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Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Simon (---.lancing.org.uk)
Date: July 15, 2003 06:50PM
(Formatting note: Imagine that each of the two words in the following article that is separately enclosed between "[o]" and "[/o]" symbols has, although it is still present, a line drawn through it...)
Winnie the Pooh, and Cthulhu too!
A.A. Milne's famous series of books about "Winnie the Pooh" & his associates are not included in most people's lists of texts about the "Elder Gods", as far as I know, but in my opinion they do indeed contain numerous references to the so-called Cthulhu Mythos which _ although they're both masked in metaphor and trying to show those deities in a much more favourable light than do most other sources _ should be quite obvious to an educated reader...
Consider POOH himself, who is covered with hair and _ as he freely admits _ "of little brain": Surely he must have been one of those furry pre-humans who worshipped various of the "Elder Gods", often in lands that have since been swallowed up by icecaps or oceans, in the primaeval eras before true Humanity evolved (or was created?). This would presumably have been the case for his friend PIGLET too, although given the extent to which POOH takes the lead in their shared adventures I would suggest that he was a priest of their local diety (or deities) whereas PIGLET was just a more ordinary member of the tribe to which they both belonged.
"PIGLET" would be considered a very unusual name for a person in most Human cultures, and I fear that it indicates an unpleasant fact about the society in which that person lived. That there's a similarity between porcine meat & human flesh has not only been discovered by various better-documented cultures but led to the term "Long Pig" being used (in at least one Pidgin English dialect from New Guinea or Melanesia) to describe human flesh when this was being used as a foodstuff: Doesn't it seem all too likely that the furry pre-humans of these stories also practised cannibalism, either as a part of their religious rites (as various other societies in which one or more of the Elder Gods were revered are known to have done) or simply due to a shortage of alternative sources of meat in their homeland, and that the person in question had consequently been given this "animal" (nick)name because he had already been selected as a potential centrepiece for one of their feasts?
If that was why PIGLET bore such an unuusual name then the scene in which he was allowed to take over PPOH's former home, in the story about a great storm & its aftermath, might _ and in my opinion probably does _ have been a temporary increase in status & privileges such as certain historical cultures gave to their prospective sacrifices, he would have been killed soon afterwards (quite probably in an attempt at propitiating whichever deity was considered responsible for sending that destructive storm (maybe Hastur, or Ithaqua?), and the character named as PIGLET in the later stories would have been not the same person but his successor in the role of "designated victim".
Several of the other beings who were identified by name during their appearances in those stories clearly represnt not just more of the furry pre-humans but various of the "Elder gods" themselves,and can easily be identified with specific members of that pantheon. This is the case both for some of the beings that had apparently been already in contact with the local populace for a while before the stories began, such as Shub-NiggurRABBIT (alias "The Black [o]Goat[/o] Bunny Of The Woods, With A Thousand [o]Young[/o] Friends & Relatives") and the informative but frequently misleading NyarWOLthotep, and also for at least one of those who arrived there mysteriously from afar during the period chronicled i.e. the fur-covered but demented-seeming TsaothaTIGGER... The pair of strangely-shaped newcomers to the woods where POOH dwelt who are named only as "KANGA" & "ROO" were probably another two of the Elder Gods, come from some alien world or outer dimension, although admittedly I haven't yet worked out which (if any) of the 'Mythos' beings that are already known-of by Earth's contemporary scholars they might have been...
EYEORE, living alone and depressed (& depressingly to other locals) in a boggy patch as he did, might be a metaphorical representation of one of the Elder Gods whom their ancient foes had somehow "imprisoned" in varius regions: If the boggy patch is supposed to indicate an aquatic connection then he might perhaps be an avatar of Bokrug, "the abominable green water-lizard", with his gloominess due to the extinction of his worshippers in the land of 'Mnar'... I don't think that he is supposed to be dread Cthulhu himself, however, despite the latter's suboceanic captivity, as I have an alternative and (at least in my opinion) more convincing theory about which character in those stories stands for that deity. Another possibility is that EYEORE, sunken in despair about the prospect of things ever getting better, actually represents some or all of the ordinary lay-people from POOH's native society...
Accepting this view of Milne's writings about POOH's adventures forces us to re-interpret many of the incidents that were described in those books, as I've already done for the one about the storm & its aftermath, too... The game of "Poohsticks" clearly represents the offering of sacrifices by throwing them into sacred rivers or other bodies of water, as has also been practised by various better-reported cultures from Humanity's history, probably with some degree of increased prestige going to whoever had their gifts to the gods accepted (& taken below the water) first. The expedition that went off in search of the North Pole would obviously have been an attempt at contacting cold Ithaqua "the Wind-walker", who was bound to the Arctic regions, whilst the declaration that the pole which POOH found was the North Pole despite it being so much closer to POOH's home than that would really have been shows how the influence of the Elder Gods warped the ("Euclidean") geometry of normal time & space. The "honey" that POOH craved so much, which was so sweet to his sense of taste but so bad for him, is clearly a metaphor for knowledge about the Elder Gods with its infamously baneful effect on scholars' sanity: The time when he got stuck in the exit from RABBIT's home ater eating a meal that consisted solely of honey and "condensed milk" (presumably the occult substance that is known as "The Milk of Shub-NiggurRABBIT"...) but no "bread" would thus be a bowdlerised account of an incident when he became too deeply involved with supernatural learning & rituals for gaining power at the expense of his connection with reality (the "bread" that he shunned) and suffered a temporary bout of madness although some of his associates eventually managed to restore him (by prolonged conversation alone, or _ perhaps more probably _ by using treatments of a physical nature as well?) to a more "normal" condition again.
The incident with the HEFFALUMPS & WOOZLES is harder to explain. I initially suspected that their apparent invisibility might indicate an aireous nature (probably making them servants of either Hastur or Ithaqua, or maybe members of the group known collectively as the Lloigor), but I now think it likely that as it was after going around in circles for a while that POOH announced their absence from the scene _ despite his earlier fears _ that he had in fact been worrying about a possible incursion into 'Pooh Corner' by the Hounds of Tindalos (who are always a potential menace at "corners", after all... :-) instead.
And where was Mighty CTHULHU himself during all of those events? Well, consider which of the characters described by Milne (a) was the most different in nature from all of the others; (b) promised to make an imminent return when he had to go away for a while (as I surely don't have to remind you about the carven inscription above the entrance to the dread one's tomb/prison at R'lyeh, do I?); and (c) was _ even in the dsiguised form described here _ given a name that began with the same letter 'C' as his true identity...
Isn't it obvious?
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN = CTHULHU!!!
(So when he went to see them "Changing the guard at Buckingham Palace", just what were the unfortunate people concerned actually being changed?)
Winnie the Pooh, and Cthulhu too!
A.A. Milne's famous series of books about "Winnie the Pooh" & his associates are not included in most people's lists of texts about the "Elder Gods", as far as I know, but in my opinion they do indeed contain numerous references to the so-called Cthulhu Mythos which _ although they're both masked in metaphor and trying to show those deities in a much more favourable light than do most other sources _ should be quite obvious to an educated reader...
Consider POOH himself, who is covered with hair and _ as he freely admits _ "of little brain": Surely he must have been one of those furry pre-humans who worshipped various of the "Elder Gods", often in lands that have since been swallowed up by icecaps or oceans, in the primaeval eras before true Humanity evolved (or was created?). This would presumably have been the case for his friend PIGLET too, although given the extent to which POOH takes the lead in their shared adventures I would suggest that he was a priest of their local diety (or deities) whereas PIGLET was just a more ordinary member of the tribe to which they both belonged.
"PIGLET" would be considered a very unusual name for a person in most Human cultures, and I fear that it indicates an unpleasant fact about the society in which that person lived. That there's a similarity between porcine meat & human flesh has not only been discovered by various better-documented cultures but led to the term "Long Pig" being used (in at least one Pidgin English dialect from New Guinea or Melanesia) to describe human flesh when this was being used as a foodstuff: Doesn't it seem all too likely that the furry pre-humans of these stories also practised cannibalism, either as a part of their religious rites (as various other societies in which one or more of the Elder Gods were revered are known to have done) or simply due to a shortage of alternative sources of meat in their homeland, and that the person in question had consequently been given this "animal" (nick)name because he had already been selected as a potential centrepiece for one of their feasts?
If that was why PIGLET bore such an unuusual name then the scene in which he was allowed to take over PPOH's former home, in the story about a great storm & its aftermath, might _ and in my opinion probably does _ have been a temporary increase in status & privileges such as certain historical cultures gave to their prospective sacrifices, he would have been killed soon afterwards (quite probably in an attempt at propitiating whichever deity was considered responsible for sending that destructive storm (maybe Hastur, or Ithaqua?), and the character named as PIGLET in the later stories would have been not the same person but his successor in the role of "designated victim".
Several of the other beings who were identified by name during their appearances in those stories clearly represnt not just more of the furry pre-humans but various of the "Elder gods" themselves,and can easily be identified with specific members of that pantheon. This is the case both for some of the beings that had apparently been already in contact with the local populace for a while before the stories began, such as Shub-NiggurRABBIT (alias "The Black [o]Goat[/o] Bunny Of The Woods, With A Thousand [o]Young[/o] Friends & Relatives") and the informative but frequently misleading NyarWOLthotep, and also for at least one of those who arrived there mysteriously from afar during the period chronicled i.e. the fur-covered but demented-seeming TsaothaTIGGER... The pair of strangely-shaped newcomers to the woods where POOH dwelt who are named only as "KANGA" & "ROO" were probably another two of the Elder Gods, come from some alien world or outer dimension, although admittedly I haven't yet worked out which (if any) of the 'Mythos' beings that are already known-of by Earth's contemporary scholars they might have been...
EYEORE, living alone and depressed (& depressingly to other locals) in a boggy patch as he did, might be a metaphorical representation of one of the Elder Gods whom their ancient foes had somehow "imprisoned" in varius regions: If the boggy patch is supposed to indicate an aquatic connection then he might perhaps be an avatar of Bokrug, "the abominable green water-lizard", with his gloominess due to the extinction of his worshippers in the land of 'Mnar'... I don't think that he is supposed to be dread Cthulhu himself, however, despite the latter's suboceanic captivity, as I have an alternative and (at least in my opinion) more convincing theory about which character in those stories stands for that deity. Another possibility is that EYEORE, sunken in despair about the prospect of things ever getting better, actually represents some or all of the ordinary lay-people from POOH's native society...
Accepting this view of Milne's writings about POOH's adventures forces us to re-interpret many of the incidents that were described in those books, as I've already done for the one about the storm & its aftermath, too... The game of "Poohsticks" clearly represents the offering of sacrifices by throwing them into sacred rivers or other bodies of water, as has also been practised by various better-reported cultures from Humanity's history, probably with some degree of increased prestige going to whoever had their gifts to the gods accepted (& taken below the water) first. The expedition that went off in search of the North Pole would obviously have been an attempt at contacting cold Ithaqua "the Wind-walker", who was bound to the Arctic regions, whilst the declaration that the pole which POOH found was the North Pole despite it being so much closer to POOH's home than that would really have been shows how the influence of the Elder Gods warped the ("Euclidean") geometry of normal time & space. The "honey" that POOH craved so much, which was so sweet to his sense of taste but so bad for him, is clearly a metaphor for knowledge about the Elder Gods with its infamously baneful effect on scholars' sanity: The time when he got stuck in the exit from RABBIT's home ater eating a meal that consisted solely of honey and "condensed milk" (presumably the occult substance that is known as "The Milk of Shub-NiggurRABBIT"...) but no "bread" would thus be a bowdlerised account of an incident when he became too deeply involved with supernatural learning & rituals for gaining power at the expense of his connection with reality (the "bread" that he shunned) and suffered a temporary bout of madness although some of his associates eventually managed to restore him (by prolonged conversation alone, or _ perhaps more probably _ by using treatments of a physical nature as well?) to a more "normal" condition again.
The incident with the HEFFALUMPS & WOOZLES is harder to explain. I initially suspected that their apparent invisibility might indicate an aireous nature (probably making them servants of either Hastur or Ithaqua, or maybe members of the group known collectively as the Lloigor), but I now think it likely that as it was after going around in circles for a while that POOH announced their absence from the scene _ despite his earlier fears _ that he had in fact been worrying about a possible incursion into 'Pooh Corner' by the Hounds of Tindalos (who are always a potential menace at "corners", after all... :-) instead.
And where was Mighty CTHULHU himself during all of those events? Well, consider which of the characters described by Milne (a) was the most different in nature from all of the others; (b) promised to make an imminent return when he had to go away for a while (as I surely don't have to remind you about the carven inscription above the entrance to the dread one's tomb/prison at R'lyeh, do I?); and (c) was _ even in the dsiguised form described here _ given a name that began with the same letter 'C' as his true identity...
Isn't it obvious?
CHRISTOPHER ROBIN = CTHULHU!!!
(So when he went to see them "Changing the guard at Buckingham Palace", just what were the unfortunate people concerned actually being changed?)
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: jon (---.proxy.aol.com)
Date: July 15, 2003 08:23PM
Oooh - can I put that on t'website with the Rupert one, please?
- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty
- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Skiffle (---.cache.pol.co.uk)
Date: July 15, 2003 11:03PM
Fanstastic. Bizarre ! If I get organized enough, I'll show it to some of my friends.
Sarah - don't you think Iain'll love it ?
Sarah - don't you think Iain'll love it ?
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: splat21 (---.in-addr.btopenworld.com)
Date: July 15, 2003 11:14PM
Brilliant!
_ _ _ _ _
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
_ _ _ _ _
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Big John (---.rit.reuters.com)
Date: July 16, 2003 10:45AM
:D
That's excellent! I got a particularly morbid chuckle out of poor Piglet's plight, and the explanation of Pooh's love for "honey". Truly, this is a landmark work of eldritch scholarship!
-----------------------------------------------
"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.
That's excellent! I got a particularly morbid chuckle out of poor Piglet's plight, and the explanation of Pooh's love for "honey". Truly, this is a landmark work of eldritch scholarship!
-----------------------------------------------
"Whisky-wa-wa," I breathed - she was dressed as Biffo the Bear.
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Simon (---.westsussex.gov.uk)
Date: July 16, 2003 03:11PM
Jon _ Of course you can, but if you do then please add the following sentence at its very beginning...
(Disclaimer: Simon Reeve accepts no responsibility for any losses of sanity that might be suffered due to people reading the following article.)
************************************************************
Warning! Product may contain Newts!
(Disclaimer: Simon Reeve accepts no responsibility for any losses of sanity that might be suffered due to people reading the following article.)
************************************************************
Warning! Product may contain Newts!
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Sarah (---.in-addr.btopenworld.com)
Date: July 16, 2003 03:14PM
Ooh, excellent! Yes, Skiffle, I think Iain will love it, and I know a few other people who will, too.
..........................................................................................
That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)
Sarah
..........................................................................................
That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)
Sarah
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: jon (---.abel.net.uk)
Date: July 16, 2003 03:22PM
Will do, Simon.
And Lady Jane Grey was neither crowned nor recognised by Parliament as Queen. It's not enough to be proclaimed; otherwise Perkin Warbeck, Lambert Simnel, the Duke of Monmouth and C. E. Stuart (the Italian dwarf) wouild have to be counted as well.
Yes, I know that's OT, but t'other thread got closed ....
- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty
And Lady Jane Grey was neither crowned nor recognised by Parliament as Queen. It's not enough to be proclaimed; otherwise Perkin Warbeck, Lambert Simnel, the Duke of Monmouth and C. E. Stuart (the Italian dwarf) wouild have to be counted as well.
Yes, I know that's OT, but t'other thread got closed ....
- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: splat21 (213.38.32.---)
Date: July 16, 2003 03:55PM
and woe is me I forgot Edward Baliol... curses! (Thanks for reminding me Simon - I do know about him, but the chances of me bagging the whole lot of them was something of the order of 5000:1 against...)
Post Edited (07-16-03 16:57)
_ _ _ _ _
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
Post Edited (07-16-03 16:57)
_ _ _ _ _
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Simon (193.82.99.---)
Date: July 16, 2003 06:31PM
You did better than I would have done, anyway: I knew about Kenneth MacAlpine, and some of the ones around MacBeth's time, but although I might have been able to name a few others from the centuries before Alexander III (especially as his designation implies the existence of two earlier Alexanders....) I certainly couldn't have put them in the right order except according to their numbers...
Pre-"Conquest" England: Alfred the Great (really only King of Wessex, i.e. [by then] England south of the River Thames), Edward the Elder (his son, arguably ditto), Athelstan (Edward's son, usually listed as the first 'King of England'), between one & three more descendants of Alfred whose details I can't remember (although I'm fairly sure that they included an 'Edmund'), Edwy (of Alfred's line; this, IIRC, is the king who almost misssed his own coronation because he was in bed with both his fiancee and her mother), Edgar (Edwy's brother), Edward the Martyr (Edgar's older son, allegedly murdered on the orders of his wicked stepmother), Ethelred the Unready (Edgar's son by Edward's aforementioned stepmother), Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark (whose reign overlapped that of Ethelred), Edmund Ironside (son of Ethelred; he may have claimed the throne during his father's lifetime, and I'm not absolutely certain that none of his full brothers [who predeceased him] did likewise), Canute of Denmark (son of Sweyn; his reign overlapped those of both Ethelred & Edmund), Harold 'Harefoot' (oldest [known] son of Canute, half-English), Harthacanute (= 'Canute II'; another son of Canute, a half-brother of Harold, his mother was a Norman), Edward the Confessor (a son of Ethelred, a younger half-brother to Edmund Ironside, half-Norman [with the same mother as Harthacanute]), Harold Godwinson (whose father was descended from one of Alfred the Great's older brothers, King Ethelred of Wessex, and whose mother was closely related to Sweyn & Canute), Edgar the Atheling (a grandson of Edmund Ironside, who was chosen as King by most of the surviving English leaders after Harold's death at the Battle of Hastings but quickly surrendered _with them _ to William the Bastard; one of his sisters was St Margaret of Scotland, the second wife of Malcolm Canmore, from whom most of the later Scottish kings _and most of the later English sovereigns, too _ were descended).
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Pre-"Conquest" England: Alfred the Great (really only King of Wessex, i.e. [by then] England south of the River Thames), Edward the Elder (his son, arguably ditto), Athelstan (Edward's son, usually listed as the first 'King of England'), between one & three more descendants of Alfred whose details I can't remember (although I'm fairly sure that they included an 'Edmund'), Edwy (of Alfred's line; this, IIRC, is the king who almost misssed his own coronation because he was in bed with both his fiancee and her mother), Edgar (Edwy's brother), Edward the Martyr (Edgar's older son, allegedly murdered on the orders of his wicked stepmother), Ethelred the Unready (Edgar's son by Edward's aforementioned stepmother), Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark (whose reign overlapped that of Ethelred), Edmund Ironside (son of Ethelred; he may have claimed the throne during his father's lifetime, and I'm not absolutely certain that none of his full brothers [who predeceased him] did likewise), Canute of Denmark (son of Sweyn; his reign overlapped those of both Ethelred & Edmund), Harold 'Harefoot' (oldest [known] son of Canute, half-English), Harthacanute (= 'Canute II'; another son of Canute, a half-brother of Harold, his mother was a Norman), Edward the Confessor (a son of Ethelred, a younger half-brother to Edmund Ironside, half-Norman [with the same mother as Harthacanute]), Harold Godwinson (whose father was descended from one of Alfred the Great's older brothers, King Ethelred of Wessex, and whose mother was closely related to Sweyn & Canute), Edgar the Atheling (a grandson of Edmund Ironside, who was chosen as King by most of the surviving English leaders after Harold's death at the Battle of Hastings but quickly surrendered _with them _ to William the Bastard; one of his sisters was St Margaret of Scotland, the second wife of Malcolm Canmore, from whom most of the later Scottish kings _and most of the later English sovereigns, too _ were descended).
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Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: splat21 (---.in-addr.btopenworld.com)
Date: July 16, 2003 06:40PM
and he's the reason we don't speak Lallans any more... (or rather she is!)
My god, it's positively Appalachian in its ramifications! Much cosier than Scots royalty though (less bloodshed, more enthusiastic um Danish discussions...mind you, it's warmer down South!)
_ _ _ _ _
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
My god, it's positively Appalachian in its ramifications! Much cosier than Scots royalty though (less bloodshed, more enthusiastic um Danish discussions...mind you, it's warmer down South!)
_ _ _ _ _
If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Simon (193.82.99.---)
Date: July 17, 2003 02:20PM
And the Danish royal family of that time was also descended from Alfred the Great (I don't have the details handy, but IIRC Sweyn Forkbeard's paternal grandmother had been a daughter of King Athelstan), as was William the Bastard's (Flemish) wife Matilda (through Edward the Elder's daughter Judith, who married a Count of Flanders), which means that William I was our only King since Alfred not to be one of Alfred's descendants.
I think that there was less intercine conflict in Englabnd then than there was in Scotland during those centuries because the prestige that Alfred & his immediate heirs won by their victories over the invaders, coupled with the centralised administrative system which they introduced, generally prevented the development of effective power-bases by potential rivals to the main line of kings (at least until Canute split the country up into a few large Earldoms and his successors' weaknesses let their contemporary Earls _ such as King Harold II's father Godwin _ become almost as powerful as the Kings). The extinction at Viking hands of several dynasties that had previously held power in various regions, and [probably] of several rival branches of the Atheling/Cerding dynasty of Wessex too, undoubtedly also helped to strengthen the position of Alfred's line.
There was some strife within the family, mind you, even excluding the various incidents that were directly associated with the Danish and Norman invasions... E.g. one of Alfred's nephews rebelled against Alfred's heirs and was actually accepted as King over part of the Danelaw for a few years; the murder of Edward the Martyr; the rebellion by Etherelred the Unready's first batch of sons (the ones borne by his [English] first wife) against his unjust & ineffective rule; the tragic fate of the Confessor's [full] brother Alfred...
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Post Edited (07-22-03 15:29)
I think that there was less intercine conflict in Englabnd then than there was in Scotland during those centuries because the prestige that Alfred & his immediate heirs won by their victories over the invaders, coupled with the centralised administrative system which they introduced, generally prevented the development of effective power-bases by potential rivals to the main line of kings (at least until Canute split the country up into a few large Earldoms and his successors' weaknesses let their contemporary Earls _ such as King Harold II's father Godwin _ become almost as powerful as the Kings). The extinction at Viking hands of several dynasties that had previously held power in various regions, and [probably] of several rival branches of the Atheling/Cerding dynasty of Wessex too, undoubtedly also helped to strengthen the position of Alfred's line.
There was some strife within the family, mind you, even excluding the various incidents that were directly associated with the Danish and Norman invasions... E.g. one of Alfred's nephews rebelled against Alfred's heirs and was actually accepted as King over part of the Danelaw for a few years; the murder of Edward the Martyr; the rebellion by Etherelred the Unready's first batch of sons (the ones borne by his [English] first wife) against his unjust & ineffective rule; the tragic fate of the Confessor's [full] brother Alfred...
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Warning! Product may contain Newts!
Post Edited (07-22-03 15:29)
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: jon (---.abel.net.uk)
Date: July 17, 2003 02:38PM
I've always thought that bit about the royal descent of Earl Godwin a bit of a fiction, myself, designed to cover up a dubious ancestry; Godwin was alleged by his enemies to have been nothing more than a pirate until he (mysteriously) won King Knut's favour. The exception that proves the rule in Simon's excellent precis is the earldom of Northumbria; the traditional ruling dynasty there survived to carry on ruling Bernicia (and sometimes all Northumbria) from Bamburgh, and they caused the various Kings of England no end of trouble until Billy the Bastard finally dispossessed them.
On the topic of Old English kings -
And now unto the company,
I this toast to you proffer;
The best servants that Old England had:
Emperor Hadrian, and King Offa!
- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty
On the topic of Old English kings -
And now unto the company,
I this toast to you proffer;
The best servants that Old England had:
Emperor Hadrian, and King Offa!
- - -
I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Simon (193.82.99.---)
Date: July 17, 2003 03:13PM
Godwin's father Wulfnoth had been a Thegn (a landed nobleman, although possibly of relatively modest status) but fell out with Ethelred the Unready and _ as that king tended to have nobles who displeased him killed _ took to piracy as a form of political protest. I've seen a family tree connecting them to Alfred the Great's brother, giving all of the names, and as they lived close enough to Alfred's reign for other people to know who was & wasn't related to him I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt about this.
Re the House of Bamburgh _ One of its later members married a daughter of Ethelred the Unready, and their daughter married a Scottish prince named Maldred who was the younger brother of Duncan and died in battle against MacBeth: His son Gospatric was Earl of (at least part of) Northumbria for a while under Norman rule until _as Jon said _ William kicked him out, and his descendants survived in Scotland as Earls of Dunbar (governing an area that had been part of Northumbria until about the 1030s AD, when Duncan's maternal grandfather Malcolm pushed his border south to the Tweed) for several centuries afterwards.
Earl Siward who led English forces to help Malcolm Canmore against MacBeth was a Dane (appointed by Canute as Earl of at least part of Northumbria although possibly only of the southern districts [now Yorkshire & part of Lancashire] in which Danish sttlement had already been heaviest) who had married into this dynasty; his younger son Waltheof, who was the last Anglo-Saxon to hold the rank of Earl in William the Bastard's reign and who had married one of William's nieces, had a granddaughter who married one of the Scottish kings (David I?) so that the House of Bamburgh is amongst the various earlier dynasties to which our present royal family can trace its descent.
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Post Edited (07-17-03 16:33)
Re the House of Bamburgh _ One of its later members married a daughter of Ethelred the Unready, and their daughter married a Scottish prince named Maldred who was the younger brother of Duncan and died in battle against MacBeth: His son Gospatric was Earl of (at least part of) Northumbria for a while under Norman rule until _as Jon said _ William kicked him out, and his descendants survived in Scotland as Earls of Dunbar (governing an area that had been part of Northumbria until about the 1030s AD, when Duncan's maternal grandfather Malcolm pushed his border south to the Tweed) for several centuries afterwards.
Earl Siward who led English forces to help Malcolm Canmore against MacBeth was a Dane (appointed by Canute as Earl of at least part of Northumbria although possibly only of the southern districts [now Yorkshire & part of Lancashire] in which Danish sttlement had already been heaviest) who had married into this dynasty; his younger son Waltheof, who was the last Anglo-Saxon to hold the rank of Earl in William the Bastard's reign and who had married one of William's nieces, had a granddaughter who married one of the Scottish kings (David I?) so that the House of Bamburgh is amongst the various earlier dynasties to which our present royal family can trace its descent.
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Post Edited (07-17-03 16:33)
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Guy (---.in-addr.btopenworld.com)
Date: July 17, 2003 03:18PM
" . . . Duncan's grandfather maternal Malcolm . . . "
That conjures up quite an image. And there we were thinking that men showing their feminine side was a recent phenomenonomenomenon.
Jesus saves; Buddha does incremental backup.
That conjures up quite an image. And there we were thinking that men showing their feminine side was a recent phenomenonomenomenon.
Jesus saves; Buddha does incremental backup.
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Simon (193.82.99.---)
Date: July 17, 2003 03:35PM
Thanks for pointing that out: It was due to my having deleted less than I'd intended of a section from the initial version of the comment, and I've now corrected it.
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Warning! Product may contain Newts!
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Simon (193.82.99.---)
Date: July 22, 2003 12:59PM
A friend (Mike Wright, from the ex-UCL roleplaying group that I've already mentioned in at least one other thread...) tells me that Neil Gaiman has written an "autobigraphy" of Cthulhu, which is available online at www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/essay07.asp : I haven't been able to look at it yet myself (owing to limited computer access at the moment, and the fact that accessing specific web-addresses _ rather than searching for information on topics and then going to pages that are suggested by the search-engine _ is rather difficult on computers here at the library), have any of YOU already read it?
I recommended Jasper's books to all of that group's members, several weeks ago, by the way, and in the same message in which Mike W told me about this article he said that he'd since read through to the end of LIAGB and was now looking for WOLP: Another convert!
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Post Edited (07-22-03 15:35)
I recommended Jasper's books to all of that group's members, several weeks ago, by the way, and in the same message in which Mike W told me about this article he said that he'd since read through to the end of LIAGB and was now looking for WOLP: Another convert!
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Warning! Product may contain Newts!
Post Edited (07-22-03 15:35)
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: splat21 (195.217.253.---)
Date: July 22, 2003 01:50PM
Yep - it's great fun (and the afterword's funny too). Yours is spookier. Shall I email it to you? (Might get round the copyright thing if it's just for your personal entertainment & save Jasper's inbox...)
Post Edited (07-22-03 14:58)
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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
Post Edited (07-22-03 14:58)
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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: Simon (193.82.99.---)
Date: July 22, 2003 02:33PM
Thanks for the offer (and the compliment :-), but I should be able to access it through a computer at my workplace (which I'd already planned to visit at some point this week, anyway, to collect a book that I'd left in my locker at the start of the holidays) so you needn't bother emailing it to me.
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Warning! Product may contain Newts!
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Warning! Product may contain Newts!
Re: Winnie the pooh, and Cthulhu too!
Posted by: splat21 (195.217.253.---)
Date: July 22, 2003 02:59PM
ok :)
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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.
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