Seawrack/Babbie

Scott Wowra · 17 Mar 2009, 11:23 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

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From: swowra at gmail.com (Scott Wowra)
Date: Tue, 17 Mar 2009 07:23:51 -0400
Subject: (urth) Seawrack/Babbie
Message-ID: <78918eac0903170423s2fc7527bo35232ff2a1d78a17 at mail.gmail.com>

Sorry I haven't figured out how to reply to a thread, I'm still creating new
ones instead.

Re: Unpronouncable Seawrack:

Some relevant passages.

On page 148:

"...the truth is that her name, which was no word of the Common Tongue,
baffled
me, and that Seawrack was near to it in sound and seemed to suit her very
well."

I guess you could say that "no word of the Common Tongue" means an alien
language,
or it simply means an archaic name taken from a very old language. Either
way, Horn
can't pronounce it properly.

Page 149:

"She smiled, It was if a child had smiled, and by smiling had made her face
transparent, so that I could see the woman she would someday be and had
always
been, the woman who stands behind all women and stands behind even Kypris,
Thelxiepeia, and Echidna. If that woman has a name I do not know it;
"Seawrack"
is as good a name as any."

The three Long Sun Gods are linked to Greek mythology:

Kypris = Aphrodite, born of sea foam
Thelxiepeia = One of the sirens in the Odyssey according to Tzetzes
Echidna = Mother of all Monsters, head of a nymph and body of a serpent

So, I think that Seawrack is a Common Tongue translation of an Ancient Greek
name for
"a woman who stands behind all women," probably the Great Mother who shows
up
in the Soldier series. I see parallels between Short Sun and the Odyssey,
so will dig around more when I can.

Re: One Arm

The Babbie evidence appears at the top of page 155, where Seawrack is
petting
Babbie's head:

"As her left hand stroked it, I noticed dried blood among the folds
of skin on the stump that had been her left arm, and understood why she had
been
so afraid of Babbie, and whose blood had stained the deck of the bow."
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