The runes on Maerad of Pellinor's lyre, and the stanzas and values pertaining to them:
A I am the dew on every hill
O I am the leap in every womb
U I am the fruit of every bough
I I am the edge of every knife
E I am the hinge of every question
F I am the falling tears of the sun
S I am the eagle rising to a knife
H I am all directions over the face of the waters
D I am the flowering oak that transforms the earth
T I am the bright arrow of vengeance
Vowels/Moon signs
A Arda New Moon Silver Fir
0 Onn Waxing Moon Furze
U Ura Full Moon Apple
I Iadh Waning Moon Poplar
E Eadha Dark Moon Yew
Consonants/Seasonal signs
F Forn Middle Spring Alder
S Sal Late Spring Willow
H Hrar Early Summer Whitethorn
D Dir Midsummer's Day Oak
T Tren Middle Summer Holly
Some conjectural interpretations of the rune designs:
SPRING is indicated by a rising-sun motif, perhaps representing growth or the coming of light.
F shows a rising arrow shape, which may, in a stylized fashion, represent rays of light.
S appears as an eagle rising.
SUMMER is indicated by a circle, representing the sun.
H shows, essentially, a compass rose, indicating "all directions."
D represents midsummer, indicated by the circle within a circle. The curving line is less clear, but could refer to an oak leaf or, more abstractly, could imply growth and transformation.
T represents both the pointed holly leaf, and the "arrow of vengeance."
VOWELS are represented by signs that refer to phases of the moon.
A represents the new moon by virtue of a dot on a vertical line. An arch shape could indicate a hill.
0 again utilizes a crescent, this time suggesting a waxing
moon. The upward arching T form could indicate leaping
(compare the form of S, an eagle rising) or may represent the
womb.
U represents the full moon. Note that the circle is fully enclosed within a leaf shape, which differentiates it from the summer symbols where the circle binds the other elements. The surrounding shape could be a generalized fruit symbol.
I shows a familiar crescent shape referring to the waning
moon. The horizontal line supported by two uprights probably
represents a knife.
E represents the dark moon; a circle within a circle possibly indicates a lunar eclipse. The rest of the sign is unclear, but may represent uncertainty.
NOTES FOR THE APPENDICES
Jacqueline Allison's monumental and pioneering study of the history of Edil-Amarandh, The Annaren Scripts: History Rewritten (Mexico: Queretaro University Press, 1998) remains the standard reference, and I have drawn from it considerably in these notes.
In the context of Annaren naming, Maerad's Truename would have been considered nonsensically grandiose. Annaren naming systems generally based themselves on place names (e.g., Dringold of Fort) or occupations (Dirrik Dhurinam translates literally from the Annaren as Handfast Horsebreeder). Surnames as we understand them were unknown. In the Seven Kingdoms, the most common were systems of patronymics or matronymics ("son of" or "daughter of"), although there were no hard or fast rules. Bardic usenames were much more formalized: Bards were always named after the School in which they were instated or (in the case of the First Bards) the School over which they presided. Bards' Truenames were kept secret and so very few are extant in the records: what little we know suggests that they were generally one-word names, with no qualifiers. Maerad was unique in that, because of her particular triple identity, her Truename was generally known but it could not be used against her. {Naming Systems of Edil-Amarandh, unpublished monograph by Cyril Atlee, 2002).
Lanorgil of Pellinor (N307). Lanorgil was the first great historian of the Bards.
4.For much of the information about the Pilanel, I am indebted to Joan Corbett's essay "Pilanel Society" in Genealogies of Light: Power in Edil-Amarandh, ed. Alannah Casagrande (Chicago: Sorensen Academic Publishers, 2000) and also to Jacqueline Allison's The Annaren Scripts: History Rewritten, cited above.
See "Pilanel Society" by Joan Corbett, cited above.
Dhillarearen Rulers among the Pilanel, Anarkin of Lirigon (N345).
On the Howes of the Pilanel, Belgar of Gent (N17).
Book V: Naraudh Lar-Chane, Maerad of Pellinor and Cadvan of Lirigon, Library of Busk (N1012).
The only possible exception is in the Suderain, whose civilization predated the Restoration by several millennia. There, as Camilla Johnson has argued in her paper "Idols of Light: Aspects of Religious Worship in the Suderain of Edil-Amarandh," delivered at the inaugural Conference of Edil-Amarandh Studies at the University of Queretaro, Mexico, in November 2003, the Elidhu and the Light were often conflated as objects of worship or respect, and she has conclusively demonstrated that in Turbansk there was a Cult of the Light, with its own shrines and rituals and even gods. This tendency led, in the later years of the Restoration, to a certain distrust between the South and Annar.
10. Across Annar, the fealty to the Light and the Balance served as what we might recognize as an organized religion, and it is tempting, but I believe a little misleading, to see the Bards as the equivalent of priests, with the concept of the Light serving as a substitute for God. It was, more properly, a complex and evolving system of ethics, developed over millennia from the days of Afinil and preserved through the Great Silence, to be reinstated during the Restoration. To a contemporary eye, many of the Bards' most important documents seem unsettlingly modern. The idea of canonical texts received straight from the Godhead would have been treated with ridicule by Bards, who were pragmatically historical in many of their studies. Their belief in prophecy, for example, was not connected to a belief in a God who foresaw everything, but to a certain set of theories about time: Bards believed that linear time was illusory, that the present was coexistent with all other times, and Seers were those Bards able to pierce the veil of the present and perceive its multiple realities. See Knowing the Light: Comparative Studies in Annaran Spiritual Practice, ed. Charles A. James (Oxford: Cipher Press, 2001) and also The Ethics of Balance: Ecology and Morality in Annar by Jennifer Atkins (Chicago: Sorensen Academic Publishers, 2003). 11. Tulkan of Lirion, a Bard of Afinil, wrote one of the most popular lays, but it was only one of innumerable variants on this theme. Tulkan's is particularly attractive, as it is written in the complex metrical pattern known in Old Lironese as inel-fardhalen. It is notoriously difficult to translate, as Old Lironese had many more rhyming words than Annaren. Old Lironese was little used in Lirigon after the Restoration, as most people spoke Annaren, but Cadvan of Lirigon was a famous scholar and translator from this archaic tongue and made the most widely quoted translation. The song is worth quoting in full, for its insight into the nature of Ardina as much as its own virtues, and here is my own translation from the Annaren.
When Arkan deemed an endless cold
And greenwoods rotted bleak and sere,
The moon wept high above the world
To see its beauty dwindling:
To earth fell down a single tear
And there stepped forth a shining girl
Like moonlight that through alabaster
Wells, its pallor kindling.
Such beauty made all beauty dim
And homage called from voiceless stone:
Like whitest samite was her skin
Or seafoam softly glimmering:
A star that lit the night alone
She stepped the winter woods within,
A pearl a-glisten in the gloam,
A moonbeam fleetly shimmering.
Then wild amazement fastened on
The Moonchild's heart, and f
ar she ran,
Through all the vales of Lirion
Her voice like bellnotes echoing:
And from the branches blossom sprang
In iron groves of leafmeal wan,
And Spring herself woke up and sang,
The gentle Summer beckoning.
She passed into the mountain keeps
Where stormdogs guard the ravined walls,
A moonbeam piercing dismal deeps,
Down jagged ridges clambering:
Until she found a crystal fall,
A river frozen in its leap,
And in its depths a marble hall
Of lofty spires was trembling.
In wonderment she silent fell,
And stood before the wall of glass
Enraptured by the citadel,
Its endless, sparkling mullions:
Like lilies caught in sudden frost,
Which grow no more, but comely still,
Forlornly cast those towers of ice
Their cold and lifeless brilliance.
She knew not that the hours passed
Nor noticed that the darkness fell;
And as she looked, she thought at last
Her heart must break with heaviness:
She wept, though why she could not tell:
For love unborn, for beauty lost,
For all that lives and breathes and will
Grow cold and lose its loveliness.
And in the icy halls a king
Woke from his spellbound sleep and saw
A vision of the banished spring,
A form so fair and luminous
That from his frosted eyes the hoar
Ran down like tears and, marveling,
He felt the chains of winter thaw
And years of thraldom ruinous.
Ardina met his eyes, and through
Her moonlit veins a shudder ran
That kissed her skin with fiery dew,
Its marble pallor chastening:
A doom it seemed to see this man
In whose dark eyes such ardor grew,
A grief stored up through summer's span
From joy to winter hastening.
Between them stood the wall of ice
And round them barren winter waste,
But each saw in the other's face
The light of springtime lingering:
Like thunder broke the charmed frost,
And freed at last to bitter bliss
Immortal maid and man embraced,
Their light and shadow mingling.
So swore Ardina and Ardhor
That ever would the other cleave,
And heavy was the doom they bore
In war and clamor perilous;
Through grief and death they passed alive
To meet on the immortal shores
And still in starry glades their love
Shines ever strong and sorrowless.
Book II: Naraudh Lar-Chane, Maerad of Pellinor and Cadvan of Lirigon, Library of Busk (N1012).
The Elidhu in Afinil, the Bard Menellin, Library of Norloch (A1505).
The Enemies of the Light, Piron of Il-Arunedh, Library of Thorold (N562).
Fragment: Arkan of the North, Elagil of Afinil, Library of Thorold (N554).
The Symbolism of the Treesong Runes, Professor Patrick Insole, Department of Ancient Languages, University of Leeds. Unpublished monograph, 2003.
Alison Croggon, The Riddle
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