REH Word of the Week: maul Essay

noun

1. a heavy often wooden-headed hammer used especially for driving wedges; a tool like a sledgehammer with one wedge-shaped end that is used to split wood

[origin: ca. 13^th century; Middle English malle mace, maul, from Anglo-French mail, from Latin malleus; akin to Old Church Slavic mlatu hammer, Latin molere to grind]HOWARD’S USAGE:A silence falls along the halls;The lions mutter in the gloom.How Time along the hours crawlsLike some great sluggish worm of doom.My heartbeats fall, a striking maul.Because my thews are hard and strong,Within the hour I must fallTo meet the blood lust of the throng.Along the halls a trumpet calls.

The red arena glimmers nigh.Thor, let me mock these fools of Rome,And show them how a Goth can die.[from “The Cells of the Coliseum”; to read the complete poem see The Collected Poetry of Robert E. Howard, p. 530; A Rhyme of Salem Town, p. 68 and Robert E. Howard Selected Poems, p.

185]