#keckling

[katmicari]

Writer Prompt Wednesday #11 Assignment

We are up to the letter K today for our random number generated word to use as inspiration, and the word is keckling, which is old rope or iron chains wrapped around a cable. I like the image of this one. As in the past weeks, the assignment is to use this word in a poem, song lyric, or short work of fiction, and if you do, please tag or post it here.

[ninadove]

Nina reads Dracula 🦇

August 1st

Two days of fog, and not a sail sighted. Had hoped when in the English Channel to be able to signal for help or get in somewhere. Not having power to work sails, have to run before wind. Dare not lower, as could not raise them again. We seem to be drifting to some terrible doom.

😬

Mate now more demoralised than either of men. His stronger nature seems to have worked inwardly against himself.

EURYLOCHUS NO!!!!!

Men are beyond fear, working stolidly and patiently, with minds made up to worst. They are Russian, he Roumanian.

YOU’VE DOOMED US AAALL EURYLOCHUUUUUUUUUS!!!!!!!!!!

Ok now back to Mina and Lucy and the old man:

"It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel; that's what it be, an' nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' barguests an' bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a-belderin'. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an' all grims an' signs an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome beuk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do somethin' that they don't other incline to. It makes me ireful to think o' them. Why, it's them that, not content with printin' lies on paper an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them on the tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will; all them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant—simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or 'Sacred to the memory' wrote on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at all; an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an' tryin' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was; some of them trimmlin' and ditherin', with their hands that dozzened an' slippy from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their grup o' them."

… Why are you trying so hard to dispel these rumours. What is it to you.

"Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in the hope of a glorious resurrection, on July, 29, 1873, falling from the rocks at Kettleness. This tomb was erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly beloved son. 'He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.' Really, Mr. Swales, I don't see anything very funny in that!" She spoke her comment very gravely and somewhat severely.

"Ye don't see aught funny! Ha! ha! But that's because ye don't gawm the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was acrewk'd—a regular lamiter he was—an' he hated her so that he committed suicide in order that she mightn't get an insurance she put on his life. He blew nigh the top of his head off with an old musket that they had for scarin' the crows with. 'Twarn't for crows then, for it brought the clegs and the dowps to him. That's the way he fell off the rocks. And, as to hopes of a glorious resurrection, I've often heard him say masel' that he hoped he'd go to hell, for his mother was so pious that she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he didn't want to addle where she was. Now isn't that stean at any rate"—he hammered it with his stick as he spoke—"a pack of lies? and won't it make Gabriel keckle when Geordie comes pantin' up the grees with the tombstean balanced on his hump, and asks it to be took as evidence!"

… Kids, could you lighten up a little?

I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as she said, rising up:—

"Oh, why did you tell us of this? It is my favourite seat, and I cannot leave it; and now I find I must go on sitting over the grave of a suicide."

"That won't harm ye, my pretty; an' it may make poor Geordie gladsome to have so trim a lass sittin' on his lap. That won't hurt ye. Why, I've sat here off an' on for nigh twenty years past, an' it hasn't done me no harm. Don't ye fash about them as lies under ye, or that doesn' lie there either! It'll be time for ye to be getting scart when ye see the tombsteans all run away with, and the place as bare as a stubble-field. There's the clock, an' I must gang. My service to ye, ladies!" And off he hobbled.

Haha… Haaaaaa…

Lucy and I sat awhile, and it was all so beautiful before us that we took hands as we sat; and she told me all over again about Arthur and their coming marriage. That made me just a little heart-sick, for I haven't heard from Jonathan for a whole month.

The same day.I came up here alone, for I am very sad. There was no letter for me. I hope there cannot be anything the matter with Jonathan. The clock has just struck nine. I see the lights scattered all over the town, sometimes in rows where the streets are, and sometimes singly; they run right up the Esk and die away in the curve of the valley. To my left the view is cut off by a black line of roof of the old house next the abbey. The sheep and lambs are bleating in the fields away behind me, and there is a clatter of a donkey's hoofs up the paved road below. The band on the pier is playing a harsh waltz in good time, and further along the quay there is a Salvation Army meeting in a back street. Neither of the bands hears the other, but up here I hear and see them both. I wonder where Jonathan is and if he is thinking of me! I wish he were here.

STOP THIS IS SO SAD FOR SO MANY REASONS AND GOSH THE WAY MINA TRIES TO DISTRACT HERSELF BY DESCRIBING THE LANDSCAPE BUT ONLY SEES OMENS OF DEATH HELP

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[postsofbabel]

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[softservewidow]

Obsessedt with this spelling of cackle. Keckle is in fact how it should be written

[tobacconist]

flakes of iron oxide floating about in the keckle, but we know they are of nutritional value.

[downtroddendeity]

Stoker Accent to English translation

Had some positive responses when I mentioned this, so for the benefit of Dracula Daily newcomers and anyone else who's curious, I figured I'd transcribe some of the annotations from my dead tree copy explaining Mina’s elderly friend Mr. Swales' dialogue. The dialect he's using is from Yorkshire, though I've always worked from the assumption that Stoker probably did about as well at representing how people from Yorkshire talk as he did Texans and Dutch people. This is all in Chapter 6 in the actual book, and these annotations are by Brooke Allen in the B&N Classics edition.

From the July 24th entry:

"I wouldn't fash masel' about them, miss. Them things be all wore out. Mind, I don't say that they never was, but I do say that they wasn't in my time. They be all very well for comers and trippers, an' the like, but not for a nice young lady like you. Them feet-folks from York and Leeds that be always eatin' cured herrin's an' drinkin' tea an' lookin' out to buy cheap jet would creed aught. I wonder masel' who'd be bothered tellin' lies to them—even the newspapers, which is full of fool-talk."

fash masel means "trouble myself"; feet-folks are people who travel on foot, in this case tourists; and creed aught means "believe anything."

"I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My granddaughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em; an', miss, I lack belly-timber sairly by the clock."

gang ageeanwards means "go toward"; crammle aboon the grees means "go upstairs"; belly-timber is "food"; and sairly means "sorely" or "badly."

From the August 1st entry:

"It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel; that's what it be, an' nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' barguests an' bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a-belderin'."

The sentence "translates" as: "These curses and spirits and ghosts and bogie-men and the the like are only fit to make children and dizzy women cry."

"They be nowt but airblebs. They, an' all grims an' signs an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome beuk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do somethin' that they don't other incline to."

The old man goes on to talk about beuk-bodies, which are book-people or pedants. [Hi!] His phrase to skeer an' scunner hafflin's means "to scare and shame halfwits."

My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an' try'm to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was;

The part of the sentence "translates" as: “it’ll be a queer mess at the Day of Judgment when they come tumbling up here in their shrouds, all jumbled together and trying to drag their tombstones with them.”

some of them trimmlin' and ditherin', with their hands that dozzened* an' slippy from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their grup o' them."

*Withered.

"Yabblins! There may be a poorish few not wrong, savin' where they make out the people too good; for there be folk that do think a balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their own. The whole thing be only lies. Now look you here; you come here a stranger, an' you see this kirk-garth." 

yabblins means “perhaps”; a balm-bowl is a chamber-pot and a kirk-garth a churchyard

"And you consate that all these steans be aboon folk that be happed here, snod an' snog?" 

snod an’ snog means “snug and cozy”

Look at that one, the aftest abaft the bier-bank: read it!

the bier-bank is the churchyard path

I have me antherums* aboot it!

*Doubts.

I tell ye that when they got here they'd be jommlin'* an' jostlin' one another

*Pushing.

But that's because ye don't gawm the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was acrewk'd—a regular lamiter he was—

gawm means “know”; acrewk’d is “crooked”; lamiter means “cripple”

'Twarn't for crows then, for it brought the clegs and the dowps to him.

the clegs and the dowps are “the flies and the crows”

and won't it make Gabriel keckle when Geordie comes pantin' up the grees with the tombstean balanced on his hump, and asks it to be took as evidence!

keckle means “laugh”

From the August 6th entry (not out on Dracula Daily at the time of this posting):

We aud folks that be daffled*, and with one foot abaft the krok-hooal**

*Crazy or stupid. **One foot in the grave.

Ye see, I can't get out o' the habit of caffin'* about it all at once; the chafts** will wag as they be used to.

*Chafing. **Jaws.

But don't ye dooal an' greet,* my deary!

*Mourn and grieve

[frickin-fresh-memes]

this really heckles my keckles dwight

[atundratoadstool]

A Mr. Swales Glossary for August 1

[Organized in the order in which words appear in the text; definitions taken from Stoker's notes and his source: F. K. Robinson's A Glossary of Words Used in the Neighborhood of Whitby ]

Nowt: Nothing

Ban: Curse

Waft: A ghost; a passing shadow

Boh-ghosts an' bar-guests: Apparitions that take on human or animal shape. According to the glossary Stoker consulted, barguests are frequently said to haunt castles and may take the shape of dogs, calves, mastiffs, or pigs, with a common feature of their appearance being their burning coal-like eyes.

Bogle: A fearful object, hobgoblin, or bugbear

Anent: Concerning

Bairn: Child

Dizzy: Half-witted

Bledder: To blubber or weep

Air-bleb: A bubble or an unsound scheme

Grim: A type of ghost resulting from an old tradition in which animals were interred in the foundational walls of churches, such that their spirits might guard the premises and give warning of approaching death via their howls.

Illsome: Evil disposed

Beuk-body: A learned person

Scunner: To scare

Hafflin: A half-wit

Airt: Quarter or direction

Acant: Leaning in one direction

Scowderment: Pandemonium; the bustle and confusion arising before a meal or major event

Death-Sark: Shroud

Joup: Jumbled together

Trimmle: Tremble

Dither: To thrill or shiver with cold or fear

Dozzen'd: Shriveled

Yabblins: Possibly!

Poorish Few: Only a small number

Balm Bowl: Chamberpot

Kirkgarth: Churchyard

Consate: Imagine, conceive

Hap: Bury, cover

Snod and Snog: Safe and sound; smooth and compact

Lay-bed: Grave

Toom: Empty Old Dun: The public hangman (I've also seen this given as "the Devil," if I recall)

Bacca-Box: Tobacco box Aftest: Hindmost

Abaft: Behind

Bier-Bank: A churchyard path, particularly one leading from the Lichgate to the church building.

Antherums: Doubts

Thruff-Stean: A table tomb

Gawm: Understand

Acrewked: Twisted, crotchety

Lamiter: A lame or deformed person

Cleg: Horse-fly

Dowp: Carrion crow

Addle: (In Stoker's notes, the definition of this word is listed as "to live." In Robinson's glossary, however, it is given as meaning "to earn a living.")

Keckle: To laugh or chuckle

[tea---stained]

Hand-me-downs

We'll say “bus” with a Z,

and drop our H's,

adding them back in

where they're not needed.

We'll change channels

on the telly with a shooter,

and put the keckle on

to make a cup of char.

We'll tell our kids

to get up the apples and pears,

and say “look at the state of you”,

then “now you look like

someone owns you”,

tell them to stop being mardy

or to not be a “soft git”.

We'll pronounce book

like it's written,

and call our grandmothers “Nana”

while thinking fondly

of the ones who live on in memories.

We'll have dinner for lunch

and tea for dinner,

and hope we'll never be

short of a few bob.

We'll put tangerines

in Christmas stockings,

and carry salt and coal

on New Year's Eve,

still wondering where

the traditions came from

after all these years.

These family heirlooms

will live on,

passed from parent to child

as they have been for generations,

the origins fuzzy,

but each expression telling a story

which changes from person to person.

We have our heritage,

in-jokes and sayings,

displaying how diverse

our ancestry has been.

Who needs jewels

that have been around

for donkeys' years

when we have gems

brought alive with our voices.

- AzureOblivion

[swanhili]

kofi sketch commission for @kek-keckles !!! thank u for donating!!!

[draculalive]

Mina Murray's Journal

1 August. -- I came up here an hour ago with Lucy, and we had a most interesting talk with my old friend and the two others who always come and join him. He is evidently the Sir Oracle of them, and I should think must have been in his time a most dictatorial person. He will not admit anything, and downfaces everybody. If he can't out-argue them he bullies them, and then takes their silence for agreement with his views. Lucy was looking sweetly pretty in her white lawn frock; she has got a beautiful colour since she has been here. I noticed that the old men did not lose any time in coming up and sitting near her when we sat down. She is so sweet with old people; I think they all fell in love with her on the spot. Even my old man succumbed and did not contradict her, but gave me double share instead. I got him on the subject of the legends, and he went off at once into a sort of sermon. I must try to remember it and put it down:---

"It be all fool-talk, lock, stock, and barrel; that's what it be, an' nowt else. These bans an' wafts an' boh-ghosts an' barguests an' bogles an' all anent them is only fit to set bairns an' dizzy women a-belderin'. They be nowt but air-blebs. They, an' all grims an' signs an' warnin's, be all invented by parsons an' illsome beuk-bodies an' railway touters to skeer an' scunner hafflin's, an' to get folks to do somethin' that they don't other incline to. It makes me ireful to think o' them. Why, it's them that, not content with printin' lies on paper an' preachin' them out of pulpits, does want to be cuttin' them on the tombstones. Look here all around you in what airt ye will; all them steans, holdin' up their heads as well as they can out of their pride, is acant -- simply tumblin' down with the weight o' the lies wrote on them, 'Here lies the body' or 'Sacred to the memory' wrote on all of them, an' yet in nigh half of them there bean't no bodies at all; an' the memories of them bean't cared a pinch of snuff about, much less sacred. Lies all of them, nothin' but lies of one kind or another! My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an' tryin' to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was; some of them trimmlin' and ditherin', with their hands that dozzened an' slippy from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their grup o' them."

I could see from the old fellow's self-satisfied air and the way in which he looked round for the approval of his cronies that he was "showing off," so I put in a word to keep him going:---

"Oh, Mr. Swales, you can't be serious. Surely these tombstones are not all wrong?"

"Yabblins! There may be a poorish few not wrong, savin' where they make out the people too good; for there be folk that do think a balm-bowl be like the sea, if only it be their own. The whole thing be only lies. Now look you here; you come here a stranger, an' you see this kirk-garth." I nodded, for I thought it better to assent, though I did not quite understand his dialect. I knew it had something to do with the church. He went on: "And you consate that all these steans be aboon folk that be happed here, snod an' snog?" I assented again. "Then that be just where the lie comes in. Why, there be scores of these lay-beds that be toom as old Dun's ’bacca-box on Friday night." He nudged one of his companions, and they all laughed. "And my gog! how could they be otherwise? Look at that one, the aftest abaft the bier-bank: read it!" I went over and read:---

"Edward Spencelagh, master mariner, murdered by pirates off the coast of Andres, April, 1854, æt. 30." When I came back Mr. Swales went on:---

"Who brought him home, I wonder, to hap him here? Murdered off the coast of Andres! an' you consated his body lay under! Why, I could name ye a dozen whose bones lie in the Greenland seas above" -- he pointed northwards -- "or where the currents may have drifted them. There be the steans around ye. Ye can, with your young eyes, read the small-print of the lies from here. This Braithwaite Lowrey -- I knew his father, lost in the Lively off Greenland in ’20; or Andrew Woodhouse, drowned in the same seas in 1777; or John Paxton, drowned off Cape Farewell a year later; or old John Rawlings, whose grandfather sailed with me, drowned in the Gulf of Finland in ’50. Do ye think that all these men will have to make a rush to Whitby when the trumpet sounds? I have me antherums aboot it! I tell ye that when they got here they'd be jommlin' an' jostlin' one another that way that it ’ud be like a fight up on the ice in the old days, when we'd be at one another from daylight to dark, an' tryin' to tie up our cuts by the light of the aurora borealis." This was evidently local pleasantry, for the old man cackled over it, and his cronies joined in with gusto.

"But," I said, "surely you are not quite correct, for you start on the assumption that all the poor people, or their spirits, will have to take their tombstones with them on the Day of Judgment. Do you think that will be really necessary?"

"Well, what else be they tombstones for? Answer me that, miss!"

"To please their relatives, I suppose."

"To please their relatives, you suppose!" This he said with intense scorn. "How will it pleasure their relatives to know that lies is wrote over them, and that everybody in the place knows that they be lies?" He pointed to a stone at our feet which had been laid down as a slab, on which the seat was rested, close to the edge of the cliff. "Read the lies on that thruff-stean," he said. The letters were upside down to me from where I sat, but Lucy was more opposite to them, so she leant over and read:---

"Sacred to the memory of George Canon, who died, in the hope of a glorious resurrection, on July, 29, 1873, falling from the rocks at Kettleness. This tomb was erected by his sorrowing mother to her dearly beloved son. 'He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow.' Really, Mr. Swales, I don't see anything very funny in that!" She spoke her comment very gravely and somewhat severely.

"Ye don't see aught funny! Ha! ha! But that's because ye don't gawm the sorrowin' mother was a hell-cat that hated him because he was acrewk'd -- a regular lamiter he was -- an' he hated her so that he committed suicide in order that she mightn't get an insurance she put on his life. He blew nigh the top of his head off with an old musket that they had for scarin' the crows with. ’Twarn't for crows then, for it brought the clegs and the dowps to him. That's the way he fell off the rocks. And, as to hopes of a glorious resurrection, I've often heard him say masel' that he hoped he'd go to hell, for his mother was so pious that she'd be sure to go to heaven, an' he didn't want to addle where she was. Now isn't that stean at any rate" -- he hammered it with his stick as he spoke -- "a pack of lies? and won't it make Gabriel keckle when Geordie comes pantin' up the grees with the tombstean balanced on his hump, and asks it to be took as evidence!"

I did not know what to say, but Lucy turned the conversation as she said, rising up:---

"Oh, why did you tell us of this? It is my favourite seat, and I cannot leave it; and now I find I must go on sitting over the grave of a suicide."

"That won't harm ye, my pretty; an' it may make poor Geordie gladsome to have so trim a lass sittin' on his lap. That won't hurt ye. Why, I've sat here off an' on for nigh twenty years past, an' it hasn't done me no harm. Don't ye fash about them as lies under ye, or that doesn' lie there either! It'll be time for ye to be getting scart when ye see the tombsteans all run away with, and the place as bare as a stubble-field. There's the clock, an' I must gang. My service to ye, ladies!" And off he hobbled.

Lucy and I sat awhile, and it was all so beautiful before us that we took hands as we sat; and she told me all over again about Arthur and their coming marriage. That made me just a little heart-sick, for I haven't heard from Jonathan for a whole month.

[horrible-monstrosity]

keckles

oh no no no no no no no no-

we were all worried about kinzo repeating his sins with lion but we really should have been worried about....

[thekkxyz]

Fröhliche Weihnachten euch allen! Genießt ein paar ruhige Tage. •••••••••• #froheweihnachten #feliznavidad #merrychristmas #christmasdecor #weihnachten #2020 #zebra (at Keckl Bauunternehmen GmbH) https://www.instagram.com/p/CJMO4pmnJK4/?igshid=jlrs38ecgoc

[tobacconist]

boil the keckle

[downtroddendeity]

Thank you so much for posting drac facts! Awesome! I have a Dracula question that I really need to ask. Those fishermen in chapter 6 talking all salty in an incomprehensible local dialect, are they saying anything that will matter later on? If so, I would really appreciate if anyone could give me the TLDR. I love this novel, and I'd like to move on beyond that part. (My apologies to anyone living in that local area. I just have a tin ear for dialect.) Also, will the salty dialect return later?

It’s not just you. Stoker was terrible at writing dialect (see also: Quincey’s ~charming American slang~). My edition actually has footnotes translating that guy, which is the only way I would have been able to parse, "I must gang ageeanwards home now, miss. My granddaughter doesn't like to be kept waitin' when the tea is ready, for it takes me time to crammle aboon the grees, for there be a many of 'em; an', miss, I lack belly-timber sairly by the clock." (He’s saying he has to leave now because it’ll take him a while to climb the stairs when he gets home for afternoon tea, and he’s really hungry.)

Some parts of it are easier to decipher if you say them aloud, though- e.g. keckle -> cackle, skeer -> scare, acrewk’d -> a-crooked

The tl;dr is basically that he’s a skeptic- he thinks all the local ghost stories are lies that only stupid tourists believe, and then goes on a tear about the fact that a lot of what’s written on the gravestones is hooey, because 1) a lot of the graves don’t have any bodies in them because they’re for sailors who died halfway around the world and 2) some of the inscriptions whitewash what actually happened to the person- notably, the tombstone Lucy and Mina like to sit at says the guy died in an accident, but actually he committed suicide. Then, the next day, he apologizes for scaring them, and says he makes jokes about death because he knows he’s probably going to die soon.

The only part that’s really super-relevant to the plot is the bit about it being the grave of a suicide.

(Part most worth deciphering, IMO: “My gog, but it'll be a quare scowderment at the Day of Judgment when they come tumblin' up in their death-sarks, all jouped together an' try'm to drag their tombsteans with them to prove how good they was; some of them trimmlin' and ditherin', with their hands that dozzened an' slippy from lyin' in the sea that they can't even keep their grup o' them.”

“My god, but it’ll be a queer mess at the Day of Judgment when they come tumbling up in their burial clothes, all jumbled together and trying to drag their tombstones with them to prove how good the were. Some of them trembling and dithering, with their hands so withered and slippery from lying in the sea that they can’t even keep their grip on them.”

He’s right, that’s one hell of a mental image. :::PPP)

[watcherswindow]

Dark Heresy spotlight: Dredd Murphy. A hard drinking member of the adeptus arbites Murphy has been a valued member of the team from the conception of the squad of acolytes on Inquisitor Aldrich's ship. From the very first mission Murphy distinguished himself by relating to the local policing forces and adapting to the doctrines of different worlds like a true sleuth. In addition once the shots began to fly he became an asset once more as he (and his trusty shotgun) proceeded to grind the limbs of heretics off their bodies. Dredd Murphy became the Limb Amputation Warrior or the L.A.W. as he continued to save countless innocent lives and his comrades alike. Featuring the great Captain Keckles as Dredd Murphy in our adventures of dark heresy.