Meaning of Hallows: Felicity's Post
Busy HP researcher, Felicity, put an excellent post about the meaning of the book 7 title, especially of the word hallows. It made me rethink my trust in using only online dictionaries which only show one word at a time; if I had brushed the dust of my trusty thick American College Dictionary (which I just did) my post on Friday would have most likely been somewhat expanded. I would have seen the other meaning of hallow which is related to our words hello and holler and means a "calling out", as Felicity points out, quoting the Oxford English Dictionary:Hallow, n. (OED)So you have a hallow as a holy person or place (Dumbledore, Potters, Godric's hollow), a "shout-out" ("Hey, yo, we got all your hocruxes, Big Guy!" and/or the quarry, i.e., the horcruxes themselves ("Hallow, what have we here? A horcrux!"). In her reply to my comment about the "blood of Abel", Felicity she gave some of the preliminary reported foreign translations of the title which are, as she pointed out, unofficial and "all over the place": French News: "Harry Potter et les Sanctuaires Mortels", "Harry Potter et les Reliques Mortelles" ("Mortel" has 2 meanings in French: that cause death or that's bound to die; sanctuary and relic are my guesses for the other two words.Quite an assortment of meanings when brought back into English. Meanwhile, commenter Cory remarks on the "Arthurian angle" over at Travis's site. Cory got this from a Leaky Cauldron comment where I found this link to the Arthurian reference. Directly underneath was this comment which connects the title to the unbreakable vow(s?) made by Snape. It obviously means "Harry Potter and the Deathly Vows". The last book was all about the question of whether Snape was good or bad, so this one we will find about about the deathly vows Snape took, and how it will help him along his path to kill Voldemort with Harry. I bet you snape took a "deathly vow" with Dumbledore to kill Voldemort.Although I really like commenter Darth Vader's insight here, I disagree with him that anything is obvious at this point. Great theory though. Reminds me of the passage in Genesis when the Lord hallows the Sabbath; this is part of his covenant with man which is always enacted in the form of a vow -- I'll let that be a hand-off to Merlin the Hebrew scholar. |
Comments on "Meaning of Hallows: Felicity's Post"
-
Anonymous said ... (December 29, 2006 6:42 PM)
:
post a commentI updated my LJ entry with a long section exploring the possiblity that "the Deathly Hallows" refers to the burial place of the Hogwarts founders.
Director Cuaron said Rowling told him Hogwarts had a graveyard that would be important to an upcoming book, and there are several usages of Hallows in LOTR that refer to places, on the burial place of royalty.
A sampling of Tolkien passages:
“What is this, my Lord?” said the wizard. “The houses of the dead are no places for the living. And why do men fight here in the Hallows when there is war enough before the Gate? Or has our Enemy come even to Rath Dinen?” Page 834
Aragorn later spoke the following to Beregond: “Beregond, by your sword blood was spilled in the Hallows, where that is forbidden. Page 947
And as I was skimming LOTR, I found another use of the word “hallow” used in the obscure sense of “hollow.” It is used twice at the end of the book to refer to a depression or hollow on the side of Mount Mindolluin where Gandalf and Aragorn find a sapling of the White Tree growing: “ . . . and there they found a path made in ages past that few now dared to tread. For it led up on to the mountain to a high hallow where only the kings had been wont to go.” Page 949