that Gibbon’s notes reveal that he was another “deeply cultured” man who suffered (periodically, at least) from intellectual weaknesses concerning “things military”—especially as far as the military histories and cultures of the barbarian tribes in comparison to the Romans went. —C.C.
† “… Moon worshipper symbols …” We can reasonably assume that these symbols were more sophisticated variations on those found on the “Sky Disc of Nebra” (see note for p. 00, below), probably incorporating runic interpretations, and making up what little written language certain members of the Bane tribe employed. —C.C.
‡ the Ayerzess-werten Gibbon wrote of this term, “Both the names assigned by the Bane to particularly dangerous waterfalls in the Cat’s Paw River— Hafften Falls and the Ayerzess-werten—are as yet, for reasons which I have explained elsewhere, undecipherable to scholars of this region and period: an irritating fact, as they seem to have imparted some definite sense of Bane irony.” The statement is almost certainly an honest expression of true ignorance, since experts only began to gain anything like a detailed knowledge of Gothic toward the very end of Gibbon’s life, while any systematic understanding of Old High German was out of the question, given how few documents were available to serve the purpose that the Broken Codex served for that kingdom’s dialect. The discoveries of modern scholars, however, in addition to consultation with them, reveal first that the word Hafften is likely an early forerunner of the modern German verb anhaften, “to cling to”—which could be taken simply as a literal indication of what travelers were forced to do when they met with mishap while trying to cross the first of the named waterfalls. But examination of the second name, Ayerzess-werten, shows that Gibbon’s suspicions about Bane irony were well founded: both terms were, almost certainly, intended (in accordance with the narrator’s description) as a sort of black humor. Ayerzess-werten derives from a known Gothic phrase, airzeis-wairthan, which translates as the fairly pedestrian term “fall into error.” The double entendre created by the Bane when they applied the phrase to a sudden and steep gorge leading down to a deadly series of rocks and waterfalls is evident, and further demonstrates that the Bane were very much more than a tribe of uneducated and deformed criminal exiles. As for the change in spelling, it can be attributed to the influence of Old High German and the now familiar “vowel shift.” —C.C.
†† gneiss formations Gneiss is igneous rock of a quality inferior to granite, as well as a name for the second most common type of stone found in the Harz Mountains, granite itself being predominant. The name gneiss seems to date back to the first Saxon settlers; and while most of these tribes had, by the sixth century, moved out of the area that would soon become the kingdom of Broken, some members stayed behind, perhaps explaining why seksent was the Broken word for “peasant” (as earlier noted). —C.C.
§ “… the position of the Moon and stars.” It may seem strange that, up to this point in the story, the Bane appear to have a better mastery of time and navigation as measured and charted by the heavens than do the citizens of Broken — but we must remember that the earliest known European instrument used to determine the timing of the solstices specifically, and to measure the movements of celestial bodies generally, was the “Sky Disc of Nebra,” created no less than 3,600 years ago — in these same Harz Mountains. Indeed, one of the points of triangulation used in the famous Sky Disc was the mountain of Brocken itself. It would appear that there was a long-established tradition of such primitive scientific study among the people of the area; and it likely survived more intact among those tribes that maintained traditional belief systems (i.e., the Bane) than among those that pretended and aspired to greater scholarship (the subjects of Broken). See the explanation of Buhmann, Pietsch, Lepcsik, and Jede, “Interpreting the Bronze Age Sky Disc of Nebra using 3D GIS.” —C.C.
† and passim “gutting blade” Again, one cannot help but wonder, especially given the aforementioned general use of the seax among the Saxons, who took their name from the weapon, if these knives that the narrator persistently refers to as “gutting blades” did not in fact have a far broader and greater purpose, by design or by accident, than the name might suggest: if they were not, that is, like the seax, as close to a sword as a utilitarian knife, much in the manner of yet another such weapon, the Frankish scramasax, so close to the seax that the two words are often used interchangeably. The Bane evidently relied on gutting blades so greatly in situations involving close combat that one is led to the strong suspicion that the “gutting” in question must have included not only dead animals, but living humans, too, and perhaps even more so — indeed, to so great an extent that the narrator does not even consider it worthy of explanation. A wound to the gut of a man, then as now, was the next best thing to an actual kill, given that serious abdominal wounds are paralyzingly painful and usually fatal; and the death, being slow and agonizing, renders the unfortunate victim unfit for continued action. —C.C.
† “The hysterical woman …” Gibbon writes, “The phrase employed here, in the original Broken dialectal version of the Manuscript, apparently translated, literally, to ‘moonsick,’ which the translator of the work immediately associated with ‘hysteria.’ The two concepts do, indeed, have much in common, ‘hysteria’ being a feminine illness which arises out of the womb, and is generally supposed to be governed by the lunar cycle: hence, ‘moonsickness’ becomes ‘hysteria.’” We should not fault the great scholar for what may appear to us a ludicrous interpretation: in 1790, many if not most violent mental disorders in women were still considered forms of hysteria, which was indeed thought to arise from the womb (the ancient Greeks, of course, first came up with the idea, hystero- being the Greek root for “utero” and “uterine”), and to be governed, therefore, by the phases of the moon. What does seem odd is Gibbon’s failure to connect “moonsickness” to “lunacy,” both being illnesses attributed, obviously, to the moon (see note for p. 00). —C.C.
† “… to form a skehsel …” Gibbon writes, “Again, there remain, alas, several words and phrases, the precise meanings of which the purveyor the Manuscript could not, or would not, determine; and, even more irritatingly, he persistently refused to say why he could not. I have left these words and phrases in quotations [changed to italics here], and have tried to extrapolate meanings as best I can from context.” Skehsel was apparently not one of the words he could so extrapolate, and, as in the case of the names of the waterfalls, it appears in its original form because the scholarship of Gibbon’s time simply had not caught up to the Broken Manuscript. We can now speculate with reasonable certainty, however, that the word is some sort of an Old High German variation on the Gothic skohsl, the term for an “evil spirit” of neutral gender. Why the Bane should have feared such spirits above others (and they mention several) is unknown, but we can also speculate, based on the very high priority the Bane placed on the natural ordering of the world, their reputation as a highly sexed people among the citizens of Broken, as well as the frequency with which “gelding” is mentioned as among the worst of fates, that it is precisely the gender neutrality of the demon that so disturbed them. The Bane evidently believed, as did many Barbarian Age peoples, that humans could, as a course of last resort, mate with most spirits and other mythical creatures, as a means of appeasing them; the skehsel do not seem to have offered that option, and, as has always been (and still is) the case in traditional societies that are followers of certain pagan religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, the failure to produce offspring, any kind of offspring, implied personal annihilation. This may well have been true for the Bane, as well. —C.C.
† “… bested by Welferek …” Gibbon writes, “This man Welferek must, indeed, have held a position of importance among the Outrager ‘knights,’ for his name cannot but be a Broken-Germanic variation of the name we encounter in Old English as Wulfric, the ‘lord (or king) of wolves.’ Given the activities of the Outragers, such a title implies high honor and authority, as well as loyalty to the Priestess of the Moon strong enough to earn him the right to carry out the most sacred punishments — as he does in this case.” Since Gibbon’s time, the word “wolf” (or “wolves”), used in this connotation, has been identified as having the secondary, metaphorical meaning of “hunter(s)”; and it is almost certainly true that the knight Welferek was the Priestess of the Moon’s chief “hunter” as in executioner — or even assassin. —C.C.
† “‘… can only be the Halap-stahla …’” Gibbon writes, “Again, the peculiar formulation of the names of the rites of punishment and execution in Broken frustrate almost every attempt we can make to determine their origins. Whether the Halap in Halap-stahla has any basis in some early Germanic variation of halbe, itself a variation, in certain German dialects, of halb, or
