My favorites are six and one.
Dec. 16th, 2006 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rymenhildOn the twelfth day of Christmas, 
rymenhild sent to me...
rymenhild sent to me...Twelve exegeses drumming
Eleven anonymous piping
Ten libraries a-leaping
Nine yeats dancing
Eight politics a-milking
Seven books a-swimming
Six muppets a-dissertating
Five bu-u-u-uying books
Four rs thomas
Three falsifying statistics
Two magnetic fields
...and a beowulf in a firefly.
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Date: 2006-12-16 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-12-16 06:43 pm (UTC)(I was hoping you wouldn't notice so I could call the point!)
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Date: 2006-12-17 02:41 am (UTC)I did think that Sam would be a possibility too, I admit.)
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Date: 2006-12-17 01:58 am (UTC)Gonzo's ABD; he's never likely to finish his dissertation on performance art and alien identities.
I can't even spell most of the names of the chemicals that earned Dr Bunsen Honeydew his lab.
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Date: 2006-12-17 02:49 am (UTC)Miss Piggy: "Moi" (dissertation as autobiography. first of 33 volumes)
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Date: 2006-12-17 04:01 am (UTC)Doesn't really make sense... Dogs a'laying??
Absolutely Unrelated to This Meme
Date: 2006-12-18 05:17 pm (UTC)The Odin references in the Harpist in the Wind series are there, but subtle unless you've got a good bit of Scandinavian Studies homework under your belt (an Odin obsession doesn't hurt either, I must admit).
For example, the first local king we run into is named Har and is a shapeshifter--"Har" is Old Norse for "High One", and is on Odin's list of by-names, and indeed that king has a few qualities generally ascribed to the Old Man, but then again, so do Deth and the King of An.
-- Lorrie
Re: Absolutely Unrelated to This Meme
Date: 2006-12-19 12:03 am (UTC)Old Norse is not, alas, one of my languages, so I did not know that about Har's name, but I can see it. OE heah isn't too far away from har. Hm. I wonder if some of what McKillip is doing is splitting off characteristics and epithets from Odin (and, I wouldn't be surprised, several other figures from several different mythological systems) and assigning them to individual characters. Thus, the High One is not precisely a god in himself, and his land-rulers take on pieces of his function, becoming themselves almost godlike. Also it occurs to me that the role of a land-ruler in itself has to be linked, on some level, to Frazer's dying god-kings.
That was rambly and undirected. I suppose the point is, thank you for sharing your knowledge and thoughts about the texts underlaying the Riddlemaster sequence, and come back again to chat sometime!
Re: Absolutely Unrelated to This Meme
Date: 2006-12-19 08:13 pm (UTC)Old Norse is not, alas, one of my languages, so I did not know that about Har's name, but I can see it.
That, and his second-favorite form was a wolf.
Oh, and the King of An favored crows.
All Three Parts of An--the land full of fractious undead--are named after various underworlds. Had you noticed?
I wonder if some of what McKillip is doing is splitting off characteristics and epithets from Odin (and, I wouldn't be surprised, several other figures from several different mythological systems) and assigning them to individual characters.
I would definitely concur with this: Odin, while definitely a Person in his own right, can also be seen as indicative of several archetypes: a shaman-king, a lord of the death and the dead, a wandering wise man, and so on, and the several kings (including the High One) can be seen as employing those specific archetypes more directly.
Also it occurs to me that the role of a land-ruler in itself has to be linked, on some level, to Frazer's dying god-kings.
Absolutely, although in this respect, coming at it from a northerly perspective, I would be more likely to associate the land-law as being fairly well Freyrish, rather than Odinnic.
It is, however, damned cool. 8-)
That was rambly and undirected.
Thus ever passes LiveJournal...
I suppose the point is, thank you for sharing your knowledge and thoughts about the texts underlaying the Riddlemaster sequence, and come back again to chat sometime!
You're welcome!
-- Lorrie