Post by zan189 on Jul 27, 2007 9:25:04 GMT -5
Lesson Two – Of Gnomes and Gardens
Good afternoon, students. In our lesson today we will pay a visit to Hogwarts’ gardens which are behind the Quidditch pitch. Most of you might never have been there or don’t even know the place exists. Please follow me and stop bickering, Aiden and Wicked!
As we stand in this beautiful patch of sunlit strawberry field, I would like you to look to your right: please keep an eye on those bushes fencing the vegetable patch. Can you see the little creature observing us mistrustful? This little fella is the star of our lesson today, a gnome and more specifically, your common English garden gnome, which will also take us on an excursion to Muggles.
Muggles and Garden Gnomes
As many of you know, Muggles can actually see most magical creatures, just as they can see us magic folk. But usually they do not take them for what they are, and rather add their own imagination to what they have actually seen. Sometimes, however, Muggles became so confused and agitated by what they had seen – or heard somebody had seen – that they turned against each other in their blind fear of the unknown, and uncanny. (I am of course referring to the so called “holy” Inquisition and its hunt of witches and wizards.)
So the magical community decided that, for the Muggle’s sake, we will hide the more dangerous and/ or large creatures in far away places, and try to control the smaller and/ or less dangerous ones so they won’t be seen by Muggles. However, gnomes do like gardens of all sorts and they do not care if the garden they invade is run by wizards/ witches or by Muggles.
The first Muggle to put an encounter with a gnome to paper was a woman called Ruza Maric in 655 AC. She was the daughter of a Croatian blacksmith and lived near the village of Modrica, where she tended to the pigs one day when she saw two large bulbs of eyes stare at her from under the rosebush. Believing to be faced with some kind of plant daemon, she ran straight to the local priest who returned to the scene of crime with no less than fifty townsmen. They were able to capture the poor creature and conducted an exorcism which left the gnome in a state of shock. Had it seen a basilisk, it couldn’t have been more petrified. So it remained for almost a month, in which the priest exhibited it in his porch until it was able to run away.
Supposedly, this story inspired the ancient art of Garden Gnomes as seen in Muggle gardens across Northern Europe and Northern America. How the gnomes’ true looks of approximately one foot height, a larger than necessary head and hard, gristly feet became some white-bearded figure clad in a pointed red hat and resembling a human altogether, nobody can really tell. Fact is that nowadays, certain Muggles despise those that like Garden Gnomes, which is understandable considering the damage real gnomes can do to your plants, and the nuisance when you want to trim the hedges they live in.
Ruza Maric, on the other hand, felt inspired by the priest’s display of power and joined a nunnery, where she eventually learned how to read and how to write. Batilda Bagshot, famous historian and author of “A History of Magic” found this story in the book of deaths of Maric’s home town, telling of the priest’s divine power over creatures upon his funeral.
Exercise
We now come to the hard part of today’s lesson.
Please pair up and de-gnome the vegetable patch. Don’t forget to put on your dragon-skin gloves lest they bite you.
The pairs are as follows:
Hutchison with Aiden (no, you will not be partnering Miss Wicked!)
Welsh with Grimm
Sichs with Wicked
[please refer to the introduction if you cannot find your name here]
Homework:
Until August 1, 2007 12 pm, board time, please PM me the story of how you de-gnomed Hogwarts’ vegetable patch using no less than 500 words.
Imagination welcome.
Whoever can tell me which creature is the gnomes’ natural enemy gets to pick one creature that I shall talk about in one of our coming lessons. It can be any creature, even one we would usually do no earlier than N.E.W.T. level.
If most of you know the correct answer, I will open an extra thread in which you can discuss the creature you want me to talk about.
[Any questions related to this lesson can be posted in this thread (except the one where you ask me about the gnomes' natural enemy).]
