“This is Serendib in England”

My interest was piqued on reading a New York Times report by Michael Kimmelman dated July 15, 2008 regarding the outcry at an announcement that the heirs of Portugal’s bizarre, angst-ridden poet and writer, Fernando Pessoa, planned to auction his correspondence with the most infamous magician of modern times, Aleister Crowley, or the “Great Beast 666” as he styled himself. Portugal’s National Library protested that the correspondence was “vital to the nation’s literary heritage”.

Kimmelman continues: “Portugal’s culture minister is among those who have shown distress in recent days about the letters leaving the country.” The sheer irony of this distress at the possible loss of a valuable yet small slice of Portugal’s literary heritage will not be lost on Sri Lankans aware of the wanton destruction of entire aspects of their country’s ancient heritage during 150 years of Portuguese domination.

Gerald Massey

There is insufficient space - even reason – to comment on the Pessoa/Crowley correspondence here, for this article is about to head in another direction. Nevertheless, here’s a tempting glimpse of the pair’s friendship. Crowley, a chronic philanderer, visited Pessoa in Lisbon in 1930 with his latest mistress. Those who remember my “Encountering Aleister Crowley” (The Sunday Times, 27 October, 3 and November 10, 1996) will know that this characteristic had a local connection, for Crowley claims to have had an affair with Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy’s second wife, a musician and singer from Yorkshire known as Ratan Devi.

Crowley and his Lisbon companion quarrelled and she left Portugal, leaving behind a deflated Great Beast - so deflated that he enlisted Pessoa’s aid to fake his suicide. After the discovery of a despondent lover’s note at a hazardous point on Lisbon’s coastline it was assumed Crowley took his own life by leaping into the sea. Pessoa explained to the press the meaning of the magical signs and symbols on the note, and claimed to have seen Crowley’s ghost the following day. Crowley had in fact left Portugal via Spain and enjoyed the reports of his death before dramatically resurfacing in public three weeks later.

I have studied Crowley with endless fascination since I was 19. The late Great Beast attracted much attention then, in the late 1960s, reflected by the Beatles who placed a photograph of him on the cover of St. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967). Of Pessoa, however, I knew little. What I have learnt recently is that he, like Crowley, had a bizarre character.

Pessoa largely wrote using the persona of other writers and poets, termed heteronyms rather than pseudonyms: individuals with their own history, personal characteristics and literary style. They included the futurist Álvaro de Campos; Alexander Search, Thomas Crosse and Charles Robert Anon, all English; the astrologer Rapahael Baldaya; and the pagan António Mora.

“Across the hazy sea from Ceylon?”

Pessoa was heavily influenced by Gerald Massey, a self-taught Egyptologist convinced that similarities existed between ancient Egyptian mythology and the Gospel stories, between Jesus and Horus, and that the essential ideas of Judaism and Christianity came primarily from Egypt. Massey’s major work on the subject is The Book of the Beginnings (1881), the text of which is available on the Internet. In Volume 1, pp. 451-453, I happened upon this astonishing passage:

“The tradition of the Bards, now to be listened to with more respect, is that the first colonies came forth seeking a place where they could live in peace, and that they fled from a land which they could not possess without warfare and persecution, whereas they desired to do justly and dwell at peace amongst themselves. So they came across the ‘hazy sea’, from Defrobani. Defrobani agrees with Taprobane, a name of Ceylon. Did they mean they came across the hazy sea from Ceylon?

Having posed such an intriguing question, Massey delivers an arcane etymology of Taprobane: “Here we have to distinguish between the celestial and geographical naming. Tep is a particular point of all commencement in the mythological astronomy, the beginning of movement in a circle, the starting-point. Ru is the outlet, gate, mouth. Tepru means oral commencement. Tepru is also a name of Tabor, a mount of the birthplace. Ben is the supreme height, the roof. Tep-ru-bani was an initial point in the solar circle, without going back for the moment to the earlier circle of Tep, the Great Bear.”

Comfortingly for the average reader, Massey continues by mentioning Taprobane’s familiar aspects: the abundance of dugongs that lead to the mermaid of Mannar myth, Jewish and Arabic legends regarding Adam that influenced the alternative name for Sri Pada, Adam’s Peak, and the alternative name for the island, Serendib:

“The old writers, in their stories of voyages and the strange creatures to be met with in the East, often speak of the mermaid; a being half fish, half woman, that was to be met with off the coast of Taprobane. The Mermaid of the zodiac is the original of this, and is still to be found in the north-east of Taprobane, the sign of the Fishes, the lofty outlet or bekh of the beginning.

That is the celestial Taprobane, which may have various geographical applications. It happens that we have another name of Ceylon amongst us. The island is likewise known as Serendib. Serendib is the place where the Hindus locate paradise, the place of beginning. Hence Adam’s peak is found in the island. When Adam was cast out of Paradise, say the legends, both Jewish and Arabic, he fell and found footing on the island of Serendib; Eve on Djidda.

“Adam is Atum, who was the lord of this place and point of commencement in An (the fish) or Serendib. In the Samaritan version of the Pentateuch the name of Serendib replaces that of Ararat. These can be identified as one according to the mythos. The teb or tep is the point of commencement in the circle for Noah or for Adam, and it is the Tap in Taprobane, the Def in Defrobani, the Teve in Teve-Lanka, another name of Ceylon, and the Dib in Serendib. Tep denotes the upper heaven, the top, and the tepht is the lower. The ser or tser was the rock of the horizon; another name for the Tep Hill. This rock, the Ser-en-Tep, was at the initial point, where the solar ark rested in the birthplace of the beginning.”

“A serendible good drubbing”

At this point, Massey returns to earth – “From this exalted height we must descend” – to mention “a most trivial application of the word”, which he claims is “a signification of Ser-en-Tep or Serendib. It is a well-known threat, the meaning of which is entirely unknown, for our peasantry to promise a boy “a serendible good drubbing”, and this, which has been perverted at times into a “seven-devil good drubbing”, is supposed to attain the highest point in thrashing. This is Serendib in England”.

"A serendible good drubbing"; "the highest point in thrashing"; "this is Serendib in England". Being a Serendibian at heart if not in blood, and a part-time lexicographer to boot, it seemed as if I had stumbled on something truly extraordinary.

But the lexicographer lurking in the left hemisphere of my brain understood that investigating the etymology of serendible was essential. No entry exists in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), so I turned to the Deputy Chief Editor, Edmund Weiner, my lexical mentor for the past decade. Edmund sent me the entry for the similar-sounding sevendible from the English Dialect Dictionary (EDD), published between 1898 and 1905: “Adjective. Ireland. Also in forms serendible, sevendable, survendible. Very great; thorough, severe.”

So “serendible” is merely a form of “sevendible” (perhaps the source of Massey’s “seven-devil”) and has nothing to do with Serendib. Furthermore, it is reported to be of Irish English not English origin. Only Massey’s definition is accurate.

The OED, like the EDD, lists illustrative quotations from literature to trace a word’s history and usage. Such a quotation from the hallowed Oxford journal Notes & Queries (1873) echoes Massey’s association of the word with corporal punishment: “I have heard a groom threaten to give a boy a serendible good thrashing”.

The entry continues: “Hence sevendibly, adverb. Thoroughly, severely.” Another quotation from Notes & Queries uses the adverb in similar context, asserting it is “Used by grooms, as: ‘I will rub in the blister sevendibly.’ I have never heard it used by any other class of men.” Both quotations come from the same passage, and there are no other quotations to support the assertion that serendible and sevendibly are used in connection with physical abuse in the stables of the wealthy.

The EDD entry that follows is sevendle. “Adjective. Strong, secure, sufficient: figuratively, trustworthy, to be depended upon.” To further confound the origin of serendible, I discovered another reference in the entry for sevendle in the Dictionary of the Scottish Language database, the Scottish National Dictionary component (DSL SND1). Edmund supposes it is or was used in both Scottish and Irish English, but that it must be recorded earlier in one of them, probably Scots. “It’s more usual for a word to travel from Scottish to Irish English than the reverse,” he comments.

The DSL SND1 entry reads: “Also savendle, sivendle, sevaandal, sevender, and derivative forms sevendible, -able and erroneously, serendible. 1. Strong, form, securely made, built or fixed” - such as “Is the scaffold sevendle?” (1923) - 2. Trustworthy, dependable. 3. Thorough, out-and-out, severe, extreme.” To illustrate 3. there is a quotation concerning punishment, but whether it is stable-oriented is unclear: “The heavier stroke, not with the open hand but with the full boxing style — a sevaandal blow”(1930).

Note that the DSL SND1 definition describes serendible as being “erroneous”. Edmund remarks: “I imagine the editors knew both from their own experience and from the overwhelming evidence that seven- was the normal form, and seren-, which was rare, was some kind of alteration (though erroneous could be going too far; perhaps it just reflects some obscure sound-change or analogy).” Massey’s assertion regarding serendible is a perfect example of how research should not only be a voyage of discovery but a voyage of verification. “This is Serendib in England” – it’s a pity that such an intriguing statement turned out to be a disappointment. But you can be assured I’ll keep looking for the abnormal.