"Wide shall you wander, at one with the world..." (p. 60)
"'High flew your spirit on many winds...'"
-Poul Anderson, The People Of The Wind IN Anderson, Rise Of The Terran Empire (Riverdale, NY, 2011), pp. 437-662 AT X, p. 559.
There are similarities between funerals for Terrestrial mermen and Avalonian Ythrians, two kinds of intelligent beings living closer to nature than human beings.
For the merman:
"Spirit in sunlight and spindrift and sea-surge..."
For the Ythrian:
"'...be water and leaves, arise in the wind; and spirit be always remembered.'"
Both farewells refer to oneness with this world, not to survival in another. I read a similar passage from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials at my son-in-law's funeral.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And there's also the farewell given by Lt. Philippe Rochefort to his recently killed Cynthian shipmate, Wa Chaou, quoting from the Terran Navy's funeral service in Chapter IX of THE PEOPLE OF THE WIND: "--Father, unto You in what form he did dream You, we commit this being our comrade, and we pray that You grant him rest, even as we pray for ourselves. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy."
Centuries later, in THE REBEL WORLDS, we see Dominic Flandry reading the funeral service for one of his crewmen. It probably included what was quoted above, despite some probable changes in the editions used as time passed.
Ad astra! Sean
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