The Legend of Broken (111 page)

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“… 
alps
 …”
Here is an ancient Germanic variation on a supernatural character that appears in almost every culture’s mythology since the beginnings of civilization, and that, in the West, is usually known by some variation on the Latin term
incubus.
The word
alp
itself is thought to be a German variation of “elf,” and indeed, the first legends concerning the
alps
told of creatures carrying out such mischief as was usually attributed, in Anglo-Saxon-Celtic mythology, to various kinds of elves, although very powerful and sinister kinds of elves. The emphasis here on a sexual component, on lying with human women and producing half-breed offspring, is where the
alp
myth swings back to the incubus model: one of the most famous half-human, half-spirit creatures in Western mythology, for instance, was and remains Merlin, the Arthurian sorcerer, who was said to have been fathered by an
incubus
. As for the
alp
and
incubus
myths themselves, their origins are obscure; but they are generally said to have been concocted to provide explanations for everything from “mystery” pregnancies (often the results of illicit sex, incest, or rape) to sleep apnea and night terrors.

A female form of the
alp,
the
mareh
(or
mara,
or
mare,
in other dialects), also existed; it is considered by some one root part of the word “nightmare.” —C.C.

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“‘marehs’”
See note for p. 000, above. —C.C.

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“The Great Imitator”
Caliphestros is employing terminology and classifications of illness that were well in advance of their use in the rest of Europe, likely due to his extensive travels: syphilis was indeed called “the Great Imitator” in many parts of the world, and for the reasons he cites. The great dangers associated with pursuing scientific investigation during his era in Europe would cost other scientific visionaries harsh treatment at the hands of the Catholic Church: small wonder so many advanced thinkers in these fields would either seclude themselves in monasteries and remote cities such as Broken, or would pursue the hermetic life in the wilderness. —C.C.

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the
mang-bana
See note for p. 000 —C.C.

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the
Rhein
The correct and ancient (as well as modern) Germanic spelling of “the Rhine,” the most famous river, along with the Danube, in Germany, not least because they made up the two borders, eastern and northern, across which Julius Caesar advised Rome never to try to send military forces: the great conqueror considered the land and the peoples too primitive to be worth any such ventures. (And, indeed, nearly all Roman emperors who disobeyed Caesar’s warning paid dearly, starting with the very first of them, Julius’s nephew and adopted son, Octavian, called Augustus when he took power.) This spelling of
Rhein
would have been so well known to scholars in the late eighteenth century that Gibbon thinks it unworthy of comment, for various dialects of German, and certainly the modern form, were languages almost as important as Latin for those who studied the history of ancient Europe. —C.C.

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heigenkeit
Gibbon writes, “Here we again come upon a particularly striking example, not only of the linguistic inventiveness and adaptability of the Broken dialect, but of its rapid development and refinement from generation to generation, as well as of the attention paid by the rulers and responsible subjects of the unique kingdom to some of what were then the most advanced scientific and social concepts, especially in northern Europe. The closeness of the first portion of the word to our own ‘hygiene,’ which is based, as
heigenkeit
almost certainly was, on the name of the Greek, and later Roman, goddess of health, cleanliness, and sanitation,
Hygieia
[or, variously,
Hygeia
] demonstrates that Oxmontrot was deeply impressed by the attention Roman city planners paid to such matters, and was determined that his mountaintop city would embody the most advanced techniques and practices that he witnessed in the ‘empire of the
Lumun-jani
.’ But there is an additional detail, in the development of Hygieia’s myth, that may supply the clue to why ‘the Mad King’s’ reaction to what she stood for seems to have gone beyond the responsibility of a ruler, and to have been almost personal: in the later eras of her worship, Hygieia also became the Roman goddess of the Moon. It is not beyond question, in other words, that Roman principles of public and private hygiene were interpreted by Oxmontrot (a Moon worshipper by birth and choice) as not simply a wise but a sacred policy, in Roman paganism, certainly, but more importantly (as Roman paganism was dying, by the time he became an auxiliary in their armies), in his own Moon faith. One of the many tragedies that resulted from the eventual domination of Broken by the cult of Kafra, is that this intimate connection between public hygiene and religion was lost, with, as we shall see, cataclysmic results.”

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obsese
Gibbon writes, “Of this term the only immediately recognizable variation is, of course,
obsessio,
being an actual Latin term for a ‘siege.’ The adaptation of that term, however, to the meaning implied here—that is, the connection to a person who suffers from what the latest psychological writings of our own day would describe as (in words that reflect a Greek as well as a Latin etymology) an
hysterical mania
—is fascinating, and surely something we do not expect to find in a
barbarian
Germanic kingdom. And yet this is hardly the sole point at which we find discussions of either the primary (that is, the empirical) or the secondary (the theoretical) implications of such ideas, which have received a title for the collected activities they have inspired—
psychology
—some eight or nine hundred years
after
the period under consideration in this tale of Broken.” Gibbon does not indulge his frequent penchant for overstatement, here: like the earlier reference to Galen’s attempt to discover the medical meaning of dreams, this citation suggests a complexity of thought in Broken’s intellectual community—particularly before the death of the God-King Izairn—that was unique, and, obviously, far ahead of its time. —C.C.

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Plumpskeles
Gibbon writes, “This is, according to my translator, a man of broad experience, simply a more colorful word for ‘latrines.’” We can only suppose that Gibbon knew the effect that the apparently literal translation of the word would have on the somewhat staid Burke: for
Plumpskeles
is another transitional word between Old High and modern German, the latter possessing
Plumpsklos,
or, quite literally, “shitholes,” as in holes cut for toilets, which for some reason were/are apparently referred to in pairs; hence the plural used by Isadora, as we have seen four latrine holes in the yard behind Berthe’s house. —C.C.

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Kriksex
Gibbon writes, “Here is a name that must have been utterly idiosyncratic, even within the Broken dialect. Although it exhibits pieces and aspects of elements common to both various forms of German as well as Gothic, we can make no sense of it, given the present scholarship—a fact which I note only because it seems, somehow, fitting.” As, indeed, it does, given the character’s nature and role; and modern scholarship hasn’t helped us very much more, if at all more, than did that of Gibbon’s era. —C.C.

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Gerfrehd
The name of this sentek of the regular army evidently was judged unworthy of Gibbon’s time to explain, perhaps because it is one of those compound Germanic names that often seem oxymoronic: it is almost certainly the Broken dialectical version of
Gerfried,
often translated as “spear of peace.” But it becomes more comprehensible when we consider that its original meaning is probably more general, a “guardian of peace.” (And given our general ignorance of the Broken dialect, we may never know what this version means, precisely—but if it were “guardian of peace,” it would be a uniquely suitable name for a man whose role seems ultimately to have become the patrolling of what would prove the key section of the city walls.) —C.C.

P
ART
T
HREE

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“M. Rousseau”
Burke speaks of one of the most famous philosophers of the time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for whom he had little but contempt. Burke thought Rousseau’s theories on Romanticism and introspection to be nothing more than vanity and self-promotion, and his theories on society to be dangerously destabilizing. But Burke’s vindictiveness toward Rousseau, whom he never met, was extreme and admittedly
ad hominem,
much of the time, although, to be fair, Rousseau drew sharp attacks from far more liberal corners than Burke’s: the fledgling feminist movement, for instance, led by such pioneers as Mary Wollstonecraft, could not forgive Rousseau’s relegation of women to a completely domestic role in his description of the ideal society. —C.C.

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“… the time at which he composed the thing …”
Burke did not necessarily believe that the confusion over the time at which the narrator composed his tale, which Gibbon considered a literary device of some kind, was necessarily anything of the like: he was bothered by the fact that, while it
might
have been an important personage looking back, it might also have been one looking forward, not, as Gibbon says, with prophetic pretensions, but with the
gift
of prophecy—and he makes it clear that his candidate for who this latter person would most likely have been was Oxmontrot, whom Burke would have found (unlike, say, the soldiers of Broken) genuinely mad. All this accounts not only for Gibbon’s aforementioned “temporal ambiguity,” but for the sense of responsibility that the narrator feels early on: for the future rulers of the state were his descendants, and the city’s important ministers, such as Lord Baster-kin, their choices. —C.C.

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“… Competing Religions, … strict and sometimes Cruel Fathers, and … perverse hedonism”
Burke strikes with intent, here, for these were three of the most tender subjects in Gibbon’s life, the first and second having to do with his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism and back again, the last due to his father’s threat to disinherit him. But formal, popular religion in general held no interest for him, and his attraction to “perverse hedonism” was caused in part by this fact, and in part by the solitary life inflicted on him by his
hydrocele testis,
or badly enlarged testicle, which became so embarrassing that he endured three cruelly ineffective surgeries to try to correct it, eventually being killed by the last surgeon’s infecting him with peritonitis: it is not difficult to see, in all of this (just as Burke says) the origins of Gibbon’s reasons for being so compulsively attracted to the “legend” of Broken.

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“… squirrels and tree kittens …”
The word “squirrel” descends from the Greek and Roman through an identifiable sequence of Romance languages, as well as through early Germanic and Norse terms, and was likely used as a familiar and convenient term by the Manuscript’s translator, the modern German term being
Eichkätzche,
or “tree kitten” (really “oak kitten,” so named because of the well-known proclivity of squirrels for acorns). The remaining question becomes why did the translator use the phrase “squirrels
and
tree kittens” [my emphasis]? Was there a distinction that the Bane drew, perhaps between two different species of squirrel? Or did another creature exist at the time, one that has since disappeared, a loss far more tragic than that of a dead word? Such are the types of questions raised by the disappearance of words and languages: questions that can, unfortunately, never be answered. —C.C.

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“… tufts of feathers …”
It is one of the enduring mysteries of zoology that we still do not know why some species of owl have this feature. It seems definite that it is a defensive ruse of some kind, as the tufts become heightened and more pronounced at moments of challenge and danger; but whether they are intended to make the owl appear more “mammalian” to other predators, or whether they are intended as camouflage, designed to allow the owl to blend into tree trunks and limbs more effectively, is an ongoing debate. —C.C.