Y'lang, Y'lang

Lowry uses the words "Y'lang, y'lang" to describe the sound of a bell ringing in his short story 'Goya The Obscure'; "and the Canning Dock, the sinister bell of warning singing out its desolate nostalgic phrase, y'lang y'lang:, y'lang y'lang, - The voice of the chiming bell-buoy chiming and wallowing and rolling..." (Pg.278) and "A woman passed. Y'lang y'lang. 'Excuse me Miss, are you going anywhere?' " (Pg. 278). Lowry revives the  words in his novel Ultramarine;  "and the Canning Dock, the sinister bell of warning singing out its desolate nostalgic phrase, y'lang y'lang y'lang y'lang. ... tolling, enforcing his sad solitude. 'Ware Shoal! A woman passes. Y'lang y'lang. Norwegian liner aground in Mersey!" (Pg. 70). Lowry also uses the words in a letter to Gerald Noxon dated 1952; "Time for the train that "goes a long way," i. e., toward Port Moody and points east. . . y'lang, y'lang." (Collected Letters Vol 2 Pg.)

Lowry would have been aware that Ylang-ylang was a tree found in Far East which is a one valued for its perfume and is considered to be an aphrodisiac. Lowry would have read a reference to a tree in Penang mentioned by J. Johnston Abraham's in his The Surgeon's Log  - a book Lowry refers to in the short story 'Enter One In Sumptuous Armour'. (Psalms Pg. 231).

Lowry appears to be linking the tree's aphrodisiac qualities to its pronunciation sounding like a bell to develop a complex sexual allusion. The use of sexual allusions is a theme that runs throughout 'Goya The Obscure'. The bell is warning Joe Passalique of the dangers of having sex with a prostitute as he drifts around Liverpool - "A woman passed. Y'lang y'lang. 'Excuse me Miss, are you going anywhere?' " (Pg. 278).

Stock-gillyflower

Lowry refers to the flower in Chapter 3 of Ultramarine during a long internal dialogue by Dana Hilliot as he muses on his drunken drift through the red light district of Dairen; "while through the attic window must be blown the scent of stock-gillyflower".

A popular name applied to various flowers, but principally to the clove, Dianthus Caryophyllus, of which the carnation is a cultivated variety, and to the stock, Matthiola incana, a well-known garden favourite .

 The word is sometimes written gilliflower or gilloflower, and is reputedly a corruption of July-flower, " so called from the month they blow in." Henry Phillips (1775–1838), in his Flora historica, remarks that Turner (1568) " calls it gelouer, to which he adds the word stock, as we would say gelouers that grow on a stem or stock, to distinguish them from the clove-gelouers and the wall-gelouers . Gerard, who succeeded Turner, and after him Parkinson, calls it gilloflower, and thus it travelled from its original orthography until it was called July-flower by those who knew not whence it was derived." Dr Prior, in his useful volume on the Popular Names of British Plants, very distinctly shows the origin of the name . He remarks that it was " formerly spelt gyllofer and gilofre with the o long, from the French girojlee, Italian garofalo (M . Lat. gariofilum), corrupted from the Latin Caryophyllum, and referring to the spicy odour of the flower, which seems to have been used in flavouring wine and other liquors to replace the more costly clove of India.

The name was originally given in Italy to plants of the pink tribe, especially the carnation, but has in England been transferred of late years to several cruciferous plants." The gillyflower of Chaucer and Spenser and Shakespeare was, as in Italy, Dianthus Caryophyllus; that of later writers and of gardeners, Matthiola .

Dictionnaire encyclopédique Trousset

Much of the confusion in the names of plants has doubtless arisen from the vague use of the French terms giroflee, ceillet and violette, which were all applied to flowers of the pink tribe, but in England were subsequently extended and finally restricted to very different plants . 

The use made of the flowers to impart a spicy flavour to ale and wine is alluded to by Chaucer, who writes: " And many a clove gilofre To put in ale " (Tale of Sir Thopas); also by Spenser, who refers to them by the name of sops in wine: "" With gellifiowres; " Bring coronations, and sops in wine, ..." (The Shepheard's Calendar), which was applied in consequence of their being steeped in the liquor. In both these cases, however, it is the clove-gillyflower which is intended, as it is also in the passage from Gerard, in which he states that the conserve made of the flowers with sugar " is exceeding cordiall, and wonderfully above measure doth comfort the heart, being eaten now and then.".

Spenser also refers to the flower in his poem Amoretti "Her lips did smell lyke unto Gillyflowers" and Shakespeare; "The fairest flowers o' the season/Are our carnations and streaked gillyflowers : Winter's Tale, iv. 2.

We must assume carnations were growing at the Lowry family garden hence the reference "while through the attic window " is to Lowry's study in Inglewood. He must have also been aware of the references made to the flower in Chaucer, Shakespeare and Spenser.

Florence Melita Bell

Miss Bell with Lowry family in the summer of 1910 on holiday in the Isle of Man.

Born in Oxton, Wirral in 1875. The Lowry's nanny affectionately called "Bey" by the family. She was nanny to Lowry after he was born until 1912 when she left for a short period to be a steward on the R.M.S. Teutonic.

She sent a letter to Lowry on 27th July 1912 from 28 Magazine Lane, New Brighton where she may have been lodging or living with a relative. The letter was sent wishing Lowry "many happy returns of your birthday." The letter told how she didn't like the sea and that she missed the Lowry boys; "dear little baby with the brown face and blue eyes" who sang "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" to her.

There are many references to the sea; "I wonder if you have started to be Admiral of the British Fleet yet.."; "the captain of my ship says you look like a sailor bold especially as you have blues eyes.". She tells of liking big boats, "Tynwalditis" - she had been sea sick on the ferry SS Tynwald, passing the PS Empress Queen - an Isle of Man ferry in the River Mersey, seeing a lot of "flying fish", looking a the stars on board ship - they look just as if they had been hung up like lamps.."; plus she makes references to nature - flowers, her rose bush in the garden and swallows.

The letter is published in full in Gordon Bowker Malcolm Lowry Remembered Pgs. 15-16.

She was re-employed by the Lowry family after her replacement Miss Long was dismissed. We can presume Miss Bell moved on after Lowry began school at Braeside in 1914. Bowker states that she ran a village shop and post office in North Wales, after which all trace of her disappears. ( Malcolm Lowry Remembered Pg 15).