More progress to report

[pegkerr]

Last night, I investigated "Herne the Hunter" on the Internet--if you'll remember, I ran across the name on that backgammon table at the Ren Fest, which listed Jack Spring, Jack Frost, John Barleycorn and Herne the Hunter. I found enough to decide that he's an entity who is closely identified with the British Isles, and so don't think I'll pursue that thread any further (although I will say that Charles DeLint did a pretty interesting job bringing the legend of the Green Man to Ottawa, Canada in Forests of the Heart).

I called the Minnesota Historical Society today to inquire if they knew of any novels written about either the Winter Carnival or Ice Palaces. Besides the murder mystery I already knew about, there was apparently just one other. No fantasy. Good. Then I threw another question, just as an afterthought, and hit pay dirt. "Were there any non-fiction books about the Winter Carnival?" Yes, one was just released by a local community's historical society just a few years ago: Icy Pleasures: Minnesota Celebrates Winter, and I've already located a copy and ordered it off the Internet at about one third cost (isn't that a great title, Icy Pleasures? I'd like to find a way to work the idea of an "icy pleasure" in somehow). I might try to contact the author at some point, if I need some historical help on the subject.

Anyway, so . . . I think I've identified and ordered some really key research books at this point. Now I have to wait for them to arrive and start reading them, so I can continue to "supersaturate" my idea-generation solution. When I interviewed Tim Powers about the process of writing a fantasy/alternate history novel, he explained that what he does is to read history, always asking himself, now what is the real reason, the magical explanation, for why these people did these inexplicable things? What I'm going to be doing is looking for patterns. How far apart in time were the ice palaces constructed? Can I think of a magical explanation of why those intervals of time might have been chosen? Can I tie the building of the ice palaces to any other patterns or events, i.e., historical happenings in the Twin Cities or Minnesota? Weather? The 17-year cicada cycle? The founding of the Heart of the Beast puppet theater? Anything?

I thought about lacuna of summer magic during winter and vice versa, what would those be? An ice rink during summer, I thought, and perhaps the Como Park Conservatory during winter (the Conservatory skates perilously close to Emma Bull's gravitational pull; she used it in War for the Oaks. Must be careful about that if I use it, too.)

Peg

Comments

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Jack Spring, Jack Frost, John Barleycorn and Herne the Hunter

Interesting. Did they mean to connote the four seasons?

Herne/Cernunnos... yeah, that'd be British stuff, yah. You wanted Russian, was it? Or Russian-to-Minnesotan? Or...?

We might need to talk about ice-runes. Let me know if you're interested.

Is it general winter magicky stuff you're looking at, just now? Things like the sign Capricorn and the Winter Solstice, the stubborn melancholy goat? (And randy, let's not forget the ever-springing randiness of Capricorn....) Hmm. "Denotes barns, hot-houses, storage rooms, barren fields, tombs, mausoleums etc." says the book in my lap.

Let's see... winter, ice caves, the blue of long-compacted old ice (years old), crystals of ice and quartz, winter flowers like the hellebore, the Christmas rose.... Holly, the Holly King.... Snowy owls.

Hey, you gonna put the nissen in there anywhere? (I've got a fondness for them guys, I do. Grew up with 'em. They wind up in a lot of stories I play with.)

Hmm. Juniper as not only a winter holiday decoration, but as a protection against thieves (in Germany, it says here), and the berries worn by mourners at funerals. And, it says, "a frequent ingredient in love potions and other magical compounds for both vengeance and attack." Vervain and Winter Sabbat incense? Hm. Never heard of it.

Perhaps you ought to come over and play in the books sometime soon. I do believe I have something around here about a Frost King. It sounds very familiar, at least. And I've got a great lovely pile of Minnesota-and-surrounding-areas history books... plus some good historical gossip books as well.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Jack Spring, Jack Frost, John Barleycorn and Herne the Hunter.
Interesting. Did they mean to connote the four seasons?

Yes, they are. Fascinating, eh? (I wrote about finding the table in my entry about going to the Ren Fest.)

Herne/Cernunnos... yeah, that'd be British stuff, yah. You wanted Russian, was it? Or Russian-to-Minnesotan? Or...?

Yes, Russian, but I was thinking that, after all, the border between Russian and Finland has wandered quite a bit over the years AND that Minnesota had quite an influx of Finns. Mostly in the north, though, right? (I remember that the Finns were very active in the mine strikes of the 20s.)

We might need to talk about ice-runes. . . Perhaps you ought to come over and play in the books sometime soon.

Yes, I'd love that! Might you be free tonight? (Friday night, ya know). I'm eager to see what you're creating for World Fantasy. And I need you to take a look at the clasp of my charm necklace, which is falling apart. Let me know. Thanks.

Cheers,
Peg

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Well, I have a Friday night meeting I usually attend. Is this the bestest time for you, though? Because I could really use a session of playing in the books. (And I can take a good look at that clasp, too -- plus we could run to the bead store if there's a piece I don't have that's needed.)

Wanna come over?

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Oh, and does the Armistice Day Blizzard do anything for you? November 11, 1940, sudden cold snap; the day started out warm and people were in shirtsleeves, but by the end of the day there was 27 inches of snow and a whole bunch of people froze to death. Heck of a storm. (It was the one that people talked about when they said the "Snow on the Pumpkin" storm a few years back was bad, but not *that* bad.)

Seemed like it might be a Frost King kind of deal, but I dunno.

I was looking . . .

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

at a book on the Armistice Blizzard just yesterday (All Hell Broke Loose), hoping. Actually, it's a near miss. There was an ice castle built in 1938. If it had been built in 1939, the Armistice Blizzard would have been much more useful, because I could have claimed "an Ice Palace is built, causing a huge build up of Winter Magic, which results the following fall in the Armistice Day Blizzard." However, there is a year inconveniently in the way. Rats.

Re: I was looking . . .

[elisem.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe they were doing something in 1939 that was preventing (averting, or possibly displacing) the Winter Magic payback. What if they couldn't avert it for more than a year, or if the staving-off was something they couldn't manage to do in 1939? (War in various places, and all that -- wasn't that why they didn't do an Ice Palace in 39? I seem to recall that they curtailed all sorts of festivities, whether St. Paul Winter Carnival or others, thenabouts.)

Do the Vulcans come into this? Lively folk, the Vulcans. Or do you not need a gang of charcoal-covered face-smudging lusty boingy boyos?

There's probably some stuff on King Boreas and the whole Winter Carnival manufactured mythos, but you've probably seen it already, right? They were much more for pageantry and storytelling in the old days, and liked to do the whole courtly thang around the Winter Carnival much more so than now.

[bookofnights.livejournal.com]

Random thoughts, barely related...

My son is named for Herne the Hunter. Yes, definitely a British Isles deity. (There's a statue of him in Windsor Park.)

I'd heard the seasons related to (among other things) the four Jacks. Jack o' the Green, John Barleycorn, Jack o' Lantern, and Jack Frost. Cheating a bit, but it's a cool way to twist new threads together. (Besides, stricly speaking Herne is a Summer through Winter deity, especially in his Winter aspect as "Lord of the Hunt" which hunts across the winter night skies.)

And just to toss in... what about the "Year Without a Summer". There seem to be several, in which summer just never came.