Clans And Tribes

Every Poul Anderson text has successive layers or levels of potential analysis and appreciation but right now I seem to have struck a literally endless level of the Technic History.

Checking a point in "Hunters of the Sky Cave," we find:

"...a wintry blaze of stars."
-Poul Anderson, "Hunters of the Sky Cave" IN Anderson, Sir Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra (Riverdale, NY, 2012), pp. 149-301 AT I, p. 152.

"The artificial satellite had Jupiter for background, and the Milky Way and the huge cold constellations." (p. 154)

Huge, cold constellations remind us that the universe is vast and inhospitable.

We are told again that Merseians are true mammals on p. 155.

Ruethen of the Long Hand refers to his "tribe." See Peace-Holy.

Is "Long Hand" a physical description or a metaphor?

I searched for Ruethen's "tribe" because Brechdan Ironrede had referred to "...salutes according to rank and clan..." See Brechdan In Ardaig. Are "tribe" and "clan" loose translations of the Eriau term, "Vach," or subdivisions within a Vach? There are different forms of social organization on Merseia.

Since Brechdan, Hand of the Vach Ynvory, refers to himself as "clan chief" (THREE, p. 22), it is safe to deduce that, in this case at least, "clan" means "Vach."