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.  Harlot is a noun & verb, harlotry is a noun, harlotish is an adjective, harlotize and harloted & harloting are verbs; the noun plural is harlots.  The adjective harlotesque is non-standard.

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 as well as pejorative sense 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.

In harlotesque mode: Lindsay Lohan in fancy dress as Suicide Squad's (2016) Harley Quinn, Halloween party, London, November 2016.  It may be a cliché but for purposes of fancy dress, fishnet stockings (or tights) are the motif of choice for those wanting the "harlot look". 

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 etc.  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.

Stanley Baldwin election campaign poster, 1929.

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 barons" then a potent force (Beaverbrook called them collectively the "press gang").  Before commercial television & radio, let alone the internet and social media, most information was disseminated in newspapers and their influence was considerable.  The press barons though, whatever their desires, couldn't be dictatorial, as Beaverbrook found when his long campaign for empire free-trade achieved little but they sometimes behaved as if they could at a whim move public opinion and often politicians were 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, David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) and Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) 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”.  Soon, the views on both men would shift but historians today treat them more sympathetically.

The old and the young.

Greta Thunberg (b 2003) and Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021), 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 mentioned 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.

Incubus & Succubus

Incubus (pronounced in-kyuh-buhs or ing-kyuh-buhs)

(1) In medieval folklore, a mythical demon or evil spirit said to be a figure appearing in nightmares and (when in explicit male form) known to descend upon sleeping women, engaging in sexual intercourse.

(2) Used loosely, sleep paralysis; night terrors, a nightmare.

(3) Some thought weighing upon one, oppressing one like a nightmare, especially if an obsession which prevents or interrupts sleep.

(4) By extension, a yoke, any oppressive thing or person; a burden.

(5) In entomology, one of various parasitic insects, especially the sub-family Aphidiinae.

1175–1225: From the Middle English incubus, from the Medieval Latin incubus (a nightmare induced by such a demon), a noun derivative of the Latin incubāre (to lie upon; to incubate), from the Latin incubō (nightmare, one who lies down on the sleeper; to lie upon, to hatch), the construct being in- (used in the sense of “on”) +‎ cubō (to lie down).  From the Latin the word was picked up also by Dutch (incubus), French (incube), German (Incubus), Italian (incubo), Portuguese (íncubo), Romanian (incub), Russian (инку́б (inkúb)) and Spanish (íncubo).  Incubus is a noun; the noun plural is incubuses or incubi.

Succubus (pronounced suhk-yuh-buhs)

(1) In medieval folklore, a mythical demon in female form, said to have sexual intercourse with men in their sleep.

(2) Any demon or evil spirit (historically, almost always in female form).

(3) A woman of loose virtue; a strumpet; a whore, a prostitute (archaic).

1350–1400: From the Middle English succubus, from the Medieval Latin succubus, a variant of the Latin succuba (a harlot), from the Latin succubāre (to lie beneath), the construct being sub- (used in the sense of “under”) + cubāre (to lie).  The alternative form was succuba.  Succubus was coined to describe a female form of a fiend on the model of incubus.  The verb succubate (have carnal knowledge of a man (as a succuba) came from the Latin past participle where succuba (a harlot) was use of a woman of human flesh and blood with no suggestion of the supernatural.  The transferred sense of succuba in the Classical Latin was “a supplanter; a rival”.  Succubus & succuba are nouns, succubine is an adjective and succubate is a verb; the noun plural is succubi. 

Lindsay Lohan with bottle of Mountain Dew water leaving an Incubus concert, Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, 13 July, 2009.  Incubus is a four or five piece rock band described as “part metal, part funk, part jazz and part hip-hop”.

The incubus was a male demon said to engage in sexual activity with sleeping women, depicted often in situations in which the victim was unable to resist and the subtext was less one of the demon’s desire than a wish to drain energy or life force.  Historically, the visitation of incubi was blamed for causing nightmares and in pre-modern medicine they were attributed as the source of sleep paralysis.  The succubus was a female demon, aid to seduce men, visiting in their dreams and engaging in sexual activity.  In folklore, the notion of unwillingness among the “victims” was not always present and often the succubus depicted as a temptress who exploits human desires, one sub-text being men were really not to blame for falling for her “irresistible” charms.  Despite that, priests would use the succubus to illustrate the dangers of masturbation, linking the demon’s nocturnal visits with the practice.  This association with themes of temptation, sin and the dangers of uncontrolled lust was one of the reasons “succubus” was by the mid-sixteenth century used to mean “a strumpet; a woman of loose virtue, a prostitute”, echoing the earlier Latin succuba (a harlot); the English language has proved endlessly productive in coining terms with which to denigrate women.  The essential distinction was that succubi were depicted as alluring and seductive, whereas incubi were portrayed as invasive and terrifying, themes familiar for thousands of years.  It’s notable that in many folk narratives, it was monks who were said to be especially vulnerable to the ways of the succubi, their sexual skills such that they would draw from the clerics so much energy the unfortunate men could barely sustain themselves, some succumbing to exhaustion and even death.  In Antiquity, although the specific terms incubus (a male demon which rapes sleeping women) and succubus (a female demon which seduces men) were not used, similar ideas do appear in Greek and Roman mythology and in the Christian tradition of the incubi & succubi the ancient beliefs in spirits, demons and seduction were blended and infused with Biblical influence.

The Greek demons

There was Empusa (Ερπουσα), one of the creatures in Hecate's entourage who belonged to the Underworld and filled the night with terrors.  Empusa could assume various shapes and appeared particularly to women and children; feeding on human flesh, she would often assume the form of a young girl to attract her victims.  Lamia (leɪmiə) was a daughter of Poseidon and mother of the Libyan Sibyl.  She was a most terrible monster who was said to steal children and was a terror to nurses.  In one account (in mythology there are many strains), Lamia was the daughter of Belus and Libya and enjoyed an affair with Zeus but on every occasion she gave birth to a child, Hera would arrange for it to die.  All this affected Lamia and she became depressed, in her despair secluding herself in a cave where she became a monster with an obsessive jealousy of mothers more fortunate than herself; she would seize and devour their children.  To punish her more, Hera denied her the ability to sleep so she appealed to Zeus who gave her the power to take out her eyes, replacing them whenever she wished.  The tale of Lamia influenced writers and some other female spirits which attached themselves to children in order to suck their blood were known as Lamiae.

Sirens and the Night (1865), oil on canvas by William Edward Frost (1810-1877).

Hecate (hɛkəti) was another demon where the details vary in different tales.  The poet Hesiod (active 740-650 BC) portrayed her as the offspring of Asteria & Perses and a and a direct descendant of the generation of Titans.  She had some virtues in that when she extended hr goodwill to mortals, variously she could grant material prosperity, eloquence in political assemblies and victory in battle & sporting events.  She had the power to fill the nets of fishermen, make the fields of farmer fecund and fatten their cattle but her reputation suffered because, as a goddess of witchcraft, ghosts, and magic (big things at the time), her retinue included ghostly women or phantoms who preyed upon men in the manner of a succubus.  The Sirens (Σειρῆνες) were deadly creatures who used their lyrical and earthly charms to lure sailors to their death.  Attracted by their enchanting music and voices, the seduced seafarers would sail their ships too close to the rocky coast of the nymph's island and there be shipwrecked.  Not untypically for the myths of antiquity, the sirens are said to have had many homes.  The Romans said they lived on some small islands called Sirenum scopuli while later authors place them variously on the islands of Anthemoessa, on Cape Pelorum, on the islands of the Sirenuse, near Paestum, or in Capreae.  All were places with rocky coasts and tall cliffs.  It was Odysseus who most famously escaped the sirens.  Longing to hear their songs but having no wish to be shipwrecked, he had his sailors fill their ears with beeswax, rendering them deaf.  Odysseus then ordered them to tie him to the mast.  Sailing past, when he heard their lovely voices, he ordered his men to release him but they tightened the knots, not releasing him till the danger had passed.  Some writers claimed the Sirens were fated to die if a man heard their singing and escaped them and that as Odysseus sailed away they flung themselves into the water and drowned.  The idea of the sirens persists in idiomatic use:  The "siren sound" is used to refers to words or something which exerts a particular compelling attraction but a "siren call" can be used of something not directly audible such as the thoughts evoked by a painting or even a concept, populism, fascism & communism all described thus at times.

The Roman demons

The strīx (στριγός) was a bird of ill omen, the product of metamorphosis, infamous for feeding on human flesh and blood.  That behavior saw the name adopted for witches but again the tales vary.  Some claimed the strīx did no harm to mortals while other damn them as vampiric, owl-like creatures,  man-eaters who were the terror of any community upon which they would prey, a notion much pursued by later Medieval writers, always happy to recount takes of bloodthirsty women, the strīx blamed for much child-eating, sometimes with an undertone of seduction or spiritual corruption.  The witches were unconnected with the word Styx.  Styx (Στύξ) was a river of the Underworld and as told by Hesiod, Styx was the oldest of the children of Oceanus & Tethys but the Roman writer Hyginus (Gaius Julius Hyginus (circa 64 BC–17 AD) aid she was one of the children of Nyx & Erebus.  Muddying the waters further, she featured amongst Persephone's companions in the in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, but there was also a tradition according to which she was Persephone's mother.  Styx was the name of a spring in Arcadia which emerged from a rock above ground, then disappeared underground again.  Its water was poisonous for humans and cattle and could break iron, metal and pottery, though a horse's hoof was unharmed and supposedly, it was waters from this spring which poisoned Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great, 356-323 BC).  The water of the Styx was in some stories said to possess magical powers and it was into its flow that Thetis dipped Achilles (holding by the heel) in order to confer invulnerability.  The satyrs (σάτυρος) were demons of nature which appeared in Dionysus' train, represented often with the lower part of the body resembling that of a horse and the upper part that of a man (sometimes the animal half was that of a goat).  They had a long, thick tail (like that of a horse) and a perpetually erect penis of truly heroic dimensions.  In many stories, they were depicted as enjoying dancing & drinking with Dionysus and pursuing the Maenads & Nymphs.  Over time, the bestial almost vanished as their lower limbs became human with feet rather than hooves with only the full tails remained as a reminder of the old form.  Although infamous for their lascivious behavior, they were not malevolent in the same way as demons although they pursued women and nymphs with as great an enthusiasm as any incubus.

Cockatrice

Cockatrice (pronounced kok-uh-tris)

(1) A mythological monster, hatched supposedly by a serpent from the egg of a rooster and thus represented usually with the head, legs, and wings of a rooster, atop the body and tail of a serpent; the alternative name was basilisk.  Depicted usually as being the size and shape of a dragon or wyvern but with some lizard-like characteristics, if so minded it could kill with just a glance and could be slain only by tricking it into seeing its own reflection.  A young cockatrice was a chickatrice.

(2) In the Bible, a venomous serpent.

(3) Figuratively, a mistress; a harlot (obsolete).

(4) Figuratively, a mistress; (obsolete).

(5) Figuratively, any venomous or deadly thing (obsolete).

(6) The cobra (the common name of a number of venomous snakes, most of which belong to the genus Naja) (contested).

1382: From the Middle English cocatrice, from the Middle French cocatris, from the Old French cocatriz, from the Medieval Latin plural form caucātrīces & the unattested Latin calcātrīx (she who treads upon something), the feminine of the unattested calcātor (tracker), the construct built from calcō (tread) or calcā(re) (to tread) (a verbal derivative of calx (heel)) + -tor (the agent suffix).  The Latin was a direct translation of the Greek word ichneúmōn or ikhneúmōn which carried the same meaning.  Cockatrice is a noun; the noun plural is cockatrices.

The origin of the cockatrice certainly in ancient and frightening & fantastic beasts are common in the fables of many cultures but the one closest in appearance is thought to be one from the legends of Ancient Egypt, the mortal enemy of the crocodile, which it tracks down and kills.  In the way stories became mangled & tangled as they travelled between languages and across borders, in the Christian West, the cockatrice became conflated with the basilisk (a fire-breathing, snake-like dragon also with a murderous glance).  In the medieval era, such morphing was not uncommon and the popular association with a cock led to the legend the creature was born of a serpent, hatched from a cock's egg although there’s little to suggest there was much of a link with crocodile.  The connection with serpents persisted and it appears several times in the King James Version (KJV, 1611)) of the Bible, used to translate a Hebrew word meaning “serpent”.  In heraldry, it was used as a rampant, a beast half cock, half serpent and in slang it was used from the late sixteenth century to mean “a woman of loose virtue; a harlot”, an indication men are never short of sources when searching for ways to disparage women.  Etymologists note frequent references to “cockatrice” being a words used to describe the cobra, presumably because of the snake’s unusual hooded head and its habit of rearing up and “staring” but there appears to be scant evidence of actual use.

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.

The cockatrice appears in the Christian Bible’s Old Testament (Isaiah 11:5-11; King James Version (KJV, 1611)):

5. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins.

6 The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

7. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

8. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den.

9. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.

10. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious.

11. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Pathros, and from Cush, and from Elam, and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea.

Isaiah was the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the first of the Major Prophets in the Christian Old Testament.  In Isaiah 11, the prophet is describing to his listeners the nature of the world during the rule of a mysterious future king of Israel.  This king’s rule will be global, over the earth, men & animals and all beasts, prey & predator, will lie down together and eat together, all without bloodshed or death; in peace, together shall they live.  To illustrate how different will be this paradise, Isaiah says both the baby and the young child safely ill play surrounded by deadly, venomous snakes and be safe even from a cockatrice.  Readers were free to interpret the verse literally as an imagining the very nature of animals will change under this rule or, metaphorically, that the new regime of the Messiah's kingdom will usher in what would now be called a “new world order”, one in which all nations and peoples peacefully co-exist.  Isaiah needs to be read in conjunction with the Book of Revelation which says at the very end of history, in the new heaven and new earth, there will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain and all wickedness will be banished from the Earth.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) lived in the England of the Elizabethan age, a time when the cockatrice was a fixture in popular culture and he used references to the mythological beast and its ability to kill with just a glance or as Shakespeare would put it, its “death-darting eye”, having the duchess in Richard III (1594) say in Act 4, Scene 1:

O ill-dispersing wind of misery!
O my accursèd womb, the bed of death!
A cockatrice hast thou hatched to the world,
Whose unavoided eye is murderous.

Crooked Hillary Clinton: How Shakespeare would have imagined “death-darting  eyes”.

He returned to the allusion in Act 3, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet (1597) in the words of the doomed Juliet:

What devil art thou that dost torment me thus?
This torture should be roared in dismal hell.
Hath Romeo slain himself? Say thou but 'Ay,'
And that bare vowel 'I' shall poison more
Than the death-darting eye of cockatrice.
I am not I if there be such an 'I,'
Or those eyes shut that make thee answer 'Ay.'
If he be slain, say 'Ay,' or if not, 'No.'
Brief sounds determine of my weal or woe.

From before Antiquity to the horror films of the twenty-first century, fantastical beasts have often appeared and while most have been created to frighten, some have been more whimsical, such as the Jabberwock which first appeared in the nonsense poem Jabberwocky, written by Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) and included in Through the Looking-Glass (1871), the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).  The poem was about the killing of the fearsome Jabberwock and is part of what makes the two books among the most enjoyable in English literature but in literary theory “jabberwocky” has also been co-opted to mean “a form of nonsense; unintelligible speech or writing”, the connection illustrated by one fragment from the poem:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

The author helpfully had Humpty Dumpty say that brillig means “four o'clock in the afternoon - the time when you start broiling things for dinner” but generally allowed his readers to make of the words what they will which probably was the best approach.  Alice in Wonderland was fun but those who followed would make linguistic gymnastics something else and James Joyce’s (1882–1941) Finnegans Wake (1939) was no fun for most although Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) claimed to find “a laugh on just about every page” and for A Clockwork Orange (1962) created his own slang argot, derived from a number of linguistic traditions.  As far as is known, Joyce never discussed jabberwocky but Burgess acknowledged the debt.  Other famous beasts include the leviathan & behemoth.  The leviathan was a truly massive sea creature rooted in ancient Middle Eastern and biblical texts, portrayed typically as a monstrous sea serpent or dragon, representing the primal forces of chaos and the ocean.  The behemoth was also of biblical origin and described generally as a massive, earth-bound beast, often symbolizing power and strength, thus the frequent use of the ox as an image, the creature dominating the land as the leviathan does the oceans.

Behemoth: 2020 Freightliner M2-106 in silver over black leather upholstery with alligator-hide inserts and timber trim, modified by Western Hauler, Fort Worth, Texas.

The big (and in recent decades they have got very big) US pick-up trucks appal some sensitive souls who sometimes damn the things as “behemoths” but for those for whom even they weren’t big enough, there were companies which would add enough bling to the first generation (2003-2023) of the Freightliner M2 medium-duty truck that some actually bought the things for private use.  Amateur 

The very clever and deliciously wicked English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) used leviathan and behemoth as metaphors to explore concepts of social and political power in his works, especially in his famous book Leviathan (1651) and the lesser-known Behemoth (published posthumously in 1682), each creature deployed as a literary device to symbolize different forms of political structures and conflicts.  In Leviathan, the sea creature represented strong, centralized government or sovereign power, the state which Hobbes regarded as not merely desirable but essential.  He envisioned society as a “body politic” in which all individuals come together under a single, absolute authority to escape the chaos of the natural state, which Hobbes described in his most memorable phrase: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”  The Leviathan represented the overarching power of the sovereign, something necessary to maintain order and peace, a vision of a government which could (and should) act decisively to suppress internal conflicts and keep external threats at bay, making it at once a protector and potentially an oppressor; little wonder then Leviathan has been found on the bookshelf of more than one overthrown tyrant.  In Behemoth, Hobbes used the monster of the land when describing the chaotic and destructive nature of civil war, focusing specifically focusing the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century and the theme of the book was the way parties and political factions and ideologies can tear a society apart.  Unlike the stabilizing leviathan, behemoth represents the forces of disorder and division that arise when people reject central authority and plunge into conflict.  It’s a cautionary tale, a warning that when men live in a society lacking a unifying authority, things will devolve into factionalism, chaos and political instability, the final result something like the “state of nature” in which life descended to something “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”.

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.