Cypress trees in Lake Drummond, Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, Virginia
11 November 2024 [Edit, 18 November: revised translation of the first quotation]
Originally a noun (and still a noun in some isolated uses), the adjective dismal comes into English, like many of our words, with the Normans, a compound formed from the Old French phrase dis mal, which in turn is from the Latin dies mali (evil days), a name for two days each month (which ones varied month to month) which were believed to be unlucky or inauspicious. They were also known as Egipcian daies, from the presumption that they were calculated by Egyptian astrologers.
We see the word in a song in Pierre de Langtoft’s Chronicle, written c. 1300. The Chronicle is primarily written in Anglo-Norman, but some of the songs are in Early Middle English. There are numerous manuscript witnesses of the work, but these particular lines are only found in one:
He loghe wil him liked,
His paclir es thurck piked,
he wende e were liale;
Begkot an bride,
Rede him at ride
in the dismale.
(He laughed when it pleased him; his pack was pinned closed; he thought he was full of prowess; [he] got a bridle; prepared himself for travel during the dismal.)
Some medieval writers reanalyzed the French dismal to mean dis (ten) + mal (bad things), or given the Egyptian connection, the ten plagues of Egypt recounted in Exodus. Geoffrey Chaucer did exactly that in The Book of the Duchess:
Ful evel rehersen hyt I kan;
And eke, as helpe me God withal,
I trowe hyt was in the dismal,
That was the ten woundes of Egipte—
For many a word I over-skipte
In my tale, for pure fere
Lest my wordes mysset were.
(Very poorly can I repeat it, and also, so help me God, I think it was during the dismal, that was the ten plagues of Egypt—for I skipped over many a word in my tale, out of pure fear, lest my words were poorly chosen.)
By the fifteenth century the association with the Latin dies, “days,” had been sufficiently forgotten that people started referring to them with the redundant dismal days, as in Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes, written c. 1421:
He hath pronounced in the parlement
Toforn the lordes and the president
His cleer conceyte in verray sikernesse,
Nat entryked with no doublenesse,
Her dysemol daies and her fatal houres,
Her aventurys and her sharpe shoures,
The froward soort and unhappy stoundys,
The compleyntes of her dedly woundys,
The wooful wrath and contrariousté
Of felle Mars in his cruelté,
(He has pronounced in the parliament
Before the lords and the president
His clear opinion with great certitude,
Not enveloped in duplicity,
Their dismal days and their fated hours,
Their vicissitudes and their sharp conflicts
The future fate and unhappy times,
The complaints of their deadly wounds,
The woeful wrath and hostility
Of fell Mars in his cruelty.)
By the end of the sixteenth century, the association with inauspicious days was largely forgotten, and dismal simply became associated with melancholy or sadness. Alexander Mongomerie’s The Flyting Betwixt Montgomery and Polwart, written sometime before 1598, includes dismal, as a synonym for melancholy, in a long list of evils released from Pandora’s box:
The frencie, the fluxes, the fyk, and the felt,
The feavers, the fearcie, with the speinʒie flees,
The doyt, and the dismall, indifferently delt,
The powlings, the palsay, with pocks like pees.
And also at this time, dismal started being used adjectivally to refer to misfortune or disaster not associated with the Egyptian days. William Shakespeare uses it this way in Romeo and Juliet. In the 1597 “bad quarto” of the play, upon hearing that Romeo has killed Tybalt, Juliet says:
This torture should be roard in dismall hell.
Can heauens be so enuious?
In the 1599 quarto and in the 1623 First Folio, those lines are rendered as:
What diuell art thou that dost torment me thus?
This torture should be rored in dismall hell.
And in those later versions of the play, Juliet again uses the word in the tomb before drinking the sleeping draught:
Ile call them backe againe to comfort me.
Nurse, what should she do here?
My dismall sceane I needs must act alone.
Come Violl, what if this mixture do not worke at all?
That’s how a medieval belief in unlucky days came to mean cheerless and depressing.
Sources:
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2007, s.v. dismol, n.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Book of the Duchess.” The Riverside Chaucer, third edition. Larry D. Benson, ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987, 344–45, lines 1204–10.
Lydgate, John. The Siege of Thebes, Tercia Pars. Robert R. Edwards, ed. TEAMS Middle English Texts. Rochester: U of Rochester, 2001, lines 2889–98. Robbins Library Digital Projects.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. dismal, n. & adj.
Montgomerie, Alexander. The Flyting Betwixt Montgomery and Polwart (before 1598). Edinburgh: Andro Hart, 1621, sig. B2r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online (EEBO).
Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, 1989, s.v. dismal, n. and adj., Egyptian, adj. & n.
Shakespeare, William. An Excellent Conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Iuliet (Quarto 1). London: John Danter, 1597, sig. F3.r. ProQuest: Early English Books Online.
———. The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet (Quarto 2). London: Thomas Creede for Cuthbert Burby, 1599, sig. G2r, Kr. ProQuest Early English Books Online.
———. The Tragedie of Romeo and Iuliet. In Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies (First Folio). London: Isaac Jaggard and Ed. Blount, 1623, 3.66/1, 3.72/1. Folger Shakespeare Library.
Wright, Thomas, ed. The Political Songs of England from the Reign of John to that of Edward II. Camden Society. London: John Bowyer Nichols and son, 1839, 303. Cambridge, University Library MS Gg.1.1. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Photo credit: Rebecca Wynn / US Fish and Wildlife Service, 2006. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain photo.