ANNOUNCEMENT: Lana Guineay wins the October WWWC!

We’re pleased to announce the winner of the October WWWC: Lana Guineay! Lana’s response to the prompt ‘beamish boy’ draws inspiration from literature and language.

On her inspiration for her entry, Lana writes: ‘When I read this month’s competition prompt, the word “beamish” was new to me. While I could infer its meaning I wasn’t familiar with the term, and what was its association with “boy”? One Google later I found that the phrase is from Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, who seemingly thought he invented it – but in fact, its first recorded English usage came from a 1530 text: John Palsgrave’s L’éclaircissement De La Langue Française. This etymology interested me much more, and its use “Beamysshe as the sonne is, radieux” called to mind one of my favourite sonnets, Shakespeare’s Sonnet 33 and its heartbreaking play on sun/son – but in this case, the heart was restored and radiant. My imagination was intrigued and the words flew out!’

Read her winning entry, ‘Beamysshe’, below.

Author’s note: This is a work entirely of fiction. The first use of the word ‘beamish’ was circa 1530 (beamysshe) in John Palsgrave’s L’éclaircissement de la langue Française, a 1000-page French–English bilingual dictionary and contrastive grammar of English and French, from beam + -ish. Palsgrave translated and defined the French adjective radieux, ‘Beamysshe as the sonne is, radieux’.

The sun is declining. He is tired. His fingers sore and callused and stained with ink, ringed in gold from the King’s coffers. There is already ice on the grass tips – and not yet September! England stretches out and out beyond the casement. A strapping lad with a scythe, trees baring their bones in a seasonal memento mori. Sky streaked yellow-orange-red, clouds spinning the firmament like ribbons. The shadows in the garden thicken, darken, emerging slowly like a nocturnal huntress. He doesn’t notice: only that the window light is suddenly too dark to write by.

He looks at his page and he looks at his ambition there in ink: to reduce the French language to rule; to place by side the vernacular of English and French. To put French on the tongues of Englishmen, as one would place a sweet on the tongue of a boy. And then as if shaking off crumbs, he rouses and takes in the darking grass, lad, all of England in growing nocturne. Stands, puts away papers, reading one entry as he does: I bomme as a bombyll bee doth, or any flye. This waspe bommeth about myne eare, I am afrayed leste she stynge me … more crumbs. Looks at the next word there written on a fresh parchment: radieux. His mind thinks over the ways he can treat this word, possibilities echoing. As the day weakens, dies, he reads in the fast brewing cloud now gales of more than usual violence, sees the last clutch of leaves being pulled one by one like of malevolent fingers. England in the gloaming. Land watered with treasonous blood, the King at war with the French once more, a growing dis-ease with the Pope.

What can he say of radieux when the world darkens, and the flittering country gutters?

He is a lover best of word, God. Through material circumstance he needed employment – through inclination, language. So he works, hours and hours, compiling his grammar; if devote his poor flesh he must, he will do it to something beautiful. And beauty is there in words like Radieux, bombyll bee. To unite in tongue where flesh makes war – and why not? He knows the law of Logos, how words lead to reality; and his treasured thoughts are of concord brought about through his grammar. Perhaps poets too, will find treasures there. Treasures – he feels them not, at this moment. His mood has grown dark with the day, and he feels discontent, thoughts clinging on him in a way that galls. He has done work but not enough. Not well enough. No. Enough. Now: wine.

He walks the rush floors to rouse up sustenance: for he finds he is suddenly parched, starved, like a man breaking fast. The boys have come in with the eventide, he can hear their whoops and coughs reverberating as they come all a-clamour, the singsong voice and cluck cluck of women, and he stirs up the fire where the dogs laze, and finds a seat there to warm his suddenly-cold bones and drink deep. Radieux.

In comes his boy, clutching a bony stick, to represent sword or wand or any other thing as his mind delights; his round sweet cheeks like apples now with dirt of the day’s adventure covering their freckle and flush. Meanwillwecaughtafishitwassobig the boy says, words a rushing stream as the excitement peaks and settles, holding out his arms as far as they will stretch, still clutching the stick, an we had six big cows follow us all the way to the river and we caught it!

Did you so?

I did! I named it Rob and Will says it’s dumb to name a thing like a fish but I did it anyway it looked like a Rob and it’s nice to name things

I agree with you

And the boy climbed up on his lap and said I caught it just like you do, you want to see it we can have it for dinner and mam said we can cook it up

In the way of children the boy is suddenly tired from the excitement and as he calms his eyes begin to close, a feathered line of lash touching his cheek, his hand still clutching the stick as he wriggles and settles fast.

Lana Guineay is an author and freelance writer/ content editor based in Adelaide. her debut novella Dark Wave won the 2020 Viva La Novella prize, and her short story ‘Bogan Botticelli’ was daily winner of the Swinburne Microfiction award. Her writing has appeared in Going Down Swinging, Anthology of Australasian Stories, the Guardian, Yen magazine, Junkee, the Adelaide Review, and Right Angle Studios. Lana is currently working on a surf noir novel, the sequel to Dark Wave.