(no subject)

[catsittingstill]

Not much accomplished yesterday except that I finally got the board for hanging canoe paddles set up. They look nice hanging in front of the wood-panelled wall in the Troll's Lair, except the plastic ones at the ends kind of detract from the look. But they need to be hung up too; the canoing books all say that hanging is the only way to store them without the risk of warping.

I'm going to need to refinish my wooden paddles this winter. The varnish on the edges of the blades is wearing away and water is starting to get into the wood.

Comments

Hiawatha didn't need no paddles

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

Thus the Birch Canoe was builded
In the valley, by the river,
In the bosom of the forest;
And the forest's life was in it,
All its mystery and its magic,
All the lightness of the birch-tree,
All the toughness of the cedar,
All the larch's supple sinews;
And it floated on the river
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
Like a yellow water-lily.

Paddles none had Hiawatha,
Paddles none he had or needed,
For his thoughts as paddles served him,
And his wishes served to guide him;
Swift or slow at will he glided,
Veered to right or left at pleasure.

-- Longfellow, Song of Hiawatha

But we poor mortals need paddles in our lives, and have to take care of them properly, yes?

-- Dave Alway

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

Gee, I didn't know that Hiawatha was an elf. :-)

It's like the way you tell the magic harps; they're the ones that don't need turning.

Perhaps Hiawatha was an Elf

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

Perhaps he was, as both Tolkien and Longfellow were influenced by Loennrot's compilation of Finnish rune-singing, the Kalevala.

From http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/kalevala.htm :

After its appearance, the Kalevala quickly attracted attention abroad. In his lecture in 1845 German philologist Jakob Grimm considered that the oldest layer of material in the epic was mythical, while the heroic poetry represented a later development. Such characters as Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen, had also much similarities with many other mythological gods. Kalevala's hypnotic metre, basically a trochaic tetrameter, inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Song of Hiawatha (1855). Later W.B. Yeats thought that the Kalevala was an especially good source for the ancient world view, and C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien both drew from it in their own works.

Re: Perhaps Hiawatha was an Elf

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

:-) Cool. However I've never had much luck getting Treowesith to go places by thinking. That is, he goes places, especially if it's a bit windy--but never where I *wanted*.

So I need to take care of my paddles. They're beautiful, actually. I think they're a classic example of beauty following function. Must be that streamlining stuff. Or maybe the people who carve canoe paddles all have pretty much the same esthetic sense.

Re: Perhaps Hiawatha was an Elf

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

It may have more to do with the feeling of the carving process, or it may be a result of final shaping based on testing in water. Good question of technical history.

Re: Perhaps Hiawatha was an Elf

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

I knew about Tolkien, but I didn't know about Yeats and I'd never have dreamed of Longfellow, though knowing it makes perfect sense of the meter of the poem--just the thing for that vowel-heavy syllable-heavy language.

Now, did you know that about a year ago, East Timor chose Finnish as its national language?

Re: Perhaps Hiawatha was an Elf

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

Cat --

By the way, how does one pronounce "Treowesith"?

-- Dave

Re: Perhaps Hiawatha was an Elf

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Treowesith is pronounced TRAOW (rhymes with now) ih sith (rhymes with with). It's Anglo-Saxon for [true/faithful/wood]-traveller. Treowesith is actually plastic, but I loved the idea of faithful and wood being one word (sort of like heartwood) and it seemed very appropriate for a boat.

Re: Perhaps Hiawatha was an Elf

[tnatj.livejournal.com]

Hmm ... trochaic tetrameter? A fragment might be ...

PADdled SHE in SILent WATCH-ing
PADdled TRAOW-ih-SITH in WAT-er
TRAOW-ih-SITH the HEART-wood TRAV'ler
NOT of WOOD the CRAFT was MADE of
BUT of PLAS-tic DEC-ades NEWer
YET of FOS-sils AGEs OLDer
MADE its HULL both STRONG and SLEEK-er:
TRAOW-ih-SITH the FAITHful TRAV'ler

heh.

I think I'd better stop now.

-- Dave