Ozblogging: The Scarecrow of Oz, Part 1

Well, it has been more than six years since I blogged about one of the Oz books, so it's time to head down the Yellow Brick Road again and tackle a new one. This time we're looking at The Scarecrow of Oz, the eighth of the Oz novels written by L. Frank Baum. It was published in 1915, and apparently draws some elements from the script for the 1914 film His Majesty the Scarecrow of Oz, produced by one L. Frank Baum for the Oz Film Manufacturing Company.

A personal note: for a long time I was a strong purist about accuracy and "canon" in Oz film adaptations — which in practice meant I mostly griped about the movies. Then I learned about Baum's own film versions and realized he didn't give a damn about fidelity himself, so I'm inclined to take a more charitable view. (That being said, I'm still not happy about Oz the Great and Powerful.)

The Scarecrow of Oz gets moving right away. We are introduced to a little girl named Trot, and her best friend Cap'n Bill, who lives in the boarding-house kept by Trot's mother and is devoted to the girl. Baum alludes to "many strange adventures" that the two have already had. "It is said" that Trot was marked at birth by the fairies and is able to "see and do many wonderful things."

Bill is an old (though "not so very old") sailor, retired from the sea due to having lost a leg in an accident. He doesn't get a cool cybernetic tin replacement, just a wood peg leg. I'm not really sure why losing a leg makes him incapable of working at sea any longer — this is 1915, after all. Even if he can't work aboard a sailing vessel there are plenty of steamers afloat.

The two of them head out in Bill's rowboat to visit one of the "great caves" along this un-named stretch of coast. Based on names, attire, and speech patterns one can assume Trot and Cap'n Bill are both Americans, but what part of America are they in? The story begins with the two of them sitting under an acacia tree, which rules out Maine, and that's about the only place on the East Coast where one could find caves by the sea.

California, however, has both acacia trees and sea caves — and in 1915 it could also boast L. Frank Baum as a resident, so it seems pretty clear that Trot and Cap'n Bill are rowing around on an oddly pacific Pacific Ocean. The very calmness of the sea worries Cap'n Bill, in fact — and his misgivings are soon validated as their boat is caught by an unexpected whirlpool and the two are sucked underwater!

Down in the depths Trot is "almost sure that unseen arms" are helping protect and guide her, as she and Bill are drawn down and down, then rise again but in a slanting direction so that they surface in an undersea cave. Like all useful caves in fiction and roleplaying games, this one is lit by a green glow and has breathable air and a comfortable temperature.

After recovering from their ordeal and drying out, the two go exploring and find a dark passage at the back of the cave. It might lead to safety — or it might lead someplace worse. They decide to remain in the cave. Cap'n Bill has some ship's biscuit and is able to catch some fish, but they don't have much in the way of fresh water to drink.

The two of them sleep, and breakfast on biscuit, but then they are startled to see, emerging from the pool that leads to the ocean, "the most curious creature either of them had ever beheld."

"It wasn't a fish, Trot decided, nor was it a beast. It had wings, though, and queer wings they were: shaped like an inverted chopping-bowl and covered with tough skin instead of feathers. It had four legs — much like the legs of a stork, only double the number — and its head was shaped a good deal like that of a poll parrot, with a beak that curved downward in front and upward at the edges, and was half bill and half mouth. But to call it a bird was out of the question, because it had no feathers whatever except a crest of wavy plumes of a scarlet color on the very top of its head. The strange creature must have weighed as much as Cap'n Bill, and as it floundered and struggled to get out of the water to the sandy beach it was so big and unusual that both Trot and her companion stared at it in wonder — in wonder that was not unmixed with fear."

(Later, Baum adds: "Perhaps the most curious thing about the creature was its tail, or what ought to have been its tail. This queer arrangement of skin, bones and muscle was shaped like the propellers used on boats and airships, having fan-like surfaces and being pivoted to its body.")

This, it transpires, is an Ork. We know this, because when Trot wonders aloud what it might be, the Ork tells her he's an Ork. Apparently the Ork also got sucked into the whirlpool, and also got helped by mermaids, but wound up in an empty cavern with no exit. Seeking escape, the Ork dove back into the sea and swam as far as the cavern holding Trot and Cap'n Bill.

The Ork (whose name is Flipper, but that's quickly forgotten) explains that he left his home in Orkland, motivated by curiosity about those strange creatures called Men. Unfortunately, as he flew, the Ork was attacked by birds, had to evade airships, and lost track of where he was.

And now for a massive digression concerning the word Ork. If you type that into a search engine, the first result is likely to be a link to the game Warhammer 40,000 or its associated universe. In WH40K, the Orks are an alien species — a sentient kind of fungus, in fact — who basically act like English football hooligans and wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other. (As opposed to the humans, who wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other; or the Eldar, who wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other; or the minions of Chaos, who wage an endless war against all the other species in the Galaxy as well as each other; or . . . well, pretty much every species in the 40K universe.)

The Warhammer 40,000 Orks got their name from a monster race in the original Warhammer fantasy wargame. Those Orks were of course just J.R.R. Tolkein's Orcs with the serial number filed off to thwart over-zealous holders of Tolkein licenses. Tolkein, scholar that he was, derived his Orcs from an old English word for a monster, descended from an Old English word "orcneas," which may derive from some even more ancient root that also gave us "ogre," the Roman evil spirit "Orcus," and possibly the word "Orca" for what are also known as killer whales. Which means, of course, that if any over-zealous holders of Tolkein licenses tried to claim ownership of the name "Orc," the defense team might well want to summon the shade of J.R.R.T. himself to explain why it's actually public domain already. Plus William Blake.

However, I sincerely doubt there's any connection between L. Frank Baum's Orks and Tolkein's Orcs, or any of their linguistic ancestors. For one thing, when Baum wrote The Scarecrow of Oz, Tolkein was too busy dodging German shells on the Western Front to be writing much about Orcs or anything else. And for another, Baum was perfectly capable of creating weird creature names of his own, like Erbs, the Gump, Knooks, Rylls, and the Woozy. Now, to be candid, Baum did often phone it in by simply describing a character using Capital Letters and leaving it at that. That's how we get the Scarecrow, the Glass Cat, the Foolish Owl, the Dainty China People, and so forth. But when he felt like it, he could nomenclate with the best of them and I'm reasonably certain the Ork was an original creation that just happened to echo an ancient word.

Next time: tunnels and tails!

Comments

[Pavel]

Whenever I think of Oz, I primarily think of the Russian versions I read - apparently, someone liked Baum's version so much, they ... rewrote it, and eventually released sequels that diverged significantly from Baum's later work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_the_Emerald_City

The bit I remember most comes from the third book, where seven kings take turns ruling - one is in charge, while six others sleep. (Which is a theme that's weirdly in one of Orson Scott Card's novels, too, and which I will probably steal for one of my D&D campaigns.)

[William H. Stoddard]

It's worth noting that Trot and Cap'n Bill had appeared in an originally independent novel, The Sea Fairies. In The Scarecrow of Oz, Baum seems to be doing a crossover that integrates them into the Oz continuity, rather the way later comics writers would have the Sub-mariner meet the Fantastic Four.