we need more stories about high femme prom queen types who become weird faggy guys. you haven't seen Behaviors until you've seen a repressed closeted tboy holding on to socially acceptable heterosexual femininity by the skin of his teeth
This was me the day of my junior prom. The dress weighed around 20 lbs, was the first one I tried on, and my makeup was done by someone who still thought brown lip liner looked good on white people. I spent the entire day being photographed and generally hating how I looked and wishing I could figure out why, when everything was technically perfect.
And this was me about eleven years later- two weeks after I started T in the first photo, and at around 5 months on T in the second. Much happier, married to the love of my life, and finally looking like myself!
granted being a big ol goth doesn't really fit the bill of "socially acceptable heterosexual femininity" but i was HYPER feminine when i was closeted, especially in the years between when i FIRST tried to come out (age 16 - around the time of those first photos) and when i actually made the jump (age 19 - about a year after the last photo)
you can tell in that second to last photo i literally got a tattoo that said "MAD GIRL" which was an exercise in many things, including abstract self-harm, a visual reminder that i had given up on myself, and wildly underestimating the number of dudes who would misread it as BAD GIRL and take that as a cue to say gross shit to me while i was at work
consciously dipped my toes into the gender fuckery pool at around 15/16 but I was pentecostal at the time and well. took them out real quick
i tried very very hard to be “femme” for a LONG time but during covid lockdowns I didn’t have to perform for anyone and I slowly started to let it all go and now I’m a silly little man 😌
btw now, since this post was marked mature and i cannot seem to get it appealed, there are youth and others in the UK and Brazil are no longer able to see this post.
this is both an insanely cool post, and also a test to see if you've been affected by tumblr's shit new rules. If you're not seeing this, I will tell you what to do on a different post. But obviously for you that post will be a surprise.
The miller wanted to impress the world, so he said "my daughter can pass any multiple choice test!" And the child was shown into a room with only a number 2 pencil and a Scantron, and told to pass the test or else she would surely die.
"But I do not have the time to study so much!" The girl cried, and then a little creature appeared behind her.
"I can make sure you pass the test, but what would you give me?" Said the creature.
"My healthy sleep schedule," said the girl. He accepted the bargain, and she passed the test.
But then she was put into honors classes, and again found herself locked in a room with only a pencil and a Scantron.
"What would you give me if I help you pass?" Said the man, appearing behind her again.
"I would give my active social life," said the child, and the bargain was again struck.
Then the girl was put into another room, with more tests than she knew what to do with. When the creature appeared again, she said she had nothing left to give.
"Of course you do," said the creature, "simply give up your identity and self esteem, and you shall pass the tests!"
The girl gave it up, and she graduated with high honors. But she was not happy, and neither was her cruel father, for his prized child was no longer in school and so he could no longer brag about her.
Finally, she went to therapy and the therapist helped her name the creature: he was guilt and shame, familial expectations, a system designed to crush children to pick out the "gifted," the melancholy of lost opportunities and the anxiety of the future. Knowing the creature's name, the girl was at last able to reclaim her sleep, then her friends, and finally her sense of self.
"What you really need," said the therapist, "is a hobby."
"I've been thinking of getting into spinning actually," said the girl.
Holy fuck the story of Rumpelstiltskin makes sense now. Why would knowing the name of your problems help? Because the name is the start of the cure. You now have a path to end the problem.
For those who don't understand, EBT are food stamps (government money for buying food for low-income people). Because the money is from the government, it comes with horrific restrictions, one of which is you cannot buy "prepared" food with it. You can only buy raw chicken, not cooked chicken, for example.
This kitchen is getting around that stupid rule by selling you raw, unprepared chicken, and then charging your EBT account for raw, unprepared chicken.
Then as a side thing, totally unrelated, they cook the chicken for free. Since you bought raw chicken with the EBT, it's legal. There's no law against cooking people's raw chicken for free for them. That's just charity.
This kitchen is a blessing to anyone who doesn't have a kitchen of their own.
It's not a ridiculous restriction, there is zero reason you should be using tax money on fried chicken. It's raw so you have to decide what to do with it, but if you could just use tax money on fried chicken, many people would.
Still great what the kitchen is doing! Mad respect.
Please elaborate as to why 'there is zero reason you should be using tax money on fried chicken'
Keep in mind that unhoused or under housed people often do not have access to clean, safe cooking facilities.
Give me a reason, other than cruelty, why people being able to buy fried chicken with tax money is an actual problem. Of course people would. Why wouldn't they? What would be wrong with that?
It's unhealthy.
Yeah I'm cruel also, what you gonna do about it? Idgaf.
You shouldn't be buying luxuries with government assistence. It's assistance. It's to help you get you back on your feet during a trying time. You do not to be eating fattening, unhealthy food with tax payers money.
I see people at my grocery store filling up shopping carts with garbage and paying with EBT. I have no sympathy for them. Just taking advantage of a hand out.
There is nothing inherently unhealthy about chicken, flour, and oil. You are factually incorrect in that assertion.
What I'm going to do about you being cruel: hold you in contempt.
Food is not a luxury. The human body requires protein, carbohydrates, and fats - fried chicken supplies all of those things. There is no such thing as 'garbage' food.
I feel contempt for you, and hope that one day you will become a better and more compassionate person. Because I'm petty, I also wish petty suffering upon you. Hope you bite your lip/cheek/tongue every time you have a judgemental or unkind thought about a person who has harmed no one.
Mind you, I still think that you - as a human being capable of suffering - deserve ready access to shelter/clothing/food/medicine/etc - the necessities of life. Because I'm not a sociopath.
I...okay. I don't give a good goddamn what you spend your EBT on, that's you.
But fried chicken is very unhealthy. I mean, obviously it's okay once and awhile as a treat, but you should never, ever forget that fried chicken is unhealthy.
Also, it should be noted that when we talk about "fried" chicken, we usually mean "deep fried", as that is the most popular method. It is also the most unhealthy, but baking or air-frying chicken yields a healthier result.
However, the note on the window does not state how the chicken is prepared, so this kitchen could be baking it, which is far more healthy. Kinda classist to assume it's fried, imo. Again, not my business, spend EBT how u want.
Here, I'll give you some resources on fried chicken (deep fried) being bad for your heart.
From Healthline
From Baylor College of Medicine
From GoodRx
From the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
@nerdpoe No one here wants to hear about your bullshit diet culture brain poison. No individual food can be classed as 'healthy' or 'unhealthy'. The idea that more calories = bad is really really fucked up diet culture bullshit. Human beings need calories in the form of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. There is nothing inherently unhealthy about chicken, flour, and oil. You are factually incorrect in that assertion.
Eating fat does not cause heart disease. Ancel Keys will not fuck you.
This article recounts the history of the diet-heart hypothesis from the late 1950s up to the current day, with revelations that have never b
I urge you to visit https://www.fatnutritionist.com/ and to look into patterns of disordered eating, particularly orthorexia.
Rank-ordering foods on a moral/orthdox scale is disordered eating. Like, clinically.
Know that constitutes healthy food? Food that provides you with nutrition in the form of accessible calories and doesn’t rip up your digestive system or cause an allergic reaction (subjective to individuals! Some foods are perfectly health for some people and unhealthy for others!)
Butter pound cake with cream cheese frosting is healthy food.
A chunk of flank steak smothered in whiskey and honey is healthy food.
A giant bowl of chili is healthy food (with or without beans in it!).
Duck fat melted into a pile of rosemary-infused mashed potatoes is healthy food.
Chicken dredged in flour and fried in fat (Ideally lard, really. But any nonhydrogenated fat is fine - hydrogenated fats should not be raised to frying temps for carcinogen reasons) IS HEALTHY FOOD.
The overwhelming majority of foods that haven’t been utterly fucked with through super-refinement and chemical amendment (spoilers this is done most often to 'diet' foods) are, by the grace of four billion years of evolution, HEALTHY FOOD.
Boiling a slice of potato in oil does not render it unhealthy. Boiling a chicken breast quarter in oil does not render it unhealthy.
You are fucking WRONG and would do well to sit down and shut up.
And even when foods are unarguably unhealthy? When they cause the people who eat them to be ill?
EATING THEM IS NOT A MORAL CONCERN. YOU ARE NOT A BAD PERSON IF YOU EAT UNHEALTHY FOOD, REGARDLESS OF WHY YOU DO IT.
Healthiness is not a moral choice. You are allowed to make decisions in the full knowledge that they are unhealthy, because your body and your life are your own. It can get dicey if your health choices legitimately cause harm to others (I.E. cause you to neglect or abuse other people for whom you are responsible, like children or elders) but if that’s off the table? YOUR CHOICES ARE YOUR OWN. And in any case whatsoever:
NO ONE IS OBLIGATED TO BE OR STAY HEALTHY.
Sure, health is nice. Many people choose to pursue it. Longevity is nice. Many people choose to pursue that. But they are not the only legitimate choices on earth, nor are they inherently ~better~ than making other life choices that counteract or sacrifice the above.
If you tell me that eating all-butter pound cake will cause me to die at 50, whereas not eating that cake will allow me to live to 100, my choice becomes
A fifty-year life with the cake
vs.
A hundred year life without it
And know what? If I decide that fifty years of delicious cake is a worthwhile endeavor and a well-spent life, one I’d prefer to a cakeless life no matter how long? THAT’S MY CHOICE. WHY DO YOU THINK YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO TAKE IT FROM ME?
(Note: Any civilization that is not attempting with all of its effort to ensure that every single person in it can CHOOSE maximally nutritious food if they want it is a piss-poor civilization in need of serious overhaul (the US in the year 2024 is a fucking dystopia)
Being poor should not mean being REQUIRED to eat either 'Healthy' or 'Unhealthy' food. Humans should be able to eat whatever they want with informed consent.
This interview with Ncuti Gatwa crossed my dash again, and I was reminded of how much I like it. Because it makes the rare Third Argument for representation in fiction, the argument I think is the best, and I'm always happy to see it. I quote:
At times, Gatwa’s casting in those projects has been dismissed as an exercise in ‘box-ticking’. Gatwa scoffs. ‘First of all, you don’t know anything about me. Secondly, tick fcking boxes! People need to be fcking seen. What are you going to do, tell the same stories? Have the same people fronting things for all of eternity? Representation and inclusivity and branching out… it enriches us all. How embarrassing. You people with your tiny mindsets – open a book, look out the window and then f*ck off.’ (source)
What do I mean by the Third Argument? Well, I'm not sure I've ever made a post about this directly, but as far as I can see it, there are three main arguments for greater diversity in popular media. The first two are the most common, and they go like this:
It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see people like them on screen. That is, the beneficiaries are marginalized people.
It is good for media to be diverse because it is good for people to see and learn about people who are not like them through art. That is, the beneficiaries are non-marginalized people, who then (hopefully) pass on the benefit by treating marginalized people better.
These two arguments are the source of a lot of debate here on ye olde tumblr. Despite both being arguments for representation, they pull in different directions. What counts as 'good' representation for the purposes of Argument 1 often would not be good for the purposes of Argument 2, and vice versa. Authentic versus sympathetic. Ugly or over-sanitized. You see this debate play out constantly. It's really hard for a piece of - say - queer media to do both at once.
But these debates tend to leave out Argument 3, the one that Gatwa is making above. And that argument cuts through a lot of this debate.
3. It is good for media to be diverse because art needs variety. The beneficiary of representation is art itself, absent any social effects that may or may not be present.
For this argument, diverse stories are intrinsically good. It is good to make art that's not just the same thing you've seen a hundred times before. Putting the kinds of people who don't often make it into mainstream media into your art is an extremely efficient way to make that happen. It's not the only method, but it's a really good method.
For representation to be 'good representation' according to Argument 3, all it needs to be is interesting. A story you haven't heard before, at least not in that medium. That which counts as 'bad representation' by the lights of this argument are stock characters, like the Eternally Patient Mother, the Gay Best Friend, the Wise Black Advisor. Perhaps there was a time in which these characters were new, but that time has long passed. There's no art in pulling a bog-standard character trope off the shelf. Show us a new kind of guy. The world is infinitely diverse. You're not going to run out. Telling the same stories with the same voices for all eternity, as Gatwa says, is boring. Even if there was nothing else wrong with it, this would be. Art isn't supposed to be boring.
And that's why Argument 3 is my favourite. I do want the world to be a better place, of course, and I think art is a part of that. But the main job of art is to be good as art. And diversity in all aspects of the production of art makes art better.
Someone asked me what housekeeping skills I’d recommend learning.
Keep in ming that this is not me shaming you, I know you have your reasons, folks. This is just a guy who enjoys clean spaces asking that you start learning now.
Here’s what I suggest as an adult who has lived with other adults who didn’t have housekeeping skills:
First and foremost, learn about all the places in your house that need to be cleaned and understand how often they should be cleaned. the American Cleaning Institute (I guess that’s a thing) has a good article about basic cleaning info. Plus this video on cleaning tips is great!
Learn how to do your dishes. HOT water is the only way to clean your dishes.
Learn how to clean your shower head, especially if you live in a place with hard water. Same goes for your sinks.
Learn how to do your laundry correctly. Even without the whole “separating whites and colors” thing, there are things you need to learn about washing your clothes. Learn what the tags mean, too.
Also, you don’t have to use fabric softener and you shouldn’t use it on towels or any fabric meant to absorb. (Learn about laundromats)
And please learn how to clean out your dryer vent, it’s a safety hazard!
Get a disinfecting cleaner for your high-touch areas, especially the gross ones like the bathroom. Just because it doesn’t look dirty, doesn’t mean it’s clean!
Learn how to sweep, mop, and vacuum effectively.
You’ll also want to make sure to change out your home’s air filters.
TL;DR, here are some cleaning videos.
How to Clean Everything in Your Bathroom
How to Clean Everything in Your Kitchen
Livingroom Cleaning Routine
How to Clean Everything in Your Bedroom
Now these resources are not the end-all-be-all, but I think if you don’t know much about cleaning your space this is a good way to start.
here’s some of the things that are helping me actually clean (as an adult who had messy parents, and has a hard time getting threw my nurodivergency about cleaning specifically) that may be helpful to you:
Favorite Cleaning Book: it helps you work through the emotional side of cleaning (and other care tasks)
Current Favorite Decluttering Method/Concept: it helps you know how much is too much to keep and how to get started when you’re overwhelmed. (having too much stuff makes it incredibly hard to clean/organize.)
Basic Cleaning Skills: this channel is amazing! this man has a special interest in cleaning and cleans people’s spaces who deal nurodivergence that make it hard to clean. he does this for free (or at a deficit because he pays for supplies and dumpsters and transport and such) and does it all with empathy and kindness working With the people as much as people can handle instead of just coming in to “fix” an issue. these videos are a bit different from his usual ones, (the last one’s most like his usual videos) but i find having the sped up cleaning videos with a voiceover can help fill in for body doubling when im too ashamed to bring people into my messy spaces.
On Yom HaShoah, I honour the memory of the 6 million Jewish souls murdered in the Holocaust, and I stand with the Jewish people, in Israel and around the world, as a friend and ally, against the continued scourge of antisemitic hatred and violence.
oh my goodness, one of dian fossey’s first close up observations with gorillas happened when she was trying to climb a tree to see them better, but so badly that by the time she’d gotten up the entire group had come out of hiding to look at her: “Nearly all members of the group had totally exposed themselves, forgetting about hiding coyly behind foliage screens because it was obvious to them that the observer had been distracted by tree-climbing problems, an activity they could understand.”
[Image transcript: porch. The group had been day-nesting and sunbathing when I contacted them, but upon my approach they nervously retreated to obscure themselves behind thick foliage. Frustrated but determined to see them better, I decided to climb a tree, not one of my better talents. The tree was particularly slithery and, try as I might, no amount of puffing, pulling, gripping, or clawing succeeded in getting me more than a few feet aboveground. Disgustedly, I was about to give up when Sanwekwe came to my aid by giving one mighty boost to my protruding rump; tears were running from his eyes as he was convulsed in silent laughter. I felt as inept as a baby taking its first step. Finally able to grab on to a conveniently placed branch, I hauled myself up into a respectful semislouch position in the tree about twenty feet from the ground. By this time I naturally assumed that the combined noises of panting, cursing, and branch-breaking made during the initial climbing attempts must have frightened the group on to the next mountain. I was amazed to look around and find that the entire group had returned and were sitting like front row spectators at a sideshow. All that was needed to make the image complete were a few gorilla-sized bags of popcorn and some cotton candy! This was the first live audience I had ever had in my life and certainly the least expected.]
imagine some freakish not-a-human alien THING has shown up out of nowhere and is trying to get into your office building to study you. but it has no idea how to get past a revolving door. it tries for three hours. by the time it finally understands the concept of a revolving door and squeeze into the building everyone in the office is crowded into the lobby to watch and call helpful suggestions. it’s conclusively determined that the alien is definitely not a threat, except maybe to itself.
I love how the gorillas were initially scared of humans, and with poaching history being what it is, rightfully so, and yet they all collectively decided this one ape was completely harmless because you can’t actually be dangerous if you can’t do something a literal baby could do.
I'm starting to gain insight into why people turn into conspiracy theorists. Some topics are so totally neglected that it looks like they were intentionally and maliciously erased, instead of falling victim to arbitrary lack of interest.
I think it's a vicious cycle; when people don't know something exists, they're not curious about it. Also, people use conceptual categories to think about things, and when a topic falls between or outside of conceptual categories, it can end up totally omitted from our awareness even though it very much exists and is important.
This post is about native bamboo in the United States and the fact that miles-wide tracts of the American Southeast used to be covered in bamboo forests
@icannotgetoverbirds It already is a maddening, bizarre research hole that I have been down for the past few weeks.
Basically, I learned that we have native bamboo, that it once formed an ecosystem called the canebrake that is now critically endangered. The Southeastern USA used to be full of these bamboo thickets that could stretch for miles, but now the bamboo only exists in isolated patches
And THEN.
I realized that there is a little fragment of a canebrake literally in my neighborhood.
HI I AM NOW OBSESSED WITH THIS.
I did not realize the significance until I showed a picture to the ecologist where i work and his reaction was "Whoa! That is BIG."
Apparently extant stands of river cane are mostly just...little sparse thickety patches in forest undergrowth. This patch is about a quarter acre monotypic stand, and about ten years old.
I dive down the Research Hole(tm). Everything new I learn is wilder. Giant river cane mainly reproduces asexually. It only flowers every few decades and the entire clonal colony often dies after it flowers. Seeds often aren't viable.
It's barely been studied enough to determine its ecological significance, but there are five butterfly species and SEVEN moth species dependent on river cane. Many of these should probably be listed as endangered but there's not enough research
There's a species of CRITICALLY ENDANGERED PITCHER PLANT found in canebrakes that only still remains in TWO SPECIFIC COUNTIES IN ALABAMA
Some gardening websites list its height as "over 6 feet" "Over 10 feet" There are living stands that are 30+ feet tall, historical records of it being over 40 feet tall or taller. COLONIAL WRITINGS TALK ABOUT CANES "AS THICK AS A MAN'S THIGH."
The interval between flowering is anyone's guess, and WHY it happens when it does is also anyone's guess. Some say 40-50 years, but there are records of it blooming in as little time as 3-15 years.
It is a miracle plant for filtering pollution. It absorbs 99% of groundwater nitrate contaminants. NINETY NINE PERCENT. It is also so ridiculously useful that it was a staple of Native American material culture everywhere it grew. Baskets! Fishing poles! Beds! Flutes! Mats! Blowguns! Arrows! You name it! You can even eat the young shoots and the seeds.
I took these pictures myself. This stuff in the bottom photo is ten feet tall if it's an inch.
Arundinaria itself is not currently listed as endangered, but I'm growing more and more convinced that it should be. The reports of seeds being usually unviable could suggest very low genetic diversity. You see, it grows in clonal colonies; every cane you see in that photo is probably a clone. The Southern Illinois University research project on it identified 140 individual sites in the surrounding region where it grows.
The question is, are those sites clonal colonies? If so, that's 140 individual PLANTS.
Also, the consistent low estimates of the size Arundinaria gigantea attains (6 feet?? really??) suggests that colonies either aren't living long enough to reach mature size or aren't healthy enough to grow as big as they are supposed to. I doubt we have any clue whatsoever about how its flowers are pollinated. We need to do some research IMMEDIATELY about how much genetic diversity remains in existing populations.
Many years ago I did some (non-academic) research on native canes in the USA because I thought I remembered seeing a bamboo-like something in the wild that I'd been told was native, and I thought it might make a nice landscaping accent. But the sources I found said something like "unlike Asian bamboos, the American equivilant barely reaches the height of a man", and I went "nah, that is exactly the wrong height for anything." But if it gets 10 feet and up, I think there are a lot of people who would be VERY happy to use it as a sight barrier in public and private landscaping, and if it means putting in a bit of a wetland/rain garden, all the better. The lack of a good native equivelant to bamboo is something I have heard numerous people bemoan. Obviously it's very important to protect wild sites and expand those, but if it'd be helpful, I bet it wouldn't be hard to convince landscapers to start new patches too.
For instance, a lot of housing developments, malls, etc. seem to set aside a percentage of their land for semi-wild artificial wetlands (drainage maybe?) planted with natives, and then block the messy view with walls of arbovitae or clump bamboo from asia - perhaps it would be a better option there?
Good Lord. Arundinaria isn't just a better option, it's perfect.
I was in the canebrake near my house again this morning, and river cane is extraordinarily good at completely blocking the view of anything beyond it. It is bushier and leafier than Asian bamboos, and birds like to build nests in it. It would make a fantastic privacy barrier.
The cane near my house is around 10-12 feet tall. This species can reach 30 feet or more, but I think it needs ideal conditions or to be part of a large colony with a robust system of rhizomes or something.
It grows slowly compared to Asian bamboos, and seems to need some shade to establish, so it would take time to become a good barrier, but no worse than those stupid arborvitae.
plants like this were often intentionally cultivated in planter boxes as a form of water filtration and civil engineering by a bunch of indigenous nations.
There's a reason why Native Americans cultivated canebrakes.
Well, several reasons. As y'all may know, bamboo is stronger than any wood, and therefore it makes a fantastic building material.
The Cherokee used, and still use, river cane to make fishing poles, fish traps, arrows, frames for structures, musical instruments, mats, pipes, and absolutely gorgeous double-woven baskets that can even hold water.
This stuff is, no joke, a viable alternative to plastic for a lot of things. The seeds and shoots are also edible.
Uh I know this is out of left field but I work in plant cloning - it's a lot easier than you'd think to do for plants and it's honestly a really important conservation tool, and good for making a TON of seedlings in a short amount of time. I can look into this genus for like, cloning viability?
Hi y'all, reblogging the Canebrake Post again. It's been over a year since I fell in love with the coolest plant ever. I'm trying to bring it back but I am very small so if any of y'all have a Canebrake nearby you might wanna talk to the owners and contact some local parks and nature preserves yeah?
A lot of people are asking how to distinguish Rivercane from invasive bamboo species. This link should help you!
Here's some distinguishing traits I've observed myself:
River cane has a really full, bushy, leafy look that makes it really hard to recognize as bamboo from a distance, because the stems are harder to see. The shape of the individual cane with its branches and leaves is narrow, because the branches spread out very little, but the foliage is DENSE. It's like a plume.
River cane is stronger, denser and heavier than invasive bamboos I've seen.
River cane stems are always green all the way around, no yellow (unless the plant's been dead for a good long time)
River cane stems feel smooth like plastic to the touch. The common invasive bamboo I've seen here, when you run your hand upwards along it, the stem feels awful like sandpaper.
The biggest way to distinguish them: River cane grows 6-4 feet tall when it's in little patches, and up to 10-12 feet when it's in a large size patch (like, the size of a backyard) It is known to reach up to 15 feet tall nowadays and historical records claim heights of 30 feet or more in fertile river valleys. I really want to stress that it's RARE for it to get big. A canebrake will almost always be many times wider than it is tall (sometimes they grow in very long strips along fence rows)
The best time to look for it is in winter before things leaf out, because it's evergreen and grows in dense masses, making it easy to spot.
Some more cool stuff i've found out—River cane was a common food of bison! Earliest European settlers reported canebrakes so big that "100 bison could graze on a single canebrake." Apparently it used to make extremely high quality forage for livestock, before it was mostly destroyed.
European settlers apparently set their pigs loose in the canebrakes purposefully to destroy them, because the pigs would root up the nutritious rhizomes and kill the plant. Thinking of the relationship between Bison and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Eastern Native Americans and Canebrakes, and the relationship between Plains Native Americans and Bison...it seems like a pattern, huh?
In the case of both bison and canebrakes, they were a fundamental part of their ecosystem, and fundamental part of the indigenous cultures that used them for every material, their musical instruments, their homes, their most advanced arts, and even food (Rivercane shoots are edible just like other bamboo, and supposedly the seeds are edible too!) but European settlers purposefully destroyed the species almost completely. I can't help but wonder if there was a similar motivation.
Books that talk about Rivercane:
Weaving New Worlds: Southeastern Cherokee Women and Their Basketry by Sarah H. Hill talks about rivercane a LOT and gives tons of details of its uses and history.
Saving the Wild South: The Fight for Native Plants on the Brink of Extinction by Georgann Eubanks has a whole chapter about Rivercane.
Venerable Trees: History, Biology and Conservation in the Bluegrass is a book about Kentucky, but it talks about rivercane's importance including its relationship with bison. It's only a couple pages out of the whole book but it's still great information.
By the way, though, if you read any very early European account of Kentucky, the word "cane" is everywhere. It's just such a nondescript word it's hard to realize its significance.
On a more personal note...god, I love this plant. Here's another photo I took. When you're in the canebrake, it feels so cut off from the rest of the world; it's shaded, quiet, cool, and someone 10 yards away couldn't even see you.
i actually talked to my neighbor that I learned owns the canebrake. She had no idea what it was but she was excited to learn about it! It was a lovely conversation.
Apparently, she knew I had been down there a bunch of times and thought nothing of it. She said "Yeah I told my husband, If you see her down there, just leave her alone she's doing her thing." In the most sincere way possible, God bless this woman
She said I could transplant all I wanted, too. This was great! ...but I quickly learned how RIDICULOUSLY HARD it is to transplant from a canebrake of this size. The rhizomes are so big and tough, a shovel can hardly get through them, and unless you're at the edge of the canebrake, there's a thick mat of them going every which way. I was driving my whole weight down on this shovel and it kept just denting the rhizome and glancing off.
I did get some transplants but each one took like half an hour because I was fighting for my life!
Also, with a canebrake this size, it doesn't grow little canes that will later become bigger—it shoots up tall canes in a single season. The youngest canes, more accessible and toward the edge of the canebrake, were significantly taller than I was. I cut the top off of one transplant for ease of handling—I had a pair of hand pruners with me that were usually perfectly useful for small limbs, but I could barely get these things through the cane, it's just so strong and dense.
Someone research the material properties of this stuff ASAP. It's insanely strong.
Here is some YouTube videos that talk about river cane!
Roger Cain of Keetoowah/Western Band Cherokee shows and talks about Rivercane. This video has a BIG canebrake, the mature canes look as if they could be 15ft tall, but he says it's only a fragment of what they used to be!
Stan the River Man visits a Canebrake in Northern Kentucky. This channel only has 22 subscribers, I feel like I've discovered a rare and priceless treasure
River Cane Renaissance, Episode 1. This guy has devoted a large part of his life to studying Rivercane and now works with the eastern band Cherokee to try and bring it back.
Chattooga river conservancy video on Rivercane, haven't watched the whole thing myself but it looks really good and detailed
These videos barely have any views or comments, but y'all can help! We can spread the knowledge.
For privacy reasons, I share details online of my real world activities only reluctantly, and not very often. But don't be bamboozled into thinking I have forgotten the Canebrakes. It's exactly the opposite.
I have done a lot of networking and made a lot of contacts. I am not alone. There are other people with a story exactly like mine: first, they heard an offhanded mention of forests of American bamboo, which shattered everything they thought they knew about their environment. Next, they became crazed with fascination, searching for knowledge with insane ferocity. Then, they realized that river cane is not only a plant, it is a keystone species symbiotic with indigenous cultures for thousands of years, and it was almost destroyed due to the subjugation of its habitat and the genocide of its caretakers.
The canebrakes' devotees have been working tirelessly to compile every single scrap of information on canebrakes that exists in writing. Every record, every primary source, every historical mention, every comment and conjecture. I have been given access to some of this priceless treasure trove. The wealth of information is amazing, but even more amazing is how much is still unknown.
The history, properties, and ecological importance of the canebrakes is so much more than I imagined.
For example, the massive amounts of seeds produced by huge canebrakes in flowering events fed the passenger pigeon flocks. Likewise the Carolina parakeet was also dependent on canebrakes, and the extinct Bachman's warbler was a canebrake specialist. The destruction of canebrakes could be responsible for why these birds went extinct.
Canebrakes were absolutely fundamental to the indigenous peoples of the Southeast, providing for their every need. Food, shelter, containers, tools, music and art. The settlers foolishly thought the indigenous peoples were not "advanced" enough for metal tools, but in truth, they already had a material superior to metal. River cane by weight is stronger than steel. You can make knives and blades out of it.
I am excited for the future. It seems like momentum is building to save the river cane and bring back the canebrakes, and I am hoping to join together with all the other like-minded people to accomplish this task.
A new organization has just started in Alabama to bring back the river cane. Here is a blog post to read from a few months ago.
[ID: Three photos of rivercane. It is tall, and dark green striped with brown. This is followedby a photo of the alabama picher plant. It has leaves shaped like jugs, in yellow and orange, with green veins. This is followed by another photo of a rivercane patch, then a pile of ripe seeds, that are still slightly green but brown on the tips, then a germinating seed, a seedling in soil, many seedlings in various improvised plant pots, and an older seedling in the ground surrounded by dried leaves. End ID.]
excuse the block of text ID it's hot outsid.e
Please for the love of all that's sacred tell someone who knows this stuff to get to Savannah Georgia, there are so many patches here that experts online cannot identify and think are an undescribed species.
Here's a petition to protect at least one of the canebrakes here
since it's January now, that means it will soon be February and March, so River Cane including the other species should start flowering soon! Keep an eye out for dark purple spikes, either coming from the stalk itself, or the ground around it!
The entire plant does not need to flower at the same time, so you might need to look. Also size does not matter. The plant can be 8 ft tall or less than a foot, it can still flower.
Start looking in February. Especially keep an eye out in March!
Hi everyone. It's February. Guess what's happening right now?
[image description start. Four photos of native bamboo flower buds, each a dark purple color, emerging from tan stems. Image description end.]
And some of them, are flowering literally three times in a row! One tiny plant we found, less than 4 ft tall, flowered and produced seed in February of 2025, then again in September 2025, and now again in February 2026!
Other taller stocks like the ones shown above, for sure flowered in February 2025, and from the seeds still clinging to the plants, they probably did it again in fall as well, but unfortunately I wasn't able to check on them because a storm knocked a bunch of tree branches into my path to get to them. And now they are flowering again, for at least the second year in a row!
Get out there and look for flowers and flower buds! If you are further south or towards the coast, you will likely find Arundinaria tecta, which is what I have picture of! (You know, unless it turns out to be another species that has not been described yet, which is possible)
Also for my friends in Mexico, there are multiple species of native bamboo that you can find, and you should all definitely show me pictures because it looks delightful!
Whoops I haven't visited this post in a little while but someone just sent an ask about Rivercane and made me think to look for it.
Very fascinating that it flowered again in the fall and then the next year. I have observed it to do that in a couple of canebrakes, I'm not sure if the plant just keeps going until it dies, or what.
When the pollen is produced, maybe you could save some to test and see if they can be hand-pollinated? (and how long the pollen lasts in storage). Im not sure if anyone has tried hand pollination.
The further north you are, the later the flowering will happen- here in Kentucky, you should look in April-May and if there are seeds they will be ready in June
Also, really cool to hear about the possible undescribed species near Savannah, it was just recently that Tallapoosa Cane was identified as its own species
@headspace-hotel Hi, I live in the DC metro area and last year I noticed a canebreak on the side of the road leading in to my neighborhood after reading your posts about river cane. The canebreak shows mixed characteristics of river cane and giant cane so I'm not sure what kind of cane it is but also if it's flowering or has seeds, what should i do with them to help? I'll also try to identify it again this year because I was completely new to bamboo identification when I tried last year but I bet having access to flowers will probably help if there are any.
I’ve moved a lot in the last 10 years. I’ve lived in tiny dumps and large “luxury” apartment complexes. Over the years I’ve encountered a number of problems and surprise amenities. This is my checklist when I am looking for a new place to live. Feel free to send me questions you ask. I’ll add them here.
General
How much is the rent?
Do they need a security deposit? How much?
Do they need first month’s rent? How about last month’s rent?
How long is the lease?
What is the penalty for terminating the lease early?
Is there an application fee? How much?
Are utilities included?
Can you sublet?
Do the people in the rental office seem intelligent / seem like they care?
Who does apartment maintenance and how do they handle it? Are they on call 24/7?
The Apartment Building
Are the floors wood beam supported or concrete? (bouncy/not bouncy)
Central Air? Radiators? Electric Heat? In wall AC? AC at all?
Elevator?
Smoke alarms? Carbon Monoxide Detectors? When were they last tested?
Where do we go if there is severe weather?
Sprinklers?
Alarms tied to Fire Station?
Do windows open?
Does the roof leak?
Are the windows drafty?
What condition are the floors in? Is the carpet soft/clean? Is the hardwood splintering?
Has the apartment been professionally cleaned after the previous tenant moved out? Does the complex pay for this service, and who do they use?
What were the last tenants like? How long did they live there and why did they move out?
Is there enough closet space?
Where will you store your vacuum cleaner?
what is the policy on trash disposal? Is recycling available?
Where will you store your bicycle?
Can you have a grill on your balcony?
Does the fireplace work?
Can you control the heat?
Can you have a real Christmas tree?
is there a screen door slide on the balcony?
Does the slider lock securely?
Is there a peep hole on the door?
How do you let someone into the building?
Can you monitor the front door / lobby from the apartment?
Can you paint the walls?
Am I allowed to hang pictures with nails?
Am I allowed to have overnight guests?
Who do you work with or recommend for renters insurance? Is it required
Do they allow pets? How about fish tanks? Is there a pet fee?
Do they allow water beds?
Is there a storage room? How big? How much does it cost?
Is there laundry in the building/complex? What is the cost?
How and where are UPS/FedEx deliveries left?
Will your couch fit through the door?
How about your box spring?
Kitchen
Gas or Electric Stove?
Kitchen sink disposal?
Kitchen Sink sprayer?
Microwave included in kitchen?
How old are the appliances?
How loud is the dishwasher?
Bathroom
Is there a bathtub or just shower?
Does the bathroom vent effectively?
If the bathroom door is open, can you see the toilet from the living room?
Are there enough towel racks in the bathroom?
Is there enough shelf space in the bathroom?
Are the vanity lights bright enough to shave cleanly / apply makeup effectively?
Home Office
Are there enough outlets to plug stuff in?
Is broadband/DSL available?
What cable company services the city?
Can you have 2 phone lines? (separate fax line)
Parking
Is parking included?
How much for a parking spot?
Is it assigned?
Permit from city required to park?
What about guest parking?
Who plows the snow?
Is it tandem parking and will you have to coordinate parking times with the other tenants?
Neighborhood
Do you get cell phone reception?
Car insurance rates higher/lower?
When is trash pickup?
Near public transportation?
Near a grocery store?
Near a gas station?
Walking distance to a bar?
Are there sidewalks to run on?
Is there a health club? Does it suck? When is it open? Can you bring a guest?
Is there a pool? Does it suck? When is it open? Can you bring a guest?
Are there tennis/basketball/volleyball courts? Do they suck? When are they open? Can you bring a guest?
Is there a playground? Is it safe? Is it near a road? Can you hear it from your apartment?
Is the area fully developed? Are they going to put up a new building across the street and ruin your view?
Is it easy to get to a highway?
What are the traffic patterns during rush hour?
Is the apartment address easy to find?
Are there good take-out places nearby?
Where is the nearest cleaners?
Where is the nearest 24 hour drug store?
Where is the nearest House of worship?
Where is the nearest Wal-Mart?
Where is the nearest laundromat?
Is there a history of theft, vandalism or other crimes?
Potential Nuisances
How much noise comes through the walls? Are they party walls?
Do headlights come in the windows from passing traffic?
Do street lights shine in the bedroom windows?
Can you hear people in the hallway?
Can you hear the elevator?
What are the other tenants like? (look at the cars in the lot)
How noisy are they?
Do they have children?
Do kids live upstairs who will run around early in the morning on weekends and wake you up?
Are there students living in the building?
Are there businesses across the street that open early (before you want to wake up) and make a lot of noise?
Is there an intersection nearby that causes traffic to back up with the result of people honking their horns in front of your windows?
Can you hear traffic from nearby roads/highways?
Do airplanes constantly fly over your roof?
Can you hear the guy who lives below you snore all night?
Are there bugs?
Is the building old and require constant maintenance?
Do the people with the balcony below/above/next to the apartment smoke? Does that smoke come into the apartment?
Do the people with the balcony below/above/next to the apartment sit on their balcony on their phone constantly?
Is there a bar across the street that has live music at night? Do they leave the door open so the whole neighborhood can hear the music?
Are there dogs nearby that bark constantly?
Are you near a park that will cause people to take your parking spot and turn around in your driveway?
Is the apartment on a street that is a commuters’ shortcut?
Have there been mold or mildew problems in the apartment or adjacent apartments?
Tips
Avoid the cheapest place available. There will be riff-raff, dents in your car doors, broken beer bottles, and screaming kids.
Questions to Ask a Landlord
August 7th, 2006 by aptsherpa
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It happens to all of us: we think of a thousand questions the day after looking at an apartment, and wish we’d had better presence of mind in the moment. Here’s a list of questions, loosely categorized by topic that you may wish to ask a potential landlord about your apartment. Remember to ask questions respectfully and refrain from gasping at any answer, even if it seems outrageous. If this isn’t the apartment for you, just move on. If you’re not sure you understand the answer to a question, don’t hesitate to rephrase or ask a follow-up question. This list assumes you’ve already actually seen the apartment and don’t need to ask the basic questions (where in the complex is it located?, how many bedrooms/square feet?, etc.). Keep in mind that this list designed as a guideline to help you remember to ask about what’s important to you. It’s not a litany of questions you must ask in every situation.
Business Matters
When is rent due? Is there a grace period?
What are the late fees? When do they take effect?
How should I pay rent? Can I pay with cash? With a credit card?
Is rent collected at the office?
Are any utilities included in the rent?
What is the approximate cost for utilities that are not included in the rent?
Do I need to set up my own electrical or other services?
Are utilities charged to individual apartments or averaged between residents?
How long have you been in business? Do you manage other properties?
Where can I submit a complaint about management or maintenance, if I have one?
Are there any move-in specials on rent? Any special gifts for new tenants?
Do I get reduced rent if I refer a friend?
Maintenance Issues
How large is the maintenance staff?
How do I file a request for maintenance services?
How long does it usually take for services to be completed?
How does management staff handle complaints about maintenance?
What are your most common maintenance requests?
When is the last time the unit I’m looking at was updated or remodeled?
What modifications do you make to units between tenants?
How do you handle pest control? What are your most common pests?
Does maintenance ever enter apartments without giving notice?
Community Affairs
What types of people live in the complex?
Does management organize any community events? What types?
What facilities are offered (pool, gym, business center)? What are the hours?
Do I need passes to use these facilities? Can my guests use these facilities?
How often do you update your facilities? How often is the pool cleaned?
How can I submit a request to have the facilities cleaned or updated?
Is there a community bulletin board or other way for residents to communicate?
How can I report problems with another resident? How do you handle such issues?
What is the most common complaint by residents about other residents?
Are there many children in the complex? Are they well-attended?
Are there community baby-sitting services?
Parking Problems
How is the parking situation?
Do residents have assigned spots?
Do I need a parking pass?
Can I get covered parking? A garage?
Are car break-ins a problem?
Is the lot monitored by cameras?
Safety Issues
How safe is the apartment?
Is the community gated? Does the gate open with a code, a card, or another method?
Have you had any break-ins in the past year? How did you address them?
What is the most common safety complaint of residents?
Do the windows lock? Can I have my windows barred?
Does the door have a deadbolt? Can I have one installed?
How can I verify that you’ve changed the locks between residents?
Tip: contact the police department to get complete information about crime in the area. Landlords will likely try to downplay any criminal incidents, but the police should have full statistics on any situations that have happened in the area. They should also be able to let you know if any registered sex offenders or other tracked felons live in or near the apartment complex.
After asking all—or even just some—of these questions, you should have an excellent idea of whether or not an apartment is for you. If you haven’t exhausted the landlord (which you might if you go through all of these questions in order!), feel free to ask follow-up questions regarding any topics that concern or interest you. Do keep in mind that this list is to help you remember to ask about particular subjects; don’t just become a drone reciting a list of questions. At the same time, it is a landlord’s job to answer questions and convince you that you want to live in this particular apartment. If you don’t feel that the person you’re talking to is truly receptive to your questions and concerns, you may want to move on—even if the answers to some questions were acceptable. When you’ve gathered all the appropriate information and learned how your potential landlord deals with people, you should be able to decide whether this apartment is right for you.
You should look at your local government (city, county/parish, etc) and see if they have an Office of Landlord-Tenant Affairs (maybe under Housing, or Community Affairs, or some other term) and look up what sort of complaints have been made to the local government.
This is probably under Code Enforcement, and you will absolutely want to know if there is a mold problem in the apartment complex, if there are rats, if there are leaks, if there has been a spate of car break-ins. Most local governments publish these things, and they will also have a list of ‘troubled properties’ that have had consistent complaints and inaction on the part of the management company that you do NOT want to live at.
You also want to find the local government’s Handbook of Landlord-Tenant Affairs (probably a different title), that explains in plain language what you as a tenant are legally entitled for your landlord to provide for you.
For example, hot water between 120F and 140F, a heating system that maintains are no less than 68F, an air-conditioning system that maintains at no more than 80F, running water that works in kitchen and bathroom (sink, toilet, tub/shower), a refrigerator that maintains at both safe frozen and safe refrigerator temperatures, functioning locks and keyfobs, etc.
Also, check your local fire code. You want to know that the bedroom you are being rented is legally a bedroom – in my locality, that means there is an exterior exit: either a door, or a window big enough and not so high off the floor that an able-bodied adult can exit it through it if there is a fire. A room without a window or an exterior door is not legally a bedroom and you don’t want to rent it.
spin the wheel and get assigned a jewish food (if you get something unfamiliar, I encourage you to look it up and discover something new!)
what do you think of this food
I love it
Meh/neutral
I don't like it
I've never had it but I would like it
I've never had it but I would NOT like it
Voting ended onMar 30
*obligatory notice: don't do any "this thing isn't actually jewish it originates from [insert country] here" bc jewish people are allowed to adapt and enjoy foods from the cultures that surround them, thereby making said food, in fact, a jewish food.
Last March/April, I finally read Harrow the Ninth, and zeroed in early on a line that would shape my first (and only, so far, full) read:
“It’s enneameter. The traditional form. Those who are fit but to hold their blade in the scabbard—”
“That’s not nine feet of anything.”
“—never to draw it forth for the battle.”
—HtN, “Parodos”
And thus began my quest for the entire book to figure out what the fuck enneameter was meant to look like. Astute readers who read appendices will note that we know it's dactylic enneameter, because Muir told us so. But she didn't say it in the text! So I had to work it out the hard way. Which was extra hard because Ortus has never once written a line of dactyls and only dactyls.
Anyway: what follows is a lot of scansion, thoughts about what Ortus is doing, and finally discussion of where it comes into play gloriously in the battle in the River.
What's a Dactylic Enneameter?
We'll start with enneameter, because the book did: this word indicates how many metrical feet, or units of stressed and unstressed syllables, make up a single line of poetry. Because the Ninth House is fucking absurd and ponderous and goes way too hard on the branding, it's nine whole metrical feet to a line. For comparison, Shakespeare generally did five feet to a line. So when Harrow says "that's not nine feet of anything," she's criticizing the way he's structuring his lines, and also so so correct.
Dactylic explains which metrical feet that line is made up of, in this case dactyls: units of three syllables, one stressed followed by two unstressed. If you put only dactyls in a line, you get kind of a waltz rhythm: BUM-ba-bum BUM-ba-bum. I'm mostly familiar with them through a silly poetry form called the double dactyl, about which more later as a bonus for reading all the way through.
I'm also going to briefly explain what a trochee is, because they'll come up. A trochee is another kind of metrical foot of two syllables, the same as a dactyl but with the last syllable cut off: BUM-bum.
Nine Feet Under: Scansion and Ortus
This is just going to be me going through the lines of the Noniad we get one by one and analyzing the metrical feet in them. If this sounds boring to you, feel free to skip, but also this may not be the post for you. I am going to be bolding stressed syllables and leaving unstressed unbolded. (D) is dactyl, (T) is trochee. The numbers are just numbering the feet 1-9.
Parodos:
Those who are fit but to hold their blade in the scabbard, never to draw it forth for the battle.
Those who are (D-1) | fit but to (D-2) | hold their (T-3) | blade in the (D-4) | scab-bard (T-5) | nev-er to (D-6) | draw it (T-7) | forth for the (D-8) | ba-ttle. (T-9)
So yeah this isn't nine feet of one thing; it's nine feet of mixed dactyls and trochees, constructed in a way that particularly gives you a stop-and-start "wait, what the fuck is going on?" problem with reading it out loud.
Sidebar: Harrow is so funny debating Ortus about his poetry and largely I'm kind of with her in her scathing opinions, but I generally prefer to Mostly Adhere to Meter. In Chapter 10, she says "it ought to be Non-i-us as three syllables, or Non-yus as two" and he defends himself with (1) his archaic style is on purpose to facilitate spoken performance and (2) "synizesis [two vowels pronounced as one for the meter] is characteristic of some of our finest examples of early Ninth prosody." I think they both have some merit, but also: WHAT DO YOU MEAAAAN YOU'RE COMMITTED TO SPOKEN PERFORMANCE. I trip over my tongue so much on this line.
I do think there's a place for trochees to break up the headlong race you can get into if you stay in dactyls for too long, or to create emphasis in the middle of the line; there are some examples I'll mention this with later. But there is such a thing as doing this too much and ending up with a mess, imo, and as I told someone while reading, this first line we get is really impressively not nine feet of anything.
Chapter 5:
Then did the dire bone frenzy fall upon Nonius, the mightiest arm of the Ninth and its bulwark
Spasmed his veins with the death lust; his great heart roared like a black iron furnace, hungry for corpses...
Then did the (D-1) | di-re bone (D-2) | fren-zy (T-3) | fall up-on (D-4) | Non-ius, the (D-5) | might-i-est (D-6) | arm of the (D-7) | Ninth and its (D-8) | bul-wark (D-9)
This one is kind of fine once you work out how many syllables he means "dire" and "Nonius" to have. "Dire" is complicated by the trochee right after the foot it's in so it was like a three-car pileup in my mouth the first time I tried it. The trochees really do have the effect of making you Stop after them, which works great at the end of the line and so-so on frenzy; I don't think I'd want the speaker to pause in the middle of that phrase, but you do you, Ortus.
Spas-med his (D-1) | veins with the (D-2) | death lust; his (D-3) | great heart (T-4) | roared like a (D-5) | black i-ron (D-6) | fur-nace, (T-7) | hun-gry for (D-8) | corp-ses... (T-9)
Haha, fuck. I had to work backwards from the end of this line to work out what he was doing. It's because of great heart. Wrestling it into a trochee is VIOLENCE. Who says it "GREAT heart" except like, me pronouncing the name of Beauty's horse in Beauty by Robin McKinley. Wrestling it into a trochee you're using to break up your dactylic meter is. Why. Why would you do this, Ortus. The foot 7 and 9 trochees work great, though! Natural pauses and emphases!
Chapter 8:
Baleful the black blade struck at the shimmering stuff of the spectral beast, biting deep in its false flesh;
Shrieking, it flailed with its claws at the pauldrons and casque of the Ninth, yet his heart never faltered or failed him...
Bale-ful the (D-1) | black blade (T-2) | struck at the (D-3) | shim-mering (D-4) | stuff of the (D-5) | spec-tral beast, (D-6) | bit-ing (T-7) | deep in its (D-8) | false flesh; (T-9)
This starts off so nicely. I didn't have to stop and figure anything out until, like, the sixth foot at the earliest. Another one where I stopped mid-line and then worked backwards from the end to figure out which foot was which. Another tortured trochee in "false flesh," but it's clearly the last foot because "deep in its" is such a perfect dactyl.
But despite how awkward ending on false flesh specifically is, I do think you need the pause on the trochee at the end here, and the placement of the emphases is bringing the B and S alliteration forward, which I do like a lot. So while his meter does make me scratch my head and do math, I think he's doing something purposeful with it here. I think changing it to "biting deep into its false flesh" would alleviate 90% of my problems with this line.
Shriek-ing, it (D-1) | flailed with its (D-2) | claws at the (D-3) | pauld-rons and (D-4) | casque of the (D-5) | Ninth, yet his (D-6) | heart nev-er (D-7) | fal-tered or (D-8) | failed him... (T-9)
Ortus, you beaut, you've done it. This, I think, was long my hypothesized perfect line. While not fully in dactyls, it's only got one trochee right at the end which works quite well and none of the dactyls are forced. We love to see it. And he got a little of the alliteration in there again. Is it a stunning line, no, but it's certainly not tripping me up.
Chapter 10:
Then Nonius spake full wroth; thunder'd his voice as the black sea roars on the tomb gate of Algol,
Blazing his eyes with the fell light thrown from the Emperor's corpse-fires; answer he gave, and he told them—
Then Nonius spake full wroth; thun-der'd his (D-4) | voice as the (D-5) | black sea (T-6) | roars on the (D-7) | tomb gate of (D-8) | Al-gol, (T-9)
What the fuck goes on here.
You can see where I started to work backwards, but what is "Then Nonius spake full wroth" three feet of? I think based on the argument in this chapter about Non-yus vs Non-i-us we're seeing the latter here, since we've seen the former. So foot 1 is "Then Non-i-us" (treating "then" as just kind of an extra syllable). But then you're left with "spake" (2 - literally 1 syllable) and then "full wroth" (3 - an iamb). I think once you get it's happening it's like....fine? A weird departure but clearly a weird set-off part of the sentence? But as is often my problem with Ortus' variation, I can't figure it out by moving forward, only by moving backward and literally diagramming the line.
Blaz-ing his (D-1) | eyes with the (D-2) | fell light (T-3) | thrown from the (D-4) | Em-pe-ror's (D-5) | corpse-fires; (T-6) | an-swer he (D-7) | gave, and he (D-8) | told them— (T-9)
Again with the tortured fucking trochees ("fell light" is a nice phrase until you make it a trochee and then it loses the vibe), but "corpse-fires" is nice. I assume he means, like, pyres. Ooh, "Blazing his eyes with the corpse-light thrown from Emperor's pyres"?
Chapter 18:
My sister, I envy your fortune; fearless you forge yet ahead, through the cold grey flood of the River.
Fallen in war for the fame of the House is the death every Warrior fain would win at the finish;
Laggard I linger behind; hold fast on the far bank's beachhead! Blood shall repay your blood spilt.
I wince at getting three whole lines at once and then I remember there's eighteen fucking books of this and Harrow apparently knows most of it against her will. But I digress.
(My) sis-ter, I (D-1) | en-vy your (D-2) | for-tune; (T-3) | fear-less you (D-4) | forge yet a- (D-5) | head, through the (D-6) | cold grey (T-7) | flood of the (D-8) | Ri-ver. (T-9)
"Cold grey" is weird but there's only so many times I can yell about weird emphasis in the trochees/trochees that are basically two emphasized syllables in a row which MAY be a totally other foot that feels bad but which I will continue to read as trochees. Another instance of the leading extra syllable on a line! I don't hate that, it's not emphasized so it kind of fits into the rhythm. I wonder if the line before it ended in a trochee: that would make for a really easy flow between the two lines.
Fal-len in (D-1) | war for the (D-2) | fame of the (D-3) | House is the (D-4) | death ev-ery (D-5) | War-ri-or (D-6) | fain would (T-7) | win at the (D-8) | fin-ish; (T-9)
Tbh the clustered trochees at the end are almost as bad as never getting into the rhythm at all. Because you're moving confidently ahead and then just go, "what?" I do kind of think he's doing an alliteration thing again. Look at all those emphasized F's and W's. Actually, this look is focused on meter, but I do keep seeing alliteration on the emphasized syllables, see also: the line before this one with so many F's also. And I wonder if that's something traditional, too; I'm thinking of Middle and Old English alliterative verse, a bit.
Lag-gard I (D-1) | lin-ger be- (D-2) | hind; hold (T-3) | fast on the (D-4) | far bank's (T-5) | beach-head! (T-6) | Blood shall re- (D-7) | pay your blood (D-8) | spilt. (9)
I think? What a weird one. There's a lot of B's in this one but they don't really line up with the emphases either so...idk, man. What are you doing. <3
Chapter 29:
Warrior proud of the Third House! Ride forth now as my sister! Ride we to death and the proving!
Ride we with heads held high; we shall bloody our blades in the foe's heart; death shall we bring to the foul ones—
Death shall we win for ourselves, as the pride for our high deeds done on the ash-choked plains of the ravens!
I think there's enough textual evidence Muir was intentionally writing kind of crap verse that I don't feel so bad about saying that I Am About to Start Biting.
War-ri-or (D-1) | proud of the (D-2) | Third House! (T-3) | Ride forth T-4) | now as my (D-5) | sis-ter! (T-6) | Ride we to (D-7) | death and the (D-8) | prov-ing! (T-9)
I bet Ortus is so glad that warrior is a dactyl. The trochees line up nicely with the exclamation points. Yeah, you do want a pause there. Third House definitely isn't an iamb but it also Feels Bad in the same way as many of his mid-line trochees.
Ride we with (D-1) | heads held (T-2) | high; we shall (D-3) | blood-y our (D-4) | blades in the (D-5) | foe's heart; (T-6) | death shall we (D-7) | bring to the (D-8) | foul ones— (T-9)
Figuring out how to read your stupid poetry shouldn't be a puzzle game I have to play on every single line, especially when it's supposed to be designed to be spoken aloud, Ortus.
Death shall we (D-1) | win for our- (D-2) | selves, as the (D-3) | pride for our (D-4) | high deeds (T-5) | done on the (D-6) | ash-choked (T-7) | plains of the (D-8) | ra-vens! (T-9)
"Ash-choked plans of the ravens" is pretty good but I've just realized that half these lines read like an engine revving and trying to start up over and over. Dun-dun. Dun-dun-dun.
Chapter 49:
"I am the Emperor's Hand; do not thou persist in this combat; matchless am I with the long blade—
Matchless alike in my magecraft. Fall to your knees and be glad that I spare thee; thy courage is mighty.
Mightier yet is thy folly if thou think'st yet to oppose me." The Lyctor spoke, and was silent.
Nonius, wounded full sore, spat blood and gave him a grim smile; nor did the sword in his hand shake.
Boldly, he answered the saint: "'Tis true that your power is great, o servant of masterful Canaan;
Nor may I hope to be counted your equal in skill, nor in craft, nor even in bodily vigour.
This is the long bit that Ortus and Harrow tag-team recite in the River bubble, and Ortus pronounces Harrow's enunciation nearly perfect, so I'm going to guess it's accurate even after Harrow takes over.
"I am the (D-1) | Em-pe-ror's (D-2) | Hand; do (T-3) | not thou per- (D-4) | sist in this (D-5) | com-bat; (T-6) | match-less am (D-7) | I with the (D-8) | long blade— (T-9)
Match-less a- (D-1) | like in my (D-2) | mage-craft. (T-3) | Fall to your (D-4) | knees and be (D-5) | glad that I (D-6) | spare thee; thy (D-7) | cour-age is (D-8) | might-y. (T-9)
Might-i-er (D-1) | yet is thy (D-2) | fol-ly (T-3)* | if thou think'st (D-4) | yet to op- (D-5) pose me." The (D-6) | Lyc-tor (T-7) | spoke, and was (D-8) | si-lent. (T-9)
*"folly if" could be a dactyl but "thou think'st" would be an extremely awkward trochee, and if that was acting as a foot alone there's no reason NOT to make it "thou thinkest," which would scan perfectly well. Lots of trochee-aided emphasis near the starts of lines here, too: the previous line also has a trochee at foot 3.
These lines are fine. I think the places the trochees come in work well for emphasis, the broken-up rhythm in that third line really works for me.
Non-i-us, (D-1) | wound-ed full (D-2) | sore, spat (T-3) | blood and (T-4) | gave him a (D-5) | grim smile; (T-6) | nor did the (D-7) | sword in his (D-8) | hand shake. (D-9)
I think???? Actually, this is where Harrow picks it up, so this might be where her "almost perfect" enunciation makes Ortus' meter look weirder than it is. The next two are also spoken by Harrow, with only a brief prompting from Ortus when she forgot how the next bit started.
Bold-ly, he (D-1) | an-swered the (D-2) | saint: "'Tis (T-3) | true that your (D-4) | pow-er is (D-5) | great, o (T-6) | ser-vant of (D-7) | mas-ter-ful (D-8) Ca-naan; (T-9)
Nor may I (D-1) | hope to be (D-2) | coun-ted your (D-3) | e-qual in (D-4) | skill, nor in (D-5) | craft, nor (T-6) | e-ven in (D-7) | bod-i-ly (D-8) | vig-our. (T-9)
Hm, just an observation. Not a rule, because there's actually a lot of exceptions, but I feel like a lot of the lines that make me happiest have the trochees dropped in at foot 3, 6, and/or 9.
And this is all of Ortus' poetry! I don't have a nice bow here beyond, well, you can see why I questioned for so long that I had the correct read on what enneameter was supposed to look like.
Why Am I Talking In Meter?
I'm not actually going to analyze all of Matthias' dialogue here, I just want to bring you back to my experience reading this, which was, after a full book of doing this every time poetry turned up, having Matthias turn up and going HELLO?????
"Ninth was my name," said the new arrival. "Ninth was my hearth and my homeland. Here I have come at your calling. None may return from the River unless he be bidden by blood-rite; tell me, why have I been drawn here?"
It sort of goes on a per-sentence basis: "Ninth was my name." / "Ninth was my hearth and my homeland." / "Here I have come at your calling." / "None may return from the River unless he be bidden by blood-rite; tell me why have I been drawn here?" But it's so immediately and palpably dactyl-based.
I don't know if I twigged from this very first piece of dialogue but I was definitely a glass case of glee until he said "why am I talking in meter" and I broke and messaged a friend. Even "Why am I talking in meter" is in meter!!! As I said at the time: "omg nonius from my poems" and "he cannot turn it off. obsessed."
Still deeply curious how the Matthias section hit other people, but for me it was the most GLORIOUS payoff of this buildup of extremely tedious poetry I was obsessing over. There are so many good punchlines after very long buildups in the back end of this book and this is one of them.
ETA: I forgot to come back to double dactyls!!! As a treat(?) for reading through all this, have a double dactyl I made about Ortus when I was yelling about this again in January.
Clippity cloppity
Ortus called Nigenad
labored profusely at
cumbersome verse—
His magnum opus: an
Enneametrical
ode fit to make angels
summon a hearse
hi op not to come hijack your post but a) this is an extremely baller metrical analysis and I am making the salute emoji at you 🫡 and b) I can maybe shed a little light on the trochee issue!
basically: they’re actually something called a spondee, because dactylic enneameter is a ridiculously wonderfully extra version of dactylic hexameter, which naturally features both dactyls and spondees largely interchangeably. and a spondee is in fact composed of two stressed syllables in a row!
most commonly used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry, dactylic hexameter is made of six feet, each *theoretically* composed of a dactyl, except the last foot is always two syllables, a starting stressed one and then something called an anceps (which just means that the last syllable can be either stressed or unstressed by nature but will read like it’s unstressed. so in English equivalent it’s a trochee it’s just also TECHNICALLY not a trochee). as you’ve very ably noted in your scans, every line of Muir’s enneameter ends in a two-syllable trochee foot.
(side note: Latin and ancient Greek versions of this meter operate not based on vowel stress but vowel length — some vowels are long, some are short, some can be either. I’m trying to stick to the English version here which is indeed based on stress but if I lapse back into long and shorts, please know it is because I am getting a PhD in the other languages mentioned and my brain is a horrible jumble of all of them at the same time, and you can substitute “long” for “stressed” and “short” for “unstressed.”) (related side note: dactylic verse is kind of famously hard to do in English because it’s designed for systems which use vowel length and not stress, but some have done it: I think the famous one is Longfellow’s “Evangeline,” which starts off “THIS is the/FOR-est prim-/E-val the/MUR-mur-ing/PINES and the/HEM-locks.” basically all I’m saying here is that Muir took a thing that was already famously tricky and made it trickier by doing enneameter instead of hexameter. like girl what do you MEAN every line has nine feet.)
ANYWAY all that said: in the languages which use dactylic meter frequently, a dactyl can ALWAYS be substituted for a spondee, so anytime you’d expect DUM-da-dum you can have DUM DUM instead. I think that thinking spondee instead of trochee can fix some of the lines that otherwise don’t appear to really scan! for instance for this beast from ch 10 I would suggest:
THEN NON-/I-us spake/FULL WROTH/THUN-der’d his/VOICE as the/BLACK SEA/ROARS on the/TOMB gate of/AL-gol
it’s for sure still a little awkward (to me “spake” feels like it ought to be stressed, there’s too many consonants involved for it to be comfortable unstressed …) but I do think it technically scans this way, and in any case I got the nine feet in and if you pronounce it, it doesn’t sound completely incomprehensible! and actually I think that a lot of your (very fair) concerns about oral performance ease if you put in spondees for trochees most of the time. like they’re definitely still awkward but this meter is just awkward in English full stop, and they at least make more sense than a trochee. if I had more time or wherewithal I’d do like an audio recording of myself reading some of these … but like I could be convinced if people want it probably.
this also, I think, means that the verse is maybe not as awkward as it seems at first glance — and Harrow’s consistent characterization of it as such may be a symptom of her underestimation of Ortus rather than a truly fair portrayal of his work! which fits with her general interactions with him through the book, IMO.
also another fun fact about classical dactylic meters is that lines almost always end in a dactyl-spondee combination, so the penultimate foot is a dactyl and the ultimate is the anceps-spondee/trochee (so it goes DUM-da-dum/DUM-dum at the line end, which one of my professors refers to as the “shave and a haircut”) and Muir ended every single one of these lines with that exact combo. every single one of her eighth feet (as you scanned!!) is a dactyl. it’s really incredibly excellent and immediately flags to me that she a) is very purposefully invoking the Latin and Greek versions of these meters and b) actually knows quite a bit about them. I was in my final year of my classics undergrad degree when HtN came out and I had to pace around my apartment for a while going “she wrote ENGLISH DACTYLIC ENNEAMETER” when I first read it.
anyway thank you so much op for this super accessible and comprehensive metrical analysis and I hope the spondee makes it feel less like an exercise in frustration!! this is high-key one of my favorite things in the series; the level of commitment required to pull it off is truly mind boggling and it’s such a wonderful payoff when you get it, as you have.
I actually interpreted that line as "Then Non | -ius spake | full wroth; | thun-der’d his | voice as the | black sea | roars on the | tomb gate of | Al-gol," I think even on my first cold read of that line.
That would make all of the first three feet spondees, with a two-syllable Non-ius and a stressed spake, which I think scans really well here. As an additional bonus, this would also mirror some classical usage of multiple initial spondees in a row for wrathful speech. "Spondees can also add solemnity, as in the following lines where Dido, Queen of Carthage, curses Aeneas after he has abandoned her. The first line begins with three spondees, the second with four: – – | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | – – / – – | – – | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – – "Sōl, quī terrārum flammīs oper(a) omnia lūstrās, / tūqu(e) hār(um) | inter | -pres cū | -rār(um) et | cōnscia | Iūnō," 'O Sun, who surveyest all the works of the world with thy flames, / and Thou, interpreter and witness of these sorrows, Juno...' " (quoted from Wikipedia's article on spondees).
Those who are fit but to hold their blade in the scabbard, never to draw it forth for the battle.
Chapter 5:
Then did the dire bone frenzy fall upon Nonius, the mightiest arm of the Ninth and its bulwark
Spasmed his veins with the death lust; his great heart roared like a black iron furnace, hungry for corpses…
Chapter 8:
Baleful the black blade struck at the shimmering stuff of the spectral beast, biting deep in its false flesh;
Shrieking, it flailed with its claws at the pauldrons and casque of the Ninth, yet his heart never faltered or failed him…
Chapter 10:
Then Nonius spake full wroth; thunder’d his voice as the black sea roars on the tomb gate of Algol,
Blazing his eyes with the fell light thrown from the Emperor’s corpse-fires; answer he gave, and he told them—
Chapter 18:
My sister, I envy your fortune; fearless you forge yet ahead, through the cold grey flood of the River.
Fallen in war for the fame of the House is the death every Warrior fain would win at the finish;
Laggard I linger behind; hold fast on the far bank’s beachhead! Blood shall repay your blood spilt.
Chapter 29:
Warrior proud of the Third House! Ride forth now as my sister! Ride we to death and the proving!
Ride we with heads held high; we shall bloody our blades in the foe’s heart; death shall we bring to the foul ones—
Death shall we win for ourselves, as the pride for our high deeds done on the ash-choked plains of the ravens!
Chapter 49:
“I am the Emperor’s Hand; do not thou persist in this combat; matchless am I with the long blade—
Matchless alike in my magecraft. Fall to your knees and be glad that I spare thee; thy courage is mighty.
Mightier yet is thy folly if thou think'st yet to oppose me.” The Lyctor spoke, and was silent.
Nonius, wounded full sore, spat blood and gave him a grim smile; nor did the sword in his hand shake.
Boldly, he answered the saint: “‘Tis true that your power is great, o servant of masterful Canaan;
Nor may I hope to be counted your equal in skill, nor in craft, nor even in bodily vigour.”
I took my own shot at the scansion below. I've italicised the places where I differ from OP, though not in those cases where I solely differ in classing their trochee as a spondee, since that's all of the disyllabic feet. Also, I think some of the final/ninth feet might be trochees instead (both trochees and spondees are allowed in the classical hexametric form), but I haven't bothered to differentiate.
I think interpreting the disyllabic feet as spondees not trochees, makes @/minarr 's argument about Ortus doing deliberate consonant alliteration in the stressed syllables even stronger; like, that's even more the case in even more of the lines if you look at it with the spondees.
Also, to expand on OP'S thought about disyllables sounding in the third and sixth foot (in addition to the ninth which is always a disyllable), I feel like with the dactylic enneameter, it naturally lends itself to subdivide into three sets of dactylic trimeter, and those final feet of the trimetric subdivisions are more naturally prone to eliding/coalescing their unstressed syllables. (The idea that final and initial unstressed syllables are more prone to variation/easier to mess with than line-internal syllables seems intuitive to me but I'm not sure it's actually universally true.) Plus, that internal structure/repetition makes it flow better because then each line reads ideally as three repetitions of "DUN da da, DUN da da, DUN dun".
My interpretation:
Those who are (D-1) | fit but to (D-2) | hold their (S-3) | blade in the (D-4) | scab-bard (S-5) | nev-er to (D-6) | draw it (S-7) | forth for the (D-8) | ba-ttle. (S-9)
Then did the (D-1) | dire bone (S-2) | fren-zy (S-3) | fall up-on (D-4) | Non-ius, the (D-5) | might-i-est (D-6) | arm of the (D-7) | Ninth and its (D-8) | bul-wark (S-9)
Spas-med his (D-1) | veins with the (D-2) | death lust; his (D-3) | great heart (S-4) | roared like a (D-5) | black i-ron (D-6) | fur-nace, (S-7) | hun-gry for (D-8) | corp-ses… (S-9)
Bale-ful the (D-1) | black blade (S-2) | struck at the (D-3) | shim-mer-ing (D-4) | stuff of the (D-5) | spec-tral (S-6) | beast, bit-ing (D-7) | deep in its (D-8) | false flesh; (S-9)
Shriek-ing, it (D-1) | flailed with its (D-2) | claws at the (D-3) | pauld-rons and (D-4) | casque of the (D-5) | Ninth, yet his (D-6) | heart nev-er (D-7) | fal-tered or (D-8) | failed him… (S-9)
Then Non (S-1) | -ius spake (S-2) | full wroth; (S-3) | thun-der’d his (D-4) | voice as the (D-5) | black sea (S-6) | roars on the (D-7) | tomb gate of (D-8) | Al-gol, (S-9)*
Blaz-ing his (D-1) | eyes with the (D-2) | fell light (S-3) | thrown from the (D-4) | Em-pe-ror’s (D-5) | corpse-fires; (S-6) OR corpse-fi-res; (D-6) | an-swer he (D-7) | gave, and he (D-8) | told them—(S-9)
(My) sis-ter, I (D-1) | en-vy your (D-2) | for-tune; (S-3) | fear-less you (D-4) | forge yet a- (D-5) | head, through the (D-6) | cold grey (S-7) | flood of the (D-8) | Ri-ver. (S-9)
Fal-len in (D-1) | war for the (D-2) | fame of the (D-3) | House is the (D-4) | death ev-ery (D-5) |Warr-ior (S-6) OR War-ri-or (D-6) | fain would (S-7) | win at the (D-8) | fin-ish; (S-9)
Lag-gard I (D-1) | lin-ger be- (D-2) | hind; hold (S-3) | fast on the (D-4) | far bank’s (S-5) | beach-head! (S-6) | Blood shall re- (D-7) | pay your (S-8) | blood spilt. (S-9)**
War-ri-or (D-1) | proud of the (D-2) | Third House! (S-3) | Ride forth (S-4) | now as my (D-5) | sis-ter! (S-6) | Ride we to (D-7) | death and the (D-8) | prov-ing! (S-9)
Ride we with (D-1) | heads held (S-2) | high; we shall (D-3) | blood-y our (D-4) | blades in the (D-5) | foe’s heart; (S-6) | death shall we (D-7) | bring to the (D-8) | foul ones— (S-9)
Death shall we (D-1) | win for our- (D-2) | selves, as the (D-3) | pride for our (D-4) | high deeds (S-5) | done on the (D-6) | ash-choked (S-7) | plains of the (D-8) | ra-vens! (S-9)
”I am the (D-1) | Em-pe-ror’s (D-2) | Hand; do (S-3) | not thou per- (D-4) | sist in this (D-5) | com-bat; (S-6) | match-less am (D-7) | I with the (D-8) | long blade— (S-9)
Match-less a- (D-1) | like in my (D-2) | mage-craft. (S-3) | Fall to your (D-4) | knees and be (D-5) | glad that I (D-6) | spare thee; thy (D-7) | cour-age is (D-8) | might-y. (S-9)
Might-i-er (D-1) | yet is thy (D-2) | fol-ly (S-3) | if thou think'st (D-4) | yet to op- (D-5) | pose me.“ The (D-6) | Lyc-tor (S-7) | spoke, and was (D-8) | si-lent. (S-9)
Non-i-us, (D-1) OR Non-ius, (S-1) | wound-ed (S-2) | full sore, (S-3) | spat blood and (D-4) | gavehim a (D-5) | grim smile; (S-6) | nor did the (D-7) | sword in his (D-8) | hand shake. (S-9)*
Bold-ly, he (D-1) | an-swered the (D-2) | saint: “'Tis (S-3) | true that your (D-4) | pow-er is (D-5) | great, o (S-6) | ser-vant of (D-7) | mas-ter-ful (D-8) | Ca-naan; (S-9)
Nor may I (D-1) | hope to be (D-2) | coun-ted your (D-3) | e-qual in (D-4) | skill, nor in (D-5) | craft, nor (S-6) | e-ven in (D-7) | bod-i-ly (D-8) | vig-our. (S-9)
* Wikipedia gives the following example of a line led with multiple spondees, which is also a line spoken in great wrath, so I think Muir was follwing that sort of precedent here in leading with so many spondees. "In the following lines, Dido, Queen of Carthage, curses Aeneas after he has abandoned her. The first line begins with three spondees, the second with four: – – | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | – – / – – | – – | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – – "Sōl, quī terrārum flammīs oper(a) omnia lūstrās, / tūqu(e) hār(um) | inter | -pres cū | -rār(um) et | cōnscia | Iūnō," 'O Sun, who surveyest all the works of the world with thy flames, / and Thou, interpreter and witness of these sorrows, Juno...' " (quoted from Wikipedia's page titled Spondee).
** This one violates the rule that the eighth foot is always a dactyl, not a spondee, but I also can't think of any better way to scan it.
@/minarr 's interpretation consolidated below for comparison:
Those who are (D-1) | fit but to (D-2) | hold their (T-3) | blade in the (D-4) | scab-bard (T-5) | nev-er to (D-6) | draw it (T-7) | forth for the (D-8) | ba-ttle. (T-9)
Then did the (D-1) | di-re bone (D-2) | fren-zy (T-3) | fall up-on (D-4) | Non-ius, the (D-5) | might-i-est (D-6) | arm of the (D-7) | Ninth and its (D-8) | bul-wark (T-9)
Spas-med his (D-1) | veins with the (D-2) | death lust; his (D-3) | great heart (T-4) | roared like a (D-5) | black i-ron (D-6) | fur-nace, (T-7) | hun-gry for (D-8) | corp-ses… (T-9)
Bale-ful the (D-1) | black blade (T-2) | struck at the (D-3) | shim-mering (D-4) | stuff of the (D-5) | spec-tral beast, (D-6) | bit-ing (T-7) | deep in its (D-8) | false flesh; (T-9)
Shriek-ing, it (D-1) | flailed with its (D-2) | claws at the (D-3) | pauld-rons and (D-4) | casque of the (D-5) | Ninth, yet his (D-6) | heart nev-er (D-7) | fal-tered or (D-8) | failedhim… (T-9)
(Then) Non-i-us (D-1) | spake (longa-2) | full wroth; (iamb-3) | thun-der’d his (D-4) | voice as the (D-5) | black sea (T-6) | roars on the (D-7) | tomb gate of (D-8) | Al-gol, (T-9)
Blaz-ing his (D-1) | eyes with the (D-2) | fell light (T-3) | thrown from the (D-4) | Em-pe-ror’s (D-5) | corpse-fires; (T-6) | an-swer he (D-7) | gave, and he (D-8) | told them— (T-9)
(My) sis-ter, I (D-1) | en-vy your (D-2) | for-tune; (T-3) | fear-less you (D-4) | forge yet a- (D-5) | head, through the (D-6) | cold grey (T-7) | flood of the (D-8) | Ri-ver. (T-9)
Fal-len in (D-1) | war for the (D-2) | fame of the (D-3) | House is the (D-4) | death ev-ery (D-5) | War-ri-or (D-6) | fain would (T-7) | win at the (D-8) | fin-ish; (T-9)
Lag-gard I (D-1) | lin-ger be- (D-2) | hind; hold (T-3) | faston the (D-4) | far bank’s (T-5) | beach-head! (T-6) | Blood shall re- (D-7) | pay your blood (D-8) | spilt. (9)
War-ri-or (D-1) | proud of the (D-2) | Third House! (T-3) | Ride forth (T-4) | now as my (D-5) | sis-ter! (T-6) | Ride we to (D-7) | death and the (D-8) | prov-ing! (T-9)
Ride we with (D-1) | heads held (T-2) | high; we shall (D-3) | blood-y our (D-4) | blades in the (D-5) | foe’s heart; (T-6) | death shall we (D-7) | bring to the (D-8) | foul ones— (T-9)
Death shall we (D-1) | win for our- (D-2) | selves, as the (D-3) | pride for our (D-4) | high deeds (T-5) | done on the (D-6) | ash-choked (T-7) | plains of the (D-8) | ra-vens! (T-9)
”I am the (D-1) | Em-pe-ror’s (D-2) | Hand; do (T-3) | notthou per- (D-4) | sist in this (D-5) | com-bat; (T-6) | match-less am (D-7) | I with the (D-8) | long blade— (T-9)
Match-less a- (D-1) | like in my (D-2) | mage-craft. (T-3) | Fall to your (D-4) | knees and be (D-5) | glad that I (D-6) | spare thee; thy (D-7) | cour-age is (D-8) | might-y. (T-9)
Might-i-er (D-1) | yet is thy (D-2) | fol-ly (T-3) | if thou think'st (D-4) | yet to op- (D-5) pose me.“ The (D-6) | Lyc-tor (T-7) | spoke, and was (D-8) | si-lent. (T-9)
Non-i-us, (D-1) | wound-ed full (D-2) | sore, spat (T-3) | blood and (T-4) | gave him a (D-5) | grimsmile; (T-6) | nordid the (D-7) | sword in his (D-8) | hand shake. (D-9)
Bold-ly, he (D-1) | an-swered the (D-2) | saint: “'Tis (T-3) | true that your (D-4) | pow-er is (D-5) | great, o (T-6) | ser-vant of (D-7) | mas-ter-ful (D-8) Ca-naan; (T-9)
Nor may I (D-1) | hope to be (D-2) | coun-ted your (D-3) | e-qual in (D-4) | skill, nor in (D-5) | craft, nor (T-6) | e-ven in (D-7) | bod-i-ly (D-8) | vig-our. (T-9)
Last March/April, I finally read Harrow the Ninth, and zeroed in early on a line that would shape my first (and only, so far, full) read:
“It’s enneameter. The traditional form. Those who are fit but to hold their blade in the scabbard—”
“That’s not nine feet of anything.”
“—never to draw it forth for the battle.”
—HtN, “Parodos”
And thus began my quest for the entire book to figure out what the fuck enneameter was meant to look like. Astute readers who read appendices will note that we know it's dactylic enneameter, because Muir told us so. But she didn't say it in the text! So I had to work it out the hard way. Which was extra hard because Ortus has never once written a line of dactyls and only dactyls.
Anyway: what follows is a lot of scansion, thoughts about what Ortus is doing, and finally discussion of where it comes into play gloriously in the battle in the River.
What's a Dactylic Enneameter?
We'll start with enneameter, because the book did: this word indicates how many metrical feet, or units of stressed and unstressed syllables, make up a single line of poetry. Because the Ninth House is fucking absurd and ponderous and goes way too hard on the branding, it's nine whole metrical feet to a line. For comparison, Shakespeare generally did five feet to a line. So when Harrow says "that's not nine feet of anything," she's criticizing the way he's structuring his lines, and also so so correct.
Dactylic explains which metrical feet that line is made up of, in this case dactyls: units of three syllables, one stressed followed by two unstressed. If you put only dactyls in a line, you get kind of a waltz rhythm: BUM-ba-bum BUM-ba-bum. I'm mostly familiar with them through a silly poetry form called the double dactyl, about which more later as a bonus for reading all the way through.
I'm also going to briefly explain what a trochee is, because they'll come up. A trochee is another kind of metrical foot of two syllables, the same as a dactyl but with the last syllable cut off: BUM-bum.
Nine Feet Under: Scansion and Ortus
This is just going to be me going through the lines of the Noniad we get one by one and analyzing the metrical feet in them. If this sounds boring to you, feel free to skip, but also this may not be the post for you. I am going to be bolding stressed syllables and leaving unstressed unbolded. (D) is dactyl, (T) is trochee. The numbers are just numbering the feet 1-9.
Parodos:
Those who are fit but to hold their blade in the scabbard, never to draw it forth for the battle.
Those who are (D-1) | fit but to (D-2) | hold their (T-3) | blade in the (D-4) | scab-bard (T-5) | nev-er to (D-6) | draw it (T-7) | forth for the (D-8) | ba-ttle. (T-9)
So yeah this isn't nine feet of one thing; it's nine feet of mixed dactyls and trochees, constructed in a way that particularly gives you a stop-and-start "wait, what the fuck is going on?" problem with reading it out loud.
Sidebar: Harrow is so funny debating Ortus about his poetry and largely I'm kind of with her in her scathing opinions, but I generally prefer to Mostly Adhere to Meter. In Chapter 10, she says "it ought to be Non-i-us as three syllables, or Non-yus as two" and he defends himself with (1) his archaic style is on purpose to facilitate spoken performance and (2) "synizesis [two vowels pronounced as one for the meter] is characteristic of some of our finest examples of early Ninth prosody." I think they both have some merit, but also: WHAT DO YOU MEAAAAN YOU'RE COMMITTED TO SPOKEN PERFORMANCE. I trip over my tongue so much on this line.
I do think there's a place for trochees to break up the headlong race you can get into if you stay in dactyls for too long, or to create emphasis in the middle of the line; there are some examples I'll mention this with later. But there is such a thing as doing this too much and ending up with a mess, imo, and as I told someone while reading, this first line we get is really impressively not nine feet of anything.
Chapter 5:
Then did the dire bone frenzy fall upon Nonius, the mightiest arm of the Ninth and its bulwark
Spasmed his veins with the death lust; his great heart roared like a black iron furnace, hungry for corpses...
Then did the (D-1) | di-re bone (D-2) | fren-zy (T-3) | fall up-on (D-4) | Non-ius, the (D-5) | might-i-est (D-6) | arm of the (D-7) | Ninth and its (D-8) | bul-wark (D-9)
This one is kind of fine once you work out how many syllables he means "dire" and "Nonius" to have. "Dire" is complicated by the trochee right after the foot it's in so it was like a three-car pileup in my mouth the first time I tried it. The trochees really do have the effect of making you Stop after them, which works great at the end of the line and so-so on frenzy; I don't think I'd want the speaker to pause in the middle of that phrase, but you do you, Ortus.
Spas-med his (D-1) | veins with the (D-2) | death lust; his (D-3) | great heart (T-4) | roared like a (D-5) | black i-ron (D-6) | fur-nace, (T-7) | hun-gry for (D-8) | corp-ses... (T-9)
Haha, fuck. I had to work backwards from the end of this line to work out what he was doing. It's because of great heart. Wrestling it into a trochee is VIOLENCE. Who says it "GREAT heart" except like, me pronouncing the name of Beauty's horse in Beauty by Robin McKinley. Wrestling it into a trochee you're using to break up your dactylic meter is. Why. Why would you do this, Ortus. The foot 7 and 9 trochees work great, though! Natural pauses and emphases!
Chapter 8:
Baleful the black blade struck at the shimmering stuff of the spectral beast, biting deep in its false flesh;
Shrieking, it flailed with its claws at the pauldrons and casque of the Ninth, yet his heart never faltered or failed him...
Bale-ful the (D-1) | black blade (T-2) | struck at the (D-3) | shim-mering (D-4) | stuff of the (D-5) | spec-tral beast, (D-6) | bit-ing (T-7) | deep in its (D-8) | false flesh; (T-9)
This starts off so nicely. I didn't have to stop and figure anything out until, like, the sixth foot at the earliest. Another one where I stopped mid-line and then worked backwards from the end to figure out which foot was which. Another tortured trochee in "false flesh," but it's clearly the last foot because "deep in its" is such a perfect dactyl.
But despite how awkward ending on false flesh specifically is, I do think you need the pause on the trochee at the end here, and the placement of the emphases is bringing the B and S alliteration forward, which I do like a lot. So while his meter does make me scratch my head and do math, I think he's doing something purposeful with it here. I think changing it to "biting deep into its false flesh" would alleviate 90% of my problems with this line.
Shriek-ing, it (D-1) | flailed with its (D-2) | claws at the (D-3) | pauld-rons and (D-4) | casque of the (D-5) | Ninth, yet his (D-6) | heart nev-er (D-7) | fal-tered or (D-8) | failed him... (T-9)
Ortus, you beaut, you've done it. This, I think, was long my hypothesized perfect line. While not fully in dactyls, it's only got one trochee right at the end which works quite well and none of the dactyls are forced. We love to see it. And he got a little of the alliteration in there again. Is it a stunning line, no, but it's certainly not tripping me up.
Chapter 10:
Then Nonius spake full wroth; thunder'd his voice as the black sea roars on the tomb gate of Algol,
Blazing his eyes with the fell light thrown from the Emperor's corpse-fires; answer he gave, and he told them—
Then Nonius spake full wroth; thun-der'd his (D-4) | voice as the (D-5) | black sea (T-6) | roars on the (D-7) | tomb gate of (D-8) | Al-gol, (T-9)
What the fuck goes on here.
You can see where I started to work backwards, but what is "Then Nonius spake full wroth" three feet of? I think based on the argument in this chapter about Non-yus vs Non-i-us we're seeing the latter here, since we've seen the former. So foot 1 is "Then Non-i-us" (treating "then" as just kind of an extra syllable). But then you're left with "spake" (2 - literally 1 syllable) and then "full wroth" (3 - an iamb). I think once you get it's happening it's like....fine? A weird departure but clearly a weird set-off part of the sentence? But as is often my problem with Ortus' variation, I can't figure it out by moving forward, only by moving backward and literally diagramming the line.
Blaz-ing his (D-1) | eyes with the (D-2) | fell light (T-3) | thrown from the (D-4) | Em-pe-ror's (D-5) | corpse-fires; (T-6) | an-swer he (D-7) | gave, and he (D-8) | told them— (T-9)
Again with the tortured fucking trochees ("fell light" is a nice phrase until you make it a trochee and then it loses the vibe), but "corpse-fires" is nice. I assume he means, like, pyres. Ooh, "Blazing his eyes with the corpse-light thrown from Emperor's pyres"?
Chapter 18:
My sister, I envy your fortune; fearless you forge yet ahead, through the cold grey flood of the River.
Fallen in war for the fame of the House is the death every Warrior fain would win at the finish;
Laggard I linger behind; hold fast on the far bank's beachhead! Blood shall repay your blood spilt.
I wince at getting three whole lines at once and then I remember there's eighteen fucking books of this and Harrow apparently knows most of it against her will. But I digress.
(My) sis-ter, I (D-1) | en-vy your (D-2) | for-tune; (T-3) | fear-less you (D-4) | forge yet a- (D-5) | head, through the (D-6) | cold grey (T-7) | flood of the (D-8) | Ri-ver. (T-9)
"Cold grey" is weird but there's only so many times I can yell about weird emphasis in the trochees/trochees that are basically two emphasized syllables in a row which MAY be a totally other foot that feels bad but which I will continue to read as trochees. Another instance of the leading extra syllable on a line! I don't hate that, it's not emphasized so it kind of fits into the rhythm. I wonder if the line before it ended in a trochee: that would make for a really easy flow between the two lines.
Fal-len in (D-1) | war for the (D-2) | fame of the (D-3) | House is the (D-4) | death ev-ery (D-5) | War-ri-or (D-6) | fain would (T-7) | win at the (D-8) | fin-ish; (T-9)
Tbh the clustered trochees at the end are almost as bad as never getting into the rhythm at all. Because you're moving confidently ahead and then just go, "what?" I do kind of think he's doing an alliteration thing again. Look at all those emphasized F's and W's. Actually, this look is focused on meter, but I do keep seeing alliteration on the emphasized syllables, see also: the line before this one with so many F's also. And I wonder if that's something traditional, too; I'm thinking of Middle and Old English alliterative verse, a bit.
Lag-gard I (D-1) | lin-ger be- (D-2) | hind; hold (T-3) | fast on the (D-4) | far bank's (T-5) | beach-head! (T-6) | Blood shall re- (D-7) | pay your blood (D-8) | spilt. (9)
I think? What a weird one. There's a lot of B's in this one but they don't really line up with the emphases either so...idk, man. What are you doing. <3
Chapter 29:
Warrior proud of the Third House! Ride forth now as my sister! Ride we to death and the proving!
Ride we with heads held high; we shall bloody our blades in the foe's heart; death shall we bring to the foul ones—
Death shall we win for ourselves, as the pride for our high deeds done on the ash-choked plains of the ravens!
I think there's enough textual evidence Muir was intentionally writing kind of crap verse that I don't feel so bad about saying that I Am About to Start Biting.
War-ri-or (D-1) | proud of the (D-2) | Third House! (T-3) | Ride forth T-4) | now as my (D-5) | sis-ter! (T-6) | Ride we to (D-7) | death and the (D-8) | prov-ing! (T-9)
I bet Ortus is so glad that warrior is a dactyl. The trochees line up nicely with the exclamation points. Yeah, you do want a pause there. Third House definitely isn't an iamb but it also Feels Bad in the same way as many of his mid-line trochees.
Ride we with (D-1) | heads held (T-2) | high; we shall (D-3) | blood-y our (D-4) | blades in the (D-5) | foe's heart; (T-6) | death shall we (D-7) | bring to the (D-8) | foul ones— (T-9)
Figuring out how to read your stupid poetry shouldn't be a puzzle game I have to play on every single line, especially when it's supposed to be designed to be spoken aloud, Ortus.
Death shall we (D-1) | win for our- (D-2) | selves, as the (D-3) | pride for our (D-4) | high deeds (T-5) | done on the (D-6) | ash-choked (T-7) | plains of the (D-8) | ra-vens! (T-9)
"Ash-choked plans of the ravens" is pretty good but I've just realized that half these lines read like an engine revving and trying to start up over and over. Dun-dun. Dun-dun-dun.
Chapter 49:
"I am the Emperor's Hand; do not thou persist in this combat; matchless am I with the long blade—
Matchless alike in my magecraft. Fall to your knees and be glad that I spare thee; thy courage is mighty.
Mightier yet is thy folly if thou think'st yet to oppose me." The Lyctor spoke, and was silent.
Nonius, wounded full sore, spat blood and gave him a grim smile; nor did the sword in his hand shake.
Boldly, he answered the saint: "'Tis true that your power is great, o servant of masterful Canaan;
Nor may I hope to be counted your equal in skill, nor in craft, nor even in bodily vigour.
This is the long bit that Ortus and Harrow tag-team recite in the River bubble, and Ortus pronounces Harrow's enunciation nearly perfect, so I'm going to guess it's accurate even after Harrow takes over.
"I am the (D-1) | Em-pe-ror's (D-2) | Hand; do (T-3) | not thou per- (D-4) | sist in this (D-5) | com-bat; (T-6) | match-less am (D-7) | I with the (D-8) | long blade— (T-9)
Match-less a- (D-1) | like in my (D-2) | mage-craft. (T-3) | Fall to your (D-4) | knees and be (D-5) | glad that I (D-6) | spare thee; thy (D-7) | cour-age is (D-8) | might-y. (T-9)
Might-i-er (D-1) | yet is thy (D-2) | fol-ly (T-3)* | if thou think'st (D-4) | yet to op- (D-5) pose me." The (D-6) | Lyc-tor (T-7) | spoke, and was (D-8) | si-lent. (T-9)
*"folly if" could be a dactyl but "thou think'st" would be an extremely awkward trochee, and if that was acting as a foot alone there's no reason NOT to make it "thou thinkest," which would scan perfectly well. Lots of trochee-aided emphasis near the starts of lines here, too: the previous line also has a trochee at foot 3.
These lines are fine. I think the places the trochees come in work well for emphasis, the broken-up rhythm in that third line really works for me.
Non-i-us, (D-1) | wound-ed full (D-2) | sore, spat (T-3) | blood and (T-4) | gave him a (D-5) | grim smile; (T-6) | nor did the (D-7) | sword in his (D-8) | hand shake. (D-9)
I think???? Actually, this is where Harrow picks it up, so this might be where her "almost perfect" enunciation makes Ortus' meter look weirder than it is. The next two are also spoken by Harrow, with only a brief prompting from Ortus when she forgot how the next bit started.
Bold-ly, he (D-1) | an-swered the (D-2) | saint: "'Tis (T-3) | true that your (D-4) | pow-er is (D-5) | great, o (T-6) | ser-vant of (D-7) | mas-ter-ful (D-8) Ca-naan; (T-9)
Nor may I (D-1) | hope to be (D-2) | coun-ted your (D-3) | e-qual in (D-4) | skill, nor in (D-5) | craft, nor (T-6) | e-ven in (D-7) | bod-i-ly (D-8) | vig-our. (T-9)
Hm, just an observation. Not a rule, because there's actually a lot of exceptions, but I feel like a lot of the lines that make me happiest have the trochees dropped in at foot 3, 6, and/or 9.
And this is all of Ortus' poetry! I don't have a nice bow here beyond, well, you can see why I questioned for so long that I had the correct read on what enneameter was supposed to look like.
Why Am I Talking In Meter?
I'm not actually going to analyze all of Matthias' dialogue here, I just want to bring you back to my experience reading this, which was, after a full book of doing this every time poetry turned up, having Matthias turn up and going HELLO?????
"Ninth was my name," said the new arrival. "Ninth was my hearth and my homeland. Here I have come at your calling. None may return from the River unless he be bidden by blood-rite; tell me, why have I been drawn here?"
It sort of goes on a per-sentence basis: "Ninth was my name." / "Ninth was my hearth and my homeland." / "Here I have come at your calling." / "None may return from the River unless he be bidden by blood-rite; tell me why have I been drawn here?" But it's so immediately and palpably dactyl-based.
I don't know if I twigged from this very first piece of dialogue but I was definitely a glass case of glee until he said "why am I talking in meter" and I broke and messaged a friend. Even "Why am I talking in meter" is in meter!!! As I said at the time: "omg nonius from my poems" and "he cannot turn it off. obsessed."
Still deeply curious how the Matthias section hit other people, but for me it was the most GLORIOUS payoff of this buildup of extremely tedious poetry I was obsessing over. There are so many good punchlines after very long buildups in the back end of this book and this is one of them.
ETA: I forgot to come back to double dactyls!!! As a treat(?) for reading through all this, have a double dactyl I made about Ortus when I was yelling about this again in January.
Clippity cloppity
Ortus called Nigenad
labored profusely at
cumbersome verse—
His magnum opus: an
Enneametrical
ode fit to make angels
summon a hearse
hi op not to come hijack your post but a) this is an extremely baller metrical analysis and I am making the salute emoji at you 🫡 and b) I can maybe shed a little light on the trochee issue!
basically: they’re actually something called a spondee, because dactylic enneameter is a ridiculously wonderfully extra version of dactylic hexameter, which naturally features both dactyls and spondees largely interchangeably. and a spondee is in fact composed of two stressed syllables in a row!
most commonly used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry, dactylic hexameter is made of six feet, each *theoretically* composed of a dactyl, except the last foot is always two syllables, a starting stressed one and then something called an anceps (which just means that the last syllable can be either stressed or unstressed by nature but will read like it’s unstressed. so in English equivalent it’s a trochee it’s just also TECHNICALLY not a trochee). as you’ve very ably noted in your scans, every line of Muir’s enneameter ends in a two-syllable trochee foot.
(side note: Latin and ancient Greek versions of this meter operate not based on vowel stress but vowel length — some vowels are long, some are short, some can be either. I’m trying to stick to the English version here which is indeed based on stress but if I lapse back into long and shorts, please know it is because I am getting a PhD in the other languages mentioned and my brain is a horrible jumble of all of them at the same time, and you can substitute “long” for “stressed” and “short” for “unstressed.”) (related side note: dactylic verse is kind of famously hard to do in English because it’s designed for systems which use vowel length and not stress, but some have done it: I think the famous one is Longfellow’s “Evangeline,” which starts off “THIS is the/FOR-est prim-/E-val the/MUR-mur-ing/PINES and the/HEM-locks.” basically all I’m saying here is that Muir took a thing that was already famously tricky and made it trickier by doing enneameter instead of hexameter. like girl what do you MEAN every line has nine feet.)
ANYWAY all that said: in the languages which use dactylic meter frequently, a dactyl can ALWAYS be substituted for a spondee, so anytime you’d expect DUM-da-dum you can have DUM DUM instead. I think that thinking spondee instead of trochee can fix some of the lines that otherwise don’t appear to really scan! for instance for this beast from ch 10 I would suggest:
THEN NON-/I-us spake/FULL WROTH/THUN-der’d his/VOICE as the/BLACK SEA/ROARS on the/TOMB gate of/AL-gol
it’s for sure still a little awkward (to me “spake” feels like it ought to be stressed, there’s too many consonants involved for it to be comfortable unstressed …) but I do think it technically scans this way, and in any case I got the nine feet in and if you pronounce it, it doesn’t sound completely incomprehensible! and actually I think that a lot of your (very fair) concerns about oral performance ease if you put in spondees for trochees most of the time. like they’re definitely still awkward but this meter is just awkward in English full stop, and they at least make more sense than a trochee. if I had more time or wherewithal I’d do like an audio recording of myself reading some of these … but like I could be convinced if people want it probably.
this also, I think, means that the verse is maybe not as awkward as it seems at first glance — and Harrow’s consistent characterization of it as such may be a symptom of her underestimation of Ortus rather than a truly fair portrayal of his work! which fits with her general interactions with him through the book, IMO.
also another fun fact about classical dactylic meters is that lines almost always end in a dactyl-spondee combination, so the penultimate foot is a dactyl and the ultimate is the anceps-spondee/trochee (so it goes DUM-da-dum/DUM-dum at the line end, which one of my professors refers to as the “shave and a haircut”) and Muir ended every single one of these lines with that exact combo. every single one of her eighth feet (as you scanned!!) is a dactyl. it’s really incredibly excellent and immediately flags to me that she a) is very purposefully invoking the Latin and Greek versions of these meters and b) actually knows quite a bit about them. I was in my final year of my classics undergrad degree when HtN came out and I had to pace around my apartment for a while going “she wrote ENGLISH DACTYLIC ENNEAMETER” when I first read it.
anyway thank you so much op for this super accessible and comprehensive metrical analysis and I hope the spondee makes it feel less like an exercise in frustration!! this is high-key one of my favorite things in the series; the level of commitment required to pull it off is truly mind boggling and it’s such a wonderful payoff when you get it, as you have.
Last March/April, I finally read Harrow the Ninth, and zeroed in early on a line that would shape my first (and only, so far, full) read:
“It’s enneameter. The traditional form. Those who are fit but to hold their blade in the scabbard—”
“That’s not nine feet of anything.”
“—never to draw it forth for the battle.”
—HtN, “Parodos”
And thus began my quest for the entire book to figure out what the fuck enneameter was meant to look like. Astute readers who read appendices will note that we know it's dactylic enneameter, because Muir told us so. But she didn't say it in the text! So I had to work it out the hard way. Which was extra hard because Ortus has never once written a line of dactyls and only dactyls.
Anyway: what follows is a lot of scansion, thoughts about what Ortus is doing, and finally discussion of where it comes into play gloriously in the battle in the River.
What's a Dactylic Enneameter?
We'll start with enneameter, because the book did: this word indicates how many metrical feet, or units of stressed and unstressed syllables, make up a single line of poetry. Because the Ninth House is fucking absurd and ponderous and goes way too hard on the branding, it's nine whole metrical feet to a line. For comparison, Shakespeare generally did five feet to a line. So when Harrow says "that's not nine feet of anything," she's criticizing the way he's structuring his lines, and also so so correct.
Dactylic explains which metrical feet that line is made up of, in this case dactyls: units of three syllables, one stressed followed by two unstressed. If you put only dactyls in a line, you get kind of a waltz rhythm: BUM-ba-bum BUM-ba-bum. I'm mostly familiar with them through a silly poetry form called the double dactyl, about which more later as a bonus for reading all the way through.
I'm also going to briefly explain what a trochee is, because they'll come up. A trochee is another kind of metrical foot of two syllables, the same as a dactyl but with the last syllable cut off: BUM-bum.
Nine Feet Under: Scansion and Ortus
This is just going to be me going through the lines of the Noniad we get one by one and analyzing the metrical feet in them. If this sounds boring to you, feel free to skip, but also this may not be the post for you. I am going to be bolding stressed syllables and leaving unstressed unbolded. (D) is dactyl, (T) is trochee. The numbers are just numbering the feet 1-9.
Parodos:
Those who are fit but to hold their blade in the scabbard, never to draw it forth for the battle.
Those who are (D-1) | fit but to (D-2) | hold their (T-3) | blade in the (D-4) | scab-bard (T-5) | nev-er to (D-6) | draw it (T-7) | forth for the (D-8) | ba-ttle. (T-9)
So yeah this isn't nine feet of one thing; it's nine feet of mixed dactyls and trochees, constructed in a way that particularly gives you a stop-and-start "wait, what the fuck is going on?" problem with reading it out loud.
Sidebar: Harrow is so funny debating Ortus about his poetry and largely I'm kind of with her in her scathing opinions, but I generally prefer to Mostly Adhere to Meter. In Chapter 10, she says "it ought to be Non-i-us as three syllables, or Non-yus as two" and he defends himself with (1) his archaic style is on purpose to facilitate spoken performance and (2) "synizesis [two vowels pronounced as one for the meter] is characteristic of some of our finest examples of early Ninth prosody." I think they both have some merit, but also: WHAT DO YOU MEAAAAN YOU'RE COMMITTED TO SPOKEN PERFORMANCE. I trip over my tongue so much on this line.
I do think there's a place for trochees to break up the headlong race you can get into if you stay in dactyls for too long, or to create emphasis in the middle of the line; there are some examples I'll mention this with later. But there is such a thing as doing this too much and ending up with a mess, imo, and as I told someone while reading, this first line we get is really impressively not nine feet of anything.
Chapter 5:
Then did the dire bone frenzy fall upon Nonius, the mightiest arm of the Ninth and its bulwark
Spasmed his veins with the death lust; his great heart roared like a black iron furnace, hungry for corpses...
Then did the (D-1) | di-re bone (D-2) | fren-zy (T-3) | fall up-on (D-4) | Non-ius, the (D-5) | might-i-est (D-6) | arm of the (D-7) | Ninth and its (D-8) | bul-wark (D-9)
This one is kind of fine once you work out how many syllables he means "dire" and "Nonius" to have. "Dire" is complicated by the trochee right after the foot it's in so it was like a three-car pileup in my mouth the first time I tried it. The trochees really do have the effect of making you Stop after them, which works great at the end of the line and so-so on frenzy; I don't think I'd want the speaker to pause in the middle of that phrase, but you do you, Ortus.
Spas-med his (D-1) | veins with the (D-2) | death lust; his (D-3) | great heart (T-4) | roared like a (D-5) | black i-ron (D-6) | fur-nace, (T-7) | hun-gry for (D-8) | corp-ses... (T-9)
Haha, fuck. I had to work backwards from the end of this line to work out what he was doing. It's because of great heart. Wrestling it into a trochee is VIOLENCE. Who says it "GREAT heart" except like, me pronouncing the name of Beauty's horse in Beauty by Robin McKinley. Wrestling it into a trochee you're using to break up your dactylic meter is. Why. Why would you do this, Ortus. The foot 7 and 9 trochees work great, though! Natural pauses and emphases!
Chapter 8:
Baleful the black blade struck at the shimmering stuff of the spectral beast, biting deep in its false flesh;
Shrieking, it flailed with its claws at the pauldrons and casque of the Ninth, yet his heart never faltered or failed him...
Bale-ful the (D-1) | black blade (T-2) | struck at the (D-3) | shim-mering (D-4) | stuff of the (D-5) | spec-tral beast, (D-6) | bit-ing (T-7) | deep in its (D-8) | false flesh; (T-9)
This starts off so nicely. I didn't have to stop and figure anything out until, like, the sixth foot at the earliest. Another one where I stopped mid-line and then worked backwards from the end to figure out which foot was which. Another tortured trochee in "false flesh," but it's clearly the last foot because "deep in its" is such a perfect dactyl.
But despite how awkward ending on false flesh specifically is, I do think you need the pause on the trochee at the end here, and the placement of the emphases is bringing the B and S alliteration forward, which I do like a lot. So while his meter does make me scratch my head and do math, I think he's doing something purposeful with it here. I think changing it to "biting deep into its false flesh" would alleviate 90% of my problems with this line.
Shriek-ing, it (D-1) | flailed with its (D-2) | claws at the (D-3) | pauld-rons and (D-4) | casque of the (D-5) | Ninth, yet his (D-6) | heart nev-er (D-7) | fal-tered or (D-8) | failed him... (T-9)
Ortus, you beaut, you've done it. This, I think, was long my hypothesized perfect line. While not fully in dactyls, it's only got one trochee right at the end which works quite well and none of the dactyls are forced. We love to see it. And he got a little of the alliteration in there again. Is it a stunning line, no, but it's certainly not tripping me up.
Chapter 10:
Then Nonius spake full wroth; thunder'd his voice as the black sea roars on the tomb gate of Algol,
Blazing his eyes with the fell light thrown from the Emperor's corpse-fires; answer he gave, and he told them—
Then Nonius spake full wroth; thun-der'd his (D-4) | voice as the (D-5) | black sea (T-6) | roars on the (D-7) | tomb gate of (D-8) | Al-gol, (T-9)
What the fuck goes on here.
You can see where I started to work backwards, but what is "Then Nonius spake full wroth" three feet of? I think based on the argument in this chapter about Non-yus vs Non-i-us we're seeing the latter here, since we've seen the former. So foot 1 is "Then Non-i-us" (treating "then" as just kind of an extra syllable). But then you're left with "spake" (2 - literally 1 syllable) and then "full wroth" (3 - an iamb). I think once you get it's happening it's like....fine? A weird departure but clearly a weird set-off part of the sentence? But as is often my problem with Ortus' variation, I can't figure it out by moving forward, only by moving backward and literally diagramming the line.
Blaz-ing his (D-1) | eyes with the (D-2) | fell light (T-3) | thrown from the (D-4) | Em-pe-ror's (D-5) | corpse-fires; (T-6) | an-swer he (D-7) | gave, and he (D-8) | told them— (T-9)
Again with the tortured fucking trochees ("fell light" is a nice phrase until you make it a trochee and then it loses the vibe), but "corpse-fires" is nice. I assume he means, like, pyres. Ooh, "Blazing his eyes with the corpse-light thrown from Emperor's pyres"?
Chapter 18:
My sister, I envy your fortune; fearless you forge yet ahead, through the cold grey flood of the River.
Fallen in war for the fame of the House is the death every Warrior fain would win at the finish;
Laggard I linger behind; hold fast on the far bank's beachhead! Blood shall repay your blood spilt.
I wince at getting three whole lines at once and then I remember there's eighteen fucking books of this and Harrow apparently knows most of it against her will. But I digress.
(My) sis-ter, I (D-1) | en-vy your (D-2) | for-tune; (T-3) | fear-less you (D-4) | forge yet a- (D-5) | head, through the (D-6) | cold grey (T-7) | flood of the (D-8) | Ri-ver. (T-9)
"Cold grey" is weird but there's only so many times I can yell about weird emphasis in the trochees/trochees that are basically two emphasized syllables in a row which MAY be a totally other foot that feels bad but which I will continue to read as trochees. Another instance of the leading extra syllable on a line! I don't hate that, it's not emphasized so it kind of fits into the rhythm. I wonder if the line before it ended in a trochee: that would make for a really easy flow between the two lines.
Fal-len in (D-1) | war for the (D-2) | fame of the (D-3) | House is the (D-4) | death ev-ery (D-5) | War-ri-or (D-6) | fain would (T-7) | win at the (D-8) | fin-ish; (T-9)
Tbh the clustered trochees at the end are almost as bad as never getting into the rhythm at all. Because you're moving confidently ahead and then just go, "what?" I do kind of think he's doing an alliteration thing again. Look at all those emphasized F's and W's. Actually, this look is focused on meter, but I do keep seeing alliteration on the emphasized syllables, see also: the line before this one with so many F's also. And I wonder if that's something traditional, too; I'm thinking of Middle and Old English alliterative verse, a bit.
Lag-gard I (D-1) | lin-ger be- (D-2) | hind; hold (T-3) | fast on the (D-4) | far bank's (T-5) | beach-head! (T-6) | Blood shall re- (D-7) | pay your blood (D-8) | spilt. (9)
I think? What a weird one. There's a lot of B's in this one but they don't really line up with the emphases either so...idk, man. What are you doing. <3
Chapter 29:
Warrior proud of the Third House! Ride forth now as my sister! Ride we to death and the proving!
Ride we with heads held high; we shall bloody our blades in the foe's heart; death shall we bring to the foul ones—
Death shall we win for ourselves, as the pride for our high deeds done on the ash-choked plains of the ravens!
I think there's enough textual evidence Muir was intentionally writing kind of crap verse that I don't feel so bad about saying that I Am About to Start Biting.
War-ri-or (D-1) | proud of the (D-2) | Third House! (T-3) | Ride forth T-4) | now as my (D-5) | sis-ter! (T-6) | Ride we to (D-7) | death and the (D-8) | prov-ing! (T-9)
I bet Ortus is so glad that warrior is a dactyl. The trochees line up nicely with the exclamation points. Yeah, you do want a pause there. Third House definitely isn't an iamb but it also Feels Bad in the same way as many of his mid-line trochees.
Ride we with (D-1) | heads held (T-2) | high; we shall (D-3) | blood-y our (D-4) | blades in the (D-5) | foe's heart; (T-6) | death shall we (D-7) | bring to the (D-8) | foul ones— (T-9)
Figuring out how to read your stupid poetry shouldn't be a puzzle game I have to play on every single line, especially when it's supposed to be designed to be spoken aloud, Ortus.
Death shall we (D-1) | win for our- (D-2) | selves, as the (D-3) | pride for our (D-4) | high deeds (T-5) | done on the (D-6) | ash-choked (T-7) | plains of the (D-8) | ra-vens! (T-9)
"Ash-choked plans of the ravens" is pretty good but I've just realized that half these lines read like an engine revving and trying to start up over and over. Dun-dun. Dun-dun-dun.
Chapter 49:
"I am the Emperor's Hand; do not thou persist in this combat; matchless am I with the long blade—
Matchless alike in my magecraft. Fall to your knees and be glad that I spare thee; thy courage is mighty.
Mightier yet is thy folly if thou think'st yet to oppose me." The Lyctor spoke, and was silent.
Nonius, wounded full sore, spat blood and gave him a grim smile; nor did the sword in his hand shake.
Boldly, he answered the saint: "'Tis true that your power is great, o servant of masterful Canaan;
Nor may I hope to be counted your equal in skill, nor in craft, nor even in bodily vigour.
This is the long bit that Ortus and Harrow tag-team recite in the River bubble, and Ortus pronounces Harrow's enunciation nearly perfect, so I'm going to guess it's accurate even after Harrow takes over.
"I am the (D-1) | Em-pe-ror's (D-2) | Hand; do (T-3) | not thou per- (D-4) | sist in this (D-5) | com-bat; (T-6) | match-less am (D-7) | I with the (D-8) | long blade— (T-9)
Match-less a- (D-1) | like in my (D-2) | mage-craft. (T-3) | Fall to your (D-4) | knees and be (D-5) | glad that I (D-6) | spare thee; thy (D-7) | cour-age is (D-8) | might-y. (T-9)
Might-i-er (D-1) | yet is thy (D-2) | fol-ly (T-3)* | if thou think'st (D-4) | yet to op- (D-5) pose me." The (D-6) | Lyc-tor (T-7) | spoke, and was (D-8) | si-lent. (T-9)
*"folly if" could be a dactyl but "thou think'st" would be an extremely awkward trochee, and if that was acting as a foot alone there's no reason NOT to make it "thou thinkest," which would scan perfectly well. Lots of trochee-aided emphasis near the starts of lines here, too: the previous line also has a trochee at foot 3.
These lines are fine. I think the places the trochees come in work well for emphasis, the broken-up rhythm in that third line really works for me.
Non-i-us, (D-1) | wound-ed full (D-2) | sore, spat (T-3) | blood and (T-4) | gave him a (D-5) | grim smile; (T-6) | nor did the (D-7) | sword in his (D-8) | hand shake. (D-9)
I think???? Actually, this is where Harrow picks it up, so this might be where her "almost perfect" enunciation makes Ortus' meter look weirder than it is. The next two are also spoken by Harrow, with only a brief prompting from Ortus when she forgot how the next bit started.
Bold-ly, he (D-1) | an-swered the (D-2) | saint: "'Tis (T-3) | true that your (D-4) | pow-er is (D-5) | great, o (T-6) | ser-vant of (D-7) | mas-ter-ful (D-8) Ca-naan; (T-9)
Nor may I (D-1) | hope to be (D-2) | coun-ted your (D-3) | e-qual in (D-4) | skill, nor in (D-5) | craft, nor (T-6) | e-ven in (D-7) | bod-i-ly (D-8) | vig-our. (T-9)
Hm, just an observation. Not a rule, because there's actually a lot of exceptions, but I feel like a lot of the lines that make me happiest have the trochees dropped in at foot 3, 6, and/or 9.
And this is all of Ortus' poetry! I don't have a nice bow here beyond, well, you can see why I questioned for so long that I had the correct read on what enneameter was supposed to look like.
Why Am I Talking In Meter?
I'm not actually going to analyze all of Matthias' dialogue here, I just want to bring you back to my experience reading this, which was, after a full book of doing this every time poetry turned up, having Matthias turn up and going HELLO?????
"Ninth was my name," said the new arrival. "Ninth was my hearth and my homeland. Here I have come at your calling. None may return from the River unless he be bidden by blood-rite; tell me, why have I been drawn here?"
It sort of goes on a per-sentence basis: "Ninth was my name." / "Ninth was my hearth and my homeland." / "Here I have come at your calling." / "None may return from the River unless he be bidden by blood-rite; tell me why have I been drawn here?" But it's so immediately and palpably dactyl-based.
I don't know if I twigged from this very first piece of dialogue but I was definitely a glass case of glee until he said "why am I talking in meter" and I broke and messaged a friend. Even "Why am I talking in meter" is in meter!!! As I said at the time: "omg nonius from my poems" and "he cannot turn it off. obsessed."
Still deeply curious how the Matthias section hit other people, but for me it was the most GLORIOUS payoff of this buildup of extremely tedious poetry I was obsessing over. There are so many good punchlines after very long buildups in the back end of this book and this is one of them.
ETA: I forgot to come back to double dactyls!!! As a treat(?) for reading through all this, have a double dactyl I made about Ortus when I was yelling about this again in January.
Clippity cloppity
Ortus called Nigenad
labored profusely at
cumbersome verse—
His magnum opus: an
Enneametrical
ode fit to make angels
summon a hearse
hi op not to come hijack your post but a) this is an extremely baller metrical analysis and I am making the salute emoji at you 🫡 and b) I can maybe shed a little light on the trochee issue!
basically: they’re actually something called a spondee, because dactylic enneameter is a ridiculously wonderfully extra version of dactylic hexameter, which naturally features both dactyls and spondees largely interchangeably. and a spondee is in fact composed of two stressed syllables in a row!
most commonly used in Ancient Greek and Latin poetry, dactylic hexameter is made of six feet, each *theoretically* composed of a dactyl, except the last foot is always two syllables, a starting stressed one and then something called an anceps (which just means that the last syllable can be either stressed or unstressed by nature but will read like it’s unstressed. so in English equivalent it’s a trochee it’s just also TECHNICALLY not a trochee). as you’ve very ably noted in your scans, every line of Muir’s enneameter ends in a two-syllable trochee foot.
(side note: Latin and ancient Greek versions of this meter operate not based on vowel stress but vowel length — some vowels are long, some are short, some can be either. I’m trying to stick to the English version here which is indeed based on stress but if I lapse back into long and shorts, please know it is because I am getting a PhD in the other languages mentioned and my brain is a horrible jumble of all of them at the same time, and you can substitute “long” for “stressed” and “short” for “unstressed.”) (related side note: dactylic verse is kind of famously hard to do in English because it’s designed for systems which use vowel length and not stress, but some have done it: I think the famous one is Longfellow’s “Evangeline,” which starts off “THIS is the/FOR-est prim-/E-val the/MUR-mur-ing/PINES and the/HEM-locks.” basically all I’m saying here is that Muir took a thing that was already famously tricky and made it trickier by doing enneameter instead of hexameter. like girl what do you MEAN every line has nine feet.)
ANYWAY all that said: in the languages which use dactylic meter frequently, a dactyl can ALWAYS be substituted for a spondee, so anytime you’d expect DUM-da-dum you can have DUM DUM instead. I think that thinking spondee instead of trochee can fix some of the lines that otherwise don’t appear to really scan! for instance for this beast from ch 10 I would suggest:
THEN NON-/I-us spake/FULL WROTH/THUN-der’d his/VOICE as the/BLACK SEA/ROARS on the/TOMB gate of/AL-gol
it’s for sure still a little awkward (to me “spake” feels like it ought to be stressed, there’s too many consonants involved for it to be comfortable unstressed …) but I do think it technically scans this way, and in any case I got the nine feet in and if you pronounce it, it doesn’t sound completely incomprehensible! and actually I think that a lot of your (very fair) concerns about oral performance ease if you put in spondees for trochees most of the time. like they’re definitely still awkward but this meter is just awkward in English full stop, and they at least make more sense than a trochee. if I had more time or wherewithal I’d do like an audio recording of myself reading some of these … but like I could be convinced if people want it probably.
this also, I think, means that the verse is maybe not as awkward as it seems at first glance — and Harrow’s consistent characterization of it as such may be a symptom of her underestimation of Ortus rather than a truly fair portrayal of his work! which fits with her general interactions with him through the book, IMO.
also another fun fact about classical dactylic meters is that lines almost always end in a dactyl-spondee combination, so the penultimate foot is a dactyl and the ultimate is the anceps-spondee/trochee (so it goes DUM-da-dum/DUM-dum at the line end, which one of my professors refers to as the “shave and a haircut”) and Muir ended every single one of these lines with that exact combo. every single one of her eighth feet (as you scanned!!) is a dactyl. it’s really incredibly excellent and immediately flags to me that she a) is very purposefully invoking the Latin and Greek versions of these meters and b) actually knows quite a bit about them. I was in my final year of my classics undergrad degree when HtN came out and I had to pace around my apartment for a while going “she wrote ENGLISH DACTYLIC ENNEAMETER” when I first read it.
anyway thank you so much op for this super accessible and comprehensive metrical analysis and I hope the spondee makes it feel less like an exercise in frustration!! this is high-key one of my favorite things in the series; the level of commitment required to pull it off is truly mind boggling and it’s such a wonderful payoff when you get it, as you have.
I actually interpreted that line as "Then Non | -ius spake | full wroth; | thun-der’d his | voice as the | black sea | roars on the | tomb gate of | Al-gol," I think even on my first cold read of that line.
That would make all of the first three feet spondees, with a two-syllable Non-ius and a stressed spake, which I think scans really well here. As an additional bonus, this would also mirror some classical usage of multiple initial spondees in a row for wrathful speech. "Spondees can also add solemnity, as in the following lines where Dido, Queen of Carthage, curses Aeneas after he has abandoned her. The first line begins with three spondees, the second with four: – – | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – ᴗ ᴗ | – – / – – | – – | – – | – – | – ᴗ ᴗ | – – "Sōl, quī terrārum flammīs oper(a) omnia lūstrās, / tūqu(e) hār(um) | inter | -pres cū | -rār(um) et | cōnscia | Iūnō," 'O Sun, who surveyest all the works of the world with thy flames, / and Thou, interpreter and witness of these sorrows, Juno...' " (quoted from Wikipedia's article on spondees).
