What's in a Title?-Part Two

Weird

Weird is an old word. In fact it's from an Old English word, wyrd. The origins of weird are in a presumed Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root, *wer-, meaning "to turn" or "to bend." We use weird as an adjective, but originally it was a noun, meaning, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, "fate, chance, fortune; destiny; the Fates." For purposes of talking about weird fiction, it might be best to reduce the meaning of weird to "fate" or "destiny." That's how I think of it, although "chance" might apply in the case of a certain kind of weird story, the conte cruel, in which characters face a cruel and arbitrary (or undeserved) fate. Conte, by the way, is translated as "tale."

The Fates are of course from Greek mythology, in which they are called the Moirai, also spelled Moirae or Mœræ, meaning "lots, destinies, apportioners." There are three of them, all women. Their names are Clotho, the "spinner"; Lachesis, the "allotter"; and Atropos, "the unturnable." Note in the names of Clothos the Spinner and Atropos the Unturnable the references again to the verb "to turn." As for Lachesis the Allotter, remember that one meaning of lot has to do with fate or destiny, as in the expression cast one's lot or one's lot in life.

Our word Fates is from the Latin, Fata, or fata, originally from a PIE root, *bha-, meaning "to speak, tell, say." That suggests a linguistic or conceptual connection between the two component words of the title Weird Tales: weird, meaning "fate," originally "to tell," and tales, or a story that is told. Maybe fate must be spoken. I should warn you at this point that pursuing the meanings and origins of words can easily lead you down a rabbit hole from which you might not return.

There are Fates in other cultures and mythologies. In Norse mythology they are called the Norns, and their names are Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld. Urðr is a cognate of wyrd, and like wyrd, it means "fate." There are suggestions that the names of the Norns denote past, present, and future. I don't know whether that's true or not, but the idea makes me think of the three ghosts of Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol (1843). Men and women in threes returned in Dracula's brides in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), in the film The Three Weird Sisters (1948), and in Albert K. Bender's Three Men in Black (MIB) from the 1950s. More on another threesome will begin in three, two, one . . .

The three women of fate are elsewhere in English literature, namely in Macbeth, Shakespeare's "Scottish Play." By the way, this is the four-hundredth anniversary year of its publication. The play refers to these three women as "the weyward Sisters." We know them now as the Three Witches or the Weird Sisters. They were not originally referred to as witches. As for weird, there's a way to get there from the word weyward.

Spelling was of course nonstandard in Shakespeare's time. His referring to his three women as "the weyward Sisters" gives us an idea, I think, of one possible pronunciation of weird, something like "way-ard." Wiktionary, the Free Dictionary gives weïrd as an alternate and obsolete spelling of weird. The diaeresis over the -i- of course indicates that the second part of the word, -ird, is pronounced as a syllable separate from the first. Thus weyward (or weyard) easily became weird, and the weyward Sisters became the Weird Sisters. This case for an association or transformation is strengthened, I think, in the meaning of the word wayward, for the -ward part of wayward (literally, "turned away") is from the same root as weird. "Turned to," then, is toward or towards, and so on.

Although it was originally an Old English word, weird dropped out of common usage in English. It persisted, however, in the spoken language of Scotland. Shakespeare as much as anybody may have saved it for us. (The only instances of weird I have found in newspapers before 1843 are in reference to his three Weird Sisters.) I'm no Shakespearean scholar, but I have read references to an increased emphasis on the weirdness--meaning the uncanniness or supernatural quality--of the Weird Sisters in performances of the Scottish Play during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is perhaps from those performances that weird became a synonym for uncanny, another Scottish (as well as northern English) word.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary: "By 1843 it [the word uncanny] had a general sense in English of 'having a supernatural character, weird, mysterious, strange'." During the pulp era and afterwards, there were magazines with the words weird, strange, and uncanny in their titles, all used more or less synonymously. There was even a small magazine called Wyrd. In any case, the year 1843 has come up three times in this essay. That suggests that weird, uncanny, and related words and ideas came into common usage again in the early to mid 1800s after having fallen into disuse everywhere but in Scotland during the previous couple of centuries. In other words, words that were previously only spoken in one relatively small place were finally written down for the whole English-speaking world to see and to read. This was, I think, a key development in the history of weird.

One possible explanation for the allure of this very old word is that it may have seemed new and glamorous, in an older sense of that word. (Glamour is another Scottish word by the way.) Weird may have carried with it a kind of meaning or utility otherwise lacking in the English language. It may actually have been a needful word in a century characterized by the twin advances of materialism and progressivism, and by an increasing faith in science and a loss of faith in the supernatural. In times of change and anxiety brought on by change, we very often fall back on old things. One possibility here is that weird is a conservative reaction to a science- or reason-based progressivism.

And that sets up a literary dichotomy about which I'll soon write more.

* * *

I'm not done with this exploration of the word weird just yet. It is my weird to look into these things a little further . . .

So why did weird persist in Scotland? Why do we think of it as a Scottish word? I can't say, but I can speculate:

First, Scotland is on the fringes of the United Kingdom. Old things often last on the fringes while disappearing in the rapidly moving heart of a larger culture or society.

Second, Scotland is home to traditional cultures and traditional ways. In their rush into modernity, cultures and societies leave behind tradition and folkways. Only later do they realize what is being lost. Only then do they rush in the opposite direction to preserve while they can the things of the past. There was a lot of that in the 1800s, I think. Maybe weird was saved not only by Shakespeare but also by folklorists or gatherers of traditional ways, poems, songs, and tales. Robert Burns may have been one of them. In fact, the word weird appears in his poem "Her Answer," from 1795. Significantly, it is used as a noun rather than an adjective. Significantly, that came during the Romantic Era, which was in part a reaction to the rationalism of the eighteenth century.

Third, a question: Is there a peculiar Celtic sense of fate or doom? I'm from an Old World-type Irish family. There is or was certainly that feeling among my dad's family. It's hard to escape even today. (I joke that our family left Ireland more than 100 years ago and are only now arriving in America.) In Celtic cultures kept under the thumb of their English overlords, there may have been a sense that a man is not in control of his own life or destiny. That sense promotes the feeling that nothing can be done and that one must accept one's lot in life, or, in Scottish, one must dree his weird.

And fourth, another question: Could the idea of the weird as fate have been reinforced in Scotland by the Calvinist concept of predestination?

* * *

In its presumed Proto-Indo-European root, weird means "to turn" or "to bend," or, in a more complex working out of the concept, "to become," as in "to turn into." Becoming, turning into, or being transformed is a common theme in weird fiction, for example in "The Wendigo" by Algernon Blackwood (1910). The protagonists in that story, by the way, are Scotsmen. "To turn" or "to bend" also shows up in certain expressions related to fate or destiny, for example, twist of fate or to reach a turning point in one's life. In literature there are plot twists, and in reading, page turners. This kind of thing could go on and on.

In its Old English origins, weird was a noun. Again, we use it now as an adjective, thus we get away from its original meaning. I think the intention behind the naming of "the Unique Magazine" as Weird Tales may have been to invoke the original meaning of weird, that is, as tales of the weird (fate) or tales of fateful things rather than as tales that are weird (strange or uncanny) or that tell about weird (uncanny or supernatural) things. "The Basket" by Herbert J. Mangham (Herbert J. Maughiman) in the first issue of Weird Tales is an excellent example of a tale of one man's weird, if I understand the word and concept correctly, without any resort to the supernatural.

Clark Ashton Smith was an expert at archaic words. He used them with a facility that is perhaps unique in genre fiction. There are only two stories in Weird Tales that use weird as a noun in their titles. Smith's story "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan," from June 1932, is one of them. The other is "The Weirds of the Woodcarver" by Gardner F. Fox, from September 1944. Notorious might be the right word to describe Fox's habit of borrowing from other authors. Maybe he did and maybe he didn't borrow from Clark Ashton Smith. Anyway, all other uses of weird in titles of stories that appeared in Weird Tales are as adjectives. In this way, the so-called "New Weird" (which, being more than a decade old, isn't new anymore) returns to origins and to old things. And so we're back to the nineteenth century or before.

There is one more story to mention on this topic. It is called "Norn," and it was by Everil Worrell, writing under her pseudonym Lireve Monet. "Norn" was in Weird Tales in February 1936. Everil Worrell is the first woman to come up. There will be more women shortly.

Next: Tale.

The Norns Vanish by Arthur Rackham (1924).

Thanks to Hlafbrot for information on Scottish words.
Original text copyright 2023 Terence E. Hanley