Oasis

Today’s Geranium Lake Properties comic features a mask portrait of Oasis, aka Sahsinnita Zijorro, a demalion who takes their name from the first line of the Song of Midnight: Sahsinnita zijorro isoku mobuta yu nilmi – There is a spring in the wilderness at midnight.

The Song of Midnight might be the jackalope equivalent to a pop song, with its emphasis on a relationship between a man and a woman, except it is centuries old. I can’t call it a folksong, we know the author was the 16th century poet/musician Tintar Fellwinger, a Londoner, and by some accounts, a companion to the composer, poet, and physician Thomas Campion. Fellwinger probably lived disguised as a British gentleman in Elizabethan England, keeping their identity as a jackalope a secret. Most people assume he was male, but we have no real evidence of that.

The song has been recorded numerous times since the beginning of the twentieth century, in its native language, and in a jazz version with a French translation, made popular by Django Reinhardt. For a popular song about love, the lyrics are surprisingly anti-romantic. In fact, it is a rather pious song, yet quite sweet and tender, almost like a lullaby. It is a very stark contrast to a song like “Midnight at the Oasis“, an Orientalist romp with several playful euphemisms for the sex act.

I added two extra mask designs to this post for you to download, print out and color. I do not remember if they have stories to go with them. After digging around in the archives for a few months, I did not find any corresponding GLP comics, but if I find any, I will post them with a link back to this post.