Pirates Glossary and Notes Compiled by Alfred Hunting

References include: Reginald Allen, The First-Night Gilbert & Sullivan Book Isaac Asimov’s Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan Leslie Baily, The Gilbert & Sullivan Book Harry Benford, The Gilbert & Sullivan Lexicon Ian Bradley, The Complete Annotated Gilbert & Sullivan Book Charles Hayter, Gilbert & Sullivan Acrostics

"I answer hard acrostics, I’ve a pretty taste for paradox - " From the Greek for ends in order. A poem or a series of lines of text, in which certain letters, usually the first and sometimes also the last of each line, form a name, a motto or a message when read in sequence; also, a word square, which is a group of words that are arranged in a square and that read the same vertically and horizontally.

Animalculous

"I know the scientific names of beings animalculous - " An animalcule, diminutive of animal, is a microscopic organism, such as an amoeba or a paramecium, that is usually regarded as an animal.

Anon

"Men who stick at no offences will anon be here -" Since the pirates were to be off at "the top of the tide", it is not clear why Frederic should be expecting them to return so soon, to be a threat to the General’s daughters.

Aristophanes

"The croaking chorus from The Frogs of Aristophanes - " Satirical dramatist of classical Athens (448 - 385 BC); like Gilbert he specialised in mocking the foibles of his day. The Frogs, with its croaking chorus "Brekekekex, koax, koax", imitating the sounds of frogs, is perhaps one of his best-known plays.

Arthur, King

"I know our mythic history, King Arthur’s and Sir Caradoc’s - " Mostly legendary king of Britain, who is supposed to have led the resistance of the native Celts against the invading Saxons in the 6th century AD; best known as the leader of the knights of the Round Table, one of whom was Sir Caradoc (q.v.).

Astronomer Royal

"Some person in authority - I don’t know who - very likely the Astronomer Royal - " A title used between 1675 and 1972 for the director of the Observatory at Greenwich, who was appointed by the reigning monarch.

The life-title now is an honourary one, bestowed on an outstanding British astronomer (currently Martin Rees, Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College at Cambridge). The Observatory, the location of which originally defined 0 degrees of longitude, is now a museum, and the official Observatory is in Herstmonceaux, in south Sussex, at 20 minutes east. Actually, the ‘person in authority’ was Caesar Augustus, who, following the lead of his predecessor Julius, named the month of August after himself and took the twenty-ninth day from February to make August as long as July. Binomial Theorem

"About binomial theorem I’m teem-ing with a lot of news - " A binomial is a mathematical expression consisting of an additive combination of two terms, such as (ax+by). Sir Isaac Newton was the first to develop the rule by which any power of a binomial could be evaluated as combinations of powers of the individual terms. In the Major-General’s mathematical ability, there is an echo of Gilbert’s Bab Ballad ‘My Dream’, which tells of a land where the babies are highly numerate: For, as their nurses dandle them, They crow binomial theorem, With views (it seems absurd to us) On Differential Calculus.

Blushing buds

"Blushing buds of ever-blooming beauty - " An example of Gilbert’s fondness for alliteration; also, an unusually gallant, florid form of expression for a young man who hasn’t seen a young woman since he was eight years old.

Bumper

"Let the pirate bumper pass - " A drinking vessel filled to the brim, especially for drinking a toast.

Cankering

"Long been gnawed by the cankering tooth of mystery - " Eroding, consuming, ulcerous, secretly infecting; from the same root as cancer.

Caractacus

"And tell you every detail of Caractacus’s uniform - " More correctly, Caratacus, the Romanised form of the Celtic name of the British chieftain Caradoc, not to be confused with the later Sir Caradoc (q.v.) of the Round Table. He was a chieftain of lands in what are now the counties of Hertfordshire and Essex, and unsuccessfully resisted the invasion of the Roman legions sent by Emperor Claudius in 43 AD. After several defeats by the legions, he escaped to northern Britain, but was betrayed and handed over to the Romans. Claudius exhibited his captive in a triumphal procession in Rome. Caratacus conducted himself with such dignity that he was pardoned and allowed to live out his days in honourable captivity. It is questionable, however, whether he ever wore a uniform.

Caradoc, Sir

"King Arthur’s and Sir Caradoc’s - " One of the knights of King Arthur’s Round Table. An old ballad tells how the faithfulness of the ladies at King

Arthur’s court was tested, by having each of them in turn try to wear a magic cloak that would remove itself from the shoulders of any woman who had not been absolutely faithful to her husband. Sir Caradoc’s wife was the only one who was able to wear the cloak and thus prove her fidelity. Caravanserai

"Hold, monsters, ere your pirate caravanserai - " In the Near and Far East, an inn built around a large court-yard, for accommodating caravans. Caravan, meaning a company of travelers, would be a better word, but wouldn’t rhyme with Chancery. It is an unusual term to use in connection with Cornish pirates, and a curious example of Gilber-tian poetic licence.

Central Criminal Court

"No pirate band will take its stand at the Central Criminal Court " Familiarly known as the Old Bailey. The original Old Bailey was built by King Henry VIII in 1539 at Cheapside, and was used for many celebrated criminal trials. In 1834 it was officially designated as the major criminal court in the land. It was also referred to as ‘Ancient Bailey’ in the Judge’s song in Trial by Jury. The present court building, still known as Old Bailey, was built on the site of Newgate Prison in the first decade of this century.

Centrebit

"Here’s your crowbar and your centrebit - " A drill used for making large circular holes in wood or metal. A burglar would use it to drill through doors, in order to unlock them from the inside.

Chassepot

see Mauser.

Circumspect

"You are very dear to me, as you know, but I must be circumspect " Prudent or cautious. This is also a remarkably commonsensical observation for a lad who hadn’t seen any other woman since he was eight years old.

"Climbing over rocky mountains"

This song was not the original setting for the entrance of General Stanley’s daughters. In late 1879 Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte were in America both to present an authorised version of Pinafore and also to prepare a premiere production of Pirates, in order to try to preserve the American copyright. When he was unpacking his bags in New York, Sullivan discovered that he had left behind all his music for Act I of Pirates. In trying to reconstruct the music, he found he could not remember the song for this entrance. To save time, Gilbert suggested they simply reuse a chorus from their first collaboration Thespis (1871), which happened to be appropriate for the scene. In Thespis, "Climbing over rocky mountain" was sung by a troupe of actors who had come to Mount Olympus for a picnic. Gilbert’s only adaptation was to replace "Till the mountain top they gain" with "Till the bright seashore they gain". More alteration could have been used, since the song still seems quite incongruous: they would hardly have had to "scale rough and rugged passes" in making their way to a Cornish beach. The Olympian flavour of

the song also shows in Kate’s phrase, "Far away from mortal men, we’ll be queens and make decrees". By virtue of this reuse, this song and "Little maid of Arcadee", which was reused in Iolanthe, are the only surviving parts of the music for Thespis. Conics

"In conics I can floor pecularities parabolous - " A branch of mathematics concerned with the geometric properties of the plane curves formed by the intersection of a plane surface with a cone; more generally, the study of the properties of the general quadratic equation in two variables.

Cornwall

"Scene. - A rocky seashore on the coast of Cornwall. - " The southwestmost county in England, in the form of a long, thin peninsula, fronting on both the English Channel and the Atlantic Ocean; also the locale of the fictitious fishing village of Rederring, the setting for the first act of Ruddygore. The adjective form is Cornish.

Coster(monger)

"When a coster’s finished jumping on his mother - " One who sells fruit, vegetables or other goods from a cart, barrow or stand in the streets, especially in London. These people had a reputation for drunken and bullying habits. Coster is from the Elizabethan name costard for a kind of large English apple; a monger is a dealer in a specific commodity, such as an ironmonger.

Crank

"We knew your taste for curious quips, for cranks and contradictions queer - " A sudden unexpected turn of speech.

Cunarder

"A keener hand at scuttling a Cunarder - " An ocean liner of the Cunard Steamship Co Ltd, founded in 1839 by Samuel Cunard. It was on a Cunarder, the Bothnia, that Gilbert, Sullivan and several of the principals of the Pinafore/Pirates company sailed to the United States in October 1879. The Cunard Line is perhaps best known now for its flagship the QE2, the only remaining superliner in service.

Cuneiform, Babylonic

"Then I can write a washing bill in Babylonic cuneiform - " A system of writing used in ancient Sumeria, Assyria, Babylonia and Persia until about the time of Christ. The wedge-shaped characters were made by pressing the slanted edge of a triangular stylus into soft clay; from the Latin cuneus, meaning wedge. Here a washing bill is a laundry list.

Custom House

"Who has ventured to approach our all but inaccessible lair? Can it be Custom House? - " Officers of Her Majesty’s Department of Customs and Excise, who are concerned with smuggling. Frederic’s apprehension at their possible appearance is an indication that the ‘pirates’ were mainly smugglers. Custom House seems a strange term to use forrevenuemen.

Dark Lantern

"Your silent matches, your dark lantern seize - " A lantern with sliding panels over the windows, that can be closed up to conceal the light within.

Dimity

"Pray observe the magnanimity they display to lace and dimity - " A sheer, crisp cotton fabric, with raised thread patterns, used chiefly for curtains and dresses; from the Medieval Greek for ‘double-threaded’. Here, of course,

the magnanimity is being displayed to the wearers of lace and dimity. Divine Emollient

"All hail, Divine Emollient! - " A god-like element that soothes, assuages or mollifies, such as Poetry.

Doing and Undoing

"Ah, the doing and undoing that the rogue could tell - " In colloquial British English, to ‘do’ someone is to cheat them, and to ‘undo’ someone is to seduce them. Thus the roving breeze may well have been meant to be a rogue indeed.

Duty

"And why? It was my duty under my indentures, and I am the slave of duty - " To moderns, Frederick’s view of Duty is simply amusing. To Victorians it was a parody of their own moral code, which emphasised constant and vigilant self-discipline, for which the reward was not only a place in heaven, but also middle-class respectability. Samuel Smiles, a popular mid-Victorian writer, wrote a series of books on the main Victorian virtues: Self Help, Character, Thrift and Duty. It is interesting that Duty was published in the year Pirates was being written. Its themes: doing our duty frees us from subjection to the lower parts of our nature; without ‘duty’, civilisation would collapse and we would all be beasts. Making the topic of Duty even more topical in 1879 was the appearance at the Prince of Wales’ Theatre of James Albery’s play Duty, which transformed the principles of Smiles into drama.

Elegiacs

"I quote, in elegiacs, all the crimes of Heliogabalus - " Elegiac couplets in the classical Greek poetic style; mournful, melancholy verse. It is said that rewriting a given piece of text into Latin elegiacs was an exercise commonly assigned to English ‘public’ schoolboys.

Emeutes

"For when threatened with emeutes - " An anglicised pronunciation of the French emeute, meaning brawl, riot or civil disorder.

Escutcheon

"For having brought dishonour on the family escutcheon - " Strictly speaking, the actual shield on which a coat of arms is displayed; in this usage, it includes the complete coat of arms along with the shield.

February 29

"You are the victim of this clumsy arrangement, having been born in leap year, on the twenty-ninth of February - " Gilbert takes some dramatic licence with the time of the opera here. At the beginning of Act I, Frederic is celebrating the end of his twenty-first year, presumably on February 29. But almost immediately thereafter, when the women’s chorus enters, they sing of "by the ever-rolling river, swollen with the summer rain". It is the season for picnics on the Cornish seashore and even ‘paddling’ in the waters of the English Channel. It is said that the south coast of Cornwall has the mildest and most equable climate in Great Britain, but ‘paddling’ would have to wait until May or June at the earliest.

Forty-seven

"A wife of seventeen! You will find me a wife of a thousand! No, but I shall find you a wife of forty-seven - " These lines were anticipated by Gilbert’s Bab Ballad ‘Haunted’, in which a man reflects on the social ghosts which haunt him:

I pass to critical seventeen: The ghost of that terrible wedding scene, When an elderly colonel stole my queen, And woke my dream of heaven: No schoolgirl decked in her nursery curls Was my gushing innocent queen of pearls; If she wasn’t a girl of a thousand girls, She was one of forty-seven! Gilbert was himself forty-six when he wrote Pirates. At the age of thirtyone, in Trial by Jury, he wrote mockingly of a woman as being able to "pass for forty-three, in the dusk with the light behind her". He seems to have found women in their forties a particular target for satire. Fugue

"Then I can hum a fugue of which I’ve heard the music’s dim afore - " A musical composition based on a short theme that is harmonised in counterpoint and then is reintroduced repeatedly. It is a Gilbertian whimsy to imagine a single person humming a fugue, which by its nature requires the sounding of more than one note at a time.

Gerard Dows

"I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies " Gerard Dou (1613 - 1675), a Dutch portrait painter and pupil of Rembrandt.

Glass

"The glass is rising very high - " A barometer; a high or rising reading on the ‘glass’ or barometer is often a good prediction of good weather to come.

Handspike

"A keener hand at scuttling a Cunarder or cutting out a P & O never shipped a handspike - " To ship an object is to put it in position for performing its function. A handspike is a heavy bar or lever, generally of wood, with a handle on one end and with the other end shaped to fit snugly into a socket on a capstan or windlass. Handspikes are used as lever arms for turning a capstan, in order to pull up an anchor or a heavy chain.

Hear, hear

"True, and until then you are bound to protect our interests. Hear, hear! " In British usage, a cry of approval, of Parliamentary origin. When a Member of Parliament would rise to speak on a strongly controversial issue, the opposition would often cough, hum, or in other ways try to distract or drown out the speaker. Then those favoring the speaker would cry “Hear him, hear him!”; this was shortened to “Hear, hear!” and generalised to express approval even when no distractions were present.

Heliogabalus

"I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of Heliogabalus - " Also Elagabolous; perhaps the most dissolute and profligate of Roman emperors. He was born Varius Avitus Bassianus in 204 AD. As a youth he became high priest to the Syro-Phoenician sun god Elagabol and took the name Elagabolus. When he was appointed emperor after a military revolt in 218, he took the name Marcus Aurelius Antonius. He attempted to impose on his subjects the worship of Elagabol, including, it is said, rites of human

sacrifice. Along with the usual appointments of misfits to high office and mass murders of dissidents, he is said to have especially outraged public opinion with his large-scale public orgies. He was assassinated by the Praetorian Guard after only four years of misrule. His name was also mentioned in Utopia Ltd by Tarara the Public Exploder, who refers to King Paramount as "one of the most Heliogabalian profligates that ever disgraced an autocratic throne". "How beautifully blue the sky

" This is one of two examples in Pirates of the simultaneous singing of two songs with completely different tempi and moods; the other is in Act II, when Mabel and Edith sing "Go, ye heroes, go to glory" over the policemen’s "When the foeman bares his steel". Sullivan used this device several times in the Savoy operas.

Indentures

"For today our pirate ‘prentice rises from indentures freed - " Originally, a document that was written out and signed in duplicate, side-by-side on parchment, then torn down the middle, so that the matching indentations on the two pieces of parchment would show they had been part of the same document; in Law, a contract binding an apprentice to the service of a master for a specified term. It is a Gilbertian whimsy that apprenticeship to an outlaw, such as a pirate, could be an enforceable contract.

Integral and differential calculus

"I’m very good at integral and differential calculus - " Two branches of mathematics that together form the infinitesimal calculus. Differential calculus is concerned with calculating such things as the rate of change of one function with respect to another, while integral calculus is concerned with calculating such things as areas and volumes of regions defined by functions.

Jot

"I am sure I’m not a jot so -" The smallest possible amount of something; from the Greek iota, the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet.

Leap Year

"I’ve just discovered that I was born in leap year, and that birthday will not be reached by me till nineteen forty - " The length of a complete orbit of the earth around the sun is 365.2422... days. This is about a quarter-day beyond the usual 365, so, to make up this time, the Julian calendar (instituted by Julius Caesar, who borrowed it from the Egyptians) adds an extra or Leap Day to the calendar every fourth year, at the end of February. However, since the extra length of the year is not quite a quarter-day, a leap day every four years is too much correction, and the calendar eventually becomes skewed relative to the seasons. After fifteen centuries of the Julian calendar, the skewing amounted to 10 days. To cure this, Pope Gregory reformed the calendar by dropping 10 days from the month of October 1485, and by changing the leap year rule so that century years are not leap years unless they are evenly divisible by 400. Non-Catholic countries mainly regarded this as a Papist plot, and refused to adopt the reform until much later; Great Britain made the change in 1752. The Gregorian calendar still leaves the average year 26 seconds

longer than the solar year, but that amounts to a full day only once every 3300 years. Life-preserver

"Your life-preserver - you may want to hit - " In British usage, a bludgeon or a stout stick, sometimes loaded with a padded ball of lead; often carried by travellers for defence against highwaymen and Victorian ‘muggers’. Some sources have suggested that it was called a ‘life-preserver’ because it could be used to stun victims without killing them.

Lower

"And darksome dangers lower - " To appear dark or threatening, as the sky or the weather; rhymes with ‘hour’.

Major-General

"I am the very model of a modern Major-General - " The most junior rank of general in the British Army; commands a division or holds a senior staff appointment; ranks below a lieutenant-general and a full general. The approximate US equivalent is a two-star general. This song of introduction is one of the fastest, most famous and likely the most parodied of all the Gilbertian patter songs. Like Sir Joseph Porter in HMS Pinafore, Major-General Stanley was at least partly modeled on a well-known contemporary English figure. George Grossmith, who created the role in the London production in April 1880, was given the elegantly twirled moustache and the slightly imperious manner of Sir Garnet Wolseley, a particularly dashing commander in the British Army. He had led the British forces in the Ashanti Wars of 1873 and was later to be in charge of the efforts to relieve General Gordon in Khartoum in 1885. At the time Pirates was being written, Wolseley had just been promoted to Lieutenant-General and was leading a successful expedition to capture a rebellious king of the Zulus. Unlike Major-General Stanley, Sir Garnet was indeed the very model of a modern military commander. In 1869 he published The Soldier’s Pocket Book, a manual of military organisation and tactics that was a forerunner of the modern field service regulations. His skills in organisation and management gave rise to the expression "All Sir Garnet", meaning "All’s well". His expertise in military expeditions was commended in the Heavy Dragoon song of Colonel Calverley in Patience: "Skill of Sir Garnet in thrashing a cannibal". Wolseley delighted in publicity and so was pleased to be regarded as the model for the Major-General; it is said that he had memorised the patter song and enjoyed singing it for friends and family at home.

Malediction

"By a complete malediction - " The uttering of a curse; also, being under a ban or a curse.

Mamelon and Ravelin

"In fact, when I know what is meant by ‘mamelon’ and ‘ravelin’ " Archaic French terms for field works in military fortifications. A mamelon is a small rounded earthwork or hummock. A ravelin is a

triangular embanked salient or strong-point outside the main ditch of a fortification, and is also a neat rhyme for javelin, which is a light spear, generally metal-tipped. Marathon

"From Marathon to Waterloo - " A Greek city that was the site of a famous victory by the Greeks over the Persians in 490 BC. A messenger carrying news of the victory ran the twenty six miles from the battle site to Athens, then dropped dead on arrival. Also, a long distance footrace, covering a distance of 26 miles and 385 yards, or any of various contests of endurance, named in commemoration of this event. The particular choice of battles listed here is thought to have been taken from Creasy’s Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, which had first been published in 1851 and was still very popular a generation later. In it, the first battle described is Marathon and the last is Waterloo.

Martial cheek

"Oh, dry the glistening tear that dews that martial cheek - " A similar image occurs near the end of Act I in Patience, in the Duke of Dunstable’s solo: "Our soldiers very seldom cry, and yet - I need not tell you why - a tear-drop dews each martial eye!"

Mauser Rifle

"When I can tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin - " A repeating rifle developed for the Prussian army in the early 1870’s; presumably readily distinguishable from a javelin by even a casual observer. Originally, Gilbert had used the term Chassepot rifle, named after its inventor, that was used by the French in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. Sometime after the 1907 revival of Pirates, he changed the phrase to the betterknown Mauser rifle.

Orphan

"Tell me, have you ever known what it is to be an orphan - " It is an odd coincidence that Sir Garnet Wolseley, who was the real-life model for many aspects of the modern Major-General (q.v.), was himself halforphaned at the age of seven, when his father died, leaving his mother to bring up four sons and three daughters by herself.

Paddle

"Suppose we take off our shoes and stockings and paddle - " In a previous production the women’s chorus, instead, took off their Victorian dresses for a moment, to show their full-length Victorian bathing costumes. The text ran, "...Tails they may, but feet they cannot. We are quite alone, and the sea is as smooth as glass. There’s plenty of time for a swim before Papa and the servants arrive with the luncheon. Oh, come along, girls, don’t be silly; there isn’t a man within twenty miles - unfortunately! Stop, ladies, pray!, etc." It is curious that ‘servants’ and ‘luncheon’ are mentioned here and are not heard of again; the General later enters unaccompanied.

Parabolous

"In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous - " Pertaining to parabolas, one of the family of conic plane curves; usually parabolic, but Gilbert needed a rhyme for Heliogabalus.

Paradox

"Until to somebody occurred a startling paradox - " A statement that seems to be self-contradictory or absurd, even though possibly well-founded or essentially true.

Parsonified

"You shall quickly be parsonified, conjugally matrimonified - " Yet another Gilbertianism, for the process of being married by a clergyman or parson.

Peers

"Because, with all our faults, we love our House of Peers - " Members of any of the five degrees of nobility in the United Kingdom: Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount and Baron; members of the House of Lords, the upper house of Parliament

Peignor

"(Enter the GENERAL’S daughters, all in white peignors and night-caps )" A woman’s loose-fitting dressing gown; from the French for ‘a garment worn while combing the hair’.

Penzance

"Papa, don’t believe them; they are pirates - the famous Pirates of Penzance - " An important centre for fishing, trade and tourism on the south coast of the county of Cornwall; a popular seaside resort, especially for retired artists; the western terminus of the main West Country railway line from London; the most westerly town in England; pronounced with the accent on the second syllable.

Pinafore

"And whistle all the airs from that infernal non-sense Pinafore - " This is the only example of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera being referred to in another of the operas. The character of Captain Corcoran, from Pinafore, appears again in Utopia Ltd, but without attribution.

Pirate King

"No, Frederic, I shall live and die a Pirate King - " One of the more likeable villains in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In an earlier musical play, Our Island Home, Gilbert had created the character Captain Bang, who was in many ways a prototype of the Pirate King, though perhaps somewhat more threatening; he introduces himself this way: Oh, tremble! I’m a Pirate Chief; Who comes upon me comes to grief, For I’m a murderer and a thief; A Pirate Captain, I. I spare nor age nor sex nor rank. For every one my fetters clank, Until they’re made to walk the plank, A Pirate Captain, I. The story of Captain Bang also anticipates the plight of Frederic. At the age of seven, Bang said he wanted to be a pilot, in order to enjoy a seafaring life. His indulgent parents consented and sent him with his nurse to be apprenticed to a pilot. She mistook her instructions and apprenticed him to a pirate of her acquaintance, binding him to serve until the age of 21.

P&O

"A keener hand at scuttling a Cunarder or cutting out a P & O never shipped a handspike - " To ‘cut out’ is to capture one of a group, such as a ship from a fleet, or a steer from a herd, by separating it from the rest of the group. The Peninsular and Orient Steam Navigation Company began in 1835 with regular steamship service to the Iberian peninsula, including mail service to Gibraltar. In 1840 it started service from Gibraltar to Alexandria. After the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, it extended service to India, Australia and the Far East. In early productions of Pirates in the United States, the Pirate King referred instead to the White Star Line, which was thought to be better known to American audiences. It was founded in 1869 and operated services on both the North Atlantic and the Australian routes. The best known of the White Star liners was the Titanic. In 1934 the line was merged with Cunard (q.v.) to form Cunard White Star Ltd.

Police

"(Enter Police, marching in single file - )" Sullivan had a particular reason for responding favourably to Gilbert’s conception of a men’s chorus of singing policemen. As organist at St Michael’s in Chester Square, a fashionable West End church, in the late 1860’s, Sullivan had made its choir one of the best in London. Describing it later, he wrote, "We were well off for sopranos and altos, but at first I was at my wit’s end for tenors and basses. However, close by the church was the Cottage Row Police Station, and here I completed my choir. The Chief Superintendent there entered heartily into my scheme, and from the police I gathered six tenors and six basses, with a few spares. And capital fellows they were. However tired they’d be when they came off duty, they never missed a practise. I used to think of them at times when I was composing Pirates."

"Poor wandering one"

This waltz song, with its colouratura trills and cadenzas - the "farmyard effects’, as Sullivan called them - was at least in part a deliberate parody of the ‘operacrobatics’ which had become fashionable in operas by Gounod and other French and Italian composers; parody or not, it is, nonetheless, an outstanding example of the genre. It is also a delightful example of the contrast, familiar in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, between words with serious import and music that is utterly lighthearted. The text of her solo is almost hymnlike in its moral tone, while the musical setting is that most sensuous of 19th-century musical forms, the waltz.

Raphaels

"I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies - " The Italian artist Raffaello Sanzia (1483-1520), also known as Raphael, was one of the creators of the art movement that became the Renaissance. In 19th Century England, a group of artists calling themselves the preRaphaelite Brotherhood sought to recreate a pre-Renaissance style of painting. It was the affectations of this group, and of the aesthetic movement that grew out of it, that Gilbert satirised in Patience.

Roundelay

"And Nature, day by day, has sung in accents clear, this joyous roundelay -

" A poem or song with a regularly recurrring refrain. Sat a gee

"You’ll say a better Major-General has never sat a gee - " Gee and haw are commands to a horse to steer to the right or left. Gee up is a command to start up. By extension, geewas a commonly used 19th Century slang term for a horse; it is said that the term gee-gee is still used by children. Thus sat a gee means rode a horse.

Scuttle

"A keener hand at scuttling a Cunarder - " To sink a ship, generally by opening holes in the hull below the waterline.

Silent Matches

"Your silent matches, your dark lantern seize - " Early matches were made by coating the ends of wooden sticks with sulfur and tipping them with potassium chlorate. They were then ignited, not by striking them against an abrasive surface, as now, but by dipping them in a bottle containing a mixture of asbestos and sulfuric acid. This process was silent, though rather cumbersome.

Sooth

"He will be faithful to his sooth - " Archaic for betrothal or pledge.

Take heart of grace

"Though thou hast surely strayed, take heart of grace - " Defined by Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, as ‘to pluck up one’s courage’, presumably from the Paulist doctrine that our strength comes from God’s grace.

Till Nineteen Forty

"That birthday will not be reached by me till nineteen forty - " Since Frederic has a birthday every four years, he would reach his twenty-first birthday at age eighty-four. If that was to occur in 1940, we might expect Gilbert intended him to have been born in 1856 and to have completed twenty-one years in 1877, two years before the writing of Pirates. If this is Gilbert’s intent, then it appears he forgot that, according to the Gregorian calendar, the year 1900 was not a leap year (q.v.). It cannot been of entirely academic interest to Mabel to know whether she would have had to wait until Frederic was all of eighty-eight years old, or merely eighty-four years.

Top of the tide

"Well, it’s the top of the tide, and we must be off - " High tide; getting a ship out of port is easiest when the tide starts running out, just after high tide.

Tremorden Castle

"We will go and collect our band and attack Tremorden Castle this very night - " This is a fictitious location, but plausible for a Cornish setting. In Cornish, the prefix tre meanshamlet or homestead, and is found in many family names and place names in Cornwall; for example, the village of Tremore, near Bodmin.

Twilight hour

"See, heaven has lit her lamp, the twilight hour is past - " Gilbert wrote this line as "The midnight hour is past - ", evidently forgetting that, shortly afterward, Frederic announces that his expedition will start "at eleven ". The D’Oyly Carte Company changed the word to "twilight" in the 1930’s, but many versions of the text still use the original wording.

Unshriven, unannealed

"Is he to die, unshriven, unannealed? Oh, spare him! - " To shrive is to hear the confession of a penitent and to give absolution. To anneal, which actually should be anele, is to anoint, as with oil. Ele is from the Old English oele , which comes from the Latin oleum. These are parts of the service of extreme unction, a Christian sacrament in which a priest anoints and prays for a dying person.

Valedictory

"As a compliment valedictory, if he’s telling a terrible story. - " Uttered or bestowed in bidding or on taking a farewell.

Wards in Chancery

"Just bear in mind that we are Wards in Chancery, and father is a MajorGeneral - " Minors under the guardianship of the Court of Chancery; usually, inheritors whose fortunes are administered by the court until they reach their majority or later. Even with allowance made for Gilbert’s special fondness for this term (he makes Phyllis one in Iolanthe), it is not clear why the Major-General’s daughters are in this category. Normally, minors are made wards if they are orphans, or to protect them from their parents. Neither reason seems to apply here. It is possible that, with so many daughters to provide for, Stanley would have had them made Wards in Chancery so that money they were to inherit from other sources could be made available for their upbringing.

Waterloo

"I quote the fights historical, from Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical - " The battle of Waterloo in 1815 was the final battle in the Napoleonic wars between France and the Allies, mainly Great Britain and Prussia. The French army under Napoleon was defeated by the British and Prussian armies under Wellington and Bluecher. Waterloo is in central Belgium, just south of Brussels. Here, categorical is used in the sense of without exception or omission.

Zoffanies

"I can tell undoubted Raphaels from Gerard Dows and Zoffanies " Johann Zoffany (1725-1810), a very popular English portrait painter, was born in Bavaria (with the family name Zaufelby), settled in England and became a founding member of the Royal Academy of Art when it was started in 1769.