I finally finished reading the Manningtree Witches. It’s a book that I have picked up and put down too many times. I couldn’t work it out. It had fantastic reviews, everyone I knew loved it but I just couldn’t stick with it. I reasoned that knowing the history, having read Matthew Hopkins (pure evil) book ‘The Discovery of Witches’ and Nehemiah Wellington’s diary (available online), made me less interested.
Last week I picked it up again and mentioned it to a friend who also said they found it too easy to put down again. She thought it was because of the sheer number of wordy sentences.
“Do you know what this means?” she asked, reading from her phone.
His mother is secretly pleased by the incipient masculinity evinced by his intransigence in the face of ablution.
I had a stab but I added in something about moustaches.
Suddenly, though, I knew the problem.
I blame the Reader’s Digest and my third year Junior school teacher.
My parents subscribed to the Reader’s Digest and kept the little books in the loo. They were perfect for when you were sitting for a while. My favourite was the page called ‘It pays to enrich your wordpower’, which was Susie Dent in book form.
My 3rd year Junior school teacher was terrifying and she once hit me in front of the class for ‘copying out of a book’ As it turned out I had used more complicated words than were in the book she thought I had plagiarised. This is harsh treatment of a 9 year old but it has always left me a bit twitchy about long words. I just have to look them up.
That was the problem. Looking up all those words slowed me down, so I walked and read with a pencil, underlining and moving on, like normal people would do (except they wouldn’t walk or underline).
In the end I enjoyed the book and I finished it as a walked down Cross Road.
Shoes have a symbolism of their own. In the film Big Fish people arriving in the town of Spector ties their shoes together and threw them over the telegraph line to symbolise leaving behind their old life and finding a new freedom. It was a clear sign that I was free from the tyranny of underlining words.
When I was telling another friend about it (mainly because I wanted to show her that I had underlined cunt-struck) she said, “Why do you look them up? Do you remember them? I never do.”
“I do though,” I said, “Because I write them down in a notebook.”
She snorted.
“What? Like a dictionary? I think that’s already been invented.”
She is, of course, right but just in case you are interested in reading The Manningtree Witches then I’m happy to share my dictionary with you.
Cabochon - gem cut in convex form
Scrimshaw - carved or engraved
Envinced - displayed
Intransigence- refusal to compromise
Ablution - washing
Viscera - internal organs
Fulmination - utterance
Lucre - money
Popish Lexemes - Roman Catholic words/phrases
Connivances - knowledge of wrong doings
Pullulate - germinate or breed freely
Midden heap - dung pile
Awl - pointed tool for marking surfaces
Execrable - wretched
Abjection - degradation
Adrumbral ensign - ?foreshaddowing duty officer
Chivs- ?chases
Sowgelders - people who spay sows
Mennonites - Protestant
Shakerags - unkempt or disreputable persons
Termagants - nagging women
‘Agtail (no idea . Wagtail?)
Hoy - boat
Sloop - boat
Shrive - administer the sacrament
Tendentious - disapproving
Between Scylla and Charybdis - 2 equally hazardous alternatives (Greek monsters)
Inundation of remonstrance - overwhelming presentation of reason
Roods - large crucifixes
Bone grubblers - not in dictionary
Dirks - a type of dagger
Piss- prophet empirics - ? Charlatons
Vexatious accretion - distressing buildup
Anchorite - religiously excluded person
Peremptorily - putting an end to debate
Flensed - stripped of blubber or skin
Cinerous - light bluish grey that is redder than skimmed milk and very slightly redder than glaucous grey (oddly specific)
Blebs - small blisters
Ichor- thin watery blood tinged discharge
Ascetic - strict self denial
Plangent - having a loud reverberating sound
Caravels - sailing ships
Ceremental horizon - horizon that looks like a shroud for the dead
Ostentatious sobriquet - over the top nickname
Bedizened - gaudily dressed
Inspissiates - makes thicker
Mottlegill - mowers mushrooms
Loosestrife - primrose like flower
Impecunious - penniless
Ensorcelled - enchanted bewitched
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