The sole remaining geographical mystery is the modern identity of the river referred to in the Manuscript as “the Cat’s Paw:” while there are several possible candidates between Brocken and the Thuringian Forest, it seems impossible to state with absolute certainty which of them the narrator is actually describing. —C.C.
† “… called the Groba …” On the surface, the connotation here would seem plain enough: groba is a Gothic term for “cave” as in a dwelling or den, and this council meets in just such a place, while its healers work in similar chambers, above. But when we come across such words (to say nothing of even more exotic personal and place names), we are also reminded of Gibbon’s statement that the language of the people of Broken, though basically a German dialect, had Eastern influences, the reasons for which we cannot be certan of, beyond noting the deep influence of Gothic, which apparently seemed “exotic” indeed — at least to Gibbon. And yet, the Groba system, structurally, is not exotic, at all; not for a Germanic tribe. Indeed, it more closely resembles the usual Germanic system of government — which most often featured elected officials, executives, and in many if not most instances, even elected kings — than does the government of Broken. The Groba also reflects, therefore, the type of traditional indigenous government that ruled the communities of the region between the Cat’s Paw and the Meloderna rivers before they were consolidated into Oxmontrot’s kingdom. In this way, we can see that words like “exotic” have very relative meanings, when it comes not only to the Manuscript, but even more especially to Gibbon’s comments. —C.C.
‡ “‘Ficksel!’” It is interesting to note that Gibbon did not choose to comment on this particular word: since there are vulgarities in modern German that closely resemble ficksel in both sound and meaning, one presumes that there must have been in Gibbon’s day, as well, and that the omission was made out of tact: a most peculiar tact, given both other accounts of various perverse behaviors that Gibbon seems not to have had any qualms about describing, and the general trend, in European literature of the late eighteenth century, toward the bawdiness and ribaldry that would provide much of the impetus behind the turn toward more reserved, even prudish, writing in the Victorian era.—C.C.
†† the names of the three Bane foragers Not for the first time, Gibbon speaks here of “the great frustration of not being given lingual tools sufficient to the task of picking apart the enormously colourful names of many of the characters in the Manuscript.” His inability was most often caused by the limited advances of scholarship in his day, but they were also, on occasion, the result of what Gibbon called “the almost unbalanced insistence of the man who translated the document and purveyed it to me [an interesting turn of phrase, since, especially in this context, it implies selling scandalous information of some sort] that he would not share his translational techniques, or part with the Broken Codex, for which I would gladly have paid as dearly as I did for the Manuscript itself.” But this rather peevish portion of his note is designed, one suspects, to make him look all the smarter for having come up with what he believed were solid explanations for the three foragers’ names: “It is essential to the drama to know all we can of these names,” he says truthfully, “as they are characters so very key to the story. The first, Keera, requires so little effort as to scarcely want mentioning; we still find the name in use (more often in the forms of Kira or Kyra) in the Scandinavian and Low Countries, as well as in Russia; and these nations took it, of course, from Greece, by way of Rome. The sole point of interest lies in the fact that it did not originate with the Greeks, but rather their longtime antagonists, the Persians; for it is but the feminine version of Cyrus, a name made most famous by Cyrus the Great, ruler of that people in the sixth century B.C. and the first to expand their state to truly imperial dimensions. The meaning of this storied name has been variously described as ‘of the sun’ and ‘far-sighted’: it seems, in this case, that the second of these interpretations was emphasized. And it is possible that Keera’s parents waited until she had begun to display her character and her several sensory gifts, before giving her a permanent name: various tribal cultures are known to practice such a style of naming (including, most importantly, several northern barbarian tribes), and even in our own nations of Europe, a name is not considered permanent until the child has been baptized, which most often occurs during infancy, but can occur later, a practice more common when names were thought to hold formative power over the individual offspring: a practice that Keera’s parents evidently embraced. These notions, of a northern influence on the name, and a delayed selection of the same, is supported by the styling of Keera’s brother, Veloc, although the thrust of this appellation is somewhat less apparent. Its first syllable seems to be a Broken approximation of valr, a term in Old Norse for ‘the dead’; whereas the second syllable is clearly (taken in context with the first syllable) the Broken styling of the old Norse demi-god, Loki (also Loci, Loge), half brother to Odin, master of mischief, shape-shifter, and sometimes noble friend to Man. It would seem that Veloc’s parents named him when they had already divined his dual nature, and either aimed to ward off the increasing influence of Loki on their son, or were paying homage to Loki in the hope that he would employ his benevolent side in assisting their troubling boy.”
But it is in trying to interpret the name Heldo-Bah that we observe Gibbon at his most imaginative, and even whimsicaclass="underline" “It is my contention,” he wrote, “that we [of the British Isles] may claim this remarkable little fellow as one of our own: not only because of the filed teeth, a practice not unknown among such primitive tribes as the Picts, but because he only reached Broken as a child-slave, and thus could have come from almost anywhere, including Britain. The first component of his name is clearly a Germanic interpretation of our English Hero (in modern German Held, or Helden, in the plural), a name that also comes to us from the Greeks, by way of Rome; and the dismissive-sounding bah, along with exclamations very much like it, were then already in use among Britons, Saxons, and Frisians alike — making it reasonable to assume that the boy was taken from Britain by seafaring plunderers from the North (quite probably Frisians, with whom the people of Broken apparently both fought and traded), and that these warriors took his given name of Hero and made of it a term of derision. And when the boy became a man, he likely kept the name, either because he had never learnt its meaning, or out of no more complex a cause than spite. The second of these explanations is the more likely; but the first displays a taste for irony among the Bane that we shall encounter again.” Gibbon is repeating a popular legend about the Picts filing their teeth (an idea picked up on by Robert E. Howard in his “Conan” stories), and could not have known that, if anyone filed Heldo-Bah’s teeth besides himself, it was likely those same northern captors, for Vikings, it has recently been discovered, often “beautified” their teeth in this manner. —C.C.
† “… Daurawah.” Gibbon writes, “The town of Daurawah, which served as a port for Broken traders, as well as for those foreign commercial vessels that brought goods to the kingdom, was certainly located on the Saale, the river referred to in the Manuscript as ‘the Meloderna’; and should one find it difficult to believe that so obvious a group of Bane as these three foragers could have entered such a town freely, one must remember the general air in and condition of Daurawah, at this time, which is clearly elaborated in a later chapter.”