traveling where their context does not. Certainly, it is possible that Caliphestros himself created such a translation, although this Alandra was already a child of some seven or eight years by the time he arrived in Broken, leaving out the possibility that he had suggested the name in the first place. In addition, one can easily anticipate the difficulties that would have accompanied propagating such stirring foreign legends in as closed and self-admiring a society as Broken’s, thus making it far more probable that Caliphestros did not translate the work, and that the name made its way into the kingdom with some earlier emissary — quite probably, that greatest admirer of Hellenic and Roman culture upon the stone mountain, Oxmontrot himself.”
† “‘… Kreikisch … Graeci …’” The first open statement — ignored, at this point, by Gibbon, of the Broken dialect’s term (often derogatory) for “Greek” is accompanied by the second word, the Latin term for the same people. Caliphestros himself explains the reasons for the different uses — perhaps the reason Gibbon ignores them. —C.C.
‡ “… can actually taste scent …” This is an extraordinary statement for Caliphestros to make, and it seems obvious that it was rooted in his anatomical, which is to say his dissecting, work earlier in his life: certainly, no one among either the Bane or the Tall could have been aware, based on their levels of scientific advancement and their terror of the Davon panthers, of such a relatively arcane aspect of the feline sensory system, which is found throughout the feline tree, from housecats to their great relatives. The reference is also further evidence of how frustratingly close scientists came, during the eras before and during the rise of Christianity and Islam, to a truly modern understanding of anatomy and medicine, even veterinary medicine: for cats do, indeed, have unique sensory organs inside their mouths, but they do not “taste” scent with them. Rather, they smell with their mouths, adding considerably to their ability to detect scent, often from amazing distances. —C.C.
† “roseberry” Almost certainly a precursor of “raspberry.” The thickness and slightly thorny aspect of the bushes suggest as much, while raspberries are indeed a branch of the wild rose family. — C.C.
† “‘… plum brandy … Slivevetz …’” Gibbon takes this claim at its face value, either because he is unconcerned with the history of particular forms of alcohol or because he has no reason to dispute the claim. In more recent times, however, it’s been postulated that brandy (or “brandy wine”), the distilled form of wine, was not invented until after the turn of the first millennium, despite references to it in various Dark Age histories and heroic tales (which, as has already been discussed, were often the same thing). This discrepancy may be accounted for by the possibility that brandy was being made long before its recipe was written down and formalized by the monks and other vintners of the French province of Cognac; or it may be one of many proofs that minor as well as major inventions were little noted until they appeared in one of the “great” European states, among which the kingdoms of the Balkan region — the original home of plum brandy — were certainly not ranked, at this time as during our own era. Interestingly, however, Heldo-Bah gives a name for the drink, slivevetz, that, once we account for the vowel shift of Old High German, is very close to one of the many Balkan variations on the name of the libation, slivovitz, derived from sliva, the Slavic word for “plum”; and anyone who has encountered that drink today (particularly in the immensely potent forms that its not-for-export variations take) can attest to the continued and rather shattering power of what has formally become the national drink of Serbia. —C.C.
‡ napthes More on this subject will follow; for now, it is safe to say that napthes was an archaic German (perhaps Broken) dialectal term for naphtha, which, particularly in its early days, could take the form of anything from mineral spirits to low-grade gasoline; and that Caliphestros’s future statements about it may well contribute to unraveling one of the great riddles, not only of Broken’s history, but of military history, more generally. —C.C.
† “‘Ther is moore broke in Brokynne, thanne ever was knouen so.’” Gibbon’s lack of any explanation for the appearance of what is the solitary sentence written in Middle English in the entire Manuscript may be a demonstration of the level of scholarship during his era; we simply don’t know. Fortunately, the meaning of the phrase is quite clear. —C.C.
† “‘… evil vapor or bad air …’” Gibbon did not bother refuting or moderating such references, of which there are several in the Manuscript, because he couldn’t — the science of infectious disease in his time did not yet allow him to. —C.C.
III: Stone † Radelfer One can’t say with any real certainty (and, perhaps because of that, Gibbon makes no attempt at all), but this name appears to arrive from another ancient popular Germanic name denoting at once “counselor” and “wolf”—an entirely appropriate connotation, given the role this Radelfer played in the Baster-kin family, and especially in the life of Rendulic Baster-kin. Indeed, it is entirely possible that he changed his name, or that it was changed for him, when he was chosen from the ranks of the Talons to watch over the scion of the Merchant Lord’s family. —C.C.
† megrem The youthful Rendulic’s condition can be readily identified as “migraine”: megrem is evidently some sort of precursor to Middle English’s megrim, the word used to identify what had been, since ancient times, a well-known and extensively described condition. Gibbon’s failure to take note of this passage may have grown out of his considering its explanation obvious, although it seems more likely that his silence was caused by his aversion to discussing chronic ailments — a habit that grew out of his self-consciousness concerning his own incurable condition, hydrocele testis, a swelling of one or the other testicle that, in an age when the fashion was tight-fitting trousers, was not only painful and serious but the source of enormous embarrassment for him. — C.C.
† “… a healthy manhood …” Before anyone thinks all this some kind of witchcraft or fanciful explanation, we should note, as Gibbon was in no position to do, that for hundreds of years, traditional healers had been successfully treating the terrible symptoms of migraine with a combination of strong opiates, willow barks, and “nutleaf,” a translation, in this case, of the German Mutterkraut, the term for the flowering, daisy-like plant we call “feverfew”: Tanacetum parthenium, or, variously, Chrysanthemum parthenium, an anti-inflammatory still in wide use by homeopaths, and of interest to Western doctors for its possible efficacy in inhibiting cancer cell growth. —C.C.
† Healer Raban This is apparently an ancient Germanic name denoting “raven”—not the most propitious association for a healer, but not an uncommon sort of appellation, either: it was often popular to give healers of the time, who were seen primarily as ghoulish tormentors whose successful remedies were dependant on unseen forces far beyond their own control or ken, names and macabre accoutrements that matched their miserable systems of knowledge and rates of success. Healers whose work actually could approach systemization and higher rates of success, at the same time, were treated even with even more distrust; for their every advance inevitably called into question some central tenet of one of the new monotheistic faiths (as the cases of Gisa, Isadora, and most of all Caliphestros demonstrate). —C.C.
† Klauqvest As was often the case with some of the more arcane or titillating, yet academically inexplicable, aspects of the Manuscript, Gibbon touched on this name only obliquely: he seems to have been convinced that further explorations into the Gothic tongue would one day show that Klauqvest was a name given by the man’s parents to reflect their reaction, not only to the disease from which he suffered all his life, which seems to have been leprosy — and, probably, something even more devastating, for he clearly lacks the immunity to superficial pain that marked so many lepers — but also an apparent deformity of the hands, almost certainly in evidence since birth and not at all uncommon within the annals of medicine. The fusion of the skin and muscle, and sometimes even the bone, of the fingers, so that the hands resemble the claws of crustaceans — a disease known as ectrodactylism—was documented long before discovery of this Manuscript, and before Grady Franklin Stiles (1937–1992) became the popular freak show performer “Lobster Boy.” And, since klau can be easily identified, in many German dialects, as meaning “claw,” we can be sure of the meaning of the first syllable, while the second, qvist, is easily conjectured — or so, apparently, said Gibbon’s translator: “To those who have labored to understand Gothic,” Gibbon wrote, “it is the root of a term denoting ‘destruction,’ the inserted ‘v’ being a misread ‘u,’ which would nearly always have been paired, as it still is paired, with ‘q’ in Germanic-Anglo- Saxon languages, giving us a name implying some sort of ‘destruction’ or ‘death’ by ‘claw’—ultimately an ironic, to say nothing of cruel, name to have given this unfortunate fellow.” —C.C.
