Much Macbeth

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 158767

Geoff wrote:
> Just adding to the linguistic analysis, my dictionary has a little
side panel on "weird", away from the main etymological definition and
says:
> 
> "Weird. In Old English weird, then spelled 'wyrd', was a noun
meaning 'destiny, fate' or, in the plural 'the Fates (the three
goddesses supposed to determine the sourse of human life); it also
meant 'an event or occurence'. 
> The adjective, first recorded in Middle English, meant 'having the
power to control destiny' and was used especially in the phrase 'the
Weird Sisters', originally with reference to the Fates and later to
the witches in Shakespeare's 'Macbeth'. The modern sense 'strange,
uncanny' did not develop until the early 19th century: it was
apparently used first by the poet Shelley."

Carol adds:
For the fun of it, here's Percy Bysshe Shelley's "weird" stanza, or
part of it (his sentences are even longer than mine):

                                  In lone and silent hours,
            When night makes a weird sound of its own stillness,
            Like an inspired and desperate alchymist
            Staking his very life on some dark hope,
            Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks
            With my most innocent love, until strange tears
            Uniting with those breathless kisses, made
            Such magic as compels the charmèd night
            To render up thy charge

"Awful" is used here in the sense of "full of awe"--the word was
ruined some time in the twentieth century (before "awesome" shared its
fate, but in the opposite direction in terms of meaning). (Tonks
should like the reference to "an inspired and desperate
alchymist"--that's Shelley's spelling, not mine.)

To make a token effort to put this post on topic, the poem from which
these "weird" lines are taken is "Alastor: or, the Spirit of
Solitude." Alastor is, of course, the real first name of Mad-Eye
Moody. It's a Greek word for an avenging deity or spirit, the
masculine equivalent of Nemesis--interesting if we apply it to Mad-Eye
(is he the avenger of the people killed by Voldemort) but possibly
more fitting for Crouch!Moody, who seems bent on vengeance against
"Death Eaters who walked free."

Carol, who wrote her dissertation on Shelley and can't pass up the
opportunity to weave him into a thread