Time

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The American portion of our community 'saw in' the greatest day of their national calendar in a fittingly splendid style and circumstances today a fortnight previous. As our issue of that very date proceeded to the press some days earlier, not possessing mastery of Old Father Time and his scythe, we were unavoidably prevented from commenting on those happy rites.

TIMOTHY MO An Insular Possession, 1986

White Rabbit In Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Alice follows the White Rabbit as he hurries along, constantly muttering to himself 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be so late!' and 'Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!' •See special entry n ALICE IN WONDERLAND on p. 10.

'Look, a student!' my friend cried, and we watched as he rolled by, wearing khaki shorts, a Stanford logo T-shirt and baseball hat, muttering like the white rabbit about being late for class.

The Independent, 1997

Travellers and Wanderers

The long journey, voyage, or series of wanderings has proved a staple

motif of world literature, with Homer's ODYSSEY the acknowledged para-

digm. Some journeys, like those of the ARGONAUTS and ODYSSEUS, have an

end; others, like those of CAIN and the WANDERING JEW, do not. •See also

Adventure Quest Walk.

Ahasuerus • See WANDERING JEW.

Ancient Mariner In Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' (1798), the Ancient Mariner, as penance for killing an albatross, is forever condemned to travel from land to land, relating his story and teaching by his example love and reverence to all God's creatures.

Argonauts In Greek mythology, the Argonauts were the group of heroes who accompanied Jason on board the ship Argo in the quest for the Golden Fleece. The Argonauts included Hercules, Orpheus, Theseus, Nestor, and Castor and Pollux. Among the dangers they faced on their perilous voyage were the Symplegades, or clashing cliffs, which clashed together and crushed ships as they passed between them. • See special entry u JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS on p. 220.

'Come along, Captain Robinson,' he shouted, with a sort of bullying deference under the rim of the old man's hat; the Holy Terror gave a submissive little jump. The ghost of a steamer was waiting for them. Fortune on that fair isle! They made a curious pair of Argonauts. Chester strode on leisurely, well set up, portly, and of conquering mien; the other, long, wasted, drooping, and hooked to his arm, shuffled his withered shanks with desperate haste.

JOSEPH CONRAD Lord Jim, 1900

TRAVELLERS AND WANDERERS 3 8 9

Leopold Bloom James Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) charts the wanderings of Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertisement canvasser, and Stephen Dedalus, a young poet, around Dublin on 16 June 1904. The various chapters roughly correspond to the episodes of Homer's Odyssey, with Bloom representing Odysseus and Stephen Telemachus. In the course of the story, a public bath, a cemetery, a newspaper office, a library, public houses, a maternity hospital, and a brothel are visited.

As a youth, he worked variously as a bricklayer, coffin-polisher and artist's model at the local college of art. The milk round, however, was special; it offered him a daily, Bloom-like odyssey of Edinburgh and he grew to know its streets so well that even when he had left it far behind, he would be able to trace its contours in his head.

The Guardian, 1998

George Borrow George Borrow (1803-81) was an English writer and traveller. His travels in England, Europe, Russia, and the Far East provided material for his narrative of gypsy life Lavengro (1851), and its sequel, The Romany Rye (1857). These works present a partly factual, partly fictional account of his travels.

Staggering along the path like some lost shepherd, doubtless living out his own private dreams as Dr Johnson or George Borrow or somebody, came Councillor Duxbury himself, dabbing his streaming eyes and clutching his gnarled old stick.

KEITH WATERHOUSE Billy Liar, 1959

Cain In the Bible, Cain was the eldest son of Adam and Eve who murdered his own brother Abel (Gen. 4: 1-16). For this crime he was cast out from his homeland and forced to live a life of vagrancy as an outcast. • See special entry

D CAIN on p. 44.

He never even seemed to come to his work on purpose, but would slouch in as if by mere accident; and when he went to the Jolly Bargemen to eat his dinner, or went away at night, he would slouch out, like Cain or the Wandering Jew, as if he had no idea where he was going and no intention of ever coming back.

CHARLES DICKENS Great Expectations, 1861

Cook's tour Thomas Cook (1808-92) was an English travel agent who founded the travel firm Thomas Cook in 1841 and originated the guided tour. A Cook's tour is a tour or journey in which many places are visited, often briefly.

The cars and petrol will be requisitioned by the army and the trains'll be packed with troops. I doubt if anyone'll get away, but if you do, you'll go empty-handed, and it won't be no Cook's tour.

OLIVIA MANNING The Great Fortune, 1960

Dionysus Dionysus in Greek mythology was the god of fertility and wine. He

wine. On his travels Dionysus is frequently represented drawn in a chariot by tigers and accompanied by Pan, Silenus, and a rowdy retinue of satyrs and maenads. •See special entry u DIONYSUS on p. 117.

In his wanderings he resembled the Dionysos of the Bacchae.

A. S. BYATT The Virgin in the Garden, 1978

Gulliver Gulliver is the hero of Jonathan Swift's satire Gulliver''s Travels (1726),

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who in the course of the book visits many strange lands including Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, Lagado, and the land of the Houyhnhnms. • See special entry • GULLIVER'S TRAVELS on p. 171.

Homer Homer (8th century BC) was a Greek epic poet, to whom the Odyssey and the Iliad are traditionally attributed. The adjective 'Homeric' can be used to describe an epic journey or voyage.

Songdogs by Colum McCann ... Sublimely written Homeric story traces the nomadic narrator's search across Mexico, the USA and Ireland for his missing mother.

The Big Issue, 1995

Kon-Tiki The Kon-Tiki is the name of the raft made of balsa logs in which, in 1947, the Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl sailed from Peru to the islands of Polynesia in order to prove that ancient people could have migrated in this way.

Odysseus •SeeoDrssEY.

It had been demoralising to wander like Odysseus from place to place, far from home, improvising a resistance that never seemed to amount to anything.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1994

Odyssey In Greek mythology, Odysseus was the son of Laertes, king of Ithaca, and central figure of the Odyssey. He was known to the Romans as Ulysses. Homer's epic poem the Odyssey recounts the ten-year voyage of Odysseus during his years of wandering after the fall of Troy, and of his eventual return home to Ithaca and his killing of the suitors of his faithful wife, Penelope. His adventures include encounters with the Cyclops, Circe, the Lotus-Eaters, and the Sirens. Any long series of wanderings or long, adventurous journey can be described as an odyssey. • See special entry • ODYSSEUS on p. 283.

I took a walk down by the Mississippi River and watched the logs that came floating from Montana in the north—grand Odyssean logs of our continental dream.

JACK KEROUAC On the Road, 1957

Ossian Ossian is the anglicized form of Oisin, the name of a legendary Irish warrior and bard, the son of Finn MacCool. Ossian's name became well known in 1760-3 when the Scottish poet James Macpherson published what was later discovered to be his own verse as an alleged translation of 3rd-century Gaelic tales. Ossian's wanderings are the subject of a poem by W. B. Yeats.

Marco Polo Marco Polo (C.1254-C.1324) was a Venetian traveller and writer. Between 12 71 and 1275 he accompanied his father and uncle on a trading expedition east into central Asia, eventually reaching China and the court of Kublai Khan. After entering diplomatic service with the emperor and travelling widely in the empire for a decade and a half, Polo returned home to Venice (1292-5) via Sumatra, India, and Persia. His written account of his travels was the West's primary source of knowledge of the Far East until the 19th century, though doubt has subsequently been cast on its veracity.

The commonest ailment experienced by modern-day Marco Polos is an intestinal attack known as gyppy tummy.

New Scientist, 1970

Sinbad Sinbad the Sailor is the hero of one of the tales in the Arabian Nights.