If you leveled at all in the Barrens prior to 4.0.1, you probably spent a certain amount of time here:
Anxious as one generally is to return to life, you may not have noticed much about your surroundings until you’d been there many times. Then, you might have observed that on the right, there are Orc and Troll graves, while on the left, there are Tauren graves.
The Tauren mummify their dead, probably embalming them before wrapping them tightly in cloth with a patterned blanket as the outermost layer. Interestingly, they leave the head unwrapped, perhaps so that the dead might be identified by ancestors and descendants alike. The mummified body is placed on an elevated bier — protected from landbound creatures such as hyenas, cats, and wolves, but not from airborne creatures such as eagles or wyverns. The jars, baskets, and weapons placed at the base of the bier may be provisions for the departed’s journey into the afterlife or personal posessions that were not passed on to his or her kinfolk. Many biers also have dreamcatchers hanging from the head end, perhaps as a charm to protect the spirits of the departed against evil spirits or influences.
Until very recently, the Tauren were nomadic. The elevated biers and mummified bodies may have allowed the gravesites to persist long enough in the environment to serve both as landmarks for the tribes’ journeys and as focal points for storytelling and maintaining the almost entirely oral history of the people.
If you haven’t played through the Mulgore since the Shattering, STOP reading this post, fire up WoW, roll up a baby cow, and take 30 minutes to play through Camp Narache.
Have you done it? Then we may proceed.
Zoning in as a brand new Tauren in the Shattered world, you first hear about Cairne’s tragic death, then arrive in Camp Narache on the day of a funeral.
Greatmother Hawkwind, who used to test young Tauren with the Rite of Humility by asking them to carry a pitcher of water for her back from the well to the village, has been killed in a surprise quilboar attack, and all of the elders of the village — the class trainers — are gathered around mourning. The youth are off fighting the quilboar, and you are promptly sent to join them.
Greatmother Hawkwind’s bier is more elaborately decorated than the common biers seen in Tauren graveyards around Kalimdor.
The legs of the bier are either carved into or rest upon totems. Beside the usual baskets and jars, there are tapestries, kites, charms, and drums. The quantity and quality of these items reflect Greatmother Hawkwind’s status as the revered matriarch of the village, and some of them may be ritual objects used for many kinds of ceremonies that will be removed after the rite. Given that most Tauren gravesites are outside of or on the outer edges of a village, I don’t imagine that they’d actually leave Greatmother Hawkwind’s bier in the center of the village. Instead, I think it’s likely that after the rite, strong braves will carefully carry the bier to the graveyard.
When you’ve completed your trials in defending Camp Narache against the quilboar, your last task before moving on to Bloodhoof Village is to lay the final offering at Greatmother Hawkwind’s bier — the very water pitcher you would have carried had you come to adulthood in happier times.
The items at the foot of each bier in a Tauren graveyard may be personal posessions of the deceased. Some of them may be offerings from the kin and friends of the deceased. All of them probably aid the living in remembering who lies there and help in the telling of the ancestors’ stories.
The rite itself begins as soon as you accept the honor and responsibility of placing the last offering.
I was very moved by this the first time I saw it.
From the way it is constructed, this is probably the usual version of the ceremony, though the fine details and nuances of the wording undoubtably vary from tribe to tribe. The dead is named, and his or her contributions are praised. The participants are reminded to continue to remember the departed by the prayer that “the grass [will] whisper her name”. They are reminded that their lives should be lived honorably by the prayer that the departed will be able to “look down on us with joy”. They are also reminded of their connection to the Earthmother, who first brought the Shu’halo into being, and that death is a natural event. There is sadness, but there is also a great sense of peace and hope. Greatmother Hawkwind’s death may have been sudden and violent, but the rite releases her spirit into an afterlife that will be as gentle and loving as she was in life.
Since the Shattering, Cairne Bloodhoof has lain at the Red Rocks, a place where “only the most valiant Tauren are laid to rest”.
Although the legs of Cairne’s bier are intricately carved, they are not as tall as the legs of Greatmother Hawkwind’s bier, and there are no larger, painted totems on the bottom. This supports my previous hypothesis that the totems under Greatmother Hawkwind’s bier are separate, ritual objects that the bier rests upon and from which the bier will be removed after the completion of the ceremony. Consistent with his status as the prime leader of the Tauren people, Cairne is wrapped in a more elaborately colored and patterned blanket than other Tauren. He is laid to rest with his signature totem-logs, indicating that the ones Baine now carries are Baine’s own. Unusually, his bier also has layers of straw and logs between the platform and the body. These items are always present, and appear to support Cairne’s body and the totem-logs such that they make an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. The offerings of baskets and boxes of corn shown in the picture were present only during Children’s Week, when we had the opportunity to attend a funeral or memorial service for Cairne.
The ceremony for Cairne is both similar to and significantly different from the ceremony for Greatmother Hawkwind.
Like the ceremony for Greatmother Hawkwind, this rite begins by naming the dead, praises his accomplishments, wishes his spirit peace in the afterlife, and speaks of him continuing to watch over his people from the afterlife. However, it speaks specifically of the manner of Cairne’s death and focuses the participants’ attention more upon the ancestors than upon the Earthmother.
For some players, this might have been the most explanation they had yet recieved concerning Cairne’s death*. For the characters, recounting the circumstances of Cairne’s death reminds the participants that the High Chieftain acted honorably always… and that his death was due to the dishonorable actions of others. In contrast to Cairne and Baine, who defended their people, the actions of Magatha and her tribe were unworthy.
The torches are the greatest difference between this rite for Cairne and what was previously known of Tauren funeral customs. The fire appears to catch primarily on the offerings of baskets and grain, and indeed, now that Children’s Week has ended, the boxes and baskets are gone, but Cairne’s bier remains. Perhaps the smoke rising from burning the offerings, but not the body itself, symbolizes or assists with the spirit rising swiftly into the arms of the Earthmother, as spoken of in the rite for Greatmother Hawkwind. Although there are no torches in the rite for Greatmother Hawkwind, and no evidence of the funeral biers being funeral pyres in other Tauren gravesites, perhaps offerings are, in fact, generally burned after the bier has been brought to its final resting place, and the lingering scent of smoke helps deter airborne creatures from molesting the bodies.
The focus on honoring the ancestors, rather than the Earthmother, is appropriate for the location, where all the greatest heros of the Tauren people have been laid to rest. When Cairne’s spirit is released, the ancestors themselves appear to greet him and welcome him into the afterlife.
These aren’t just any old ancestral spirits, either. If you happened to have moused over the spirits, or had NPC names turned on, you might have noticed that their names seemed familiar.
During the Lunar Festival, Elder Dreamseer appears in Gadgetzan, Elder Mistwalker appears in the Dire Maul arena, Elder Stonespire appears at Everlook, Elder Runetotem appears at Razor Hill, Elder Skyseer appears at Freewind Post, and Elder Bloodhoof appears at Bloodhoof Village. To be personally welcomed into the afterlife by this company of Elders is a rare honor indeed, and it confirms the greatness of Cairne himself.
Tauren burial customs may have helped the Shu’halo to maintain a cohesive sense of racial identity, community, and cultural memory even though they were, until very recently, a loosely affiliated group of wandering tribes. Tauren funeral rites both reflect and reinforce Shu’halo philosophies and cultural values. They honor the deceased and encourage the living to behave worthily, invoke the continued existence and activity of the spirit in an afterlife and the necessity of being approved of by the ancestors, and acknowledge and respect death as part of the gifts of the Earthmother.
~*~*~
*If you’re interested in learning more of the story, but don’t want to buy/read The Shattering, WoW Moviewatch recently featured a machinima entitled “The Fall of Cairne” that hews very closely to the novel.
I really hope we see Cairne as an Elder next Lunar Festival. đŸ˜€
That would be awesome, and I almost wrote that exact thing in my post… but then I remembered that we’d already had a Lunar Festival since Cataclysm went live, and Elder Bloodhoof was still just Elder Bloodhoof, not Elder Cairne Bloodhoof. It would be nifty, though, if Blizz was just holding off on making that change to Lunar Festival until the new Children’s Week had passed.
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