From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V5 #29 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Tuesday, February 11 2003 Volume 05 : Number 029 Today's Subjects: ----------------- o/styrbiorn ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/nypost on faith ["Donald G. Keller" ] b/amber benson writing webcast [meredith ] Re: b/psych! ["Berni Phillips" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 09:21:19 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/styrbiorn Another little tidbit I've been meaning to post, though it'll take (as little as possible) explanation. My reading recently has taken the following string of references: =Lord of the Rings= (film) --> Tolkien --> Tolkien on =Beowulf= --> other =Beowulf= criticism --> other Northern literature/myth ...which explains how I came to be poking through a box of books to see which Norse sagas I had. Turned out to be =Njal's Saga=--two different versions--and =Egil's Saga=. (I thought I had more.) Flipping through the introductory material, I discovered a fact I'd forgotten, that =Egil's Saga= had previously been translated into English by E.R. Eddison, the fantasy writer (author of =The Worm Ouroboros=, etc.); did I have a copy of that? So I went digging in =another= box, and discoverd, no, I didn't; but I did have a copy of his rare 1926 novel =Styrbiorn the Strong=, which (like H. Rider Haggard's =Eric Brighteyes=) was an attempt to emulate the Norse sagas. Given that Eddison had translated a saga, and that it was clear from his epigraphs that he was dealing with characters who were mentioned in other sagas, it's reasonable to assume that the names he uses were ones that were preserved in historical (or semihistorical) records; which is prelude to my interest in the following passage which occurs on the first page of the narrative: "King Olaf Biornson had to wife Ingibiorg, daughter of Earl Thrand of Sula. Their children were Thora and Thurid and Asdis and Aud. Ungainly it seemed to King Olaf that he should get none but girl-children." (I'm charmed by that unusual usage of "ungainly." And yes, that's a fair sample of the book's style: I read the whole thing and enjoyed it.) Now, three of those four daughters' names are particularly interesting. I don't need to comment much on Aud, except to say that it =is= a name that was in use in that era, and somebody must have done =some= research. (Note the presence of Olaf as well, though that's a more common name.) If you read magazine articles about Thora Birch, who was so good in =American Beauty= and =Ghost World=, you will see it mentioned that her parents gave her that name as the feminine of Thor (god of thunder). (And remember that SMG's dog is named Thor.) Silly me, I took that as a caprice of her parents, but clearly the feminine form existed as well. (And a most likely name for a father to name a daughter he was hoping would be a son.) =Most= interesting is Thurid, which I'm pretty sure is a variant of Thrud. (Old English for "through" is "thurh," and "thorough" was an acceptable variant of "through" almost into modern English.) Thrud (which means "strength"--good name for a Slayer) is seldom mentioned in Norse mythology, but was the daughter of Thor. (Thus a very likely name for a second daughter after Thora.) Some sources aver that Thrud was one of the Valkyries. But that's not all. The Old English form of Thrud would be Thryth; and thereby hangs a further tale. Among the =Beowulf= scholars I've been reading is Tom Shippey, author of two books on Tolkien (I highly recommend the more recent, =Author of the Century=; the earlier, =Road to Middle-Earth=, has been hard to come by for years); his little book, simply titled =Beowulf=, I found at the library is a very thought-provoking study. After that I went web-searching, and found an essay: www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/5/Shippey1.html entitled "Wicked Queens and Cousin Strategies in Beowulf and Elsewhere." It deals with what Shippy calls the "Modthrytho Episode" in =Beowulf=, which is a jarringly-introduced digression about (in Shippey's words) "a queen who first behaved cruelly and irrationally, having men executed for no reason, but then after her marriage to Offa the legendary Anglian hero became a model wife and mother." Sounds =Taming of the Shrew=like (or Faithlike, even). Anyway, there's great scholarly confusion over this: is her name Modthrytho, or Thryth, or is her name even mentioned (the words "mod thryth o" could simply mean "arrogant")? Is there a line, or a longer passage missing? We'll never know. Anyway..."Thryth" is a fairly common element of Old English feminine names (Cynethryth was a queen), which survives in such names as Ger-trude. (Hm. So it would have been even better, etymologically, to call her "Trudy the Vampire Slayer.") Just to bring this purely philological fantasia to a screeching halt: in Saxo Grammaticus, the Danish historian (the first writer we have who related the Hamlet story), the name "Thryth" occurs as "Drida." Which--though it's doubtless false etymology in this case--is very close to "Deirdre." And "Deirdre" in Irish means troublemaker, and Thryth in =Beowulf= is a troublemaker, and Faith in =Buffy= is a troublemaker...funny that we named our daughter Deirdre Faith, eh? ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 18:29:51 -0500 (EST) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/nypost on faith [Small news item in today's (2/10) =New York Post=:] [headline] Is Slayer Faith the next Buffy? Producers of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are close to creating a spinoff starring the renegade Slayer Faith. Fan Web sites have been abuzz in recent days with reports that Eliza Dushku, who plays Faith, had signed to star in a spinoff. Then, over the weekend, Christopher Buchanan, president of Mutant Enemy, the production company behind "Buffy," told SCI FI Wire, the web site for the SCI FI channel, that the Faith spin-off is was a real possibility. Though "Buffy" star Sarah Michelle Gellar has made no official announcements yet, it's expected that she will leave the series after her contract expires at the end of the current seventh season. Speculation has swirled around what UPN will keep the series going without Gellar or seek a spinoff. "We're kind of sitting on our hands until UPN and Fox [which produces the series] figure out what they want to do," Buchanan says. Faith, a moody loner who seemed too enthusiastic about killing demons, made her first appearance in the show's third season. Once Buffy's friend, she was lured over to the dark side for one of the most-famous "Buffy" episodes of all time, Sunnydale High's graduation-day conflagration. [DGK here. Practicing truth in journalism, I have carefully reproduced all the errors in the text. Find them all! I'll only point out that whoever wrote this doesn't know the series very well, apparently knowing about "Graduation Day" only because of the controversy concerning its postponement. All in all, this only slightly more confirms what we've heard already. Sitting on my hands as well...] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 19:26:45 -0500 From: meredith Subject: b/amber benson writing webcast Hi, I'm not entirely clear on what this is -- I think it's an animated miniseries that will be webcast under the auspices of the BBC. It's written by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden, and will premiere at the end of March. http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/cult/2003/02/03/1841.shtml =============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth =============================================== Live At The House O'Muzak House Concert Series http://muzak.smoe.org NEXT UP: Dorothy Scott, 3/16/03 =============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 17:13:45 -0800 From: "Berni Phillips" Subject: Re: b/psych! From: "Donald G. Keller" > Remember the first scene of Act I of "Help" (or "Buffy the Guidance > Counselor," as UPN would have it) where Buffy sees her first batch of > students, and we keep crosscutting between three or four of them? > > Test yourself: do =you= remember who the first one we see come talk to her > was? > Amanda! Actually, I did remember her. I found the actress quite distinctive between her voice and her height, and I thought she was funny. Her response was so what you weren't expecting that I enjoyed it. When she came back as the Potential, I commented on that to David and made a mental note praising the series for continuity. On the other hand, I have started re-watching this season and I am disappointed that they seem to have forgotten Kit and what's-his-name from the season opener. I thought they were going to be major friends for Dawn. Berni ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V5 #29 ****************************