Subject: (urth) Major new Wolfe story online

From: Nicholas Gevers <vermoulian at yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 04:18:34 +0000

GW's new story, "Under Hill", a sort of mediaeval
romance by the look of things, is now online on THE
INFINITE MATRIX (www.infinitematrix.net). Hurrah!

--Nick Gevers.

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 10:27:48 +0000

Thank you!!  But actually it seems quite minor.

The theme is that life is preferrable to peace, or more succintly  that
Peace = Death.  It is a nice little thing, but I spy no depths in it.  Does
anyone differ?

    hartshorn

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nicholas Gevers" <vermoulian at yahoo.com>
To: <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 5:18 AM
Subject: (urth) Major new Wolfe story online

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 21:17:16 +0000

So Wolfe is a Kai Lung fan.  I had no idea.

I've seen the "princess on a glass mountain" motif twice before: in a novel
called THE GLASS MOUNTAIN by Leonard Wolf, which I haven't read, and in a
Fractured Fairy Tale (in which the rescuer was a giant frog).  Given this,
I'd expect that it occurs in some genuine fairy tale or medieval romance,
but nothing comes to mind.

Like hartshorn, I didn't see any hidden depths to the story, at least on
first reading.

--Adam

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 21:20:24 +0000

> I've seen the "princess on a glass mountain" motif twice before: in a
> novel called THE GLASS MOUNTAIN by Leonard Wolf, which I haven't read,
> and in a Fractured Fairy Tale (in which the rescuer was a giant frog). 
> Given this, I'd expect that it occurs in some genuine fairy tale or
> medieval romance, but nothing comes to mind.

It appears in a number of places. Here's one version:

http://www.darsie.net/talesofwonder/pgm.html

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From: Matthew Davis <matthew at michaelscycles.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 21:00:51 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Adam Stephanides" <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
To: <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 10:17 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Major new Wolfe story online

> I've seen the "princess on a glass mountain" motif twice before: in a
novel
> but nothing comes to mind.

The "princess and the glass hill" by andrew lang
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=LanBlue.sgm&images=image
s/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=33&division=div1

which I found by this nifty index to Lang's fairy tales
http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~emily/Docs/lang.html#p

But does the title allude to anything? One of the hobbits went under the
false name "Mr Underhill" but nothing else leaps to mind.

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 20:20:54 +0000

Traditionally the fairies, the Sidhe, the "little people", live "Under the
hill".   This derives from a confusion of old Celtic burial mounds.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Davis" <matthew at michaelscycles.freeserve.co.uk>
To: <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 10:00 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) Major new Wolfe story online

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From: Josh Geller <dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 23:35:04 +0000

On Tue, 7 May 2002, Matthew Davis wrote:
> "Adam Stephanides" <adamsteph at earthlink.net> writes:

> false name "Mr Underhill" but nothing else leaps to mind.

'Under Hill' is an old. old euphemism for what's often called 'Faerie'
('faerie' is also a euphemism; this is the land of the Dead we are
talking about (see my post with the subject 'Mound Dwellers')).

The main fairy in John Crowley's "Little, Big" is called Mrs. Underhill.

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From: Josh Geller <dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net>
Date: Tue, 07 May 2002 23:41:10 +0000

> hill".   This derives from a confusion of old Celtic burial mounds.

They are not just Celtic. In fact, the best source I know for information
on these ancient religious/magickal practices is the Icelandic sagas.

Also it's not always an artificial mound. Often it is a natural hill or
mountain. What matters is that it have the proper alignment to the Sky,
basically. Kings and priests and so on are buried in these places, from
which they are sometimes held to have returned (see my post with the
subject "Mound Dwellers").

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