Word Smith: Goney
Rereading Herman Melville’s classic novel, Moby Dick, there was a strange reference to albatross in the chapter on the Whiteness of the Whale. Melville, through the narrator of the tale, Ismael, writes for the reader an unusually lengthy footnote:
“I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged gale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch below, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the main hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous flutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king’s ghost in supernatural distress. Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled waters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of towns. Long I gazed at that progeny of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and turning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney! I never had heard that name before; it is conceivable that this glorious thing is utterly unknown to men ashore! never! But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman’s name for albatross.” [1]
[1] 11/14/1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, NY: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC: “But some time after, I learned that goney was some seaman’s name for albatross.”
Henry E. Hooper 