Have you read The Pied Piper lately?

The imagery! and the rhythm of the words!!

Robert Browning's Pied Piper wears a long coat “from heel to head” which is “half of yellow and half of red.”

Pied is actually an adjective which means 'of two colors.' Originally pied was used for the colors of a magpie, which is black and white - in fact that is where the 'pie' comes from. Now it stretches to include all animals (piebald horse, for instance, which has black and white patches), especially birds with two colors.

The word is also traced back to the Middle Ages as the Carmelite monks were called 'pied friars' because their habit was a brown tunic and a white cloak.

From Uncle Tom's Cabin

......for, so well is the harp of human feeling strung, that nothing but a crash that breaks every string can wholly mar its harmony.

A gorgeous word

Feilamort: the colour of a dead leaf.

I got this beautiful word while reading about Anne Donovan's 'The wonders of Scots Thesaurus brought me closer to my characters.'

She uses the Scots Thesaurus 'occasionally as a reference, but mainly for the pure pleasure of the sounds of the words,' she says.