From An Ancient Tablet, With Successive Historical Notations (Translated)

by Luc Reid

With the last gleam of the wolf’s eye[14] will fall the night[1].

[1] Robert of Tours speaks of this fragment being borne from the tomb of king Vraghur II of the Cirroghs, born in the 714th year before Our Lord, whose armor was carved into the likeness of a wolf[7], a prophecy of the fall of the Cirroghs at the proud king’s passing.[2] (Jacques Etablant, 1310)

[2] Though the fragment be Cirroghic[3], no death of kings did it fortell but the death of us all, in the Plague[4] God hath wrought upon us, the weak and the strong alike. So show the French their putrid ignorance. (John of Hampdenmontfordshire, 1351)

[3] Be it Cirroghic? And who the Cirroghs, pray?[5] Though long extolled as paragons of ferocity, the learned man in modern days misdoubts that ever such men walked the earth.[6] (Albert Burlowe, 1605)

[4] Good John, were thou but mistaken of the nature of the thing, yet thou art mistaken only of the year! Thus God doth visit on us finally the last and worst plague, and we perish like (illegible) (author unknown, London, 1666)

[5] The Cirroghs were a race of bean farmers residing in the valley of Dziban, though they were not known to write with the Old Dazibanic script in which the table is inscribed. Yet they did exist! (Caleb Blackford, 1884)

[6] Oh? Then why is it that Vraghur II’s breastplate recently surfaced during excavations in Dziban?[8] (Blackford, 1884)

[7] But there was no wolf on it, so we doubt this tablet to have referred to Vraghur II[9]. (Blackford, 1884)

[8] Never mind. The breastplate, it appears, was a hoax. (Blackford, 1886)

[9] An excellent conclusion, as the Cirroghs were slaughtered to the last man[10] in the reign of Vraghur I. (Wolfgang Krunt, 1928)

[10] A 1952 excavation reveals evidence of surviving Cirroghs in Albania, however.[11] (Dr. Janice Pitui, 1973)

[11] Which doesn’t prove[12] it’s Cirroghic. (Dr. Walter Mordartur, 1974)

[12] Nothing in science is proven[13], as the occasional buffoon may forget (Pitui, 1974)

[13] But we talked about it a lot and decided it probably wasn’t Cirroghic anyway (Dr. Janice Pitui-Mordartur, 1976)

[14] A mistranslation; recently reviewed and retranslated as “With the last gleam of the sunset, will fall the night.” Appears to be an ancient snippet of amateur poetry. (Andre Hampden Etablant, 2017)