Graymalkin

Graymalkin

I have enjoyed many wild places in my time, being an avid hiker, climber, and skier. The natural world has been a source of beauty and delight. However, there have been two places where, despite my predilection for enjoying nature, I felt a particular menace, or spookiness about a certain area. The first was western Scotland, along the route of the train from Fort William to Glasgow: a treeless forbidding waste. The other was the western coast of Washington, in Olympic National Park, especially right on the coast, near the mouth of the Hoh River.

Geography is just geography, but there might be something else going on. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s work “Akallabeth” (“The Downfall of Numenor” -- in The Silmarillion) there is a debate between the Numenoreans and the Elves concerning the nature of the “Undying Lands” -- Valinor, the abode of the gods. The Numenoreans, though long-lived, lusted after the immortality of the Elves, and were considering invading Valinor to acquire it. One of the counterarguments presented to the Numenoreans is as follows:

‘The Doom of the World,’ they said, ‘One alone can change who made it. And were you so to voyage that escaping all deceits and snares you came indeed to Aman, the Blessed Realm, little would it profit you. For it is not the land of Manwe that makes its people deathless, but the Deathless that dwell therein have hallowed the land; and there you would but wither and grow weary the sooner, as moths in a light too strong and steadfast.” (Silmarillion, p. 264).

If the presence of angelic beings hallows an area, then the converse might be true: the presence of demonic beings might curse an area. According to some, the earth as a whole is the abode of countless evil spirits. The earth, then, might be, in a spiritual sense, thought of as something close to hell. At certain points this “effect” might be felt as more pronounced: according to this line of reasoning, wherever the concentration of evil spirits is higher, the ones present relatively more evil, or for some other reason.

One common idea concerning witches is that they are attended, or associate with, beings called familiars -- ‘non-human agents of their deeds.’ If this is so, it rules out ordinary animals as familiars, since animals by themselves cannot be the agents of what witches accomplish with their power. So what we are tending toward is the identification of an agency that can serve as the cause of the results. If results are wicked and unnatural, the being producing them is likely wicked and unnatural: an evil spirit, for instance. I’m trying to be lawyer-like, but I suppose I’m not succeeding too well.

As for our pervy nubile witches, Graymalkin is often identified as a cat, and Paddock as a toad, implying that the vocalizations of each were representative of the species: a meow and a croak. But if the two entities are indeed witch’s familiars, then they are spiritual beings, and their utterances would not be confined to the characteristic vocalizations of the biological organisms. What they are hearing and what they respond to would seem not to be a mere meow or a croak, but something more characteristic of the evil spirits. It’s more likely some kind of unearthly shrieking.

Graymalkin: “malkin” can mean “slut” or “lewd woman.” But according to my Dictionary of Slang and Euphemism, it can also mean “female genitals” (there it is again, it’s cropping up all over the place). And “Gray,” in addition to signifying the color gray, can also mean “old.” So Graymalkin might be a cat’s name, but also in this context it looks like it’s something akin to Davy Crockett’s pet name for his rifle (“Old Betsy”). It’s a proper name, a nickname. Paddock is likely of the same sort. If Paddock means “toad,” then the term has appeared as an affectionate nickname in another story (American Graffiti).

All of this sets up a meaningful dramatic antithesis. Any normal person, alone on the moor, in the presence of evil spirits, hearing a demonic shrieking, perhaps accompanied by lighting effects of some sort, would be terrified. The witches, however, are delighted. One shriek peals out, and a witch announces she is coming to meet it. Then the next witch most likely says, “Paddock calls anon.” It means, in a moment, another of our familiars will identify himself with a like dire yell, and aren’t we happy for it? Then the second shriek comes and they all run off, presumably to perform some unrighteous sexual act or other in the presence of their familiars. Or worse.

References

American Graffiti. Dir. George Lucas. Perf. Ron Howard, Charlie Martin Smith, Candy Clark. Universal, 1973.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Ed. A.R. Braunmuller. The New Cambridge Shakespeare. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1997.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Silmarillion. London: Allen and Unwin, 1977.