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Movie Review: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Christine Amsden’s bottom line is near the top of her review: A good movie for an eight-year-old. For anybody else, maybe not so much.
Portland, Oregon Has a Leprechaun Colony
“Ireland” may be the most popular first answer given when someone is asked about where leprechauns live, but Portland, Oregon, has its very own population of little green-clad Irishmen, too. And they’ve even got a dedicated area—Mill Ends Park—to prove it. Here are 11 fun facts about what has been described as “the only leprechaun colony west of Ireland.”
Early European Depictions of Exotic Animals
Vincze Miklós has posted several images at io9 from medieval and early modern sources of the animals of Africa and Asia, based on hearsay and rumor.
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!
Sunday Inspiration: What Should I Do?
When you get your “Who am I?” question right, all the “What should I do?” questions tend to take care of themselves.
—Richard Rohr
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.
Yumboes: Senegalese Little Folk
Wolof type by Edouard Riou
Yumboes are part of the Wolof folklore of Senegal. These beings are also called bakhna rakhna, “Good People.” They are described as about two feet in height, and of a pearly-white color. (White skin is often a property of supernatural beings in African beliefs). They also have silver hair.
The “Good People” attach themselves to a chosen family and love and care for them. When a member of that family dies, they develop great compassion for the grieving family members and try their best to lament them. It is also traditional that the Yumboes dance upon the grave of the deceased victim.
The Yumboes live beneath the Paps hills, three miles inland from Goree Island, and come out to dance in the moonlight. They feast on large tables, served by partially invisible servants (only feet and hands are visible). They invite both natives and foreigners to their feasts.
The Wolof say Yumboes live just like people. They have been spotted at night in their fishing boats hoping to catch a late snack. They bring this fish to the land in search for some fire to roast it. Unlike humans, the Yumboes do not make their own fire but they steal the burning wood of campfires from human natives but they only take as much as is needed to roast their fish. They are also very fond of corn, which they also steal. Yumboes are very fond of plum wine. When the wine turns sour, they drink it with great joy until they become very drunk. In such a drunken state they sing loudly, make much noise by beating on drums and generally acting wild.
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.
Darrell J. Pursiful 