Today I saw Watership Down, so today’s keywords are in Lapine, the rabbit language created by Richard Adams. Below is a glossary for the uninitiated. This is the story from Holly and Bluebell about what happened at the Sandleford warren.
Hrair: many (“u Hrair” – “the thousand”: all predators)
Inlé: death (“fu Inlé”: night)
Frith: the sun/God
Embleer: stinking, rank
Rah: term of respect, “chief”. (Elirairah is “the prince with a thousand enemies”: a rabbit trickster figure)
Hraka: droppings
Remember, at the warren we were hrair
So many rabbits, out until fu inlé
All under the protection of Lord Frith
Able, always to dodge and trick the embleer
Homba, aided by Elirairah
We thought no more of men, then than of our hraka
Until that springtime evening when the hraka
Hit the burrow. Funny little Hrair-
Roo and Hazel told the Threar Rah
That he could see the Black Rabbit of Inlé
And that the warren was completely embleer
With death. He’d had a message from Lord Frith
Himself. The Threar Rah did not think that Frith
Would treat the warren like a piece of hraka
And sent poor Fiver packing. Oh you embleer
Men! You are the worst of all u Hrair!
You plunged our lives into the blackest inlé
Forsaken even by Elirairah!
The ones who left, they followed Hazel Rah.
That’s what they called him – and they followed Frith
across the fields. Often came close to Inlé.
Kept moving, hardly time to pass their hraka
Always afraid that they might scent u Hrair
But what they’d left behind was far more embleer.
For humans came and filled our holes with embleer
Air, which choked even the Threar Rah
I’d rather have faced each one of u Hrair
Alone, than be abandoned by Lord Frith.
The stench of death and poisoned air and Hraka
Filled all our noses as we went to inlé.
It didn’t take them long, and by fu Inlé
Where once the warren lay, the air was embleer
With gas and earth and death and pain and hraka.
A few survived to search for Hazel Rah
And look up to the sky to ask Lord Frith
Why he’d forsaken us. No longer hrair.
When we pass hraka we must fear you, Inlé
U Hrair await us and their stench is embleer
We trust in Elirairah and Lord Frith.
Tom Juniper Poetry 