Fiona Macleod

[poliphilo]

 Yesterday I was sitting out in the sun reading Fiona Macleod; this morning the wind is getting up again- and it's a cold wind.

"Pretty pink sky" I say to Ailz."

"Stormy sky" she answers.

"But pretty," I insist

All the same her forecast agrees with the Met Office. Another bout of stormy weather is on its way.....

Fiona Macleod?

Oh yeah; a propos of Storm Eowyn we were talking about names invented by famous writers that have caught on and become current. Fiona was one of them. Nobody was called Fiona before 19th century writer William Sharp came up with it up as a suitably Celtic pen-name under which to issue his woozy, neo-pagan poems and fictions. Sharp was Scottish, a protege of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and an initiate of the Golden Dawn (but wasn't everybody?) He went to considerable lengths to establish Fiona Macleod as a real, independent personality- getting his sister copy out his/Fiona's letters to his/her admirers so that the handwriting would appear feminine. When people got too pressing in their desire to meet the famous authoress Fiona would go off on cruises in her wealthy husband's yacht. All this seems a bit obsessive- and therefore comic, but Sharp was a very good writer.

I've had Fiona's The Washer of the Ford in my collection for ages. It's a collection of short pieces, characterised as 'legendary moralities"-  and I haven't read them all, but I mean to now. Yesterday I read "The Three of Marvels of Hy"- about the interplay of Pagan and Christian values in the life of St Collum- and it sent shivers down my spine. 


 William Sharp

Comments

[cmcmck]

But the Welsh girl's name Ffion was around long before that and is my niece's name- her parents didn't think the Tories should get all the good names! (Ffion Hague). Especially as her mum is southwalian.

And what it actually is is not an invention but an Anglicisation of the Scots Gaelic name Fionn.

In both languages it means 'white' or 'fair'

It exists as Fiona in Irish Gaelic too and with that spelling but in that language it means 'wine'

[poliphilo]

Clearly he derived "Fiona" from Celtic root words but I think it stands that Fiona didn't exist as a woman's name before his time.

[cmcmck]

Except in Ireland!

[mallorys_camera]

Wow! That's fascinating "Fiona" is a made up name. It sounds so authentically Gaelic! 😀

[cmcmck]

It actually isn't. See my comment above. He anglicised a gaelic name.

[poliphilo]

As cmcmk explains above it's derived from a Gaelic name but his anglicised version was not in use before his time (so far as we know)

[paserbyp]

The Valley Of Silence

In the secret Valley of Silence
No breath doth fall;
No wind stirs in the branches;
No bird doth call:
As on a white wall
A breathless lizard is still,
So silence lies on the valley
Breathlessly still.

In the dusk-grown heart of the valley
An altar rises white:
No rapt priest bends in awe
Before its silent light:
But sometimes a flight
Of breathless words of prayer
White-wing'd enclose the altar,
Eddies of prayer.

[poliphilo]

It's a pity he's not better known.