Subject: (urth) Shadow Children and Dead Languages

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 08:43:56 +0000

Mantis wrote:

> From a folklore standpoint, the Shadow Children are:
[...]

Actually, Mantis' list of Shadow-child characteristics immediately
makes me think of the Fair Folk. Given Wolfe's penchant for 
reimagining fantasy, and especially faerie-tale, tropes in a
plausible-enough-for-SF-"realism" form, I'd almost bank on it.

> --ghouls, eaters of dead things, permanent halloween critters
> that must be bought off with gifts of mice

That's certainly indicative; some folks in Eire _still_ leave
a bowl of milk out for the Fair Folk.

> --children (they eat some, adopt others), cast off/abandoned 
> children, as implied by their name and their stature (OTOH,
> when the second group meets Sandwalker as a shadowfriend, they
> remark how young he is, so maybe they usually pick up cast off
> elders?).

Leaving the question of elders aside, this is the one that made
my Roach-sense go BING! BING! BING! -- Wolfe's potschke'd with 
the changeling motif more than once before.

> --dead/dreaming

Weird but not alien to this demi-theory: the FF seem to have a
different awareness from ours.

> --sacred Lotus Eaters with a drug communion
> --profane drug abusers (simultaneously autochthons wiped out by
> alien alcohol/ex-conquistadors derailed by exotic opium)

These two seem to qualify as stfnal justifications of the one
before.

> --first and last: autochthons and invaders-gone-native; yet neither
> first nor last, since the magic trees came before they did, and the
> Anglophone colonists came after they did.

Again, a stfnal version of the idea that the FF are a race much
older than humans, and what we see (when we do) are the last 
remnants.

*****

Then the Mad Exultant observed that he is: 

> ... still awaiting delivery of my used copies of 5HC (1 
> Scribner's, 1 Ace) from that emporium called, in one of 
> your dead languages,  "Lacking Breast".

Not to be too fussy, but I believe a-maston would be "without
breast," not necessarily implying a lack -- though, of course,
the fact that they name themselves for this "withoutness" 
would seem to imply that they themnselves feel this lack.
One might speculate that the founders of this emporium were
bottle-fed and have never completely recovered from a lack 
of maternal intimacy.

In the meantime, please -- Support Independent Booksellers 
or we soon may have nothing left but B. Waldencrown, 
Barder and Borble, and the ubiquitous Breastless. 

Advocatorially,

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/