naryaflame:

anatomy-lesson:

“The fact is that ‘rabbit’ is a peculiar word. The OED can find no ultimate etymology for it, nor trace it back in English before 1398. ‘Coney’ or ‘cunny’ is little better, going back to 1302, while ‘bunny’ is a pet-name used originally for squirrels, as it happens, and not recorded till the seventeenth century. The words for ‘rabbit’ differ in several European languages (French lapin, German kaninchen), and there is no Old English or Old Norse word for it at all. These facts are unusual: ‘hare’, for instance, is paralleled by Old English hara, German hase, Old Norse heri, and so on, while the same could be said for ‘weasel’ or ‘otter’ or ‘mouse’ or ‘brock’ or most other familiar mammals of Northern Europe. The reason, of course, is that rabbits are immigrants. They appeared in England only round the thirteenth century, as imported creatures bred for fur, but escaped to the wild like mink or coypu. Yet they have been assimilated. The point is this: not one person in a thousand realizes that rabbits (no Old English source) are in any historical way distinct from mice (O.E. mýs) or weasels (O.E. weselas), while the word is accepted by all as familiar, native, English … Rabbits prove that novelties can be introduced into a language and then made to fit—of course as long as one exhibits due regard to deep structures of language and thought. ‘If a foreign word falls by chance into the stream of a language’, wrote Jacob Grimm, ‘it is rolled around till it takes on that language’s colour, and in spite of its foreign nature comes to look like a native one.’

Now this situation of anachronism-cum-familiarity certainly has something to do with hobbits.  … Smoking later appears as not just a characteristic of hobbits, but virtually the characteristic, ‘the one art that we can certainly claim to be our own invention’, declares Meriadoc Brandybury (LOTR, p. 8). But what are they smoking besides pipes? ‘Pipeweed, or leaf’, declares the Lord of the Rings Prologue firmly. Why not say ‘tobacco’, since the plant is ‘a variety probably of Nicotiana’? Because the word would sound wrong. It is an import … reaching English only after the discovery of America, sometime in the sixteenth century. The words it resembles most are ‘potato’ and ‘tomato’, also referring to new objects from America, eagerly adopted in England and naturalised with great speed, but marked off as foreign by their very phonetic structure. ‘Pipeweed’ shows Tolkien’s wish to accept a common feature of English modernity, which he knew could not exist in the ancient world of elves and trolls, and whose anachronism would instantly be betrayed by a word with the foreign feel of ‘tobacco’ … .[‘Tomatoes’ was eliminated from The Hobbit in revised editions.] ‘Potatoes’ stay in, being indeed a specialty of Gaffer Gamgee, but his son Sam has a habit of assimilating the word to the more native-sounding ‘taters’— … but in fact the scene in which Sam discusses ‘taters’ with Gollum (LOTR, p. 640) is a little cluster of anachronisms: hobbits, eating rabbits (Sam calls them ‘coneys’), wishing for potatoes (‘taters’) but out of tobacco (‘pipeweed’). One day, offers Sam to Gollum, he might cook him something better—‘fried fish and chips’. Nothing could now be more distinctively English! Not much would be less distinctively Old English. The hobbits, though, are on our side of many cultural boundaries.

That, then, is their association with rabbits.  …  both insinuated themselves, rabbits into the homely company of fox and goose and hen, hobbits into the fantastic but equally verbally authenticated set of elves and dwarves and orcs and ettens. One might go so far as to say that the absence of rabbits from ancient legend made them not an ‘asterisk word’ but an ‘asterisk thing’—maybe they were there but nobody noticed. That is exactly the ecological niche Tolkien selected for hobbits, ‘an unobtrusive but very ancient people.”

–
Tom Shippey,

The Road to Middle-earth. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, rev. ed., pp. 68-69

Hell yes Tom Shippey ❤

alystraea:

Míriel weaving the deeds of the House of Finwë after she returns from the dead. For a WIP

by Sigrid Miech, who has been working on a series of songs on Silmarillion themes, and wanted a painting of Miriel with some red thread in it. 

It was going to be so simple. Just Miriel, a loom and a little bit of red. And then I got carried away.  

I hope you can spot in the tapestries: Fingon, Maedhros, Fëanor, Finwë, Morgoth, Maglor, Amrod, Amras, Elrond, Elros, Eärendil, Elwing, Vingilotë

, the kinslaying at Alqualondë, the burning of the ships at Losgar, the crossing of the Helcaraxë, and balrogs and Ungoliant lurking somewhere at the shadowy edges… 

funereal-disease:

“Consider how textbooks treat Native religions as a unitary whole. The American Way describes Native American religion in these words: ‘These Native Americans [in the Southeast] believed that nature was filled with spirits. Each form of life, such as plants and animals, had a spirit. Earth and air held spirits too. People were never alone. They shared their lives with the spirits of nature.’ Way is trying to show respect for Native American religion, but it doesn’t work. Stated flatly like this, the beliefs seem like make-believe, not the sophisticated theology of a higher civilization. Let us try a similarly succinct summary of the beliefs of many Christians today: ‘These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son’s body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died.’ Textbooks never describe Christianity this way. It’s offensive. Believers would immediately argue that such a depiction fails to convey the symbolic meaning or the spiritual satisfaction of communion.”

— Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen (via seriouslyamerica)

blackbearmagic:

edderkopper:

On the names of Odin

In Grímnismál, Odin states, “Never a single name have I had since first I fared among men.” And indeed, we have a very large number that are attested, as well as many that have no doubt been lost to time.

One of the more well known heiti is Hrafnaguð, the Raven God. In turn, his blood brother Loki is called Gammleið, “the vulture’s path.”

Because of Odin’s connection with ravens as well as his role of selecting those slain on the battlefield for an afterlife in Valhalla, I propose that it is feasible, perhaps even likely, for Odin to have been named “the raven’s path” by viking age skalds.

Another notable name is the one commonly used for him: Odin. The word it most likely derives from, óðr, is usually associated with ritual ecstasy and battle frenzy, but it could potentially extend to other forms of “madness.” For example, of his twin ravens, Huginn and Muninn, traditionally translated as “thought” and “memory”, Odin states, “I fear more for Muninn.” He embodies anxiety about not only the temporary abandonment of ritual or battle, but also a more permanent loss of history and self.

One final aspect of Odin that his heiti point to but is rarely explored is his connection to the night and blackness. He is Fjölnir, concealer, Herblindi, blinder of hosts, and Tvíblindi, twice blind. He is Grímnir, the hooded one. He presides over Yule, the longest night. Ravens are so closely associated with their color that the word is used as a synonym for black. And according to folklore, he notably rides forth with his forces, known today as the Wild Hunt only between sunset and dawn.

So basically, it’s 100% lore compliant to say that Odin is Ebony Darkness Demtia Raven Way.

I’m going to punch you in the ear, Eddie