Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood -- Notes on Words / Allusions (pp.1-29)

Text: Under Milk Wood, Ed. Daniel Jones, New Directions

References:
American Heritage Dictionary (AHD)
Oxford Dictionary of the English Language (OED)
Under Milk Wood, The Definitive Edition (UMW/DE),
Eds. Walford Davies and Ralph Maud, Dent: 1995.)

Page:

1:
Captain Cat: according to ancient belief, cats can see in the dark, thus Captain Cat, though blind, serves, along with the FIRST VOICE and SECOND VOICE, as a narrator whereby we "see" a world that the voices of the characters cannot entirely reveal (UMW/DE).

cockle-women: In South Wales, some families make their living collecting shell-fish called "cockles," rising early in the morning to catch the clear beaches before the tide.

cobble-streets: streets made of stone.

courters' and rabbits' wood: woodland where lovers go and rabbits live.

dingle: a small valley or glade (AHD).

dumbfound: mute (asleep), as if stricken dumb.

fancy woman: prostitute

glow-worms: lightning bugs

lulled: sleepy

moles: a small animal with velvety fur, nocturnal, small but not blind eyes, lives and burrows underground (AHD).

pensioners: retired people

publican: bar owner, owner of a tavern (OED).

shops in mourning: the :mourning effect of blinds drawn overnight in shop windows, a funerary custom as well (UMW/DE).

sloeblack, slow, black: consecutive words changing only one sound or letter (paragram); this device was popular with British poets such as Gerald Manley Hopkins, a favorite of Thomas's (UMW/DE). "sloe," the color of blackthorn berries, a dark purple or black (AHD).

tidy wives: prim and proper housewives (OED).

trousseaux: bride's clothes, dress, linen, etc.

Welfare Hall in widows' weeds: This type of town hall was built in the decade after World War I to honor the dead, hence "widows' weeds" refers to the unkempt, unmowed state of the grounds and yard around the town hall, and the widows of the dead who keep the grounds clean (UMW/DE).

2:
anthracite statues: Miners in South Wales have created a craft industry from carving coal (anthracite) into figurines such as animals, hence the metaphor.

Arethusa, the Curlew...: names of small fishing boats.

bombazine (black): a fine twilled fabric often dyed black (OED).

bootlace bow: bows attached to dress boots.

bucking ranches ... jollyrodgered sea: images of Jolly Roger, the ensign of pirates, with his black flag with skull and crossbones; originally "jolly, rodgered"; rodgered and bucking give the passage its slang sexual slant (UMW/DE).

butterfly choker: a type of necklace (OED).

china dog: popular British ceramic dog figurine (usually in pairs facing each other) for decor.

cockled cobbles: cobble streets covered with cockle shells, or perhaps cockle shells mixed in with mortar.

dab-filled: "dab," a nautical term for fishbait.

Dai Bread: Because of common first and last names in Wales (Jones, Williams, Evans, etc.), men are figuratively nicknamed according to their occupation -- Dai Bread (the baker). Dai is the shortened version of David.

fortywinking: sleeping (OED).

four-ale: oblique reference to a tavern that serves four brands of beer or ale (UMW/DE).

harmonium: portable organ found in many homes (OED).

holy dresser: a dresser in which dishes are displayed or stored (OED).

mintoes: a traditional hard candy (OED).

neddying: floating (OED).

needling: moving forcefully.

rosy tin teacaddy: tray for a teapot and teacups (OED).

seaweed on its hooves: placed as padding on horse-hooves to keep their walking quiet through cobbled streets, used especially at funerals (UMW/DE).

snuggeries: small comfortable cradle or baby's room (OED).

text: book (probably a bible).

3:
Bethesda: the names of chapels in Wales have come predominantly from the place-names of the Holy Land in the Bible (UMW/DE).

Davy dark: A reference to the sea as "Davy Jones's [Jonah's] locker," after a sailoring name for the supposed evil spirit of the sea., but also a coal-mining association with the miner's safety-lamp invented by Sir Humphrey Davy (1778-1829), used in the mines from 1816 onwards (UMW/DE).

long drowned : this passage where the sailors speak guiltily but longingly about their former lives draws influence from the American poet Edgar Lee Master's Spoon River Anthology, and "Voices from Things Growing in a Churchyard" by one of Thomas's favorite poets, Thomas Hardy (UMW/DE).

S.S Kidwelly: "S.S." stands for screw steamer or  steamship. "Kidwelly (Cydweli in Welsh) is an ancient Carmarthenshire town between Carmarthen and Swansea, across the Towy river from Laugharne, where Thomas wrote the final draft of the play (UMW/DE).

Thou Shalt Not on the wall: In many British homes, framed placards with quotes from the Bible grace the walls.

yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead: old and yellowing pictures of dead relatives in nineteenth-century ties (dickybirds) (OED).

4:
flagon: tall, glass or metal cup for beer.

blisters: common term for cancer from the Old French blestre (tumor) (OED).

dredger: fishing boat that dredged for great quantities of oysters.

Nantucket: An island town (and town) in the Atlantic, just south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Its Indian name means "far away land," and it whaling associations evoke Herman Melville's Moby Dick, in which Captain Ahab, too, "lost his step,: in losing his leg to the whale (UMW/DE).

ormolu: gilded with copper/gold or brass.

Tom-Fred the donkeyman: Given the fewness of surnames in small communities in Wales, it became useful to identify individuals by the addition of a parent's Christian name (hence, Tom-Fred), the person's job (hence donkeyman) the name of the home (hence (Mae Rose-Cottage), or the work-place (Mary-Ann the Sailors). The term "donkeyman" is probably not a reference to the animal, but to the "donkey-engine," a small auxillary engine for hauling or hoisting freight on board ship, or for pumping water from the boilers of a steamship (UMW/DE).

sealawyer, born in Mumbles: A "sea-lawyer" was an argumentative sailor always aware of his own rights (UMW/DE).

5:
lavabread [sic] laverbread: here stated in the Swansea pronunciation (UMW/DE), a sea-weed harvested and produced on the coast of South Wales and used as a spread for bread and sold in the taverns; made in bowls (lavers).

bosoms: the curve of a sail, but also breasts and birds.

concertinas: squeezebox musical instrument commonly played by sailors.

Ebenezer's bell: name for warning bell for the launch of lifeboats.

6:
cows in Maesgwyn: dairy farm by the name of Maesgwyn (lit. "Fair Meadow"). Thomas lived near a farm by this name as a child some two miles from Fern Hill, his maternal aunt's farm at Llangain (UMW/DE).

old girls in the snug: slang reference to women, usually unmarried, who go to the bar-parlor of an inn or tavern.

tenors in Dowlais: male tenor singers in the choir of the village of Dowlais.

tiddlers in a jamjar: salt-water minnows kept by children in a jamjar (OED).

whippets: small, racing dogs (AHD).

7:
Cloth Hall: central market for selling and trading cloth in London (OED).

Emporium: a clothes shop (OED).
flailing up the cockles with his eyes like blowlamps: metaphor for 'bright-eyed'. Blowlamps (or kerosine lamps) were used by the cockle-fisherman to see their work at night; cockle are a type of edible shell-fish found along the South Wales coast.

Manchester House: A "Manchester House," or cloth and clothes shop existed in both Laugharne and New Quay where Thomas lived while writing UMW (UMW/DE).

Samson-syrup-gold-maned: Samson's mane occurs in the biblical story of Samson, which of course also includes a lion (Judges V, 5-9). However, in this rather James Joycean piece of word-play, this refers also to the lion trade-mark for Tate and Lyle' famous "Golden Syrup," which incorporates the sentence "Out of the strong came forth sweetness" from the Samson story. Myfanwy Price is a "sweet-shop keeper," and the same conjunction of ideas is picked up again on p.42: "MR EDWARDS: I love Miss Price. FIRST VOICE: Syrup is sold in the Post Office..."

Sunday roast: traditional Sunday dinner in Britain with roasted meat, potatoes and peas.

sweetshop keeper: owner of a shop that sells candy.
where the change hums on wires: In some large town shops (hence Mog Edwards's ambition), well beyond the Second World War, payment and change for purchased goods were sped between shop-attendant and cashier along a system of sprung pulleys and wires. Thomas would have remembered the device from the Ben Evans department store in Castle Bailey Street in Swansea. destroyed by German bombs in 1941 (UMW/DE).

yes, yes, yes...: Evoking Molly Bloom's final, repeated "yes" in her soliloquy at the end of James Joyce's Ulysses (UMW/DE).

8:
Ach y fi!: A Welsh expression of disgust.

gooseberried: a wild berry that grows on the sides of hills in Britain. Apart from the tale that babies are found under gooseberry bushes, to "play gooseberry" was to act as a chaperon, or be an unwanted third presence when lovers wanted to be alone (UMW/DE).

Jack Black the cobbler: UMW is not a roman à clef (novel about real people under disguised identities), but Thomas sometimes linked name and occupation from actual memory. One of Thomas's early schoolmates relates: "In the Uplands [a Swansea neighborhood] was a group of small shops, amongst them Mr Grey, the newsagent, Mr Black the cobbler, and Mr White's, the shoe shop. One day, whilst a group of us waited for the school door to be opened, Dylan told us importantly that no-one was allowed to open a shop there unless their name was a color. We all believed him, especially as, by a strange coincidence, the next shop to open was Mr Green the Greengrocer." (Joan A Hardy, "At Dame' School with Dylan," The New Welsh Review, Spring, 1995, 39) (UMW/DE).

sixpenny hops: slang for cheap village-hall dances (UMW/DE).
spit and sawdust: cheap bars or taverns where the only
floor-covering was sawdust (UMW/DE).

tills: cash registers.

tosspots: slang term for heavy drinkers (OED).

9:
bowler: a traditional British round hat.

currants: raisins

milk stout: a sweet stout (strong beer) made from lactose.

welshcakes: traditional welsh biscuits made with currants or raisins, an allusion to an old rural custom in Wales of using water derived from melted snow in the preparation of cakes and pastries (UMW/DE).

11:
hasn't got a leg: slang for either "drunk" or "lazy".

12:
pianola: player piano.
singing in the "w": singing in the bathroom, British "w.c.," (water-closet) (UMW/DE).

using language: using bad language.

13:
chalking words: writing graffiti on public places with chalk rock.

chimbley: common dialect word for "chimney."

mum: British usage for "mom."

mwchins: Welsh slang for playing truant or hookey from school (UMW/DE).

14:
b.t.m.: Victorian English for `bottom', also perhaps a euphemistic abbreviation for one of Mr. Waldo's lovers, Beattie Morris (UMW/DE).

halfpenny: British coin, literally half a cent (OED).

sennapods: the bitter tasting pods of the senna plant; used like castor oil to induce vomiting (OED).

15:
besoming: a besom is a broom, sweeping (UMW/DE).

crinoline: a stiff fabric made of horse hair and cotton or linen thread (UMW/DE).

linoleum: a floor cloth coated with linseed oil. (AHD).

spruced: neat and smart in appearance (OED).

trig and trim: strong and slender (clean in appearance) (OED).

16:
balsam: an ancient ointment for healing, aromatic (OED).

flannel band: strip of flannel to cushion the side while sleeping (OED).

sciatica: relating to damage of the nerves in the hips (AHD) see p.62.

17:
asthma mixture: smoking mixture containing Australian Asthma-herb (Euphorbia pilulifera) (OED).

charcoal biscuit: a biscuit containing wood-charcoal as an anti-fermentative (antacid), absorbent or deodorizer (OED).

peke: short for pekingese dog (OED).

tannin: tannic acid, said to hurt the lining of the stomach (OED).

18:
chintz: a painted calico cloth from India (OED).

ferrets: to hunt (as the animal ferret hunts rabbits) (AHD).

hummock: a pile (OED).

perturbation: a disturbance (AHD).

19:
bloomered: women's knee-length undergarments (OED).

cadenza: a vocal solo in classical music (AHD).

churns: milk-cans (AHD).

kippers: small seafish, usually salted and canned.

truncheon: a short thick staff or club (OED).

Salt Lake Farm: Salt House Farm actually exists near Laugharne. Changing it to "Salt Lake" gave Thomas the name "Utah" Watkins for the farmer - after the Great Salt Lake in Utah. In the original notes to the play, Utah Watkins was originally "Mormon Watkins" (UMW/DE).

Women's Welfare: local women's group involved with charities (OED).

20:
lock-up: jail (OED).

tankard: tall metal or ceramic cup for beer (AHD).

21:
brilliantined: a glossy substance used on mounted fish.

Call me Dolores/Like they do in the movies: In the New English Weekly in November 1938 Thomas had reviewed Thomas had reviewed H G Wells's novel Apropos of Dolores - the story, according to Thomas, of "a superlatively common woman" (Early Prose Writings, Ed. Walford Davies, Dent 1971, 191).

mogul: romantic slang for a Persian lord or `mongol'.

taproom: main bar-room in a tavern (beer taps).

22:
giblets: goose or turkey entrails, including the liver, gizzard, etc. (OED).

titbit (Am. tidbits): a small morsel of food (OED).

topsyturvies: slang for a type of candy (OED).

sprat: a small sea-fish (OED).

23:
Eisteddfodau: traditional Welsh poetry contests in which the best poet wins either the crown or the chair; from Welsh eistedd (to sit) + bod (place).

crwth: traditional Welsh stringed instrument

pibcorn: traditional Welsh pipe or reed instrument.

druid's seedy nightie: reference to the long white robes currently worn by the druid poets at the National Eisteddfod in Wales.

parchs: from the Welsh parchedig or English "reverend" as a title for a minister.

24:
gippo: has to be understood in relation to "clothespegs," well beyond the Second World War, the main objects for sale by the Romanies or gypsies travelling throughout South Wales were wooden pegs for hanging laundry (UMW/DE).

25:
Bethesda: name of a chapel (Protestant).

druids: refers to participants in a native Welsh ceremony that crowns a poet yearly. See 23: Eisteddfodau.

small circle of stones: similar to Stonehenge, created for the eisteddfod ceremonies. See druid above.

27-28:
bard: form Welsh bardd (poet).

Poem by Eli Jenkins: the first part of the poem compares famous Welsh mountains with Llareggub Hill; the second half compares noted Welsh rivers to the Dewi river.)