Ehsan Knopf is an Australian filmmaker who was diagnosed late with Asperger's, who also made a short film about discovering Robert E. Howard. I think he must be a decade or so younger than me, and is definitely younger than some of you; this is suggested by the age of his childhood favorite TV show (1992), and also by the fact that he thinks that Game of Thrones is the thing that proves that the Fantasy genre can handle deeper themes and more complex characters than it always does.
It's interesting to see how the next generation encounters something like Howard and Conan. You may also learn some things about Robert Howard, and about L. Sprague de Camp's stewardship (or plundering, as some think) of Howard's legacy.
Of course I will also take the opportunity to remind everyone of our comrade Joel Leggett's piece on Conan as an American mythology (somewhat mis-headlined by the publisher, as sometimes happens, but it's the focus of that particular journal).
Get Conan, Fafhrd, the Mouser and a few buxom Shield Maidens together and a guy could take over Seattle. Or at least Vashon Island. Build the boats! Put the shields on the gunnel! (can one actually have a gunnel before guns?) Time to come roaring out of the North!
ReplyDeleteOK, I will put my beer down now....it must be the sea, my ancestors spent a lot of time in the Great Banks, and the Southern Oceans for cod and whales. Looking across a wild ocean, seeing the Fairweather Range standing up white and cold, timing the gaff hook from crest to trough and fishing the last minute before running to a shelter of ill repute-
Lituya Bay-a place of great beauty, historical importance and a six hour opening- then the gate is closed with the tide, as standing breakers rise in a line out to sea. LaPerouse lost 21 men there, swept to sea through the surf, rowing madly against a 12 knot tide. Two hundred years later, the great wave, 1500 feet high, pushed through the bay, as half a mountain slipped into the upper reaches. The driftwood wreckage lies there yet, set back at the edge of the new growth like a paling of woe.
So I looked up the etymology and it does appear that "gunwale" does first occur in the 15th century, as a consequence of the guns. It was originally a reinforcement to existing designs to handle the artillery.
ReplyDeleteHowever, "wale" by itself is attested to the 13th century.