Kevin's Watch

LFB, Chapter 14, The Council of Lords

The Hearthrall pulled a small tablet and stylus from his robe and began to calculate, muttering to himself. The scrape of his stylus could be heard throughout the Close until he raised his head and said stiffly, "The lore remains. But not easily. The best we can do. Of course. And time -- it will need time. Bodach glas, it will need time."

Towards the bottom of this page we find that "The Bodach Glas, or Dark Grey Man is a death token, of which Sir Walter Scott makes such effective use in WAVERLEY towards the end of Fergus MacIvor's history."
So, obviously, Birinair is a Scott.

Ah, and apparently, the Bodach Glas is a harbinger of death, like the Banshee. Considering what happens within 40 years...

Cool link, Syl! And way to make the connection! Makes me wonder if there aren't any more "cognates" between the languages of the Land and of the "real world."

Nicely found!

It's seems to me that it's too unlikely to be a random coincidence. And it seems an unlikely intentional reference, similar to the Ravers' names. Is there a reason why Birinair would take the name of a Scottish bogeyman in vain?

Should we characterise this an an unintentional mistake, similar to Tolkien's mention of an express train in LOTR?

Is this a case of the Spelling Checker making an unintended substitution?

i know but when was a express train mentioned in LotR?

In the very first chapter, at Bilbo's birthday party:

JRRT wrote:The lights went out. A great smoke went up. It shaped itself like a mountain seen in the distance, and began to glow at the summit. It spouted green and scarlet flames. Out flew a red-golden dragon — not life-size, but terribly life-like: fire came from his jaws, his eyes glared down; there was a roar, and he whizzed three times over the heads of the crowd. They all ducked, and many fell flat on their faces. The dragon passed like an express train, turned a somersault, and burst over Bywater with a deafening explosion.

Back on topic: I myself don't consider Bodach glas to be an error; it's one of those snippets of non-English languages that were deliberately tossed into the pot of SRD's nomenclature, like the Hebrew and Sanskrit names of the Ravers, or the word Elohim. Spices the stew, don't you know.

Variol Farseer wrote:Back on topic: I myself don't consider Bodach glas to be an error; it's one of those snippets of non-English languages that were deliberately tossed into the pot of SRD's nomenclature, like the Hebrew and Sanskrit names of the Ravers, or the word Elohim. Spices the stew, don't you know.

As I said, I'm disinclined to agree with that. Because, in this case, there's no sense to it. Use of the word Elohim "fits" - what it means matches in some way what it is used for in the story. Similarly, naming Raver's after spiritual states fits somewhat - they are spiritual beings.

What, however, is the connection here? How does it make sense? Is Bodach Glas an expletive in Scotland? (And if so, should this thread be moderated ? )

on a related note, is geas an existing word, or made-up by SRD in the Old Lords' tongue?

I believe geas is Irish — sometimes spelt geis. It means roughly a spell that compels someone to do something against their will. Usually there is some kind of serious whammy involved if the target of the geas tries to disobey.

The word is slowly becoming naturalized in English, but the dictionaries don't seem to have caught up yet.

thanks! most interesting

Variol Farseer wrote:I believe geas is Irish — sometimes spelt geis. It means roughly a spell that compels someone to do something against their will. Usually there is some kind of serious whammy involved if the target of the geas tries to disobey.

The word is slowly becoming naturalized in English, but the dictionaries don't seem to have caught up yet.

This sounds right to me. In Patricia Kenneally's Keltiad series, a geis is sort of like a curse...but it can seem harmless at first. One of the characters has a geis laid on her that she must accept whatever food is offered to her. This is occasionally awkward, but she gets around it by accepting only tiny portions. The whammy shows up when the first geis conflicts with the second, which is that she can't eat one particular food. Some nasty person offers her a bite of the food she's forbidden to eat, and suddenly she has to break one geis to keep the other, and ends up sick as a dog for three weeks.

I've seen geas used before, but only in Fantasy Literature.
Anytime I've seen it, I figured it for a spell on someone, pushing or pulling them to a spesific location, or task.

Maybe Tolkein meant that only for the reader, and didn't mean us to think that it reminded the Hobbits of a train.

Bodach glas is in italics when Birinair said it, but it's not in the glossary, with every other italicized word. (Or at least I would have said "every other" until this thread. I can't believe I glossed right over those words the times I've read LFB!!! ) Seems odd to me.

SRD wrote:I was trying to make what may have been an obscure point about the nature of evil. It's my belief that real evil doesn't perceive itself as evil: it perceives itself as enlightment. Sheol, Herem, and Jehannum (loosely translated: hell, genocide, and hell) are the "public" names of the Ravers; they represent the way the Ravers are perceived by the people of the Land. Moksha, turiya, and samadhi are the "private" names of the Ravers, their names for themselves. Like Hitler, Nixon, and Limbaugh, the Ravers do NOT go around saying, "I'm evil, and I'm proud." They say, "I'm better, smarter, wiser, and more important than you are, and so whatever happens to you while I get what I want is justified."

This seems to be saying the Ravers know our meanings for the words moksha, turiya, and samadhi. How else could those words, or sounds, mean what SRD says the Ravers intend them to mean? So if the Ravers know what those words mean to us, Birinair could know what Bodach glas means to us. And since it's not in the glossary, it doesn't have any meaning specific to the Land.

Yeah? Maybe?

Fist and Faith wrote:Maybe Tolkein meant that only for the reader, and didn't mean us to think that it reminded the Hobbits of a train.

It's still a slip-up, considering that LOTR was supposed to have been translated from the Red Book of Westmarch. There were no express trains in the Hobbit dialect of Westron; clearly the translator has been taking liberties!

Good on you for spotting what SRD said about words not in the glossary! I missed that one, too. Makes sense to me — at least enough to keep me quiet. Though I would have handled it differently. (Any time I use a foreign word or phrase in one of my own tales, I make sure it's in a language that actually exists in the context of that world. That includes innocent-looking things like i.e., e.g., and etc. — which are a proper pig to do without, sometimes.)

Fist and Faith wrote:This seems to be saying the Ravers know our meanings for the words moksha, turiya, and samadhi. How else could those words, or sounds, mean what SRD says the Ravers intend them to mean? So if the Ravers know what those words mean to us, Birinair could know what Bodach glas means to us. And since it's not in the glossary, it doesn't have any meaning specific to the Land.

Yeah? Maybe?

SRD's point would have been impossible to make unless the names held a certain meaning for the reader.

amanibhavam wrote:on a related note, is geas an existing word, or made-up by SRD in the Old Lords' tongue?

I've heard the word before, though it was spelled "geis".

I still haven't figured out what "bodach glas" means, either. To confuse the issue even more, I just started reading Gene Wolfe's The Knight, in which a certain tribe of elven/faerie folk are called "Bodachan".

Maybe Birinair was going to summon up a host of little elves to help him with the Gildenlode rudders?

A Geas (pronounced "GESCH") is a kind of magical obligation, prohibition, or taboo that a person may possess. (Druidism Guide)

Dineen's 'Irish Dictionary' explains the word geas as meaning 'a bond, a spell, a prohibition, a taboo, a magical injunction, the violation of which led to misfortune and death,'(Celtic Encyclopedia)

However, Donaldson uses the word differently. You can substitute "irresistable coercion" for geas with no loss of meaning. The original meaning of the word implied that breaking a geas is disastrous but possible, but throughout the Second Chronicles the implication is that a geas cannot be broken, or at least without extraordinary strength.

NEWS FLASH!

Donaldson uses word with different meaning from dictionary!

Film at 11!

I'm not a loser or anything, but I heard geas first as a cleric spell, 2nd level I think, in Dungeons and Dragons.

But, you know, not a loser. Just making that clear.

..so you were a winner at Dungeons and Dragons then...?