"Michael F. Stemper" <
michael.stemper@gmail.com> posted:
Some time in the early 1980s, I picked up a copy of _The Owl Service_, by Alan Garner.
I read and enjoyed it. It then went back on my shelve, where it sat until a few days
ago (including through three moves).
During my current read, I encountered the name "Dicky Nignog", possibly referring to
an author. I've always that that second name was an ethnic slur. Apparently not.
I searched on-line. Duck-Duck-Go sent me to the wikipedia page on _The Owl Service_,
which seemed promising. But, searching that page turned up no occurrences of the
string "Nig".
Now, I'm doubly puzzled. I still don't get the reference, and now I don't understand
why a search engine would think that the wikipedia page was relevant when it made
no reference to the name.
Any ideas?
<https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?7705> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Owl_Service>
When I lived in England in the 60s and 70s, 'nignog' was definitely a racial slur.
The Owl Service is a wonderful book. I also have very fond memories of The Weirdstone
of Brisingamen, and The Moon of Gomrath. The latter two are very location specific, and
you could track every movement on an Ordnance Survey map.
Pt
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