HISSNLISSN

A query posted to a social forum¹ I participate in about the potential merits and relative dangers of living in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago resulted in a response that included a link to Cecil Adams’ excellent Straight Dope column on the Chicago Reader website.

Cecil’s response to a similar scenario, detailed here, includes the following nifty turn of phrase²:

In 2007, the latest year for which detailed statistics are available, index crime in the 24th police district, which includes Rogers Park, was roughly half what it had been in 1996, and fell faster than for the city overall. It ought to be conceded that the 24th district also includes West Ridge, which to hear some tell it is a sylvan fastness with no crime to speak of, possibly distorting the numbers.

That striking combination of terms, “sylvan fastness,” set me on a quick hunt to define the words and seek out other instances from the Web.

Webster’s defines sylvan (adj.)  as:

1. b. of, relating to, or characteristic of the woods or forest

and American Heritage on fastness:

3. a. A secure or fortified place; a stronghold.

b. A remote, secret place.

Some noteworthy instances of the phrase appear below the cut.

From the essay “Signs and Symbols” by Joyce Kilmer, in an argument against those whose aim was to preserve the American countryside from roadway advertising:

But the aesthete-reformer, in condemning such monstrosities as these, condemns merely an hy pothesis. And since the hypothesis obviously is condemnable, he starts a crusade against the inno cent facts upon which the purely hypothetical evil is based. It is wrong to mar the snowy splendor of the Alps ; therefore, he says, the Jersey meadows must not bear upon their damp bosom the jubilant banner of an effective safety-razor. The sylvan fastness of our continent must be saved from the vandal; therefore, he says, you may not advertise breakfast food on a hoarding in the suburbs of Paterson.

From some sort of Lord of the Rings fan fiction:

In his tower of Barad-dúr the Dark Lord Sauron was’t wrenched from his preoccupation with the combat inside the fiery mount, for returning thence to his lands in defeat came the host he had sent forth unto Rhovanion. Thither they had been ordered, to lay waste to all the lands ‘twixt the Morannon and Greenwood, then thence to conquer that sylvan fastness and enslave all the Elven folk within. Yet instead he heard now, ‘cross the desolation of Gorgoroth, not boasts and bragging of victors nor the cheers of a host returning triumphant, but rather the wails of dismay, the impotent curses, and the whimpering of the wounded as they fled back to the Black Land.

And a forum post arguing for urban decentralization³:

Better/faster transportation and instant communication as well as de-industrialization means that you tend to need fewer, bigger cities or (given Anglo-American preference for pseudo-sylvan fastness) lots of very small suburban ones.

The majority of the other instances I found as a result of a cursory Google search fall under what I would call archaic usage, typically  lyrical flourishes rather than as an essential tool of description. However, as evidenced by the Cyburbia forum post and the inciting instance snarkily authored by Cecil Adams, this odd bit of language isn’t totally obsolete, though it may have aged well past the point of relevance.

1. one in which just about everyone knows one another offline, ’social forum’ is the best I can come up with to describe it as such [↩]
2. emphasis within blockquotes mine [↩]
3. From a forum site entitled Cyburbia, which claims to be the web’s oldest English language urban planning forum in existence [↩]