The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [213]
Q: When is Jamie’s birthday?
A: May 1. I had one reader argue with me about this, insisting that he had to be a Leo, but I assure you he isn’t. My husband and kids are all Tauruses, and I know what they’re like. May 1 it is. [See “Horoscopes,” in Part Two.]
Q: Is the story of the Dunbonnet and the laird who hid for seven years true?
A: Leap o’ the Cask is real—so is the story of the laird who hid in the cave for seven years, whose tenants called him the Dunbonnet, and his servant, who brought the ale to him in hiding. The laird’s name? Ah… James Fraser. Really.
Q: Who/what is Master Raymond? What is his significance?
A: He’s a prehistoric time-traveler. I think he came from somewhere about 4000 B.C. or perhaps a bit earlier (not technically prehistoric, but they certainly weren’t using written records where he started out), and the eighteenth century is not his first stop. I think I won’t say more about him just now, though—other than to note that we’ll tell his story in a later series of novels, after the Outlander cycle is complete.
Q: Were Jonathan Randall and the Duke of Sandringham lovers?
A: No, the Duke and Randall weren’t lovers, though the Duke certainly understood Randall’s psychology, and no doubt used it to control him. The Duke was simply a practicing homosexual, whereas Randall was a sadist of indiscriminate appetites. Given their relative social positions—and the Duke’s taste for manipulation and power—Randall couldn’t possibly have assumed the necessary psychological dominance over the Duke for a sexual relationship between them to exist, nor would he willingly have submitted to the Duke. And while the Duke might have forced Randall to oblige him, it’s not likely; Randall was an effective tool for him, and engaging Randall in a sexual relationship would have destroyed that effectiveness. The Duke might also have found Randall not quite to his taste—which evidently ran to young, handsome, fair-skinned boys, given his early attempt on Jamie’s virtue.
“Lovers,” as a term, implies a certain emotional equality, which certainly didn’t exist in this case.
Q: How is Laoghaire pronounced? Where did the name come from?
A: I got Laoghaire off a map. And no, I had no idea how it was pronounced, though I had a guess. Geraldine James, who does the abridged audiotapes of the books, pronounces it “Leery,” and Davina Porter (who does the unabridged versions) pronounces it “Lee-yur”—and a couple of Scottish correspondents have given me slightly different pronounciations (one person said this was her grandmother’s name, and that the grandmother pronounced it “L’heer.”).
Q: How is Geillis’s name pronounced?
A: I don’t know. For what the observation is worth, Geraldine James (on the abridged audiotape) calls her GAY-liss or GAY-lee, and Davina Porter (unabridged) pronounces it GEE-liss (GEE as in “geese”) and GEE-lee. Either or both of them may be right. I recently met a Scot who pronounced it “JILL-is.”
Q: Why doesn’t Jamie use the endearment “mo duinne” in Voyager or Drums?
A: Er… well… cough. He doesn’t say “mo duinne” in Voyager because between Dragonfly in Amber and Voyager I acquired the gracious assistance of a native speaker of Gaelic, one Iain MacKinnon Taylor (who kindly advised on all the Gaelic bits in Voyager and Drums).32
Mr. Taylor informed me that while “mo duinne” had the right words for what I meant to convey, it wasn’t idiomatically correct—that is, the proper expression would be “mo nighean donn.” So I used that in the subsequent books, wishing (as always) to be as accurate as possible.
Q: Who were the Paleolithic lovers in Dragonfly in Amber? What was their significance?
A: I didn’t really have anything specifically in mind about the Paleolithic