Harlot

Harlot (pronounced hahr-luht)

(1) A prostitute or promiscuous woman; one given to the wanton; lewd; low; base.

(2) By extension, in political discourse, an unprincipled person (now rare).

(3) A person given to low conduct; a rogue; a villain; a cheat; a rascal (obsolete).

(4) To play the harlot; to practice lewdness.

Circa 1200: From the Middle English harlot (young idler, rogue), from the Old French harlot, herlot & arlot (rascal; vagabond; tramp”), of obscure origin but thought probably of Germanic origin, either a derivation of harjaz (“army; camp; warrior; military leader”) or a diminutive of karilaz (man; fellow); most speculate the first element is from hari (army).  It was cognates with the Old Provençal arlot, the Old Spanish arlote and the Italian arlotto.  The long obsolete Middle English carlot (a churl; a common man; a person (male or female) of low birth; a boor; a rural dweller, peasant or countryman) is thought probably related.  Harlot was a noun and (less often) a verb, harlotry a noun and harlotize a verb; the present participle was harloting (or harlotting), the simple past and past participle harloted (or harlotted) and there’s no evidence exotic forms like harlotistic or harlotic ever existed, however useful they might have been.  The plural was harlots.

Harlot as a surname dates from at least the mid-late 1100s but by circa 1200 was being used to describe a “vagabond, someone of no fixed occupation, an idle rogue" and was applied almost exclusively to men in the Middle English and Old French.  Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1345-1400) used harlot in a positive sense as well as a pejorative and in medieval English texts it was applied to jesters, buffoons, jugglers and later to actors.  What is the now prevalent meaning (prostitute, unchaste woman) was originally the secondary sense but it had probably developed as early as the late fourteenth century, being well-documented by the early fifteenth.  Doubtless, it was the appearance in sixteenth century English translations of the Bible (as a euphemism for "strumpet, whore") which cemented the association.

The biblical imprimatur didn’t so much extend the meaning as make it gender-specific.  The noun harlotry (loose, crude, or obscene behavior; sexual immorality; ribald talk or jesting) had been in use since the late fourteenth century and the choice of harlot in biblical translation is thought an example of linguistic delicacy, a word like “strumpet” though too vulgar for a holy text and “jezebel” too historically specific.  In this, harlot is part of a long though hardly noble tradition of crafting or adapting words as derogatory terms to be applied to women.  It has to be admitted there are nuances between many but one is impressed there was thought to be such a need to be offensive to women that English contains so many: promiscuous, skeezer, slut, whore, concubine, courtesan, floozy, hooker, hussy, nymphomaniac, streetwalker, tom, strumpet, tramp, call girl, lady of the evening, painted woman et al.  So the bible is influential although there’s a perhaps surprising difference in the translations of that prescriptive duo, Leviticus & Ezekiel: In the King James Version (KJV 1611), harlot appears in thirty-eight versus, but once in Leviticus, nine times in Ezekiel, some of the memorable being:.

Genesis 38:24: And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar thy daughter in law hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she [is] with child by whoredom. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burnt.

Leviticus 21:14: A widow, or a divorced woman, or profane, [or] an harlot, these shall he not take: but he shall take a virgin of his own people to wife.

Joshua 6:25: And Joshua saved Rahab the harlot alive, and her father's household, and all that she had; and she dwelleth in Israel [even] unto this day; because she hid the messengers, which Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

Isaiah 1:21: How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.

Ezekiel 16:15: But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornications on every one that passed by; his it was.

Ezekiel 16:41: And they shall burn thine houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot, and thou also shalt give no hire any more.

Ezekiel 23:19: Yet she multiplied her whoredoms, in calling to remembrance the days of her youth, wherein she had played the harlot in the land of Egypt.

Ezekiel 23:44: Yet they went in unto her, as they go in unto a woman that playeth the harlot: so went they in unto Aholah and unto Aholibah, the lewd women.

Amos 7:17: Therefore thus saith the LORD; Thy wife shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line; and thou shalt die in a polluted land: and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.

Nahum 3:4: Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the wellfavoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts.

Phrases like “shameless harlot” and “political prostitution” used to be part of the lively language of politics but social change and an increasing intolerance of gendered terms of derision have rendered them almost extinct (the language of metaphorical violence is next for the chopping-block: guillotined, knifed, axed etc all on death row).  Harlot’s most notable political excursion came in 1931 when Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947; thrice UK prime-minister 1923-1937) was facing an orchestrated campaign against his leadership by the newspaper proprietors, Lords Rothermere (1868–1940) & Beaverbrook (1879-1964).  The press lords then were a remarkable force.  Before television and commercial radio, let alone the internet and social media, most information was disseminated in newspapers and their influence was considerable.  The press lords weren’t dictatorial, as was demonstrated when they tried more overtly to effect changes they desired, though they sometimes behaved as though they were and politicians were sometimes inclined to believe them.  Within the UK at the time, Rothermere & Beaverbrook weren’t exactly “by Murdoch out of Zuckerberg” but it’s hard to think of a better way of putting it.

Baldwin in 1931 found a good way of putting it.  His leadership of the Tory party challenged because he refused to support them in what was even then the chimera of empire free trade, he responded with a strident speech which appealed to the public’s mistrust of the press barons, using a phrase from his cousin Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), ironically a friend of Beaverbrook.  Rothermere & Beaverbrook he denounced as wanting power without responsibility, “…the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”  It was the most effective political speech in the UK until 1940, Baldwin flourishing and empire free trade doomed, although Beaverbrook would keep flogging the corpse for the rest of the 1930s.  Often underestimated, Lloyd-George and Churchill would later acknowledge Baldwin as the most formidable political operator of the era.

The oratory of Lloyd-George and Churchill may be more regarded by history but Baldwin did have a way with words and less remembered lines from another of his famous speeches may have influenced climate change activist Greta Thunberg (b 2003).  Delivered in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932 in a debate on disarmament, he argued for an international agreement to restrict the development of the aircraft as a military weapon:

“I think it is well also for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him.  The bomber will always get through…”.  “The only defense is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves. I mention that so that people may realize what is waiting for them when the next war comes.”

Prescient about the way the unrestricted bombing of civilians would be the Second World War’s novel theatre, the phrase the bomber will always get through reverberated around the world, chancelleries and military high commands taking from it not the need for restrictions but the imperative to build bomber fleets, Baldwin not planting the seed of the idea but certainly reinforcing the prejudices and worst instincts of many.  That was the power of the phrase; it subsumed the purpose of the speech, the rest of which was essentially forgotten including the concluding sentences:

"I do not know how the youth of the world may feel, but it is no cheerful thought to the older men that having got that mastery of the air we are going to defile the earth from the air as we have defiled the soil for nearly all the years that mankind has been on it."

“This is a question for young men far more than it is for us…”  “Few of my colleagues around me here will see another great war…”  “At any rate, if it does come we shall be too old to be of use to anyone.  But what about the younger men, they who will have to fight out this bloody issue of warfare; it is really for them to decide. They are the majority on the earth. It touches them more closely. The instrument is in their hands.”

“If the conscience of the young men will ever come to feel that in regard to this one instrument the thing will be done.”  “As I say, the future is in their hands, but when the next war comes and European civilization is wiped out, as it will be and by no force more than by that force, then do not let them lay the blame on the old men, but let them remember that they principally and they alone are responsible for the terrors that have fallen on the earth.”

Hansard recorded Baldwin’s speech being greeted with “loud and prolonged cheers”, his enthusiasm for disarmament making him as popular as Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940; UK prime-minister 1937-1940) would briefly be in 1938 when he returned from Germany with a piece of paper bearing Hitler’s signature an a guarantee of “peace in our time”.  The views on both would change.

The old and the young.

Greta Thunberg and Donald Trump, United Nations, New York, September 2019.  Ms Thunberg was attending a UN climate summit Mr Trump snubbed, going instead to a meeting on religious freedom.  Proving that God moves in mysterious ways, Mr Trump took a whole new interest in evangelical Christianity when he entered the contest for the 2016 presidential election.

Ms Thunberg seems to have noted the final paragraphs of Baldwin's speech and while convinced it’s quite right to “lay the blame on the old men” and their blah, blah, blah, which she thinks insufficient to lower carbon emissions, seems confident youth will prove more receptive to doing something about us defiling the earth.

Greta Thunberg, How Dare You? (Acid house mix).

Strumpet

Strumpet (pronounced struhm-pit)

A woman of loose virtue (archaic).

1300–1350: From the Middle English strumpet and its variations, strompet & strumpet (harlot; bold, lascivious woman) of uncertain origin.  Some etymologists suggest a connection with the Latin stuprata, the feminine past participle of stuprare (have illicit sexual relations with) from stupere, present active infinitive of stupeo, (violation) or stuprare (to violate) or the Late Latin stuprum, (genitive stuprī) (dishonor, disgrace, shame, violation, defilement, debauchery, lewdness).  The meanings in Latin and the word structure certainly appears compelling but there is no documentary evidence and others ponder a relationship with the Middle Dutch strompe (a stocking (as the verbal shorthand for a prostitute)) or strompen (to stride, to stalk (in the sense suggestive of the manner in which a prostitute might approach a customer).  Again, it’s entirely speculative and the spelling streppett (in same sense) was noted in the 1450s.  In the late eighteen century, strumpet came to be abbreviated as strum and also used as a verb, which meant lexicographers could amuse themselves with wording the juxtaposition of strum’s definitions, Francis Grose (circa 1730-1791) in his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) settling on (1) to have carnal knowledge of a woman & (2) to play badly on the harpsichord or any other stringed instrument.  As a term in musical performance, strum is now merely descriptive.

Even before the twentieth century, among those seeking to disparage women (and there are usually a few), strumpet had fallen from favour and by the 1920s was thought archaic to the point where it was little used except as a device by authors of historical fiction.  Depending on the emphasis it was wished to impart, the preferred substitutes which ebbed and flowed in popularity over the years included tramp, harlot, hussy, jezebel (sometimes capitalized), jade, tart, slut, minx, wench, trollop, hooker, whore, bimbo, floozie (or floozy) and (less commonly) slattern skeezer & malkin.

There’s something about trollop which is hard to resist but it has fallen victim to modern standards and it now can’t be flung even at white, hetrosexual Christian males (a usually unprotected species) because of the historic association.  Again the origin is obscure with most etymologists concluding it was connected with the Middle English trollen (to go about, stroll, roll from side to side).  It was used as a synonym for strumpet but often with the particular connotation of some debasement of class or social standing (the the speculated link with trollen in the sense of “moving to the other (bad) side”) so a trollop was a “fallen woman”.  Otherwise it described (1) a woman of a vulgar and discourteous disposition or (2) to act in a sluggish or slovenly manner.  North of the border it tended to the neutral, in Scotland meaning to dangle soggily; become bedraggled while in an equestrian content it described a horse moving with a gait between a trot and a gallop (a canter).  For those still brave enough to dare, the present participle is trolloping and the past participle trolloped while the noun plural (the breed often operating in pars or a pack) is trollops.

Floozie (the alternative spellings floozy, floosy & floosie still seen although floogy is obsolete) was originally a corruption of flossy, fancy or frilly in the sense of “showy” and dates only from the turn of the twentieth century.  Although it was sometimes used to describe a prostitute or at least someone promiscuous, it was more often applied in the sense of an often gaudily or provocatively dressed temptress although the net seems to have been cast wide, disapproving mothers often describing as floozies friendly girls who just like to get to know young men.

Strum and trollop weren’t the only words in this vein to have more than one meaning.  Harlot was from the Middle English harlot, from Old French harlot, herlot & arlot (vagabond; tramp), of uncertain origin but probably from a Germanic source, either a derivation of harjaz (army; camp; warrior; military leader) or from a diminutive of karilaz (man; fellow).  It was an exclusively derogatory and offensive form which meant (1) a female prostitute, (2) a woman thought promiscuous woman and (3) a churl; a common person (male or female), of low birth, especially who leading an unsavoury life or given to low conduct.

Lord Beaverbrook (1950), oil on canvas by Graham Sutherland (1903–1980).  It’s been interesting to note that as the years pass, Rupert Murdoch (b 1931) more and more resembles Beaverbrook.

Increasing sensitivity to the way language can reinforce the misogyny which has probably always characterized politics (in the West it’s now more of an undercurrent) means words like harlot which once added a colorful robustness to political rhetoric are now rarely heard.  One of the celebrated instances of use came in 1937 when Stanley Baldwin’s (1867–1947; leader of the UK’s Tory Party and thrice prime-minister 1923 to 1937) hold on the party leadership was threatened by Lord Rothermere (1868-1940) and Lord Beaverbrook (1879-1964), two very rich newspaper proprietors (the sort of folk Mr Trump would now call the “fake news media”).  Whether he would prevail depended on his preferred candidate winning a by-election and three days prior to the poll, on 17 March 1931, Baldwin attacked the press barons in a public address:

“The newspapers attacking me are not newspapers in the ordinary sense; they are engines of propaganda for the constantly changing policies, desires, personal vices, personal likes and dislikes of the two men.  What are their methods?  Their methods are direct falsehoods, misrepresentation, half-truths, the alteration of the speaker's meaning by publishing a sentence apart from the context and what the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

The harlot line overnight became a famous quotation and in one of the ironies of history, Baldwin borrowed it from his cousin, the writer Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) who had used it during a discussion with the same Lord Beaverbrook.  Like a good many (including his biographer AJP Taylor (1906-1990) who should have known better), Kipling had been attracted by Beaverbrook’s energy and charm but found the inconsistency of his newspapers puzzling, finally asking him to explain his strategy.  He replied “What I want is power. Kiss ‘em one day and kick ‘em the next’ and so on”.  “I see” replied Kipling, “Power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”  Baldwin received his cousin’s permission to recycle the phrase in public.

While not exactly respectable but having not descended to prostitution, there was also the hussy (the alternative spellings hussif, hussiv & even hussy all obsolete).  Hussy was a Middle English word from the earlier hussive & hussif, an unexceptional evolution of the Middle English houswyf (housewife) and the Modern English housewife is a restoration of the compound (which for centuries had been extinct) after its component parts had become unrecognisable through phonetic change.  The idea of hussy as a housewife or housekeeper is long obsolete (taking with it the related (and parallel) sense of “a case or bag for needles, thread etc” which as late as the eighteenth century was mention in judgements in English common law courts when discussing as woman’s paraphernalia).  It’s enduring use is to describe women of loose virtue but it can be used either in a derogatory or affectionate sense (something like a minx), the former seemingly often modified with the adjective “shameless”, probably to the point of becoming clichéd.

“An IMG Comrade, Subverts, Perverts & Extroverts: A Brief Pull-Out Guide”, The Oxford Strumpet, 10 October 1975.   

Reflecting the left’s shift in emphasis as the process of decolonization unfolded and various civil rights movements gained critical mass in sections of white society, anti-racist activism became a core issue for collectives such as the International Marxist Group.  Self-described as “the British section of the Fourth International”, by the 1970s their political position was explicitly anti-colonial, anti-racist, and trans-national, expressed as: “We believe that the fight for socialism necessitates the abolition of all forms of oppression, class, racial, sexual and imperialist, and the construction of socialism on a world wide scale”.  Not everything published in The Oxford Strumpet was in the (evolved) tradition of the Fourth International and it promoted a wide range of leftist and progressive student movements.

Lindsay Lohan in rather fetching, strumpet-red underwear.

The Oxford Strumpet was an alternative left newspaper published within the University of Oxford and sold locally.  It had a focus on university politics and events but also included comment and analysis of national and international politics.  With a typically undergraduate sense of humor, the name was chosen to (1) convey something of the anti-establishment editorial attitude and (2) allude to the color red, long identified with the left (the red-blue thing in recent US politics is a historical accident which dates from a choice by the directors of the coverage of election results on color television broadcasts).  However, by 1975, feminist criticism of the use of "Strumpet" persuaded the editors to change the name to "Red Herring" and edition 130 was the final Strumpet.  Red Herring did not survive the decline of the left after the demise of the Soviet Union and was unrelated to the Red Herring media company which during the turn-of-the-century dot-com era published both print and digital editions of a tech-oriented magazine.  Red Herring still operates as a player in the technology news business and also hosts events, its business model the creation of “top 100” lists which can be awarded to individuals or representatives of companies who have paid the fee to attend.  Before it changed ownership and switched its focus exclusively to the tech ecosystem, Red Herring magazine had circulated within the venture capital community and the name had been a playful in-joke, a “red herring” being bankers slang for a prospectus issued with IPO (initial public offering) stock offers.

Goth

Goth (pronounced goth)

(1) A member of an East Germanic people from Scandinavia who settled south of the Baltic early in the first millennium AD. They moved on to the Ukrainian steppe, first raiding and later invading many parts of the Roman Empire between the third and fifth centuries.

(2) In historic slang, a person of no refinement; barbarian.

(3) A genre of rock music, first popular in the 1980s and characterized by morbid themes and dreary melodies.

(4) A person part of a sub-culture favoring this style of music and whose tastes tend to be dark and morbid.

(5) In fashion, a descriptor of dark (usually black or purple) clothing and heavy make-up intended to create a ghostly appearance.

Pre-900: From the Middle English Gothe and Late Latin Gothī (plural); which supplanted the Old English Gota (plural Gotan), cognate with Gothic Gut (as in Gut-thiuda (Goth-people)).  Word in Greek was Gothoi.  In the nineteenth century, use in English became common to describe both architecture (often written as Gothick) and the literary style of certain novels; an adherent of either style was sometimes called a Gothicist.  Modern use to describe the fashion and music emerged in the 1980s, considered still a fork of the punk aesthetic.

The Visigoths

The Visigoths were the western branches of the old nomadic tribes of Germanic peoples referred to collectively as the Goths.  These tribes flourished and spread throughout the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, an era known as the Migration Period.  It was the Visigoths under Alaric I who sacked Rome in 410, an act which made Europe’s descent into medievalism inevitable although there are historians who dispute the detail of that.

The term Visigoth was a geo-etymological error made by Cassiodorus (Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator, circa 485–circa 585).  Always known as Cassiodorus, he was a Roman statesman, renowned scholar of antiquity, and a bureaucrat in the administration of the Ostrogoth king, Theoderic the Great.  Confusingly for students of the epoch, Senator was part of his surname; he was not a member of any senate.  His mistake was thinking Visigoth meant "west Goths".  Visigoth is from the Latin Visigothus, probably deriving from the Proto-Germanic Wīsagutô, a construction of wīsaz (wise, knowledgable) +‎ gutô (a Goth) or from the primitive Indo-European wesu (good).

Battle of Guadalete, circa 1890, by Salvador Martínez Cubells (1845–1914)).

It happened in what is now southern Spain but it’s not known exactly where the Battle of Guadalete was fought and even the date is disputed, most sources saying it was in 711, others a year later although all agree it lasted, on and off, for days.  There had been earlier engagements but Guadalete, fought between the Umayyad Caliphate and Roderic, Visigothic King of Hispania, was the first major battle of the Umayyad conquest of Hispania.  Against the Christian Visigoth army under Roderic, the invading force of the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate was comprised mostly of Berbers and a smaller number of Arabs.  The significance of the battle, not wholly realized at the time, is that it was a set-piece culmination of the earlier skirmishes which had weakened the structure and lines of communications of the Visigoth army.  The Umayyad victory marked the beginning of their conquest of Hispania,  Roderic and many of his generals killed in the battle, opening the way for the capture of the Visigothic capital of Toledo.

Modern-sounding geopolitical concepts like political economy were important influences in the Islamic expansion in North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.  North African politics and economics influenced the early Muslims’ decision to cross the Strait of Gibraltar because the Arab armies which had conquered North Africa found themselves drastically outnumbered by the Berbers (Amazigh), many of whom were either Christian or somewhere in the pagan tradition and the invaders’ rules were unambiguous: Christians, a “People of the Book,” were expected to pay the jizya, an additional tax not imposed on Muslims while pagans were offered the choice of conversion or the blade of the sword.

Clear though the theocratic rules may have been, the realities of an small occupying force attempting to exploit a local population which was hostile and greatly outnumbered the conquerors meant the triumph of politics over ideology, both the collecting of tax and conversions of heathens soon haphazard.  But, the lands of North Africa were vast and their defense and administration required money and if it couldn’t locally be collected, it would have to come from the spoils of war new conquests will bring.  To the south lay the seemingly endless deserts of the Sahara and to the north, the waters of the Mediterranean and whatever dangers lay in the sea-crossing to Iberia, they were preferable to attempting to push through the Sahara.

Some toxicity in Visigothic politics was also a factor in the invasion.   The Visigoths had ruled almost all of Hispania since 415 when they drove out the Vandals who taken control of the province from Rome; ironically it was to North Africa the Vandals fled.  The Visigoth king had once been elected but, as happens in kingdoms, dynastic habits evolved and had become the practice for the crown to be passed to a son although, that inheritance was subject to the veto of the aristocracy.  Usually the nobles concurred but not always and in 710, upon the death of a king, they intervened to replace the dynasty with new blood.  Conflict between the clans ensued and, although in battle the new king prevailed, it appears part of the settlement was the division of the kingdom.

At that point, matters cease to be history and become the stuff of myth and legend.  From Arabic sources is the story that the Muslims invaded Hispania at the behest of Count Julian of Ceuta, the last Christian governor in North Africa. Ceuta lies on the African coast just south of Gibraltar and Julian, who may have been Berber, or Germanic, or Greek and was either a vassal of the Visigoths or a Byzantine governor of North Africa, the records to establish the truth are lost.  Julian had somehow succeeded in holding Ceuta against the Muslim advance and, secure in his city, sent his daughter to Toledo to study at the court of Roderic, the new Visigoth king, which seemed a good idea at the time but within months, Julian was told she was pregnant with Roderic’s child.  Enraged, in 710 Julian approached his former enemies and suggested an invasion of Hispania.  Improbable though this may be, the PR machines on the Muslim and Christian sides were cranked up and offered their own embellishments, the former saying the evil Roderic had raped the poor girl, the latter that the little harlot had seduced poor Roderic.

Julian, it is said, provided provisions, logistical support and intelligence for the assault but little more is known other than it was the name of the general leading the invasion force, Ṭāriq ibn Ziyād (طارق بن زياد in the Arabic) from which the Rock of Gibraltar gained its name, Jabal Ṭāriq (جبل طارق), meaning “mountain of Ṭāriq”.  The invasion was a success but the scale of the military operation is uncertain, medieval writings mentioning forces on both sides in the hundreds of thousands but most historians believe the Muslims had no more than 20,000 troops and the Visigoths perhaps twice that number.

Whatever the numbers, the Visigoths were defeated, Roderic killed in battle.  After the fog of war cleared, the fog of history drifted in and there are many tales to explain how a big army with all the advantages which accrue to defenders could be defeated by a smaller expeditionary force.  Some suggest Roderic didn’t enjoy the loyalty of all his men, many unhappy at his usurpation of the throne but this is contradicted by those who claim the old king was despised by all and that Roderic’s enthronement had been widely celebrated.  Apart from the legal point about the nobles exercising their right to elect a king so it could hardly be said to be a usurpation, the truth of any of this is unknown.  Nor is much known about the battle, military historians tending to conclude the most likely reason for the Arab success was the deployment of fast, mobile, cavalry against static defencs lines in an unrelenting succession of attacks which simply overwhelmed the Visigothic army.

After victory at Guadalete, Ṭāriq didn’t pause, marching on to the Visigothic capital, Toledo before his enemy had time to regroup.  At that point, Musa bin Nusayr, Ṭāriq’s commanding officer, shocked at the rapidity of the advance and anxious to grab for himself the glory of victory, assembled “reinforcements” and hastened across the strait to assume personal command.  Musa didn’t long get to bask in the glow of Ṭāriq’s triumph, the Caliph, Ibrahim ibn al-Walid (ابراهيم ابن الوليد بن عبد الملك‎), soon recalling them both to Damascus where they would live out their days.  This narrative, though widely told, is disputed, some claiming the two soldiers had a harmonious relationship and some saying that while there were disputes, they were later reconciled.  Again, it’s all lost to history.

One military legacy of the conquest of their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula was one hardly noticed at the time and dismissed as insignificant by those who did.  The one area which did not fall to them was the tiny northern kingdom of Asturias and it was from this postage stamp of a renegade province that one day would form the political and geographic base for the Reconquista, the eventual re-imposition of Christian control over Iberia.

American Sapphic, Lindsay Lohan & former special friend Samantha Ronson by Ben Tegel after American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood (1891-1942).

Quean

Quean (pronounced kween)

(1) An overly forward, boisterous, impudent or disreputable woman (archaic).

(2) A (usually) female prostitute (archaic).

(3) A girl or young woman, especially a robust one (archaic British dialectal slang).

(4) A young unmarried woman or girl; daughter (Scots English, quine the alternative spelling).

(5) A useless old woman (a one-off, ex post facto, Australian invention).

(6) In 1930s Australian slang (1) an effeminate man, (2) a suspected or confessed homosexual.

Pre 1000:  From the Middle English quene (a woman; a low-born woman) from the Old English cwēn & cwene (woman (also female serf, hussy, prostitute (as in portcwene "public woman"))), from the Proto-Germanic kwenon (source also of the Old Saxon quan, the Old High German quena, the Old Norse kona, the Gothic qino (wife, woman), the Greek gunē and the Middle Dutch kone & quene (vain or worthless woman).  The ultimate root was the Germanic kwenōn from the Proto-Germanic kwenǭ (woman) from the primitive Indo-European gwḗn (woman) and was related also to the Dutch kween (a barren woman; a barren cow), the Low German quene (barren cow; heifer), the German kon (wife), the Swedish kvinna (woman), the Icelandic kona (woman) and the Gothic qinō (woman) & qēns (wife).

The word had a strange history in the British Isles and the similarity to the homophonic "queen" must have accounted for at least some of the tangle.  Some etymologists the form was used in deliberate opposition to "queen" in the sense of "woman considered without regard to qualities or position" thus the frequent use as a slighting or abusive term for a woman and in the Middle English it could mean "a harlot; an old woman or crone" and by the sixteenth & seventeenth centuries it was in popular use to mean "a hussy; a woman of loose virtue".  North of the border however, things could be different and in the late fifteenth century, in Scotland it carried the sense of a "young, robust woman".  Quean is a noun and queanish an adjective; the noun plural is queans but all are now thought obsolete except for historic purposes.

Queen and quean

Sir William & Lady McMahon.

Rumors about the proclivities of Sir William McMahon (1908-1988; Australian prime minister 1971-1972), floated around within the Canberra beltway almost from the time he was first elected to parliament in 1949.  Usually the gossip was conducted in quiet, knowing sniggers but one day, on the floor of the house, Gough Whitlam (1916-2014; Australian prime minister 1972-1975), in one of his moods, called McMahon “a queen” which on reflection, he decided might have over-stepped the mark and told the Hansard office to edit the official record, saying he actually meant “quean” which he assured them meant “a useless old women”.  During the past thousand years it had never meant that and in the 1930s it had been recorded in Australian slang as a gay slur but the press were still forgiving of Whitlam, the view being it was a rhetorical flourish like Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) once calling British politician Duff Cooper (1890–1954) a krampfhenne (a Bavarian dialectical word meaning “nervous old hen”).

Sir Robert Menzies (1894-1978; Australian prime minister 1939-1941 & 1949-1966) himself advised McMahon if he ever wished to become Prime Minister, he would need a wife and children so, upon hearing of Menzies’ plans to retire, he made contact with a young lady he’d earlier met.  He was then fifty-seven, she twenty-four years younger and they became engaged within six months, the marriage eventually producing four children.  Unfortunately, Menzies’ most ill-fated electoral strategy worked and McMahon became prime-minister in 1970.  The governor-general (Sir Paul Hasluck (1905–1993; Governor-General of Australia 1969-1974) who would later appoint him to the prime-ministership, in March 1968 confessed to:

“…a dislike of McMahon, the longer one is associated with him the deeper the contempt for him grows and I find it hard to allow him any merit.  Disloyal, devious, dishonest, untrustworthy, petty, cowardly - all these adjectives have been weighed by me and I could not in truth modify or reduce any one of them in its application to McMahon.  I find him a contemptible creature and this contempt and the adjectives I have chosen to apply to him sum up defects that, in my estimation of other people, cannot be balanced by better qualities."

Sir Paul Hasluck (left) and William McMahon (right) at the swearing-in of the McMahon ministry, Government House, Canberra, 22 March 1971.

Sir Paul did allow that McMahon was renowned for "industry and pertinacity in a cause" but added to his diary a note that it was "...the industry and persistence of a man applying himself often to a mean purpose."  Anxious perhaps that it not appear his opinion was formed from mere prejudice, he recorded that long ago "...the unkindest thought I had of him was to think him something of an oddity and a rather funny little man.  There was a time when I might have sought to find good points for he is a pathetic figure, obviously an incomplete and sorry little person, small in stature, ill-developed, extremely sensitive about his lack of manly qualities and sometimes ingenuous in his bid for liking.  But his vanity and deviousness in self-advancement go beyond a point where one can continue to excuse them or make allowances for them out of sympathy.  I do not respect him and do not trust him."  So even if Sir Paul was at pains to point out he didn't take an instant dislike to Sir William, it seems might have saved time and warming to the topic, he recalled in 1951 hearing McMahon who, although already for over a year a member of parliament, was still acting as a uniformed attendant at functions for the Lord Mayor of Sydney, assisting his aunt by handing out tea and cakes to the ladies in attendance.  Sir Paul must have taken particular delight in adding "He would be the only man among all the ladies and seemed to love it.  He never seemed to be in the company of men but was mincing and simpering like a little girl."  None of these character traits of course disqualify anyone from high political office although they may have contributed to McMahon being reckoned still perhaps Australia’s worst prime-minister although that may be unfair to some of his twenty-first century successors.

Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974), escorting Sonia McMahon (1932-2010) to a state dinner, the White House, 1971; husband William bringing up the rear.

There was one highlight during McMahon’s brief, mediocre tenure in the Lodge.  On a state visit to the United States in 1971, his wife wore to dinner a white dress, slit both sides to the armpits and held together from the waist up by rhinestones less than an inch (25 mm) apart.  A garment of extraordinarily daring by the standards of the diplomatic corps, the dress made headlines world-wide and was the subject of more analysis than was ever extended to McMahon.  His wife always dismissed speculation about her husband being a bit gay, claiming the rumors were started by Gough Whitlam after McMahon wore suede shoes into parliament.

Lindsay Lohan in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004) (left) and Patrick Mullins' revelations of a middle-aged drama quean, his biography of Sir William McMahon (Tiberius With A Telephone (2020) Scribe, 784 pp, ISBN: 9781922310637 (right)).

The jibe "Tiberius With A Telephone" came also from Whitlam, an allusion to McMahon's reputation for intrigue and an example of his fondness for flaunting his classical learning and flair for conjuring alliterative phrases.  Remarkably, given that for half a century McMahon's brief premiership has been dismissed as insignificant, incipit and inept, Mullins' biography of this previously neglected administration is a revelation and a classic work of political history, an absorbing tale of the middle-years of the twentieth century.