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The Breastplate of Saint Patrick
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to all who are observing it. Perhaps you’ll appreciate the discussion of the Lorica of Saint Patrick posted today at the Celtic Myth Podshow. A lorica (literally, “breastplate”) is a poetic prayer form especially associated with Ireland. It is a prayer of protection by which the pray-er claims divine protection from various threats and enemies, hence the “breastplate” imagery.
As with much early Irish Christian religiosity, this traditional prayer (not likely to actually go back to St. Patrick himself) is steeped in earlier pagan or druidic forms:
It is written in the style of a druidic incantation for protection on a journey. It is part of the Liber Hymnorum, a collection of hymns found in two manuscripts kept in Dublin. This beautiful prayer of St. Patrick, popularly known as “St. Patrick’s Breast-Plate”, is supposed to have been composed by him in preparation for this victory over Paganism. It’s fascinating to compare the structure of this prayer with many of the incantations found in the Carmina Gadelica as well as many of the meditations and rituals seen in Druidry, Wicca and Ceremonial Magic today.
The text of the prayer is included both in its most familar English form and in a more literal translation from Old Irish.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m wearing green today only because it’s 38° F in Charlotte, where I’m currently away from home on business, and green is the color of the only clean long-sleeved shirt I have with me!
Robert Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth
The Celtic Myth Podshow has a brief introduction to the life of Robert Kirk, an Irish clergyman most famous for his 1691 book The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies.
Kirk’s account of the secret commonwealth combines the banal with the surreal. They live in houses underground that are large and fair, lit with lamps and fires but without fuel to sustain them. They may abduct mortal women to nurse their children. Their clothing and speech is that of the country they live in. Their life span is longer than ours, but eventually they die. They have rulers and laws but no discernible religion. Moreover, unlike us, they do not have a dense, material form but have, in Kirk’s words,
“Bodies of congealed Air”.
Every Quarter they travel to fresh lodgings, a reference perhaps to the elemental tides of the seasons.
Build Diversity into Your Fantasy Setting
As Alice Leiper explains, the best way to build diversity into your fantasy setting is, well, to world-build it.
By considering diversity from the outset, you can create a world in which diversity is natural and normal without it feeling “unrealistic”, by developing geographies and cultures organically rather than defaulting to pseudo-medieval European.
The Science of Dragons
In the Memoirs of Lady Trent series, Marie Brennan does something somewhat unique with her dragons: she attempts to ground them in science. She explains why in an essay posted over at io9.
Maybe we should blame dinosaurs. Giant reptilian creatures did exist once upon a time; why couldn’t giant reptilian creatures with wings exist? Well, because physics — but the inner eight-year-old, the wide-eyed child who shelves books about dinosaurs right alongside fantasy stories with no regard for boundaries, doesn’t care about the equations. (One wonders what the long-term effect will be of the realization that dinosaurs actually had feathers. Will we see more feathered dragons cropping up in genre fiction, a la the Aztec quetzalcoatl?)
Or maybe it’s the sheer nerdy challenge of it. The same impulse that makes people build working computers in Minecraft or postulate the likely outcome of a battle between Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan might lead you to wonder whether dragons couldwork, and if so, how. I know from personal experience that there’s nothing like application to make a dry and tedious topic interesting; no doubt generations of biology students have entertained themselves by fiddling around with matters like bone structure and oxygen exchange, trying to find a way to make dragons fly.
Then, of course, there’s the amusement factor. NORAD — the North American Aerospace Defense Command — tracks Santa’s progress around the world every Christmas. Why? Because in 1955, a Sears ad gave children Santa’s phone number . . . but the number they gave accidentally went to the duty commander at NORAD’s operations center. (Oops.) Utter silliness, but the point isn’t to be serious; it’s just a chance for adults to kick back and enjoy some imaginative play. We’re more willing to allow that to grown-ups now than we used to be, so I think you get more intersections of adult knowledge with childish whimsy as a result.
I love this kind of world-building, having worked out something of the science of both unicorns and griffins—and hoping eventually to work it into my Into the Wonder series in some way. I also know a fair bit more about the physiology and evolution of dwarves than I’ve tipped my hand to so far…
At any rate, I will definitely have to put the Memoirs of Lady Trent series on my wish list!
What do Voldemort, Mordred, and Professor Moriarty Have in Common?
A phonestheme, of course. James Harbeck of The Week explains why so many villains’ names include the element “mor.” Along the way, you’ll learn that a phonestheme is “a part of a word that tends to carry a certain connotation not because of etymology or formal definition but just by association.” So, “mor” words tend to suggest darkness, evil, or death. Words that start with “sn” tend to have to do with the nose (sneeze, snore, sniffle, etc.). Sometimes, words even shift their pronunciation in the direction of the phonestheme once it has reached a certain critical mass. Mordred from the Arthurian legends was originally Medraut.
Keep all this in mind the next time you face down a pack of hungry Morlocks, or decide to take a stroll into Mordor.
Interesting Facts about the Irish Language
Irish is a Celtic language, which means it is distantly related to Welsh. In distant prehistory, Irish and Welsh were married. Eventually, however, they got a divorce. In the settlement, Welsh got custody of most of the consonants while Irish got custody of most of the vowels.
Anyway, with Saint Patrick’s day coming up—and given the importance of Irish language and folklore to the faery mythology—I was pleased to see a Mental Floss article on “8 Fun Facts About the Irish Langauge” by Akira Okrent.
You might also appreciate this Beginner’s Guide to Irish Gaelic Pronunciation. Or just do what I do and find a computer to pronounce it for you.
Whence Charlotte’s Web?
In a letter to his editor, reproduced at Letters of Note, E. B. White explained where the idea of Charlotte’s Web came from, and why a farm is an especially appropriate place to reflect on death and dying:
A farm is a peculiar problem for a man who likes animals, because the fate of most livestock is that they are murdered by their benefactors. The creatures may live serenely but they end violently, and the odor of doom hangs about them always. I have kept several pigs, starting them in spring as weanlings and carrying trays to them all through summer and fall. The relationship bothered me. Day by day I became better acquainted with my pig, and he with me, and the fact that the whole adventure pointed toward an eventual piece of double-dealing on my part lent an eerie quality to the thing. I do not like to betray a person or a creature, and I tend to agree with Mr. E.M. Forster that in these times the duty of a man, above all else, is to be reliable. It used to be clear to me, slopping a pig, that as far as the pig was concerned I could not be counted on, and this, as I say, troubled me. Anyway, the theme of “Charlotte’s Web” is that a pig shall be saved, and I have an idea that somewhere deep inside me there was a wish to that effect.
(H/T: io9)
Thirteen Prehistoric Monsters
Buzzfeed’s Hannah Gregg has assembled an unlucky list of thirteen terrifying creatures guaranteed to make you happy you live in the twenty-first century. Add these to my lists of prehistoric beasts that could stand in for mythological monsters, and I think you could make a pretty good case that 2014 isn’t shaping up too badly.
Languages in Fantasy
Leo Elijah Cristea has posted some thoughts and observations about made-up languages in fantasy (and science fiction) over at Fantasy Faction. The bottom line: nobody who doesn’t have a Ph.D. in linguistics is going to do it as well as Tolkien, and even if they could, that’s not what fantasy readers want any more. Characters are everything, and the world-building must serve the characters (and, of course, the plot).
For Children of Pride and its eventual sequels, I’ve roughed out a couple of constructed languages. Esrana, for example, is the ancestral language of many of the fae kindreds of western Europe. It holds a place similar to Latin in the Topside world, especially a few centuries ago when Latin was a “prestige” language spoken by the educated elites. There are some characters (and locations) in Children of Pride whose names are derived from Esrana, just as there are people and places today whose names are derived from Latin or Greek (Julia, Gregory; Indiana, Philadelphia, etc.).
Not yet seen in print is Wechakáhli, the language of certain dwarfish clans. I worked out some of the details of this language just to play around with a language spoken by beings whose vocal apparatus is not entirely the same as that of humans. Other than a handful of vocabulary and a bare-bones grammar, there’s not much to it.
The Hopkinsville Goblin
One of Kentucky’s lesser known claims to fame is a 1955 “goblin” sighting in Hopkinsville. Rob Lammle has the story at Mental Floss.
Darrell J. Pursiful 