We’re not done discussing badgers and badger horns yet. For those still wondering, it comes from the Favorite Avatars thread just last week, where we discussed Lewis Carroll’s descriptions of raths and toves.
Lewis Carroll himself gave conflicting descriptions of toves, raths, and perhaps other critters. Before writing Looking Glass, he wrote a periodical called Mischmasch, in which he may have given the description you mention. But in Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty gives some different descriptions. Slithy_Tove’s avatar follows Humpty Dumpty’s definition and agrees with Tenniel’s illustration:
[image]
To be sure, the Wikipedia page for Jabberwocky seems garbled…
Senegoid:
To be sure, the Wikipedia page for Jabberwocky seems garbled: At one point, it says:
For example, following the poem, a “rath” is described by Humpty as “a sort of green pig”.[18] Carroll’s notes for the original in Mischmasch “rath” is “a species of Badger” that “lived chiefly on cheese” and had smooth white hair, long hind legs, and short horns like a stag. [19]
Later, the same page says:
Tove: Humpty Dumpty says “‘Toves’ are something like badgers, they’re something like lizards, and they’re something like corkscrews. … Also they make their nests under sun-dials, also they live on cheese.”[18] Pronounced so as to rhyme with groves .[21] They “gyre and gimble”, i.e., rotate and bore. Toves are described slightly differently in Mischmasch [19]
(ETA: Emphasis added by me.)