> Personally,
> I hesitate to drag too many things with such shamelessly Scottish
> connotations into Sartar, as a lot of them are rather wildly anachronistic
> for any plausible Orlanthi-Celt analogue.
Also, Sartar is not a direct Celt/Scot analogue, any more than it is a
direct Viking analogue. My own preference is to have variations between
different tribes and even clans: so some have bagpipes, some have male
voice choirs, and a few have horns on their helmets and no musical
tradition at all...
> Brother Dog's prediliction for tartan would be a case in point
Tartan? TARTAN???? You are joking, aren't you? Although to be fair,
plaids dyed in check patterns have been around for a fair old while: the
ones that require modern or expensive dyes are suspect, but using a
simplified version as a recognition system could have come in earlier in
Sartar than it did in Scotland. Let's see: the original colours came from
the lichens that grew on the mountains. Nice stuff, lichen dye, and
self-mordanting, which is helpful. Perhaps, Sartar being a bit more
magical than Scotland, different areas have seriously different dye
plants available? So they dye their plaids in area-dependant colours? And
of course the colour of the sheep they breed would be important, too.
Cream and brown are standard RW colours, with pure white and (almost)
pure black being rare but possible. Some Sartarite clan could always
have blue sheep, for instance. You know, we could make something of this.
It just wouldn't be much like "tartans", unless you want to invent
mechanical spinning and weaving while you're at it.
>(especially if you don't think Italian tomatoes count as "traditional"). Something that's only been around for four centuries at most is hardly traditional. Come to think of it, if like me you see Sartarites as Ancient Brits resisting Romans, they shouldn't have bagpipes yet. It was the Romans who introduced them, after all. But it's a Wind instrument that makes a lot of noise, so why not?
> > And to make matters worse, [GRoY and FS]'re about Solar cultures. Solar
> > cultures are male-dominated and bureaucracy-ridden and bound by
> > convention and prudery.
> I confess I have something of a sympathy-gap in this respect too.
> What I found quite striking is how different the Entekosiad is in
> that respect, though;
Other people have mentioned this: I've sent off for it, but had nothing
back as yet. Still, postage from the USA is bound to be slow.
V.S. Greene asks:
> By the way, at the risk of my being horrified, what _is_ black
> pudding? Sounds scary; the most frightening thing I've eaten myself is
> porcupine. :)
I must admit I don't know the recipe, but black pudding is basically a
sausage coloured black with pigs blood. You slice it and then fry/grill
the slices. Can be a bit dry if overcooked (most hotels get this wrong).
What's porcupine like? And why is it frightening to eat? To cacth, I can
understand, but if it's already dead, what's the problem?
Jane Williams jane_at_williams.nildram.co.ukhttp://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/index.shtml
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