The Outlandish Companion

by Diana Gabaldon

  Since Thou, O Christ, it was who brought’st this soul,

  Be its peace on Thine own keeping. Amen.

  And may the strong Michael, high king of the angels, Be preparing the path before this soul, O God. Amen.

  Oh! the strong Michael in peace with thee, soul,

  And preparing for thee the way to the kingdom of the Son of God. Amen.

  HOUSE PROTECTING VOLUME 1, PAGE 103

  God, bless the world and all that is therein.

  God, bless my spouse and my children,

  God, bless the eye that is in my head,

  And bless, O God, the handling of my hand; What time I rise in the morning early, What time I lie down late in bed,

  Bless the rising in the morning early,

  And my lying down late in bed.

  God, protect the house, and the household, God, consecrate the children of the motherhood, God, encompass the flocks and the young; Be Thou after them and tending them, What time the flocks ascend hill and wold, What time I lie down to sleep,

  What time the flocks ascend hill and wold, What time I lie down in peace to sleep.

  (This is the blessing prayer that Jamie speaks at the laying of the hearthstone on Fraser’s Ridge, in Drums of Autumn.)

  [Drums, pp. 368-69]

  THE DRIVING (AN SAODACHADH) VOLUME IV, PAGE 43

  The protection of Odhran the dun be yours, The protection of Brigit the Nurse be yours, The protection of Mary the Virgin be yours

  In marshes and in rocky ground,

  In marshes and in rocky ground.

  The keeping of Ciaran the swart be yours, The keeping of Brianan the yellow be yours, The keeping of Diarmuid the brown be yours,

  A-sauntering the meadows,

  A-sauntering the meadows.

  The safeguard of Fionn son of Cumhall be yours, The safeguard of Cormac the shapely be yours, The safeguard of Conn and Cumhall be yours

  From wolf and from bird-flock,

  From wolf and from bird-flock.

  The sanctuary of Colum Cille be yours, The sanctuary of Maol Ruibhe be yours,

  The sanctuary of the milking Maid be yours, To seek you and search for you, To seek you and search for you.

  The encircling of Maol Odhrian be yours, The encircling of Maol Oighe be yours, The encircling of Maol Domhnaich be yours,

  To protect you and to herd you,

  To protect you and to herd you.

  The shield of the King of the Fiann be yours The shield of the King of the sun be yours The shield of the King of the stars be yours

  In jeopardy and distress,

  In jeopardy and distress.

  The sheltering of the King of Kings be yours,

  The sheltering of Jesus Christ be yours,

  The sheltering of the Spirit of healing be yours,

  From evil deed and quarrel,

  From evil dog and red dog.

  (Duncan Innes uses portions of this incantation for the protection of the stock, while helping to bless the hearthstone at Fraser’s Ridge.)

  [Voyager, p. 954]

  THE DEATH BLESSING VOLUME 1, PAGE 119

  “God, omit not this woman from Thy covenant, and the many evils that she in the body committed.”

  —traditional Celtic invocation, from Carmina Gadelica

  BIBLICAL QUOTES7

  [Voyager, p. 196]

  “O, Lucifer, thou son of the morning…” Lord John is paraphrasing slightly; the correct (and complete) quote is: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!”

  —Isaiah 14:12

  [Voyager, p. 815]

  “My beloved’s arm is under me, and his hand behind my head. Comfort me with apples, and stay me with flagons, for I am sick of love.” (Note that Claire has—as she now and then does—slightly misquoted this; the actual quote is “Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love.”)

  —Song of Solomon 2:5

  [Drums, p. 161]

  “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Matthew 6:34

  Frank’s favorite Biblical saying (for good reason), repeated now and then by both Claire and Brianna.

  [Drums, p. 224]

  “Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.”

  Claire and Philip Wylie are trading lines from the Song of Solomon 7:4.

  [Drums, p. 242]

  “Whither thou goest…”

  “And Ruth said, Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go: and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:

  “Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”

  —Book of Ruth 1:16

  While often used as a reading in wedding ceremonies—and as Claire uses it here, to proclaim attachment to a mate—this very moving declaration of devotion is in fact the words of a woman for her mother-in-law; the words of Ruth for Naomi.

  [Drums, p. 245]

  “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

  —The Beatitudes, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew, 5:7

  Dragonfly, p. 944]

  “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.”

  —The Gospel According to John 20:29

  [Dragonfly, p. 503]

  “Remember, man, that thou are dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”

  This is part of the Catholic liturgy, recited during the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, at the beginning of Lent. The original basis is a line from Genesis: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

  —Genesis 3:19

  MISCELLANEOUS ENGLISH, SCOTTISH, AND AMERICAN POETRY

  [Outlander, p. 105]

  THE SELKIRK GRACE

  Some hae meat that canna eat, And some could eat that want it. But we hae meat and we can eat, And so may God be thankit.

  —Robert Burns (1759-1796) [See note in Appendix I, “Errata”]

  [Outlander, p. 121]

  Hurley, hurley, round the table, Eat as muckle as you’re able. Eat muckle, pooch nane, Hurley, hurley, Amen.

  I don’t for the life of me remember where I got this, and my usual authority, Jack Whyte, can’t place it either, though he says “hurley” sounds like the Aberdeen area. We’ll call it folk verse and leave it at that, unless anybody knows better.

  [Dragonfly, p. 547]

  REQUIEM

  Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.

  This be the verse you grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

  —Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

  [Voyager, p. 446]

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave,

  When first we practice to deceive!

  —from “Marmion,” Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)

  [Voyager, p. 486]

  Home is the place where, when you have to go there,

  They have to take you in.

  —from “The Death of the Hired Man,” Robert Frost (1874-1963)

  [Voyager, p. 763] Water, water, everywhere… Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink. Water, water, everywhere Nor any drop to drink.

  —from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Samuel Coleridge (1772-1834)

  [Drums, p. 752]

  I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and

  wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

  —from “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

&nbs
p; [Voyager, p. 634]

  “She moves! She stirs! She seems to feel/The thrill of life along her keel!”

  Claire is here slightly misquoting the original, which reads:

  And see! She stirs!

  She starts—she moves—she seems to feel The thrill of life along her keel.

  —from “The Building of the Ship,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

  [Voyager, p. 661]

  “The weeping Pleiads wester/And the moon is under seas.”

  Claire, always fond of Housman, is here conflating a couple of lines from different stanzas. The original first line (from “More Poems”) is from a verse that reads “The rainy Pleiads wester/Orion plunges prone,/ And midnight strikes and hastens/And I lie down alone.”

  Later, she quotes from another poem:

  Halt by the headstone naming The heart no longer stirred, And say the lad that loved you Was one that kept his word.

  and on p. 904:

  Oh, who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?

  And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?

  And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?

  Oh they’re taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

  ’Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of

  hair as his; In the good old time ’twas hanging for the

  colour that it is; Though hanging isn’t bad enough and flaying

  would be fair For the nameless and abominable colour of his

  hair!

  —from “Additional Poems,” Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936)

  [Drums, p. 430]

  “Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”

  —from “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” John Keats (1795—1821)

  [Drums, p. 431] “Make me thy lyre…”

  —from “Ode to the West Wind,” Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

  [Drums, p. 430]

  While Claire does not directly quote this poem in the text, she does mention reciting Keats’s “Sonnet Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition”:

  The church bells toll a melancholy round, Calling the people to some other prayers, Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,

  More hearkening to the sermons horrid sound. Surely the mind of man is closely bound In some black spell; seeing that each one tears

  Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs, And converse high of those with glory crown’d. Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp,—

  A chill as from a tomb, did I not know That they are dying like an outburnt lamp, That ’tis their sighing, wailing ere they go Into oblivion;—that fresh flowers will grow, And many glories of immortal stamp.

  [Drums, p. 431]

  “Fiend, I defy thee! with a calm, fixed mind.”

  —from Shelley, Prometheus Unbound, Act I

  [Drums, p. 147]

  Amo, amas, I love a lass, As cedar tall and slender…

  —Anonymous

  This particular poem is what’s known as a “macaronic”; a type of light verse popular in the eighteenth century8 and later, in which Latin words or phrases are mixed with English to produce a comic effect, either by reason of Latin false cognates (Latin words that sound like English words, but mean something quite different) or by reference to Latin grammar, as in this example. Popular among the upper classes, as it showed off a person’s wit, as well as his (or her) education.

  Several members of the Literary Forum discovered or recalled bits of macaronics, which they helpfully quoted to me; this one was both complete, and most apropos, so I chose it for Jamie.

  [Drums, p. 279]

  How many strawberries grow in the salt sea; how many ships sail in the forest?

  —from “The Fause Bride,” a medieval Scottish ballad. My friend Jack Whyte (my authority on Scottish ballads)9 tells me that this particular line rates as perhaps the oldest riddle in Scottish literature, and is from the Northeast of Scotland—“Fraser territory,” he says.10

  [Drums, p. 776]

  From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues.

  —from a traditional sea-chanty

  [Drums, p. 778]

  Farewell to you all, ye fair Spanish ladies.

  —traditional sea-chanty

  MISCELLANEOUS QUOTATIONS

  [Voyager, p. 511]

  He created a desert and called it peace.

  Though later repeated by one of the Duke of Cumberland’s contemporaries, in reference to his “pacification” of the Highlands after Culloden, this quotation is originally from the Roman historian Tacitus, and reads (in translation), “Where they make a desert, they call it peace.”

  —“Agricola,” Cornelius Tacitus (A.D. c. 56-c. 120)

  [Voyager, p. 519] Hawk for a handsaw…

  “I am but mad north-northwest: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

  —from Hamlet, William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

  [Voyager]

  After a war, first come the corbies, and then the lawyers, to pick the bones. —Anonymous (which merely means I don’t know who said it)

  [Voyager, p. 586]

  Law is a bottomless pit.

  —Dr. John Arbuthnot (1667-1735) This is not a quote per se, but rather the title of a book, Law Is a Bottomless Pit, published by Dr. Arbuthnot in 1712—and likely well known to Ned Gowan.

  [Drums, p. 726]

  Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition! —Monty Python

  For trivia buffs: Brianna may be stretching a point slightly; I believe Monty Python’s television show began in 1967 or 1968, but I didn’t bother trying to find out precisely when the show that contains the Spanish Inquisition skit aired. We’ll just assume she saw it, all right?

  [Voyager, p. 620]

  Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest… “Fifteen men on the Dead Man’s Chest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!

  —from Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

  [Drums, p. 429]

  How long will a man lie i’ the earth ere he rot?

  —Hamlet, William Shakespeare

  MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES AND NOTES

  “Romances”

  Following the publication of Voyager, I had letters from some readers amused by the parallels of Claire’s and Jamie’s reading matter—that Claire should be reading a modern romance novel (The Impetuous Piéate)11 on pages 255—256, while Jamie was reading what they assumed to be the eighteenth-century equivalent. In fact, what Jamie is reading is Fanny Hill: Memoir of a Woman of Pleasure, a fairly notable piece of eighteenth-century pornography by John Cleland, published in 1747.12 (Jamie does in fact read “romances,” too—he recounts stories from The Adventures of Roderick Random and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling to his men at Ardsmuir, and later discusses Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (which is somewhat closer to a modern-day romance, in terms of its subject matter)* with Lord John Grey—but he is likely reading Fanny Hill for purposes other than mental diversion).

  In another place (Voyager, pp. 80-81), Jamie is shown reading what appears from the excerpts to be Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, a popular—and in the circumstances, rather prophetic—tale of shipwreck and adventure.

  “This violent rain forced me to a new work, viz., to cut a hole through my new fortification, like a sink, to let the water go out, which would else have drowned my cave. After I had been in my cave some time, and found still no more shocks of the earthquake follow, I began to be more composed; and now, to support my spirits, which indeed wanted it very much, I went to my little store and took a small sup of rum, which however, I did then and always very sparingly, knowing I could have no more when that was gone.

  “It continued raining all that night, and great part of the next day, so that I could not stir abroad; but my mind being more composed, I began to think.…”

  —from Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)

  1 While
not university-educated in the usual sense, Claire has an equivalent cultural background, owing to her unorthodox upbringing and her marriage to an academic.

  2 Personally, I’m a hardcore King James version reader; I think the New American Bible is heresy, just on aesthetic grounds, and you don’t even want to know what I think about gender-neutral scriptures. Don’t talk to me about inclusion; I’d rather be referred to as “mankind” than be included in something so clumsily written. St. Jerome and the Vulgate are fine, and the Douay-Rheims version is okay, too—but the King James stands as possibly the only excellent piece of work ever produced by a committee.

  3 So far as I can. I don’t claim this appendix is absolutely complete; I don’t keep track of quotations as I write, so was obliged to cruise back through the novels, picking them out. Consequently, I may well have missed one here or there.

  4Doubtless by a few other people before and since; however, I like Crashaw, and his translation is also out of copyright, which allows me to reprint the entire text.

  5My husband, who took Latin in school, originally contributed this gem (as well as the information that the quote is from Virgil, The Aeneid). He prefers the variation “My arm was run over by a dog on a motorcycle” (virumque, vroom-kay, motorcycle… geddit?)—but since the allusion would be lost on Ian, Claire likely would use the less sophisticated (ahem) form.

  Oh—for the benefit of those who didn’t take Latin in school, the quote actually is translated: “Of arms and a man I sing.”

  6Both Celtic and English versions are per Carmichael.

  7All Biblical quotes are taken from the King James version.

  8A “macaroni” was a fop; a person of marked affectation and extreme fashion (often imported from Italy; hence the name).