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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them :: Роулинг Джоан Кэтлин
Страница: 4 из 7In a spirit of friendship he summoned all 'beings' to meet with the wizards at a summit to discuss new magical laws and found to his intense dismay that he had miscalculated. The meeting hall was crammed with goblins who had brought with them as many two-legged creatures as they could find. As Bathilda Bagshot tells us in A History of Magic:
Little could be heard over the squawking of the Diricawls, the moaning of the Augureys and the relentless, piercing song of the Fwoopers. As wizards and witches attempted to consult the papers before them, sundry pixies and fairies whirled around their heads, giggling and jabbering. A dozen or so trolls began to smash apart the chamber with their clubs, while hags glided about the place in search of children to eat. The Council Chief stood up to open the meeting, slipped on a pile of Porlock dung and ran cursing from the hall.
As we see, the mere possession of two legs was no guarantee that a magical creature could or would take an interest in the affairs of wizard government. Embittered, Burdock Muldoon forswore any further attempts to integrate non-wizard members of the magical community into the Wizards' Council.
Muldoon's successor, Madame Elfrida Clagg, attempted to redefine 'beings' in the hope of creating closer ties with other magical creatures. 'Beings', she declared, were those who could speak the human tongue. All those who could make themselves understood to Council members were therefore invited to join the next meeting. Once again, however, there were problems. Trolls who had been taught a few simple sentences by the goblins proceeded to destroy the hall as before. Jarveys raced around the Council's chair legs, tearing at as many ankles as they could reach. Meanwhile a large delegation of ghosts (who had been barred under Muldoon's leadership on the grounds that they did not walk on two legs, but glided) attended but left in disgust at what they later termed 'the Council's unashamed emphasis on the needs of the living as opposed to the wishes of the dead'. The centaurs, who under Muldoon had been classified as 'beasts' and were now under Madame Clagg defined as 'beings', refused to attend the Council in protest at the exclusion of the merpeople, who were unable to converse in anything except Mermish while above water.
Not until 1811 were definitions found that most of the magical community found acceptable. Grogan Stump, the newly appointed Minister for Magic, decreed that a 'being' was 'any creature that has sufficient intelligence to understand the laws of the magical community and to bear part of the responsibility in shaping those laws'.(An exception was made for the ghosts, who asserted that it was insensitive to class them as 'beings* when they were so clearly 'has-beens'.
Little could be heard over the squawking of the Diricawls, the moaning of the Augureys and the relentless, piercing song of the Fwoopers. As wizards and witches attempted to consult the papers before them, sundry pixies and fairies whirled around their heads, giggling and jabbering. A dozen or so trolls began to smash apart the chamber with their clubs, while hags glided about the place in search of children to eat. The Council Chief stood up to open the meeting, slipped on a pile of Porlock dung and ran cursing from the hall.
As we see, the mere possession of two legs was no guarantee that a magical creature could or would take an interest in the affairs of wizard government. Embittered, Burdock Muldoon forswore any further attempts to integrate non-wizard members of the magical community into the Wizards' Council.
Muldoon's successor, Madame Elfrida Clagg, attempted to redefine 'beings' in the hope of creating closer ties with other magical creatures. 'Beings', she declared, were those who could speak the human tongue. All those who could make themselves understood to Council members were therefore invited to join the next meeting. Once again, however, there were problems. Trolls who had been taught a few simple sentences by the goblins proceeded to destroy the hall as before. Jarveys raced around the Council's chair legs, tearing at as many ankles as they could reach. Meanwhile a large delegation of ghosts (who had been barred under Muldoon's leadership on the grounds that they did not walk on two legs, but glided) attended but left in disgust at what they later termed 'the Council's unashamed emphasis on the needs of the living as opposed to the wishes of the dead'. The centaurs, who under Muldoon had been classified as 'beasts' and were now under Madame Clagg defined as 'beings', refused to attend the Council in protest at the exclusion of the merpeople, who were unable to converse in anything except Mermish while above water.
Not until 1811 were definitions found that most of the magical community found acceptable. Grogan Stump, the newly appointed Minister for Magic, decreed that a 'being' was 'any creature that has sufficient intelligence to understand the laws of the magical community and to bear part of the responsibility in shaping those laws'.(An exception was made for the ghosts, who asserted that it was insensitive to class them as 'beings* when they were so clearly 'has-beens'.