Re: Still more on elves

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_interzone.ucc.ie>
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 20:45:42 GMT


D'oh. I fumbled my attempt at remember the Fancy Elf Names in my last post, didn't I? For emblymi (sp? I really must start looking things up) read mrelli. Clearly a rare form of yellow/brown colour blindness.

Chris Lemens paraphrases moi:
> 3. Mythically, for brown elves, Vronkal morphed into HKE and Yelmalio to
> give the brown elves some mythic respect. It was just too demeaning to be
> saved by a green elf.

Not quite, I thought this might be an Occassional Brown Elf Aberation. Most mreli are just just chummy to bits with vronkai, or at least the ones they share their forest with (as opposed to the Nasty ones in the next forest along).

> My only problem with #3 is "Who is Mrel, after whom the brown
> elves are named?"

Don't follow. Why is this a problem with #3, and what motivates the question? My provisional answer would be "Dunno", anyway. Are the brown elves named after a cultural hero, or merely after some obscurely Petersenian aspect of their biology? (I believe the "mrel-" root has some RW botanical significance, but I can't for the life of me recall what, unless it's some Phylum/Division/Class/Order/Family/Genus/Species name, or what have you.)

> I don't like #4 (though it is plausible), because I see
> these natural forces as caused by events in godtime and reinforced on the
> hero plane.

This is a popular human cultural view (esp. the Theyalans), certainly. So, you would say that, being human. ;-) The "natural forces" likely to be responsible in the aldryami view would be either Grower, or Aldrya herself. (A sort of self-resurrection, to nick from DH ideas.) Obviously, neither of those two are "caused" by Darkness events...

> Also, it is incompatible with my views on what plants were like
> before the dawn (see above.)

Not necessarily. It'd require outside agency to introduce Death into the equation, yes, but death may have been seen as being a Cyclic thing anyway, rather than something that has to be "fixed" by the Dawn. I'm sure say, the Pelandans would believe something on those lines, for example.

> Flamal planted himself and ripped open
> the earth with his roots, permitting the sun (and all those other godlings
> trapped down there) to escape from hell.

This portion sounds good to me.

> I suppose this would be the hell
> crack in the north west of the praxian wastes.

Unlikely, I'd think. Not a lot of elves in the area to agitate for this view.

> Idea from the guy who failed his first year at Jrustela U: Hey! "Elf"
> starts with "El-", so they must be solar!

About as plausible as much of the Linguistic Pseudery in this list really. ;-)

A Pseud and Proud OF It,
Alex.


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