Ghyll:Mureannor
There aren't as many mureannors around as there used to be. Grenfing has lost some of its allure, and now seems to be an old fashioned affectation. Today's youth are more interested in brightening their stripes than in having texts grenfed into their carapaces.
Carving interesting patterns in carapaces has probably been done for at least a thousand years. Grenfing, the process of creating a mureannor by carving grooves with varying width and depth so that, when traced with a mandible, the whole carapace would resonate with sound, dates from about -350 EC. Mureannors would travel from village to town, and would entertain locals by tracing their grenfs and causing the sounds to resonate from their carapaces.
However, any new development is invariably corrupted. Young couples soon found it enjoyable to have matching patterns, and would take turns tracing each others' grenfs. In -147 EC, Reeyay pronounced the tracing of others' grenfs to be indecent, and sought to have it banned. This led to a period of great popularity for grenfed carapaces over the next three decades.
Verses of Peershakes' sonnets were very popular subjects which people would have grenfed into their carapaces. Frank Sicksdagrees, widely suspected to be the impostor known as Not Peershakes, was a journeyman grenfer in Shepenor. Quite probably, he first came across Peershakes' verses when clients began bringing in wonderful bits of poetry for grenfing into their carapaces. But the only bit of verse reliably attributed to Mr. Sicksdagrees is this bit of doggerel:
Whoah that's a big belly,
Waddling down the street.
I wouldn't want to be
Between him and his lunch table.
He looks like he knows how to
Wield a buffet mace.
Of course, with the familiarity youth have with one another today, running a mandible along the grenfs on a sleek, shiny carapace just isn't as exciting as it once was. The thrill of running a mandible over a mureannor's grenfs and hearing the sounds have been supplanted by crasser entertainments, like quiver'n'bend music and flooming. Such is the era we live in.
Citations: Dendel's Stripes, Grenfing, Not Peershakes.
--Brother Arfrus 15:47, 16 Aug 2005 (EDT)
