Concepts in Watership Down
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There are a number of concepts in Watership Down that were created for the story by Richard Adams. Some of these are:
Bob-stones: a very simple game popular amongst rabbits. One rabbit will cover a group of pebbles with his paw, while the other must guess something about their nature - one or two, light or dark etc.
Chief Rabbit: the ruler of a warren. Almost invariably a buck, but by the time of Tales from Watership Down we are told that the Watership warren itself is being ruled by an effective partnership of Hazel and his mate Hyzenthlay.
Elil: used to describe rabbits' many enemies: cats, stoats, men etc.
Hlessi: a wandering, solitary rabbit, usually found living above ground like a hare. Bigwig takes on the role of a hlessi as a cover when he infiltrates Efrafa.
Owsla: a sort of "court" of high-status buck rabbits surrounding the Chief Rabbit. Often they are fighters, but sometimes a storyteller or seer might win a place.
Owslafa: found only in Efrafa, the "Council Police" are a sinister organisation, commanded by Vervain, whose job it is to maintain General Woundwort's regime and to deal severely with dissent and breach of discipline.
Outskirter: a rabbit yet to achieve full size and weight, and therefore pushed somewhat to the margins when it comes to privileges of food etc. Most of Hazel's initial band are outskirters, including Hazel himself.
Rah: "leader" or "prince", used as an honorific suffix when addressing the Chief Rabbit of a warren. It also forms part of the name of El-ahrairah, which is a corruption of Elil-hrair-rah, literally Enemies-thousand-prince and generally rendered into English as The Prince with a Thousand Enemies. The word can also be used to mark something particularly good: for example, flayrah means particularly tasty food. In this context it could be imagined to mean "great" or "above average" when not referring to an animate creature.
Silflay: used as both verb and noun to mean the act of going above ground to feed.
Tharn: the state of paralysis which overcomes a rabbit in extreme terror; also used metaphorically on occasion (for example about Cowslip's warren).
The White Blindness: myxomatosis, a disease greatly feared by the rabbits.
Wide Patrol: an invention of General Woundwort, Wide Patrols are scouting missions covering long distances, usually lasting several days with rabbits sleeping rough overnight.
| Richard Adams' Watership DownEdit |
|---|
| Novels: Watership Down - Tales from Watership Down |
| Adaptations: Feature film - TV series |
| Characters: Bigwig - Blackavar - Blackberry - Campion - Cowslip - Dandelion - Fiver - General Woundwort - Hazel - Hyzenthlay - Kehaar - Vervain - Minor characters |
| Mythical/story creatures: El-ahrairah |
| Locations: Efrafa - River Enborne - Railway line - Redstone - River Test - Watership Down |
| Other: Chief Rabbit - Concepts in Watership Down - Lapine - Owsla |
