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The Canticle of Shartan

In Dragon Age, it is established that the Canticle of Shartan is central to elves who believe in and worship the Maker; it is Dragon Age's Exodus parallel (the connections between which will have to be for another post). It is important enough to elves to have been vengefully de-canonized after the Exalted March on the Dales. Additionally, the Chantry has removed evidence that Shartan was an elf in art and literature. If Leliana becomes the Divine in Inquisition, she re-canonizes this Canticle.

What's interesting is that in the little actual text we have of the Canticle, dogs are one of the primary metaphors employed in the text through Shartan/the narrator's voice. In the first instance, Shartan tells the People who are considering returning to Tevinter:

"A dog might slink back to the hand it has bitten And be forgiven, but a slave never. If you would live, and live without fear, you must fight."

Dogs are used in the text to measure power, status, lowliness, and degeneracy. In the above, the condition of bondage is worse than being a dog.

In the next instance:

Darkness fell upon the Lonely One, A night without moon or stars, As the legion followed, like bloodhounds, The trail of the rebels.

The narrator compares the Tevinter legion pursuing the elves to bloodhounds--a poignant deglorification of their Roman-adjacent military might. The elves are the strategic geniuses while the legion are mindless hunters; by lowering the status of the Tevinters to dogs, they legitimize themselves above them, as a free people.

The third instance is after the People kill the legion. They are frightened by the sound of Andraste's army marching into Tevinter, though they do not know it is her:

Seeing an army beyond counting gathered in the distance, Shartan said to the People "Let us not fall into the jaws of the wolf together..."

It is more than likely that polytheistic elven tradition seeped into the language of the Canticle, with Fen'Harel as a wolf-god associated with curses and exile. The change in metaphor is striking to me as it could foreshadow Andraste's power and dignity--while a dog is a low imitation, a wolf is it's more dangerous, more respected forebear. Wolves are, of course, associated with Fen'Harel, and even as a trickster, Fen'Harel is still acknowledged as a deity.

Regardless, danger, enslavement, mindlessness (a kind of enslavement) and death are associated with dogs, wolves, and canines.

Dogs in the Alienage

Throughout most major Jewish texts, similar to the above, dogs are equated with lowliness, uncleanliness, and evil. In the Hebrew Bible, dogs are associated with prostitution, and considered animals that maul people and eat corpses. Even Jewish law, halakha, describes in kosher guidelines food so unclean it is nifsal mei'achilat kelev, "something one would not feed to a dog." The Talmud records a case of a dog barking at a pregnant woman, and she miscarried; the dog's bark "caused the Divine Presence to depart from the Jewish people." (Bava Kamma 83a:7).

In the opening cutscene of the Tabris origin, we see a dog lying beside working and impoverished elves; we later see elven children playing with this dog during the wedding preparations. So there's not a general cultural dislike or removal of all dogs, and dogs can be pets. I believe, however, there are significant limits to this relationship. Historically, Jewish legal codes regulated that dogs must be chained and/or only let out at night because of their association with destruction and violence. When going around the alienage, there are no dogs out and about--we only see dogs loose after the purge. Notably, the dog seen is not a mabari. In Dragon Age, it could be that mabari specifically, war dogs, represent a new magnitude of violence and lowliness.

Mabari and the Orphanage

In Jewish mystic tradition, dogs symbolize demons and the presence of evil in the world. They are referred to as such in the Psalms: "Dogs surround me;/ a pack of evil ones closes in on me" (22.17) and later in the poem "Save my life from the sword,/ my precious life from the clutches of a dog" (22.21) [Translation from the Jewish Study Bible, Second Edition, Oxford University Press].

When investigating the horrors of the orphanage, two of the major signs of demonic activity are dogs. One dog is dead, and has been for some time; the other is alive and feral. It is the same dog that was playing with the elven children that has gone feral, while the mabari lies dead.

When you enter into the orphanage, mabari have taken over the rooms alongside the restless spirits and demons. Considering the Talmudic story about dogs and children above, it is significant that dogs replace the elven children that were once there. They are the remnant of the pogrom.

A survivor says this about the dogs in the orphanage:

"The dogs hear the bad men too. They make the dogs so confused, so angry. Poor little pups barking at the noise. Make them stop!"

What's interesting is the elven woman shows a lot of sympathy for the dogs. If the "bad men" are both the violent humans and the demons, then the "poor animals" and "pups," are reacting with and like the restless spirits of the elven children and adults massacred. There are literal dogs inside the orphanage, just as outside, but they are the physical manifestation of a corrupted weakness in the veil, the death and violence. If elves believe dogs are demonically connected, perhaps dogs are drawn to such belief wherever elven spirits rage. Their angered and grieving souls have been corrupted, and their being stuck, frightened, and haunting that place is equal to the lowliness of doghood.

A major role for dogs in the story of Exodus is during the tenth plague, the Death of the Firstborn, which also connects dogs and noise:

"And there shall be a large cry in all the land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again; but not a dog shall snarl [or bark, or move its tongue]..." (Exodus 11.6-7).

The silence of the dogs enabled and recognized the ancient Jewish people as a free people. The elven woman is also asking for the silence of the dogs, the quieting of spirits through justice and the expulsion of the demons. She is asking, in a way, for the restoration of their dignity.

We see in the Canticle of Shartan and the way in which restless spirits who died violent deaths become equated with mabari, the violent acts of humans degrade themselves into demons and dogs, and degrade others to a status even beneath that. The silence and absence of dogs represent the dignity of elves as a free people, and justice in their memory.

So, when Tabris tells Shianni she killed them "like dogs," it is a kind of redemption, a denigration of humans because of their violence and a recognition of elven dignity. Just as the People in the Canticle of Shartan slaughtered the "bloodhounds," and how the dogs in Exodus were silent during the last, violent plague for liberation.

In Conclusion