When I read the end of CD and Maeve mentions that she will not be Mab’s falcon anymore, I realized that it was at least the third similar reference I felt like I could remember reading in TDF. I knew that there was some poem out there about how the center cannot hold and things fall apart, about entropy and the end of the world. Finally I decided to figure it out. Here is the poem—it’s from William Butler Yeats and it’s titled “The Second Coming”:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

         Doesn't this sound like it could be applied to the DF apocalpyse? I’m no Yeats scholar, but in a bit of googling I came across the fact that Yeats spent years crafting an elaborate, mystical theory of the universe. This theory issued in part from Yeats’s lifelong fascination with the occult and mystical. He believed that history can be laid out as two conical spirals, one inside the other, so that the widest part of one of the spirals rings around the narrowest part of the other spiral, and vice versa. Yeats believed that this image (he called the spirals “gyres”) captured the contrary motions inherent in history. Yeats believed that the world was on the threshold of an apocalypse, as history reached the end of the outer gyre and began moving along the inner gyre. In other words, the world’s trajectory along the gyre of science and democracy was coming apart, like the frantically widening flight of the falcon that has lost contact with the falconer; the next age will take its character not from the gyre of science and democracy, but something else entirely and opposite. Of course, the poem was written around 1921 and so likely had more to do with WW1 than predicting the DF apocalypse to come  , but it’s kind of cool to think about the possibility that Yeats, like the DF version of Stoker and Lovecraft, may have understood more than the rest of the world.

         Also, rather than just being a sad echo of my days as an english major, I started this thread to see if anyone picked up on these or other references. IIRC, Murphy said something to Harry in SF or FM about how the center cannot hold. I think Harry mentions “falcons and falconers” at some point, but I have no idea where. And then we have Maeve in CD telling Mab she will not be her falcon anymore.

        Are there anymore potential “The Second Coming” references in the Dresden Files? Anyone care to formulate a WAG about Yeats being prophetic??

Can I still suggest my own theories for consideration?

Do new theories get considered for addition to this reference?

when jim had to switch DB and PG he intentionally created a time loop in the books, behind the scenes.
source-source^{-wizard nelson}

Elegast i invoke thee to look at my updated theory.(i explain it better)

I'm wondering how to add sources for theories that only have a slice of text from the RPG to support them. I could use the method I proposed at the top of this post but creating a thread for such a small piece of evidence seems wastefull...getting threads like them into the DF Reference Collection would just clutter it up. Maybe we could make one thread for all the theories that only have small amounts of evidence (this could also work for Speculative and Highly Speculative theories)?

Faeries speak gaelic
(Arjan, Elegast)

Fairies and language

Quote from: Changes

someone whispering to me, something in a tongue I didnt understand-but I knew my queen's voice

Quote from: Summer Knight

Maeve drew herself up, her face shining with a sudden terrible beauty. She lifted her right hand, ring finger and thumb both bent, and murmured something in a liquid, alien tongue.

Quote

My godmother spoke something, a string of liquid syllables in a tongue I could not understand-but it made my knees turn rubbery and my fingers suddenly feel weak.

About speaking Russian:

Quote from: Changes

"Harry", he[Toot-toot] said, as if the question made no sense at all, "you just speak it"

Quote from: Wikipedia

The word fairy derives from Middle English faierie (also fayerye, feirie, fairie), a direct borrowing from Old French faerie (Modern French féerie) meaning the land, realm, or characteristic activity (i.e. enchantment) of the legendary people of folklore and romance called (in Old French) faie or fee (Modern French fée). This derived ultimately from Late Latin fata (one of the personified Fates, hence a guardian or tutelary spirit, hence a spirit in general); cf. Italian fata, Portuguese fada, Spanish hada of the same origin.
Fata, although it became a feminine noun in the Romance languages, was originally the neuter plural ("the Fates") of fatum, past participle of the verb fari to speak, hence "thing spoken, decision, decree" or "prophetic declaration, prediction", hence "destiny, fate". It was used as the equivalent of the Greek Μοῖραι Moirai, the personified Fates who determined the course and ending of human life.
[...]
Latin fata comes from the Indo-European root *bhã- "speak".

From:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy#Etymology

Gaelic

Quote from: Wikipedia

Most consonants have both palatal and non-palatal counterparts, including a very rich system of liquids, nasals and trills (i.e. 3 contrasting l sounds, 3 contrasting n sounds and 3 contrasting r sounds).

From:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic#Pronunciation

The daoine sìth are described in gaelic litterature after all:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidhe

Harry doesn't speak gaelic:

Quote from: Death Mask

Ebenezar spat something in what I presumed was Gaelic.

Mac Aodha (MacCoy) means son of Fire in Gaelic! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCoy_(surname)) I wonder if Harry's predilection for fire is a common trait in his bloodline.

 Mab and Maeve are both forms of an old irish name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medb

No one cares about my previous post? .

Also, just afterward Fred mentions that Jim said he didn't have a whole lot down on Simon Pietrovich.