Fiona Macleod
Jan. 26th, 2025 08:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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
"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
