Hey friends, long time no write about the Name of the Wind, Kingkiller, etc. I’ve intended to do a Name of the Wind analysis reread (not to mention the other books) for some time now. —
You should assume spoilers henceforth! Forthwith! This post shall take a fortnight of hours to read!
Table of Contents
- You should assume spoilers henceforth! Forthwith! This post shall take a fortnight of hours to read!
- Note about me:
- Name of the Wind Analysis — Ch 19:
- Navigate to other chapters:
Note about me:
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Name of the Wind Analysis — Ch 19:
Turn your hymnal to the appropriate page and number. “Thoughtlessly” performing the actions that would keep me alive. Very specific word after Ben worried about thoughtlessness. This is the first place that indifference seems to show up in his character, in the plot, his staying in the woods in survival mode.
Fascinating again that rain keeps him from music.
He gives it his whole attention, this singing mastery. His songwriting.
He runs out of songs to play. And then:
I began to play something other than songs. When the sun warms the grass and the breeze cools you, it feels a certain way. I would play until I got the feeling right. I would play until it sounded like Warm Grass and Cool Breeze. I was only playing for myself, but I was a harsh audience. I remember spending nearly three whole days trying to capture Wind Turning a Leaf. By the end of the second month, I could play things nearly as easily as I saw and felt them: Sun Setting Behind the Clouds, Bird Taking a Drink, Dew in the Bracken.
He’s not playing songs. He’s play specific feelings.
He’s playing names.
Somewhere in the third month I stopped looking outside and started looking inside for things to play. I learned to play Riding in the Wagon with Ben, Singing with Father by the Fire, Watching Shandi Dance, Grinding Leaves When it Is Nice Outside, Mother Smiling. . . .
And that’s playing something like the precision of certain memories.
Playing with three broken strings… considering it was 7 to begin with. Are the three broken strings Haliax, the moon, and Cinder? Are they Ben, mom, and dad?
Are they just three strings?
He calls himself “akin to a wild animal” than a boy of twelve.
I want to take this moment, which is as good as any other, to point out something about Ferule’s name:
The word “feral” shares a root with the word “ferula,” the rod — or ruler — you use to slap naughty children on the hand.
Why is that interesting to me?
Virility as a kind of life force (vis) or virtue (virtus) is an essential characteristic of Mars. As an agricultural guardian, he directs his energies toward creating conditions that allow crops to grow, which may include warding off hostile forces of nature.
The priesthood of the Arval Brothers called on Mars to drive off “rust” (lues), with its double meaning of wheat fungus and the red oxides that affect metal, a threat to both iron farm implements and weaponry. In the surviving text of their hymn, the Arval Brothers invoked Mars as ferus, “savage” or “feral” like a wild animal.Mars’s potential for savagery is expressed in his obscure connections to the wild woodlands, and he may even have originated as a god of the wild, beyond the boundaries set by humans, and thus a force to be propitiated.[38] In his book on farming, Cato invokes Mars Silvanus for a ritual to be carried out in silva, in the woods, an uncultivated place that if not held within bounds can threaten to overtake the fields needed for crops. Mars’s character as an agricultural god may derive solely from his role as a defender and protector, or may be inseparable from his warrior nature, as the leaping of his armed priests the Salii was meant to quicken the growth of crops.
Mars Rigisamus is found in two inscriptions, the earliest most likely the one at Avaricum (present-day Bourges, France) in the territory of the Bituriges. At the site of a villa at West Coker, Somerset, he received a bronze plaque votum. The Gaulish element rig- (very common at the end of names as -rix), found in later Celtic languages as rí, is cognate with Latin rex, “king” or more precisely “ruler”. Rigisamus or Rigisamos is “supreme ruler” or “king of kings”.
In Herodotus’ Histories, the Scythians worship an indigenous form of Greek Ares, who is otherwise unnamed, but ranked beneath Tabiti (whom Herodotus claims as a form of Hestia), Api and Papaios in Scythia’s divine hierarchy. His cult object was an iron sword. The “Scythian Ares” was offered blood-sacrifices (or ritual killings) of cattle, horses and “one in every hundred human war-captives”, whose blood was used to douse the sword. Statues, and complex platform-altars made of heaped brushwood were devoted to him. This sword-cult, or one very similar, is said to have persisted among the Alans. Some have posited that the “Sword of Mars” in later European history alludes to the Huns having adopted Ares.
The Sword of Attila, also called the Sword of Mars or Sword of God, was the legendary weapon carried by Attila the Hun.
When a certain shepherd beheld one heifer of his flock limping and could find no cause for this wound, he anxiously followed the trail of blood and at length came to a sword it had unwittingly trampled while nibbling the grass. He dug it up and took it straight to Attila. He rejoiced at this gift and, being ambitious, thought he had been appointed ruler of the whole world, and that through the sword of Mars supremacy in all wars was assured to him.
Priscus’s description is also notable for describing how Attila used it as both a military weapon and a symbol of divine favor, which may have contributed to his reputation as “the Scourge of God,” a divinely-appointed punisher. As historian Edward Gibbon elaborated, “the vigour with which Attila wielded the sword of Mars convinced the world that it had been reserved alone for his invincible arm.” In this way it became somewhat of a scepter as well, representing Attila’s right to rulership. The Scythians worshipped a god equated with Ares by Herodotus, which has led some authorities to speculate that it was adopted by the Huns.
In the 11th century, some 500 years after the death of Attila, a sword allegedly belonging to him surfaced according to Lambert of Hersfeld, who attributed its provenance to the recently established Árpád kings of Hungary, who in turn appropriated the cult of Attila and linked their claimed descent from him with the right to rule. Lambert records that the sword was given by Anastasia, mother of King Salomon of Hungary, to Otho, Duke of Bavaria, who had urged the emperor to reinstate Salomon’s possessions in 1063. Otho had given it to Dedus, younger son of the Margrave Dedus. The king, Henry IV, received it after his death in 1069, giving it to the royal counselor Leopold of Meersburg, whose death in 1071—it was asserted by partisans of his rival, Otho—had been a divine judgment. The occasion of Leopold’s unfortunate death was impalement upon his own sword after falling from his horse.
There is no evidence to substantiate these medieval claims of its origin with Attila. The sword, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna as part of the Habsburg Schatzkammer, in fact, appears to be from the early 10th century and possibly Hungarian.
The real historical events of the discovery of this sword will probably remain unknown. More information about the possible origin of the sword comes from the Miholjanec locality finding. Before this legend had been regarded, this sword was believed to be Joyeuse, the sword of Charlemagne. Some legends claim Joyeuse was forged to contain the Lance of Longinus within its pommel. The blade may have been smithed from the same materials as Roland’s Durendal and Ogier’s Curtana.
A children’s book from the early 20th century tells that “One priceless thing Charlemagne ever carried in his belt and that was Joyeuse, the Sword Jewellous, which contained in a hilt of gold and gems the head of the lance that pierced our Saviour’s side. And thereto he wore a pilgrim’s pouch — ‘against my faring to Jerusalem, or, if that may not be, to remind me that our life is but a pilgrim’s way, and our joy but a pilgrim’s rest, and our hope a palm.’”
All of that to say, if FOLLY is that sword, rather than some Ademre sword, and if Ferule is the Feral Ruler in the hand of God, Haliax, and if Kvothe takes over not for Haliax, but Cinder — lots of ifs there — but in all of those cases, the sword here may well be the sword of God, both of conquest and agriculture.
Making him the new Feral Ruler.
Or maybe it’s just a foil.
I do wonder if the song Tinker Tanner is literally older than God in the book?
Or Tehlu, anyways?
Especially if it’s originally about Ben?
I once saw a fair farmer’s daughter
On the riverbank far from all men
She was taking a bath when I saw her
Said she didn’t feel right / that she didn’t feel clean
If a man caught a sight / if her bathing was seen
So she soaped herself slowly all over again.
You know who Kvothe saw on the riverbank far from all men, washing sexually?
Felurian.
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I’ll put this at the end of each chapter so we can actually navigate the text. Because this is getting unwieldy — we’re going to eventually have dozens of links — I’m going to just link to the category from here on out:
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