#orco

Orco y Malteada

Illustrazione di Fabian Negrin per il pozzo delle meraviglie. 300 fiabe, novelle e racconti popolari siciliani, di Giuseppe Pitrè, della fiaba la troffa di la razza.

the illustration depicts the "Patri-Drau" (Dragon-Father) as he climbs out of the whole left by a turnip:

Di stu pirtusu metti a nèsciri fumu, e 'mmenzu lu fumu sàuta comu fussi un saccu nìuru d'abbràciu. Chi è? chi fu? Avia nisciutu di ddà lu Patri-Drau.

From this hole started to come out smoke, and from within this smoke jumps out something like a black burlap sack. Who is it? Who was it? The Dragon-Father had come out of there.

Ah yes the Orlando Furioso. I meant to include this in my big "What makes an ogre" series but never got the time.

So... I have to admit I am not an expert on Italian language, especially old fashioned Italian language, and I also am no expert on the full Orlando Furioso (it is a very complex work I only got started on recently). But here's the thing...

It is well-known that the Orlando Furioso was put together by taking elements of Greco-Roman mythology and reinventing them completely. The Orco and Orca are this. The Orco is basically Polyphemus reinvented - but here with two eyeballs made of bone instead of one eye promptly gouged out. The Orca meanwhile is the sea-dragon of the Andromeda story given a new name. So far so good.

But "Orca" is not meant to evoke the sea animal of the same name, the "killer whale", and that's something everybody has to remind people of (even the Wikipedia article for the Orca in Italian points out it is NOT the "orca" as in the sea creature). Orca is used here as the male form of "orco" - and the "orco" is indeed the same name of creature used by Basile to designate his proto-ogres. The "uercos", which is just "orcos" spelled differently.

So should we translated "Orco" as "ogre" and "Orca" as "ogress"? Well... No, it wouldn't work. At least for the Orco it can work since he sports typical ogre traits and DID influence the rise of the ogre figure in France (I don't think it is a random choice if madame d'Aulnoy's ogres are cyclops). But the Orca clearly isn't the same kind of creature - it is a sea dragon, or a sea monster, or some big sea snake. So this hints at the fact that "orco/orca" doesn't actually translated, in the context of the Orlando, as "ogre"...

You see, by Basile's Pentamerone, the "orco" is clearly an "ogre" in the fairytale sense of the word - though some English translators decided to go for "ghoul" because they didn't understand why an ogre would have magical powers, unaware that ogres were originally sorcerers/fairies of their own rights. They preferred to evoke the shapeshifting Arabian demons, allowing for an easier explanation of "Oh yes the ogre turns into all sorts of animals and curses people when it can't eat them".

[Note: As I write this I realized "orchi" is apparently the plural of "orco"? Well... I'll keep calling them "orcos" for now, but another proof I am not expert when it comes to these things]

But the author of the Orlando Furioso seems to have had a different and more ancient meaning in head for "orco". If you ask me, what seems very likely (though I am no expert) is that "orco"/"orca" is here taken as meaning "man-eating monster". Not just a fairytale ogre, but any kind of creature that wants to devour human beings. As a result the "orco" is an ogre-like giant, while the orca is a sea monster-dragon. "Orco/a" is used in the same broad sense as how "fairy" could be used in the British Isles to refer to all sorts of creatures, or yokai in Japan - or at least, that's what it seems to me. This is probably why the translator chose to prefer the term "orc", more neutral and evoking the older roots and mysterious figures behind the word "orc" before Tolkien made it famous. Calling the sea creature "orca" feeds the confusion with the killer whale ; while calling the land monster "ogre" might remove the idea that he is another form of the sea creature met earlier. One could keep the cohesion by having "ogre / ogress" but it would be mistranslating to call the sea monster "ogress" when it is clearly not just a female version of the land creature. So ultimately I think this is why the terms "sea orc" and "land orc" were chosen - it keeps the unity, while pointing out that the term does not designate a specific type of being, more a large class of man-eating beings. You could easily go with "sea monster" and "land monster" too.