Wormtail and Wormtongue

[coriolan at worldnet.att.net]

No: HPFGUIDX 11795

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "Marvin Long, Jr." <msl at f...> wrote:
> 
> (I didn't find this topic discussed in the archives, so I hope not 
to be
> repeating an old thread...)
> 
> Who's read "The Screwtape Letters" by CS Lewis?  If you have, you'll
> recall that they are a series of letters from a senior devil, 
Screwtape,
> to his young nephew, Wormtongue, 

Excellent analysis, but one slight error: Screwtape's hapless nephew 
is named Wormwood. My dictionary defines it as "A European plant 
yielding a bitter slightly aromatic dark green oil used in absinthe." 
The word has of course become synonymous with bitterness and gall. In 
Revelations 8:10-11, we read:

The third angel sounded his trumpet, and a great star, blazing like a 
torch, fell from the sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs 
of water--the name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters 
turned bitter, and many people died from the waters that had become 
bitter.

Wormwood was also the name of Calvin's teacher in the Calvin & Hobbes 
comic strip (Bill Watterson, the cartoonist, stated that he derived 
her name from Screwtape) - and the Ukranian word for Wormwood is 
Chernobyl (which, disaster though it was, fortunately did not fulfill 
the prophecies of St. John)

   - CMC