Re: OT: Corpses, etc. (was: Re: Gender in conlangs (was: Re: Umlauts (was Re: Elves and Ill Bethisad)))

>:) Note the capital M! I was going to ask how the
>Cw and Tr differ, but you answered that. What I
>meant was that you probably couldn't distinguish
>a Cwendaso and a Trehel who are wearing cloaks in
>a darkling alley. A Daine's wings will stick out,
>making him quite obvious. In the light of day, I
>guess they'd be equally obvious!
No, in extemely low light conditions you wouldn't be able to tell any of
the three races apart, as long as they didn't speak.  The accent would give
them away, the only exception being that there are some Nidirino who speak
perfect Tehelish with nothing more than a regional dialect.  In daylight,
you can't fail to know which race someone belongs to.  In strong enough
moonlight, you would still be able to tell which race someone belonged to
by how light or dark their skin and hair are and by the facial
features.  There are certain types of facial features strongly associated
with each of the three races.  Cwendaso, for instance, tend to have round
faces, and Nidirino faces tend to be long and often oval.

>Do they worship things other than Sun or Moon?
They also worship whichever of the planets are visible to the naked
eye.  (Can anyone tell me which those are?  I've seen Mars and Venus
myself, but I don't know if any others are visible without a
telescope.)  They will worship anything body that moves against the
starfield, so that includes comets.  I do not know what their opinion of
meteor showers is.

Under Trehelish influence, some Nidirino have also begun to worship
rivers.  Trehels, modern ones, at least, are very much into river
worship.  (In Sovchilen, which is situated on a major river, in the present
day, the Temple of the river gets a lot more trafic than the temple of
Death.)  In areas of 100% Nidirino population, you will not find river
worship, but in areas of mixed Nidirino and Trehelish population, the
Nidirino often worship rivers.  The difference is that the Trehelsh are
worshipping the god/goddess of the river, while the Nidirino are
worshipping the river itself as a god/goddess.

>What do they think of the Trehelish penchant for
>worshiping deities rather than realities?
They disapprove.  The Nidirino won't worship anything they can't see.  That
does not mean that there is no abstract element to their worship.  To the
Nidirino, the Sun (and he is male, while the Trehelish have a sun goddess)
represents life.  The change in the length of the day throughout the year
represents the Sun's power waxing and waning as he battles with Death for
mastery over the world.  (And they do not believe that the Sun can ever be
conquered.)  Trehelish and Nidirino theology have interacted and influenced
each other in a number of ways over the course of more than half a
millenium.  The Nidirino feel that it is merely foolish and wrongheaded to
worship invisible deities as the Trehelish do, but to worship Death they
find beyond unconscionable.  (As do the Cwendaso.)

>Well, yes. The problem with making books in that
>manner is that the typeface tends to Remember
>what it's printed before. Words, spoken and
>written, have a Power of their own; and they have
>an effect on the things they touch.
>
>Especially when it comes to the printing of
>magickal works, there is the real danger of
>reisidual magic imbuing, say, a later printing of
>a children's runebook or similar. Even nonmagical
>printings can build up a sort of bibliographical
>static which might discharge later in unexpected
>ways.
<snip>
>For reasons not entirely clear, copying by hand
>doesn't have this side effect.
My world doesn't have that sort of problem.  There isn't really any magic
in it other than the sort of paranormal things that you hear reported in
the real world, e.g. someone with the "second sight," religious trances,
sightings of ghosts, prophecies - just a smattering of that sort of thing
to keep things from being boring.  People believe in miracles from the gods
and in sorcery, and can attest that they've seen such things themselves
with a *much* greater greater frequency than do modern Americans.

> > The other
> > great usefulness of it, in their eyes, is that
> > you can print a book with a
> > lot of illustrations, such as _The_Herbal_,
> > which is the standard medical
> > reference book, very large, very heavy, very
> > expensive, very indispensible.
>
>Oh, well, illustrations are entirely possible in
>hand copied books. It is not uncommon for a
>scriptery to create woodblocks, print them on
>paper and then write out the text surrounding the
>pictures. Many books are copied out using hand
>rendered illustrations.
Hand rendered illustrations are a last resort for a Trehel.  That's why you
print books.  Professional copyists will do that sort of thing, but the
preference is not to have to duplicate all the illustrations by hand.

>Illustrators are highly
>skilled (consider student artists who make a
>little money by copying the works of great
>masters - some of them are quite good). Of
>course, such a book will be very expensive. This
>largely means that books are rare and usually
>chained into large libraries.
Trehelish books are not exactly cheap, but they are affordable.  A lot of
individuals or families own small or large private libraries.  The Nidirino
have a higher literacy rate than the Trehelish, and any literate Nidirino
will own a prayerbook.  The Nidirino language is written with a syllabary,
while the Trehelish language is written with an alphabet.  The Cwendaso
language will eventually be written with an alphabet derived from the
Trehelish alphabet with the character used for marking stress borrowed from
the Nidirino syllabary's mark for inticating a high tone.

> > So I take it that there is slavery, based on
> > your comment above?
>
>Yes. Humans can sell themselves into debt slavery
>(they have considerable rights, mind);
I think that the Trehelish may have something similar to debt slavery, but
I really don't know the details.  I really don't know how they deal with debt.

>A common pattern is to exhibit darker hair and
>feathers on one side and lighter hair and
>feathers on the other. The effect is spectacular
>in black coloured individuals - where perhaps the
>left wing will have black feathers and the left
>armpit black hair; across the chest the hair
>lightens and the head is a swirl of black, white
>and perhaps grey; the right armpit is white and
>so is the right wing. The effect is frightening
>if the eyes are coloured differently as well!
Your mention of body hair reminds me of a question...I remember from the
portion of your webpage that I had time to read that Daine men often do not
wear clothing above the waist (and I can understand why not with the
wings.)  Does the same go for Daine women?  And how do Men take that?

>Hm. We haven't talked about actual corpses for a
>while.
Well, we do need to make an effort to keep threads on topic, even OT ones :)

This seems to be a popular thread today, judging from the 17 new messages
in it, the rest of which I have not yet read.  I will work my way through them.

>  One of the funeral preparations amongst
>all Daine is combing out the feathers and the
>hair. A hair comb is called _tamack_. A corpse's
>wings are arranged in a natural pose, rigor
>granting, and the hair is often plaited and
>twined with flowers or pretty vines.
Practically the only funeral preparation for the Cwendaso is rebraiding the
hair.  The dead person's hair is unbraided, combed out, then rebraided into
a special braid.  The Cwendaso, both men and women, always wear their hair
elaborately braided - we would call it French-braided or cornrowed, the
sort of braiding style that you see so many Blacks wearing today.  The
braid for a dead person starts out with many small braids that begin at the
edges of the scalp and at the midline, moving toward each other
(perpendicular to the midline of the scalp.)  Where the braids meet, along
each side of the head, they are grafted into a braid that runs along the
side of the head from front to back.    When the neck is reached, the rest
of the hair is just braided normally and tied at the end.  This leaves two
free braids hanging down in back.  When the dead person is laid out, the
free ends of the braids are brought forward over the shoulders and run down
the chest.

The widow or widower has their hair braided in small braids starting at the
edges of the scalp which converge in the center and are braided into a
larger braid that runs down the midline of the scalp from front to back,
leaving a single braid running down the back.  If the man or woman intends
never to marry again, then he or she will tie off the braid at the nape of
the neck and cut off the braid below the tie.  The cut-off braid is then
placed in the dead spouse's hands.  Cwendaso women never cut their hair
otherwise, and the men only cut the ends of their hair periodically to keep
it from getting too long.  Appropriate hair length for men is about the
bottom of the shoulderblades.

Isidora

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