Otters and badgers, and hedgehogs have been referred to as wavedogs/streamdogs, stribehounds/stripedogs, and spikedogs/spikehounds (I think) respectively. Were there every any dogs or hounds? Interesting fanfic idea.
Hmm....I don't think there are but as you said it would make a great fanfic! ;D
Yup, a lot of ideas come to me late at night. xD
The closest is Urgan Nagru, when he found a dead olf.
Ah remember Methuselah explainin' zat a dog told him aboot Cluny in Redwall, o' courze zince it vaz ze firzt book a lot o' characterz appear zat dinnae appear again in ze Redwall zeriez.
Aye, and they made a "cloaked" appearance in The Bellmaker, as I said. Interesting, will have to get redwall out again... what page is it on?
You think they must get the name from somewhere! Various breeds of dogs couldn't really be running around in the wild if there were no humans to breed them. Any would still be at more of a wolf state. I'm not sure how to explain that one, really!
WOOF WOOF!!! Sorry...
Don't forget Chickenhound! He was named after a hound, so their might be some.
But wait, what about the chickens? :P Yea, true.
Hmm......
CHICKEN RANCH! Zorry. Family joke. Juzt ignore ziz pozt.
In the first book, Brian had lots of things that aren't in later books like cows, beavers, horses, etc. So their might not be dogs in Redwall.
On the topic of hounds, anybody know what the dirge hounds were?
No but they were scary! Perhaps they were actually wolves? :o
It zayz on ze Redwall Viki zat zey vere tvo female Ermine.
Yes, definatly. I'm sure it said in the book.....
Yeah I think it might have been Bellmaker
(http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSpPpr8UjCafwY4RTQBeH6fHXGHKIhI7dioZK1_o2iWTsaDfCj-)
Quote from: HeadInAnotherGalaxy on August 11, 2013, 06:53:53 PM
It zayz on ze Redwall Viki zat zey vere tvo female Ermine.
A Ermine is just another name for stoat. :D
Quote from: Leatho Shellhound on August 13, 2013, 05:13:35 PM
Quote from: HeadInAnotherGalaxy on August 11, 2013, 06:53:53 PM
It zayz on ze Redwall Viki zat zey vere tvo female Ermine.
A Ermine is just another name for stoat. :D
Zae zen a Ztoat iz juzt anozer name for an Ermine?
Yes. ::)
I thought an ermine was a kind of stoat.
I doubt there were dogs in the Mossflower region, just like horses and chickens, even though Brian Jacques mentions all three animals in the Redwall series one time or another.
Agreed.
Quote from: BadgerLordFiredrake on July 19, 2013, 03:42:41 PM
Yup, a lot of ideas come to me late at night. xD
The closest is Urgan Nagru, when he found a dead olf.
How did Nagru know that wolf's name, though, if it was dead when he found it?
I bet he made it up
Sounds plausible, considering it was his spelled backwards...a little too much of a coinky-dink...but only Jacques knew for sure
Personally, I think that there were probably wolves (due to their closeness to foxes and their mention in the Bellmaker) and they could have been called "hounds". In the southern sections of the U.S.A., some people call ferrets or skunks (or stoats or weasels, I can't remember) "pole-cats". A pole-cat appears in Mattimeo, which is odd because Brian could have just called it a ferret etc. Maybe he was trying to show the creature's ethnicity, or he could have been saying that where the creature lived was supposed to be the place where it is called that particular name. I think that in England dogs are more referred to as hounds than in the U.S., but that's just a guess.
^ But, polecats are real animals. They are related to stouts and skunks and the like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_polecat.
I've imagined that the first Redwall as being a time where dogs and some other animals have existed, but had become extincted as time went on. Or they just live in other places.
I've always thought that a really interesting fanfic idea would be an external threat to Mossflower/Salamandastron from a wolf pack or something. It could force an alliance between vermin and woodlanders and be an instance for a different type of Redwall story.
Quote from: Sable on February 10, 2014, 03:19:30 AM
I've always thought that a really interesting fanfic idea would be an external threat to Mossflower/Salamandastron from a wolf pack or something. It could force an alliance between vermin and woodlanders and be an instance for a different type of Redwall story.
Same here! I always wished that would happen in a real book though.
That does sound cool! It would be really interesting to see how the woodlanders, good and bad, came together to fight off a wolf pack or similar. :D
otters and badgers are stripedogs and riverdogs.
Quote from: Tam and Martin on February 10, 2014, 06:14:20 PM
Quote from: Sable on February 10, 2014, 03:19:30 AM
I've always thought that a really interesting fanfic idea would be an external threat to Mossflower/Salamandastron from a wolf pack or something. It could force an alliance between vermin and woodlanders and be an instance for a different type of Redwall story.
Same here! I always wished that would happen in a real book though.
Read my fanfiction. I have a wolf in there and how powerful I think it would be in the Redwallverse. It's a start at least.
BTW, I'm going to steal that idea and start another fan fiction with the wolves vs all other creatures. ;D JK (maybe)
I think in the Redwall universe the terms dog and chicken were originally applied to a use in nicknaming certain creatures(eg. chicken means coward)and if there were these creatures in redwall then the words would be applied to them only after they already had a different meaning ;D
In 'Redwall' when Methuselah is going through the Abbey records he finds that a TOWN DOG told another recorder about Cluny.
Yes, I remember that. That was in Redwall though right?
Yes, it was Tam and Martin
Thanks!
It could also apply to, say an old inhabitant of a town or a seadog in a town(who would have heard far and wide of Cluny)!!
Or maybe hound is just a made up sailor word, or maybe the hounds had a major migration, or they just died out.
Or maybe hound is another word for wolf in redwall?
Quote from: SilentSam on January 03, 2015, 09:16:17 PM
Or maybe hound is another word for wolf in redwall?
Now you say it, I can imagine town wolves. Hmmm.
Yeah, but really, thw word "dog" is used in another book besides redwall, I think it's used in Brocktree.
If there were wolves, would they be vermin or goodbeasts?
That's not clear in the books. It's obvious they were powerful and feared, but what stance they took is never told. My guess is they would be bad if we were to go by the formula the books usually take.
Indeed. Just based on the thinking Jacques used in his sorting, they'd almost certainly be evil. In English folklore/culture, wolves are about as quintessentially baddie as it gets.
Except the one that guarded the head of Saint Edmund. That was a good wolf. The rest are eeeeeeeevillll.
So what would the role of a wolf be do you think? A natural leader? Pure brawn?
Both.
Honestly, more I think about it, probably not that different from wolverines. Despite all the debate about how wolverines might be neutral or good, I think the straightforward interpretation is that they are just savage, nearly indomitable dangerous monsters that tower over all the vermin around them.
So, if I was designing Redwallian wolves, they'd be very rare, the badger equivalent in evil alignment, and terrifying to both goodies and baddies. 'Omen of danger', to play off the folklore. Unless they are adverse to interaction, and just want to be savage predators removed from the politics of assembling a band/army/horde/whatever.
Also they were Dirgecallers not Dirgehounds.
"Lone wolf" comes to.mind.
Maugrim from C. S. Lewis' The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe is a good example for a vermin wolf.
Wolves are also commonly (but less commonly) shown to be noble, strong, and majestic.
They could have worked as "gray" characters.
Yeah, could be possible. Then Brian could have gone down the same route as with wildcats, having the good, the bad and the grey. As others have said, going by how wolves have typically been portrayed in stories, I think they would have been mostly shown as bad.
The good the bad and the grey. . . Heh.
Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, but yeah. :p
Well, if wolves exists as well as both house cats and wildcats, then there must be dogs, But if there are dogs, and we know that there are house cats because Julian in the first book is a house cat, that would mean that there would have to be humans, but where did they go? Did they even exist? If not, then how did house cats and dogs come to be? Aaah!!!
There was also a horse and the mention of pigs in the first book. Some of those things never carried on to the other books so most of us think they're not really canon, so to speak.
I personally have never liked the idea of humans being in the Redwall world. . . It takes away some of the fantasy, for me.
Same. If there were humans, it would already mess up the already wonky and undefined scale rules. They would be as small as a mouse, or step over Redwall Abbey!
And all the trees. Redwall can't be tiny because characters are around human sized when compared to trees.
There are almost certainly no humans in the Redwall world, but I don't think that necessarily precludes there being domestic animals like house cats and dogs. We can just look at the example of Julian Gingivere, who was a house cat descended from a wildcat that settled down to become a farmer. The implication there is that the Gingivere family had "domesticated" themselves over generations of peaceful living. We also have the feral cats from High Rhulain, who were apparently enslaved by some stronger force before Riggu Felis came and took over.
So, if there are dogs in the Redwall world, then they'd probably come about in a similar way; by either being the descendants of wolves that gave up their wild and barbaric ways, or else wolves that were enslaved long ago by someone else.
True, but what dog breeds would come of it and where would those breeds be?
My guess, almost all strains of wolves or dingos or other wild dogs. Huskies and German shepherds (as far as my limited knowledge) are relatively close to wolves, but that would likely be as diverse as they would get.
The diversity would depend on the writer's imagination, I'd think. I can imagine at least a few different scenarios that I think would fit the setting. Like one wolf tribe conquering another and enslaving them, eventually turning their enslaved brethren into servile sheepdogs over generations. A kingdom of former wolves that have become so privileged and removed from their family's warrior past that they're now nothing more than foppish lap dogs. A village of huskies trying their best to live honestly in the lands of ice and snow, even while beset on all sides by their wilder cousins. The possibilities could be nearly limitless.
Always just thought it was a term for canine that they used.
Keep in mind that their world is different than ours, and even if dogs exist, they do not need to have come from humans or any kind of "domestication", although with Julian, which I do not consider canon, it was implied. Dogs could, reasonably, just have come about on their own.
Although I support the idea of no dogs being in Redwall.
It does make it easier.
Aye, sir.