Scarborough Fair/Canticle

Paul Simon learned it in 1965 in London from Martin Carthy and set it in counterpoint with “Canticle”, a reworking of Simon’s 1963 song “The Side of a Hill” with new, anti-war lyrics. Wikipedia

Riddles Wisely Expounded. The Elfin Knight. The False Knight Upon the Road. Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight. Et cetera the Scandanavian versions of the Child Ballads as lore, quests, and riddles.

Apply The Elfin Knight to interbreeding as the Falmer fell, and the herbs illiterate Nedic/Nordic women took to avoid it; and Canticle to the genocide which collapsed their civilization and eradicated their culture. (Video of a nicely haunting version with minimal parts and accompaniment.)

Religious Version

Find the S&G version sung at the Feast of the Dead. By verse, a duet sing the first and last together; a woman sings the Scarborough Fair lyrics in the middle three verses; and a man sings the Canticle lyrics.

The Scarbarrow is a hill which would open on certain nights of the year and the fairyfolk would steal the souls of the dead. Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme are herbs to shield the graveyard inhabitants from the charms of the fae.

Scarbarrow Fae, fairyfolk, Falmer. Nords lay impossible charges on them to keep them from the souls of their ancestors. This remembers desparate Falmer raiding Nord barrow-wights in their binding rituals. Desecrating these honored dead was the last decision the banshee made before Kyne cursed her with the screaming thu’um.

Folk Version

Find the circa 1610 version A recited by an ancient Nord lady (mentioned in version B), from clear memories of her youth (she’s not so good at remembering the present).  This version is more intimate, describing the contest of wills around the seduction.

I see dead people

The names of the Five Hundred Companions are still recited, every Thirteenth of Sun’s Dawn at the Feast of the Dead in Windhelm, as the Nords link their current people to their ancestors.

This rite is a pale shadow of the Falmer “Naming the Passed”, which channels their ancestor’s wight-magic (no soul-gems) into objects of their finest craftsmanship: you have to know the name of the dead, what magicka imbued the body of the dead, and match the magic to an appropriate item.  Falmer started regularly recycling their spirits for the Night of Tears, when they needed strength to commit genocide.  The Falmer fell because these ancestor spirits were no longer available to guide them as a race.  The Falmer queen who made this decision became a banshee, who protects the secrets and story.

Floral Suitability for Skyrim

From a thread I posted to Skyrim for Oblivion. I worked through the Tamriel flora list at UESP, figuring out where it makes sense to put in Skyrim existing plants from other provinces. All these plants are in the games, nothing yet which is solely from the lore.

Floral Suitability for Skyrim

Where we may expect plants from other provinces to find purchase in Skyrim. Soil tests conducted by the academic colleges of Haafinghar and Winterhold. Published by the Ysmir Collective Press, 3E430.

Northern Cyrodiil

Some say in memory of her violent, haunted, race-hunted past, cairn bolete grows profusely in the caves and grottoes which honeycomb the Holds. Wisp stalks are just as common as in Cyrodiil caves. Clouded funnel and milk thistle grow profusely in high areas below the treeline. Motherwort and tinder polypore are especially suitable for the western Velothi mountains. Both mugwort seeds and wormwood leaves come from the Artemisia family, scraggy and sporadic in the highest alpine and glacial climes. Witches’ tasp lore recommends the seeds to control dream travel, and keep away ancestral moths. Mandrake in the highlands of the Pale. In low-lying forested areas, bergamot, fly amanita, garlic, ginkgo, lily of the valley, somnalius frond, St. Jahn’s wort, steel-blue entoloma, viper’s bugloss. Various hardy, especially tuberous farm crops in cultivated areas of the same clime.

Hammerfell Mountains

Black and white poppies in the mountains of the dragon’s tail.

The Province of Morrowind

At the same latitudes as Skyrim, any plant which grows in Vvardenfell outside the ashlands should find purchase in Skyrim’s soil. Lichens color the harshest climes, where almost nothing else will grow. Salty kreshweed in abundance on the shore and islands of the Sea of Ghosts. Chokeweed in the highlands of the Pale. Some bittergreen in the western Velothi mountains. Draggle tail, hackle-lo, a few isolated muck sponges and slough ferns, and some wild satrice and violet coprinus in the coastal lowlands. In more temperate areas, black anther, comberry, corkbulb, gold kanet, evergreen heather, stoneflower, willow anther. For fungi, you may see bungler’s bane or hypha facia amongst the more common russulas. We came by one lovely timsa-come-by, caringly planted and watered by an expatriate Dunmer, who also tilled with ash the soil of a small plot of wickwheat.

The Island of Solstheim

Holly berries in bushes well-suited to the climes of Skyrim. In more temperate areas, belladonna. It’s said wolfsbane grows in garlands on the throat of the world, but this is probably poetic license.