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Outlaws

There is a long tradition of the criminal outlaw being celebrated as a folk

hero, a tradition exemplified in Britain by such figures as ROBIN HOOD and

DICK TURPIN, in Australia by NED KELLY, and in the US by BILLY THE KID,

BONNIE AND CLYDE, and others. • See also Criminals, Murderers.

Billy the Kid William H. Bonney (1859-81), known as Billy the Kid, was an American bandit and bank robber, involved in the Lincoln County cattle war in New Mexico. He allegedly committed his first murder at the age of 12. He was finally shot by sheriff Pat Garrett.

Bonnie and Clyde Bonnie Parker (1911-34) and Clyde Barrow (1909-34) were the leaders of a gang in the US who conducted a series of robberies and murders. They were shot dead in their car by police in Louisiana in 1934. A film presenting a rather glamorized version of their lives, Bonnie and Clyde (1967), ends with a memorable slow motion sequence depicting their bodies jerking and falling in a barrage of gunfire.

Determined to defend her honour, the couple are soon on the run pursued by all and sundry—a modern day Bonnie and Clyde.

Film Focus, 1994

These wackos are attention-seekers. Serial show-offs. I mean, for Christ's sake, making out against a Slurpy Pup in front of a bunch of bullet-riddled shoppers! They think they're some kind of twenty-first-century Bonnie and Clyde.

BEN ELTON Popcorn, 1996

Butch Cassidy Butch Cassidy, whose real name was Robert Leroy Parker (1866-1937?), formed a gang called the Wild Bunch which was responsible for numerous train and bank robberies and murders in the US. Cassidy and his partner, the Sundance Kid, went to South America and it is not known what then happened to them or how they died. The film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, romanticized their lives and showed them dying by running from a hiding-place into a hail of bullets.

Jesse James Jesse Woodson James (1874-82) was a US bank and train robber who formed a gang of outlaws with his brother Frank. In 1882 a member of the gang shot Jesse in order to claim the reward on his head.

But that night he hadn't pitied himself, he had been imbued with all the selfcomplacency of the man behind the gun. He had thought condescendingly of Jesse James—such a cheap, two-bit chiseler compared with himself.

CHESTER HIMES P/750/7 MdSS, 1933

Ned Kelly Ned Kelly (1855-80) was an Australian outlaw whose father had been transported from Ireland. Kelly headed a four-man gang of bandits, notorious for killing three policemen in 1878. After an attempted train ambush,

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Kelly tried to escape in a homemade suit of armour, but was apprehended and hanged.

And you're game, Monny. Came as Ned Kelly, and you'll get on your feet again.

ROBERTSON DAviEs A Mixture of Frailties, 1951

Robin Hood The legend of Robin Hood probably began in the 12th or 13th centuries and was well established by the 14th. According to the stories, Robin Hood was an English medieval outlaw, who is reputed to have lived with his band of fellow outlaws in Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire and robbed the rich to help the poor.

The idea that she was among thieves prevented her from feeling any comfort in the revival of deference and attention towards her—all thieves, except Robin Hood, were wicked people.

GEORGE ELIOT The Mill on the Floss, 1860

Dick Turpin Dick Turpin (1705-35) was a famous English highwayman who started his career as a smuggler and cattle and horse thief. He was hanged at York for horse-stealing and murder.

Past

The emphasis in this theme is on things that have existed for an extremely

long time. This idea dovetails with that of being behind the times in some

way, covered at the theme Outdatedness. • See also Modernity.

Adam and Eve According to the account in the Book of Genesis, Adam and Eve were the first man and woman to inhabit the earth. Anything that is said to have existed before the time of Adam and Eve must therefore have existed in the very distant past. • See special entry • on p. 5.

Perhaps their ancestors had danced like this in the moonlight ages before Adam and Eve were so much as thought of.

ALDOUS HUXLEY Crome Yellow, 1921

King Arthur According to tradition, Arthur was an ancient king of Britain, whose life and adventures have become the focus for many legends involving romance, magic, and chivalrous heroism. Stories about Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table were developed and written down by writers such as Chrétien de Troyes and Thomas Malory.

Beowulf Beowulf was a legendary Scandinavian hero celebrated in the Old English epic poem Beowulf. The poem describes BeowulPs killing first of the monster Grendel in King Hrothgar's hall, then of Grendel's mother in an underwater cave, and finally Beowulf s own death in combat with a dragon. The poem is set in the Scandinavia of the fifth and sixth centuries, but the poem itself is believed to have been composed in the eighth century.

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We were on a beach, and someone . . . suggested we engrave our names in big letters upon the sand, then one of us would mount the promenade and photograph inscription plus inscriber. A cliché in Beowulfs time, I know, but you can't keep coming up with new games.

JULIAN BARNES Talking It Over, 1991

Caesars The name Caesar was used by successive Roman emperors from Augustus to Hadrian, becoming a title of the Roman rulers. The reigns of the Caesars spanned from 27 BC to AD 138.

Within the space of a mile from its outskirts every irregularity of the soil was prehistoric, every channel an undisturbed British trackway; not a sod having been turned there since the days of the Caesars.

THOMAS HARDY Tess of the D'Urbervilles, 1891

Creation The Creation is the name given to the account in the Book of Genesis of God's creating of the universe and the first people, Adam and Eve.

This has been a key principle of taxation since the Creation.

The Observer, 1997

Cyclopean In Greek mythology, the Cyclops (or Cyclopes) were a race of savage one-eyed giants who were said to have lived as shepherds or to have made thunderbolts for Zeus. The building of massive prehistoric structures was supposed to have been the work of the Cyclops.

From time to time he came upon the great smooth stones, remains of the ancient wall, which had once separated two kingdoms, and touching their smooth surfaces with his hands he could not help thinking that there was something eerie about them. They seemed left over from some forgotten Cyclopean age.

LAWRENCE DURRELL White Eagles over Serbia, 1957

Flood In the biblical story related in Genesis, God brought a great flood upon the earth in the time of Noah because of the wickedness of the human race. Apart from Noah, his family, and the animals he was instructed to shelter on the ark, all inhabitants of the earth perished in the Flood, which lasted for forty days and forty nights. There are similar flood myths in other traditions, such as in the epic Gilgamesh and in the Greek legend of Deucalion. References to a time before the Flood are intended to suggest the very distant past. • See special

entry n NOAH AND THE FLOOD on p. 279.

Putting an arm around his sopping half-sleeve shirt, I say, 'I bet if you set your mind to it you could go back before the Flood!

PHILIP ROTH The Professor of Desire, 1978

Merlin In Arthurian legend, Merlin was a wizard who served as a mentor and counsellor to King Arthur.

And truly if the glass has lain here for all these centuries past and has not lost its brightness, then it is more ancient and more wonderful than anything Merlin devised.

PETER ACKROYD The House of Doctor Dee, 1993

Noah According to the biblical story related in Genesis, Noah and his family were chosen by God to be spared when he sent a great flood to destroy all people, because of the wickedness of the human race. As with the Flood,

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references to the time of Noah can suggest the very distant past.

What I have written so far makes us sound like something from a dubious old melodrama—which would not be far wrong, because the family is as old as Noah, and I suppose you could say it's as rotten as a waterlogged Ark.

MARY STEWART Touch Not the Cat, 1976

Patience

Two meanings of 'patience' are covered below: the calm endurance of

hardship or suffering and the capacity for calm, self-possessed waiting.

Enoch Arden In Tennyson's poem of the same name (1864), Enoch Arden is shipwrecked with two companions. When his fellow-survivors die, 'in those two deaths he read God's warning "wait"'. So Enoch patiently waits to be rescued and after ten years a ship finally does appear. When he returns home hefindshis wife, Annie, has remarried and resolves not to reveal his identity to her in order to preserve her new happiness.

I knew I could outwait them. I could outwait Enoch Arden if I had to. But it would be nice if, when they finally got sick of waiting, I knew which way they'd exit.

ROBERT B. PARKER Walking Shadow, 1994

E s t r a g o n • SeecoDOT.

Godot In Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot (1952), two tramps, Estragon and Vladimir, discuss philosophical issues while they await the arrival of the mysterious character Godot. Godot never appears, despite the promises of a young boy who comes on at the end of each act claiming to be his emissary.

I approached the Audi and passed it. Fielding was reading a paper and seemed to be waiting. They were great lads for waiting. They could have out-waited Estragon. RICHARD HALEY Thoroughfare of Stones, 1995

Criselda Griselda is the heroine of the last tale of Boccaccio's Decameron (1353), used by Chaucer for 'The Clerk's Tale' (c.1387) in The Canterbury Tales. Her husband, the Marquis Walter, subjects her to various cruelties to test her love and patience, including making her believe that her children have been murdered and that he intends to divorce her and remarry. Griselda bears his cruelty to the end, when her children are restored to her and her husband accepts her again as his wife. Griselda represents the ideal of patience and wifely obedience.

Monica made no reply. She had made several resolutions as she worked, and one of them was that she would never draw attention to anything she did for him, or seem to seek praise. Patient Criselda was only one of the parts she meant to play in the

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life of Giles Revelstoke and it was certainly not the principal one. ROBERTSON DAviEs A Mixture of Frailties, 1951

Clifford didn't look happy but he went. I waited, hands folded in my lap like patient Criselda.

SARAH LACEY File Under Deceased, 1992

Jacob In the Bible, Jacob was a son of Isaac. He fell in love with his cousin Rachel and offered to work for her father, Laban, for seven years to win her hand in marriage: 'And Jacob served seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for the love he had to her' (Gen. 29: 20). At the end of the seven years Jacob was tricked into marrying Leah, Rachel's older sister. He was given Rachel a week later, after promising to work for a further seven years.

'Croft's going to marry Bell!' exclaimed Eames, thinking almost with dismay of the doctor's luck in thus getting himself accepted all at once, while he had been suing with the constancy almost of a Jacob.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE The Small House at Allington, 1862

Six years were a long time, but how much shorter than never, the idea he had for so long been obliged to endure! Jacob had served twice seven years for Rachel: what were six for such a woman as this?

THOMAS HARDY Far from the Madding Crowd, 1874

Job The Old Testament Book of Job tells the story of Job, a prosperous man

whose patience and piety are tried by dire and undeserved misfortunes. In spite
of all his suffering, he remains confident in the	goodness and justice of God,
and his patience is finally rewarded with wealth	and long life. He is alluded to
as the epitome of forbearance.

'And I suppose you're Job himself 'I'd have to be. To put up with you.' JOHN MORTIMER Rumpole of the Bailey, 1978

Amiable as the old man was, prolonged exposure to him would test anyone's patience. But Dolly Harris would have made Job seem like a chain-smoking neurotic. MARTIN EDWARDS Yesterday's Papers, 1994

Penelope In Greek mythology, Penelope was the wife of Odysseus who waited patiently and faithfully for her husband to return home after the end of the Trojan war. She put off her many suitors by saying that she would marry only when she had finished the piece of weaving that she had started. Each night she unravelled the work that she had done during the day. • See special entry

D ODYSSEUS on p. 283.

'There is always about you,' he said, 'a sort of waiting. Whatever I see you doing, you're not really there: you are waiting—like Penelope when she did her weaving.'

He	could not help a spurt of wickedness. Til call you Penelope,' he said.
D.	H. LAWRENCE Sons and Lovers, 1913
She	feared in her heart that back home he would dismiss her, . . . that she would
be	left forever, faithful and forgotten, waiting like Penelope for a man who never

came.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1994

Vladimir • SeecoDOT.