{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/231", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 231, "subject": "Tracking Song decoding", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1997-10-22T14:23:17+00:00", "last": "1997-10-23T00:15:00+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "John Bishop", "address": "jbishop at ch.hp.com" }, "date": "1997-10-22T14:23:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Tracking Song decoding", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I was re-reading saved digests (no, I _do_ have a life),\n and wanted to a) thank Alice Turner and =mantis= (and\n others) for the animal identities and b) disagree with\n them on said identities:\n\n Alice says:\n Nashwonk -- elk\n Lenizee -- deer\n Wiggikki -- wolves\n Mimmunka -- lynx\n Cim Glowing -- dog\n \n =mantis= ditto:\n Pamiguka -- boars (obviously right, once you hear it)\n Cim Glowing -- mink\n\n General consensus:\n Ketin -- lion\n\n General confusion:\n Min -- Men (cyborgs) or Monkeys?\n Mantru -- Man?\n \n I had first wanted to mention the \"fisher\" or \"fisher cat\",\n a member of the weasel family like mink, but much larger.\n They are woods-dwellers, about the size of a small dog,\n and fierce and beautiful enough to qualify for Cim. They\n live around here (New Hampshire), where they are blamed\n for eating cats and small dogs.\n \n However, I'll point out that we've been mostly working\n in the \"Nearctic\" context, where \"Nearctic\" comprises\n the northern parts of North America, Europe and Asia.\n All those areas have elk and wolf, etc. It's the snow\n that makes us do this, I think.\n\n But lions are African, Middle Eastern or Asian. While\n Siberian tigers are strong, Ketin has a mane. He's also\n spoken of by the others in a way that makes the\n identification of Ketin as the \"king of beasts\", i.e.\n literally a lion, _panthera_leo_(?), hard to avoid. I\n think we are intended to so read him. That identification,\n as well as that of the Pamiguka as wild pigs, seems\n solid. Consider the heavy curved knives--they are\n tushes/tusks.\n\n This means the context isn't Nearctic. But that's good,\n as the \"snow monkeys\" don't work either unless we go\n south (or say they are squirells). Given the echos of\n Kipling (i.e. Mowgli), I'd like to suggest India, but\n an India-with-snow. This has the advantage that we get\n the abominable snowman for free if we need him. And\n there are lions in India. They are quite rare now,\n but they used to be more common.\n\n So I suggest:\n\n Wiggikki -- wolves\n Lenizee -- deer\n Nashwonk -- buffalo (wild, not tame. Like the\n Nearctic bison in reputation, but\n unrelated). Big sharp strong horns,\n quite capable of catching and throwing\n a wolf. I thought of elephant, but\n they're just too big.\n Pamiguka -- boars\n Mimmunka -- leopard\n Cim Glowing -- Some kind of mink/fisher--what's\n around in India? Mongoose?\n Ketin ----- lion\n Min ------- Monkeys\n\n Finally, what about \"I\", the narrator? We've been saying\n he's human (but not angelic). I keep thinking that the\n name \"Cutthroat\" should be triggering something, but I\n don't know what.\n\n I'd sure hate this to be another \"narrator is dead\" story.\n Once is clever, twice is repetition, third time is obsession.\n\n -John\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.com" }, "date": "1997-10-23T00:15:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Tracking Song decoding", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Reply: Item #2695614 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#\n\nJohn Bishop,\n\nRe: analogous location of land in TS (India vs. anywhere else), you\nraise good points. But also there is the terrain defined by a\nweather period--i.e., the fauna of ancient Europe (with Celts, Picts,\nGauls as homo sapiens sapiens humans) was not the same as the fauna of\nice age Europe (Irish Elk, Mammoth, Sabertoothed Tiger, Wooly Rhinoceros,\nCave Lion, Cave Bear; with possibly a separate human species in Neanderthal\nco-existing alongside homo sapiens sapiens). And I think that TS is\nprofoundly an Ice Age story . . . in fact, back when I thought Cim Glowing\nwas a bear I felt I had the whole thing within reach--because in ice age\ntimes the bear and the smilodon are emblems of north and south, winter and\nsummer; the reason why Gilgamesh wears a lionskin (even when he's Herakles)\nand why the Ainu (aborigines of Japan) sacrifice bears as gods, et cetera,\net cetera.\n\nSo throwing the hero in an arena with a lion and a bear, well! And\nto have him play \"master of beasts\" by getting them to co-operate so\nthat everybody can escape, well-well!!\n\nBut Cim isn't a bear, alas!\n\n(Since the land of TS is presumably not Earth/Urth, all our guesses\nare analogies in that respect. Right--the lighter gravity felt by\nCutthroat . . . difficult to explain =that= away if he isn't an\noffworlder who fell off the Sleigh . . . )\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }