The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [287]
Page 621: missing open quotes—“He looked so funny.…”
Page 632: “… sat still by the fire hearth.” Remove the word fire.
Page 637: Change “ruadh”to “ruaidh.”
Page 644: first “himself” should be “Himself.”
Page 691: “The numbers were one, nine, six, and seven.” This refers to the year 1967 (see page 692), and should be changed to “… one, nine, six, and eight” (1968). See “1945” p. 519; also “Where Titles Come From.”
Page 692: change “Nineteen sixty-seven” to “Nineteen sixty-eight.”
Page 768: insert comma, “ripping through a soldier’s upper arm, leaving a tuft of shredded fabric flapping”
Page 778: “the black robes of a Franciscan” Well, here again, it might be an error, and it might not. One researcher with a specialty in church history assured me, after reading Outlander, that Franciscans wore brown robes. Upon looking into the matter more thoroughly, though, I discovered that there were assorted suborders of Franciscans, who seem to have been wearing robes in all sorts of colors, from brown and black to gray (the last being called “The Dusty Friars,” in consequence). So, the probability may be that Father Anselm should have been wearing the brown robes of a Franciscan, but then again, maybe he wasn’t.
Page 803: “myrrh leaves”; delete “leaves.” The part of the Commiphora myrrha plant used as an aromatic essence “myrrh”) is the crystallized sap, not the leaves.
Page 818: typo; change “solid foot” to “solid food.”
Page 833: “1745” should be changed to “1746.”
Page 834: “The chart—that cursed chart!—had given the date of his marriage, sometime in 1744. And the birth of his son, Frank’s five-times-great-grandfather, soon after.” In fact, Jack Randall married early in 1746—but surely by this time we all appreciate just how inaccurate historical documents can be?
Page 834: “1744” should be changed to “1745.”
Miscellany
I have had some readers inform me that there could not be wolves in Scotland at the time described, or that it is impossible for a woman to kill a full-grown wolf with her bare hands. Well, maybe so—and maybe no.
Wolves have been extinct in Scotland since the mid-eighteenth century; the last (fairly reliable) recorded sighting that I was able to find was in 1749, and sightings were infrequent for some years before that. However, this does mean that wolves could still have been extant in 1743, when Claire encounters a small pack outside Wentworth.
Now, the behavior described for these wolves is not that characteristic of a truly wild pack, but it is consistent with that of animals driven out of their usual habitat and forced to rely on scraps and carrion, rather than on free hunting. One would expect adverse effects not only on the behavior of such animals, but on nutrition and general health.
Therefore, while it is unlikely—though not impossible—that a woman could overpower and kill a full-grown wolf under normal circumstances, it’s rather more likely that a desperate woman could overpower a mangy, underfed animal, which might well be suffering from parasitic disease or nutritional deficiencies.
NB: Recent efforts by the Scottish Wildlife Council to reintroduce wolves in Scotland have been fairly successful. On one trip to Scotland in the early 1990s, I saw several posters, all bearing the full-face likeness of a big, yellow-eyed wolf, teeth showing just ever-so-slightly. “Don’t tell him he’s extinct!” read the legend underneath.
DRAGONFLY IN AMBER
Page 23: “The Flying Scotsman could have him in Edinburgh in three hours.” More like four or five.
Page 30: Brianna’s age
All right. I freely admit that I lose track of dates easily, since I usually stick in something approximate while writing, and then try to tidy it up later. However, I think Brianna was born in November 1948. If she was, she would have been nineteen in May of 1968, when introduced to Roger Wakefield. And if that’s so, then Claire ought to have said “Bree has another year and a half to go” rather than “Bree has another eight months to go” before being legally allowed to drink alcohol.