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Gramarye
Definitions
- 1 The island of Britain. literary, rare
"You must remember that this was in the old Merry England of Gramarye, when the rosy barons ate with their fingers, and had peacocks served before them with all their tail feathers streaming, or boars' heads with the tusks stuck in again— […]"
- 1 Grammar; learning. obsolete, uncountable
"[…] I dearly love to climb / Time's ladder, and identify / Myself with worthies long gone by – / And Lucerne seems (at least to me) / Fit circle for such gramarye; […]"
- 2 Mystical learning; the occult, magic, sorcery. archaic, uncountable
"My mother was a weſterne woman / And learned in gramaryè, / And when I learned at the ſchole, / Something ſhee taught itt me."
Etymology
Inherited from Middle English gramarie, from Old French gramarie, a variant of gramaire; thus a doublet of glamour, glamoury, grammar, and grimoire. The word was revived by Scottish historical novelist, playwright and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832).
Adopted by English author Terence Hanbury White (1906–1964) in his book The Once and Future King (1958; based on shorter works published between 1938 and 1941) as a name for Britain, based on the reference to “Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye” in the poem Puck’s Song from Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906) by English author and poet Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) – the stanza italicized below, which is the last in the poem, appears in White’s book just before the start of the first chapter. Trackway and Camp and City lost, Salt Marsh where now is corn; Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease, And so was England born! She is not any common Earth, Water or wood or air, But Merlin’s Isle of Gramarye, Where you and I will fare. Kipling is likely to have been referring to an isle of magic (see gramarye) rather than using Gramarye as a newly coined name for Britain.
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