dragons' and similar fantasy games to mean a magical 'aura' and imparted to an enchanted object. Why did the coiner (or reviver) of this word opt for a different spoelling from that used by Tolkien in his Rohirric compunds? It is possible that they may have been reading Lazamon's (sic.)
Not sure what you mean here, but at a guess I think you've misread. The lower case 3 thing there isn't a "z" but a yogh which stands for consonantal "y" as in "young" and "right" (which used to be pronounced [and may be still in some dialects] as "riyt" rather than "rite"). So Layamon is better if the "yogh" doesn't come through.
'Brut', the one English text in
which the dweo- forms occur - but it seems no less likely that mention of this spelling in the OED entries for DEMERLAYK and DWEOMERCRAFT may have suggested it (and it does have the attraction of being a rather more exotic-looking word.)"
Interestingly enough the author comes to same conclusion I did before Dan's information from Gygax: the "reviver" of the word used the OED. Interesting.
.
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