Chapter 11
- (The crookit figger; Riddley hits the road; Bernt Arse; the Ardship; second Eusa story; "The Other Voyce Owl of the Worl")
- Riddley finds an unfamiliar hand puppet in Widders Dump and is suddenly moved to flee. In the "dead town" ruins of Bernt Arse, he meets Lissener, a blind and deformed "Eusa person" of mysterious knowledge and abilities, who was going to die soon in a scapegoat ritual.
- (72:17) "some times in that kynd of muck in stead of rotting a way they got like old dark levver"
Acidic peat bogs can in fact preserve corpses for thousands of years. The most famous case in England is a well-preserved body found in Cheshire which was dated to 300 BC, but partial bodies have been found in Scandinavia that appear to be as old as 8,000 years.
- (72:31) "it wernt like no other figger I ever seen. It were crookit .... I cudnt hardly beleave it .... It wer a hump and it wer meant to be a hump"
As we see later, Riddley's people have a fear of deformity which is both practical and superstitious; to deliberately make a hunchbacked puppet might be seen as tempting fate.
Pong is a Britishism for a nasty smell.
- (75:6) "Grean rot and number creaper on the stumps and stannings"
There seems to be no vine or moss whose name sounds like "number." What kind of creeper is it? EB Is it a suggestion of encroaching scientificism and the desire to have the measure of everything, of the "clevver" form of knowledge which seeks to control nature and which thus produces the "grean rot"; or of a creeping numbness? GW Or even a pun on the Roman numeral IV (ivy)? CB
Hoban's explanation: "Just as fireweed grows on burnt ground, number creaper climbs up the ruins where the [number of the] 1 Big 1 has hit." RH
- (75:32) "a woodin trap doar I liffit up and gone down some conkreat steps. Come to a nother doar then with 2 bars"
BJB proposes that Lissener's chamber may be part of the so-called Ashford Cage, a building originally built in the 16th century which for unknown reasons contains a small underground prison cell (Briscall, Archaeologia Cantiana 101, 1984). The ground floor was later used for shops, including a bookstore. Its address is No. 1 Middle Row, Ashford.
White shadows or "Hiroshima shadows" are produced when a surface is darkened by the heat flash of a nuclear explosion, except for the part that was blocked by some intervening object. The infamous shadows found near ground zero at Hiroshima showed the outlines of people who had been standing in front of a wall.
- (78:9) "He never ben the Puter Leat he never been the Power Leat"
Computer elite, power elite.
- (78:10) "Pontsery is what he come out of"
Ponce is British for homosexual or sissy, or sometimes pimp.
- (78:25) "plot the parbeltys of it"
Plot the probabilities.
- (79:26) "1st the easy askings then its helping the qwirys"
I.e., torture. In the UK, "helping the police with their inquiries" is the standard euphemism for describing a suspect who has been arrested and is being interrogated, whether or not this help is being given willingly. In Inland, police brutality is taken for granted.
Note that inquiry, or the search for information, is generally considered bad luck in this book; and the sound of the word also recalls the theme of what is required.
A pun on "Blobs yer nunkel".
- (80:26) "Who run the Power Ring who ben too close to Power who gone Badstock crookit and seed of the crookit? Us the same the Eusa folk."
This is one of the points where a literal-minded reader—especially one expecting a science-fiction story in the mode of A Canticle for Leibowitz—may become frustrated by the lack of a single clear antecedent for Lissener's stories. Is he really descended from scientists? From Eusa? Did their work make them deformed? Is their lost knowledge really genetically inherent in the Eusa folk, as Lissener believes; or was this story made up to explain the inexplicable presence of that knowledge? We have already heard a different version of Eusa's life and we will hear others; not surprisingly, different details are highlighted depending on who's telling it.
At least one reader has suggested that the plight of the Eusa folk, who are kept separate and systematically tortured for the supposed spiritual information they contain, represents the age-old persecution of Jews in Europe. (The same subject is treated more directly in Pilgermann.) EB sees some support for this reading, if one takes the notion that the Eusa folk are "crooked" from having been "too close to Power" as a metaphor beyond the obvious reference to radiation. It echoes two common antisemitic legends at once: the Jews being cursed for the betrayal of Jesus (himself a Power), and being a mysterious elite with secret influence in the world. Antisemites from medieval to modern times have portrayed Jews as sickly yet powerful. If intentional, the reference is surely ironic since both Judaism and Christianity are forgotten in Riddley's time.
- (81:21) "Eusa stood at the gate"
The Ram was originally Ramsgate (and nearby Margate).
In European and British tradition, cold iron keeps away witches and fairies. See also Kipling's "Cold Iron": "As my loss is grievous, so my hope is small, / For iron, cold iron, must be master of men all."
- (82:9) "from Reakys Over down to Roaming Rune ... that wer the day the Ram be come a nylan"
Technically, Ramsgate is already on an island, the Isle of Thanet, which is separated very slightly from the rest of Kent by the Stour River and the Wantsum Channel (the latter was a major waterway in Roman days, but is now very small). Reakys Over and Roaming Rune are near the endpoints of the dividing line.
- (83:17) "they myndit me of gulls eyes. Eyes so fearce they cudnt even be sorry for the naminal they wer in"
Pitiless seagull eyes also appear in Turtle Diary and Pilgermann.
- (85:32) "The Lissener and the Other Voyce Owl of the Worl"
This story slightly recalls an American Indian myth in which Owl tries to maintain a permanent night by repeating the word "dark," while Rabbit repeats the word "light." Eventually Owl slips up and daylight is allowed to exist. Here is a version that is attributed to the Menominee tribe, but similar stories are reported throughout North America. EB
The owl is an age-old symbol seemingly derived, in European myth, from the Etruscans. The Grey Hooded Owl is always in the background of Etruscan art, as a kind of "seeing eye" from the realms of the spirit. This has carried over to traditional Italian witchcraft, Stregha, where the Grey Owl is the symbol of La Streghoneria. SF And owls, like lions and seagulls, recur throughout Hoban's books: they are spirit harbingers in Pilgermann and Fremder, and there is a more cheerful (but still carnivorous) owl with a repetition compulsion in Hoban's children's story "The Marzipan Pig." EB
- (85:33) "He sat in the worl tree"
There is a World Tree in many mythologies, including the Maya (who named the Milky Way after it) and the Norse. In Norse/Germanic myth, the tree Yggdrasil connected the underworld and Asgard; in its branches, an eagle (sometimes identified with Odin) looked down on the world.
- (85:35) "his other voyce wer saying the sylents. He had a way of saying them"
Note that the word sylents is used in the plural, as if a "sylent" is the opposite of a sound.