{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4908",
    "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": 4908,
    "subject": "Peace: St. Brandon",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2007-09-12T22:41:40+00:00",
    "last": "2007-09-12T22:41:40+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<8C9C3A5381CE159-9F0-64DC@webmail-dd20.sysops.aol.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "stoneox17 at aol.com",
        "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com"
      },
      "date": "2007-09-12T22:41:40+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Fwd: Peace: St. Brandon",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I have been trying to construct the wiki pages for *Peace*, and upon\nrereading it while preparing for this task, I discovered some twists\non the interpretation of the tale of St. Brandon that haven't been\ndiscussed on this mailing list. I thought people might be interested \nin seeing them.  So without further ado, here is the \"Interpretation\" \nsection for the tale of St. Brandon that I wrote for the wiki.  In the\nwiki, I also wrote a summary of the story which, if you haven't read\n*Peace* recently, may be useful for understanding my interpretation\n(and if you haven't read *Peace* at all, please go read it before \nreading any further).   \n\nStone Ox (Peter S.)\n\nWarning: spoilers for *Peace* ahead.\n\n-\n-\n-\n-\n-\n-\n-\n-\n-\n-\n\nInterpretation:\n     \nIn the story, there is some discussion as to whether St. Brandon's ship\nis made of wood or stone. The final word is had by Brandon, who says\nthat it is stone, in places. Which parts are stone may be answered by a\npassage a few pages later in *Peace*, where Den describes a cloud tower:\n\"To me it was Brandon's mast and at the same time the princess's tower\nrising from the sea, so that the Irish holy man captained a wicker\nvessel with sails the size of continents bent to that enchanted edifice\nof stone.\" So the boat is wood with a mast of stone. This is visually \nreminiscent of a grave, with the wooden hull being the coffin and the \nmast the tombstone (rising through the earth's surface).\n\nWith this key, the symbolism of the story is easy to figure out.\n\n    * The High King at Tara is God,\n    * Finn M'Cool is an angel - or somebody,\n    * Brandon is Den (there is even a phonetic correspondence),\n    * the ship's sinking is the burial of the coffin,\n    * they are headed not for the Earthly Paradise, but Heaven,\n    * the twenty thousand years between two and five am are spent in\n      Purgatory,\n    * the rat is Den's wickedness,\n    * the cat may be Den's heathenism. \n\nThis interpretation is supported by another mention of St. Brandon in\n*Peace*.  In the banshee story, Kate says that Jack and the banshee \nfought \"like Kilkenny cats, I was about to say, but it was really \nmore like St. Brandon and the Devil.\" So maybe in the archetypical \nversion, St. Brandon and the king of the rats (alike as two peas in \na pod, remember?) fight. This is reminiscent of the purported \nobjective of Purgatory: to purge the wickedness from one's soul. In \nDoherty's version, wickedness and the fairy cat fight, but nobody \nwins; they tear each other into pieces and the pieces run off into \nthe woods. Whatever is going on here, it's not the original program.\n\n   Unresolved questions\n\nWhat is the significance of the pieces running off into the woods?\nThis is vaguely similar to the sidhe story in *Peace,* where the \nthree children of the sidhe are turned into a flock of geese. It is \nalso vaguely reminiscent of the story of the Kilkenny cats.\n\n\n\n\n\n "
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}