Why hello, my lovelies. This is a rather special installment in The Constellations.
(And you should, of course, read it here.)
You see, this is the one-year anniversary of this project. I had, of course, hoped to have more than eleven installments completed by now, but, since there are eighty-eight constellations precisely, at least we know how much longer this is going to take.
Damn. If I’m still working on The Constellations in 2027, that’ll be a riot, huh?
You’ll notice, I’m sure, that the word count climbed not only over the wall at the limits of the The Constellations, but then proceeded to running screaming through the fields and probably into the nearest ocean.
Well, you know how I feel about rules, pets- fire, meet gasoline.
I excuse the story being so long as a celebration of the one-year anniversary of the project. One should overindulge when one celebrates.
The constellation
If I could only have one thing to say about the constellation Camelopardalis:
*YAWN*.
Of course, my lovelies, it’s my blog, and I get to say more than one thing.
This constellation is The Giraffe. It occupies at strip of the sky so uninteresting that the ancient Greeks didn’t bother putting a constellation there, but the Dutch are a thorough sort, and Petrus Plancius invented Camelopardalis in 1612.
Look between Ursa Major and Cassiopeia. Don’t see anything? Perfect, you’ve found Camelopardalis.
Speaking of which, that’s rather a mouthful, wouldn’t you say? The ancient Greeks had no word for giraffes ( giraffe is derived from Arabic, fyi), so they just called them camel-leopards, i.e., camelopardalis, since they had a leopard’s spots and the rest of them was vaguely camel-like.
Laziness.
Giraffes were occasionally captured and shown off in ancient Rome or elsewhere in long-ago Europe, where they created quite a stir.
Somehow, out of all of that, I decided to have monsters called Camel Leopards invade a forest.
They’re giraffes, really, except that they eat dryads, which is mean. Dryads are such sweethearts.
Of elves and dryads and dragons and giraffes
Many of these characters have been rattling about in my head for quite a number of months, blissfully free of any unifying theme or plot. All that changed when the latest constellation came into my consciousness.
I don’t much care for giraffes. I’ve nothing personally against them, mind you, but I don’t find them particularly compelling.
They made obvious bad guys.
Since they eat trees, their victims were also fairly obvious. Murderous elves, and trees transforming into humans, and weredragons with stealth aircraft technology in their scales, have all been floating aimlessly about my brain… I am quite pleased they all came together in such a delightfully oddball way.
I guess there’s really no worry about how likely it is giraffes would migrate into an old growth forest, or the odd collection of trees I threw together, considering I’ve already got dryads and cannibal elves and weredragons with stealth aircraft technology running around.
Yes, after the Elvenking sued the Cannibal Elf’s backside for trademark infringement over his use of the title “the Erlkönig,” the Cannibal Elf was, briefly, the Elf Formerly Known as the Erlkönig. I expect you never thought I could work both a Goethe and a Prince reference into one lawsuit spoof, did you?
A Cannibal Elf screams for a reference to the legend of the Erlking, the bad guy elf who hangs about in woods kidnapping children, especially as it took shape in the Romantic period for the Germans. Interestingly enough, the German “erlkönig” can be translated either as “erlking” or “alder-king,” which ties in nicely with how the dryads look up to the Cannibal Elf as something of a savior, if not precisely a king.
I am particularly fond of Schubert’s setting of Goethe’s “The Erlkönig” poem, inasmuch as I am fond of any German lied. Read the poem and a lovely translation here, and here is a recording of the Schubert.