Lich
Dan Clore
[I could use help expanding this entry. It's an interesting case of how
an archaic, unused (aside from dialect) word got revived for literary
use in fantasy, and took on a specialized sense. (And then an even more
specialized sense, if you count the use of the term for an undead wizard
in Dungeons & Dragons.) I'm guessing that Clark Ashton Smith was the
writer most instrumental in the revival, probably influenced by the
appearances in Bierce's work, particularly the quote from Hali. CAS used
the word many, many times that I haven't quoted here. In any case, I
would be grateful for more citations, particularly early ones. The word
is practically useless as a search term, and hard to research.--DC]
lich, litch, lych, n. [< OE l�c, body, corpse] A dead body, corpse,
cadaver; in particular, one animated through magical or supernatural means.
Titles: Frank Belknap Long, "The Desert Lich"
"Her bain't screwed down yet," said Turpin, "but her will be presently.
Would y'like to have a look? Thomas maketh a beautiful lych, that her do."
Sabine Baring-Gould, Dartmoor Idylls (1896)
For by death is wrought greater change than hath been shown. Whereas in
general the spirit that removed cometh back upon occasion, and is
sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing in the form of the body it
bore) yet it hath happened that the veritable body without the spirit
hath walked. And it is attested of those encountering who have lived to
speak thereon that a lich so raised up hath no natural affection, nor
remembrance thereof, but only hate. Also, it is known that some spirits
which in life were benign become by death evil altogether.
Hali (whom God rest), as quoted in Ambrose Bierce, "The Death of Halpin
Frayser" (1891)
O, fear you not that Vrooman's lich
Will rise from earth and point
At you a scornful finger which
May lack, perchance, a joint?
Ambrose Bierce, "A Political Violet"
"I will not change souls with that bullet-ridden lich in the madhouse!"
H.P. Lovecraft, "The Thing on the Doorstep" (1933)
"Behold, it is only the lich of an old man after all, and one that has
cheated the worm of his due provender overlong."
Clark Ashton Smith, "The Death of Malygris" (1933)
The tales they told were both vague and frightful, and were of varying
import; some said that this country was a desolation peopled only by the
liches of the dead and by loathly phantoms; others, that it was subject
to the ghouls and afrits, who devoured the dead and would suffer no
living mortal to trespass upon their dominions; and still others spoke
of things all too hideous to be described, and of dire necromancies that
prevailed even as the might of emperors doth prevail in more usually
ordered lands.
Clark Ashton Smith, "A Tale of Sir John Maundeville" (1930)
These also they raised up from death; and Mmatmuor bestrode the withered
charger; and the two magicians rode on in state, like errant emperors,
with a lich and a skeleton to attend them. Other bones and charnel
remnants of men and beasts, to which they came anon, were duly
resurrected in like fashion; so that they gathered to themselves an
ever-swelling train in their progress through Cincor.
Clark Ashton Smith, "The Empire of the Necromancers" (1932)
Here he lay sleepless, with the curse of Ulua still upon him; for it
seemed that the dry, dusty liches of desert tombs reclined at his side;
and bony fingers wooed him toward the unfathomable sand-pits from which
they had risen.
Clark Ashton Smith, "The Witchcraft of Ulua" (1933)
The tiny blue flame touched the mummy's wrinkled skin, a flickering
tongue of yellow fire bloomed like a golden blossom from the point of
contact, and in an instant the whole bony, bitumen-smeared body of the
litch was ablaze.
Seabury Quinn, "The Man in Crescent Terrace" (1946)
"If I must battle devils or liches, leave me my hearing and my courage."
Fritz Leiber & Harry Otto Fischer, "The Lords of Quarmall" (1936/1961)
Michael Hayward was a writer -- a unique one. Very few writers could
create the strange atmosphere of eldritch horror that Hayward put into
his fantastic tales of mystery. He had imitators -- all great writers
have -- but none attained the stark and dreadful illusion of reality
with which he invested his oftentimes shocking fantasies. He went far
beyond the bounds of human experience and familiar superstition, delving
into uncanny fields of unearthliness. Blackwood's vampiric elementals,
M.R. James' loathsome liches -- even the black horror of de Maupassant's
"Horla" and Bierce's "Damned Thing" -- paled by comparison.
Henry Kuttner, "The Invaders" (1939)
There was a sickening crunch; then dead flesh yielded before my hand as
I seized the now faceless lich in my arms and cast it into fragments
upon the bone-covered floor.
Robert Bloch, "The Secret in the Tomb" (1934)
"We burned the lich to make sure it would not walk again, and thereafter
the folk had peace."
Poul Anderson, "The Tale of Hauk" (1977)
"They stipulate that for every square ell of soil two and one quarter
million men have died and laid down their dust, thus creating a dank and
ubiquitous mantle of lich-mold, upon which it is sacrilege to walk. The
argument has a superficial plausibility, but consider: the dust of one
desiccated corpse, spread over a square ell, affords a layer one
thirty-third of an inch in depth. The total therefore represents almost
one mile of compacted corpse-dust mantling the earth's surface, which is
manifestly absurd."
Jack Vance, The Eyes of the Overworld (1966)
Tristram was caught in the crowd, borne irresistibly, apples be ripe,
through the town, home of a swan, and nuts be brown, and a
lexicographer, petticoats up, Lich meaning a corpse in Middle English,
and trousers down, how inappropriately named -- Lichfield -- tonight
Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed (1962)
Kothar was fleeing from the thought of Red Lori, the sorceress who hated
him and whom he had imprisoned in the tomb of Kalikalides and sealed
therein with solid silver along the edges of the mausoleum door. He had
ridden away, leaving her a prisoner with the lich of dead Kalikalides,
and Kothar felt vaguely uneasy about the whole thing.
Gardner F. Fox, Kothar and the Demon Queen (1970)
A vaguely terrible picture was presented to the warily watching Mary
Allen, as James Phipps' widow made her way with that half-paralytic gait
which seemed to be characteristic of all the Phipps family, between the
dark houses under a lich-pale moon.
Ramsey Campbell, "The Horror from the Bridge" (1964)
Revealed in the torchlight jutted an immense throne of hewn stone, upon
which its skeletal king still reposed in sepulchral majesty. In the cool
aridity of the cavern, the lich had outlasted centuries. Tatter of
desiccated flesh held the skeleton together in leathery articulation.
Karl Edward Wagner, "Two Suns Setting" (1975)
It was a lich's face�desiccated flesh tight over its skull. Filthy
strands of hair were matted over its scalp, tattered lips were drawn
away from broken yellowed teeth, and, sunken in their sockets, eyes that
should be dead were bright with hideous life.
Karl Edward Wagner, "Sticks" (1974)
Angobard would have left this dead wit in peace, but he wished neither
to share the tomb nor to search the dangerous cliffs in darkness for
another. Already the red wolves of the hills were tuning up a chilling
antiphony, so over the side went the desiccated lich, but not without a
brief prayer to Uaal for its eternal rest.
Brian McNaughton, "Reunion in Cephalune" (1997)
Yage descended and the boulder revolved widdershins. If any human
emotions remained in his long-dead frame the liche would've sensed
frustration. But he hadn't got this far by indulging in human emotions.
Don Webb, "Alchemy"
lich-gate, lych-gate, n. The roofed gateway at a cemetery, at which the
minister meets the corpse.
lich-owl, n. The screech-owl, whose cry is reputed to portend death.
Now I hear
The lich-owl, shrieking lethal prophecy;
And whimpering winds, the children of the air,
Lost in the glades of mystery and gloom.
Clark Ashton Smith, "The Witch in the Graveyard"
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
"Tho-ag in Zhi-gyu slept seven Khorlo. Zodmanas
zhiba. All Nyug bosom. Konch-hog not; Thyan-Kam
not; Lha-Chohan not; Tenbrel Chugnyi not;
Dharmakaya ceased; Tgenchang not become; Barnang
and Ssa in Ngovonyidj; alone Tho-og Yinsin in
night of Sun-chan and Yong-grub (Parinishpanna),
&c., &c.,"
-- The Book of Dzyan.
Mike Schilling
>
> "They stipulate that for every square ell of soil two and one quarter
> million men have died and laid down their dust, thus creating a dank
> and ubiquitous mantle of lich-mold, upon which it is sacrilege to
> walk. The argument has a superficial plausibility, but consider: the
> dust of one desiccated corpse, spread over a square ell, affords a
> layer one thirty-third of an inch in depth. The total therefore
> represents almost one mile of compacted corpse-dust mantling the
> earth's surface, which is manifestly absurd."
> Jack Vance, The Eyes of the Overworld (1966)
>
Not a surprise to find Vance using an obscure word. There were time I would
(as part of VIE prooofreading) google a word I found in one of his stories,
and the only hits would be people discussing that very story.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
>
> [I could use help expanding this entry. It's an interesting case of how
> an archaic, unused (aside from dialect) word got revived for literary
> use in fantasy, and took on a specialized sense. (And then an even more
> specialized sense, if you count the use of the term for an undead wizard
> in Dungeons & Dragons.) I'm guessing that Clark Ashton Smith was the
> writer most instrumental in the revival,
No, that'd be Gary Gygax. The number of people who know the word "Lich"
would be at least one, possibly two or three orders of magnitude smaller
were it not for D&D.
In this case, the "specialized term" is used by more people than any of
the other definitions.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Rik Shepherd
>
> [I could use help expanding this entry. It's an interesting case of how an
> archaic, unused (aside from dialect) word got revived for literary use in
> fantasy, and took on a specialized sense. (And then an even more
> specialized sense, if you count the use of the term for an undead wizard
> in Dungeons & Dragons.) I'm guessing that Clark Ashton Smith was the
> writer most instrumental in the revival, probably influenced by the
> appearances in Bierce's work, particularly the quote from Hali. CAS used
> the word many, many times that I haven't quoted here. In any case, I would
> be grateful for more citations, particularly early ones. The word is
> practically useless as a search term, and hard to research.--DC]
In the lych-gate sense, surely it's in virtually every book about the
architecture of churches? Which, of course, isn't to say that anyone knew
what the lych was.
Jack Campin - bogus address
>> how an archaic, unused (aside from dialect) word got revived for
>> literary use in fantasy, and took on a specialized sense.
> architecture of churches? Which, of course, isn't to say that anyone
> knew what the lych was.
The variant "lyke" is known in the compound "lyke-wake" to anybody
who's read a handful of British ballads.
==== j a c k at c a m p i n . m e . u k === <http://www.campin.me.uk> ====
Jack Campin, 11 Third St, Newtongrange EH22 4PU, Scotland == mob 07800 739 557
CD-ROMs and free stuff: Scottish music, food intolerance, and Mac logic fonts
****** I killfile Google posts - email me if you want to be whitelisted ******
Dan Clore
Ah, but Gygax wouldn't have known the word if it weren't for the fantasy
writers like CAS. But I would agree to a two-stage, CAS-EGG, for most
influential in the revival. So I guess the story would go:
(1) Bierce uses the archaic term in one prominent place;
(2) CAS, influenced by Bierce, uses the term often, and is followed by
other writers for magazines like Weird Tales, so that it becomes part of
the fantasy genre vocabulary;
(3) Gary Gygax uses the term for the D&D monster, taking it from writers
influenced by CAS (he hadn't read CAS's work)*, and from the RPG world
it goes back into the fantasy literature world.
*I now see that Gardner Fox's story "The Sword of the Sorcerer" was
EGG's source.
I should look for uses by EGG in his fiction.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
John W Kennedy
How sorry I am to bid you adieu! Oh let me not be forgot by the friends
most dear to you at Lichfield! Lichfield! Ah! of what magic letters is
that little word composed! How graceful it looks when it is written! Let
nobody talk to me of its original meaning. The field of blood!* Oh! no
such thing! It is the field of joy! The beautiful city, that lifts up
her fair head in the valley, and says, I am, and there is none beside
me! Who says she is vain? Julia will not say so——nor yet Honora; and
least of all their devoted
JOHN ANDRÉ
* Field of Blood.—Here is a small mistake. Lichfield is not the field of
blood, but the field of dead-bodies, alluding to a battle fought between
the Romans and the British Christians in the Dioclesian persecution,
when the latter were massacred.———Three slain Kings, with their burying
place, now Barrowcopy Hill, and the Cathedral in miniature, form the
City-Arms.** Lich is still a word in use. The Church yard Gates, thro’
which Funerals pass, are often called Lich Gates.
** Miss Seward appears to have confused the city arms of Lichfield with
the city seal.
-- Letter from John André (yes, /that/ John André) to Anna Seward, dated
October 1769, possibly redacted by Miss Seward. First footnote by Anna
Seward in 1780 or 1781. Second footnote by me, ca. 2005.
Mike
> [I could use help expanding this entry. It's an interesting case of how
> an archaic, unused (aside from dialect) word got revived for literary
> use in fantasy,
I believe Tolkien describes the head Nazgul as a dwimmerlaik, which I
always assumed was related to lich.
--Mike
Dan Clore
It isn't. It's actually something totally unrelated, the root is -l�c,
play, action. (And dwimmer meaning magic gives the meaning "creature of
magic" or some such.)
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> On 5/8/09 7:20 PM, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) wrote:
>> Dan Clore wrote:
>>>
>>> [I could use help expanding this entry. It's an interesting case of
>>> how an archaic, unused (aside from dialect) word got revived for
>>> literary use in fantasy, and took on a specialized sense. (And then an
>>> even more specialized sense, if you count the use of the term for an
>>> undead wizard in Dungeons & Dragons.) I'm guessing that Clark Ashton
>>> Smith was the writer most instrumental in the revival,
>>
>> No, that'd be Gary Gygax. The number of people who know the word "Lich"
>> would be at least one, possibly two or three orders of magnitude smaller
>> were it not for D&D.
>>
>> In this case, the "specialized term" is used by more people than any of
>> the other definitions.
>
> How sorry I am to bid you adieu! Oh let me not be forgot by the friends
> most dear to you at Lichfield!
Using THAT as an example of people using the word "Lich" would be like
insisting people are still using a particular Native American phrase
when they mention the city of Schenectady. Most of those using either
one have no idea it means anything at all except "name of city".
Don Phillipson
"Dan Clore" <cl...@columbia-center.org> wrote in message
news:4A04B64...@columbia-center.org...
>
> [I could use help expanding this entry. It's an interesting case of how an
> archaic, unused (aside from dialect) word got revived for literary use in
> OE l�c, body, corpse] A dead body, corpse, cadaver; in particular, one
> Tristram was caught in the crowd, borne irresistibly, apples be ripe,
> through the town, home of a swan, and nuts be brown, and a lexicographer,
> petticoats up, Lich meaning a corpse in Middle English, and trousers down,
> how inappropriately named -- Lichfield -- tonight
> Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed (1962)
Even for admirers of Anthony Burgess (who deliberately set out
to reanimate a genuine but unusual word in nearly every review or
chapter he wrote) the frisson works only for people who speak no
German. Leich is the ordinary word for corpse in that language
(and was frequently used in the 20th century, cf. two world wars.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
John W Kennedy
Try reading the entire quotation before commenting on its relevance.