Yip, Yip, Hooray!

[vovat]

When L. Frank Baum first devised his map of Oz for the endpapers of Tik-Tok of Oz, he included a few places that had yet to be mentioned in the actual texts. Whether or not he had plots in mind for them when making the map isn't clear, but he would go on to use them in future stories. One of these places is the mountain of the Yips, located in the southwestern corner of the Winkie Country. The mountain and its inhabitants became significant a few books later, in The Lost Princess of Oz. When Ugu the Shoemaker stole the most valuable magic from Ozma, Glinda, and the Wizard of Oz, he also stole a gold dishpan from a Yip named Cayke the Cookie Cook.


Like some other isolated Ozian communities, the Yip Country is very difficult to reach. It's located on a tableland on top of the mountain, and there are no paths leading up to it. The Yips' homes are scattered all over the mountaintop, not laid out according to any particular pattern, but simply wherever the inhabitants prefer. Also located somewhere on the mountain is the pond where the magic skosh that enlarged the Frogman grows, although none of the Yips seem to be aware of this. Baum writes that the Yips have "queer ways and notions of their own," but doesn't really elaborate. Neill, however, shows them as having rather interesting choices in hat decoration:


The only Yip who's really differentiated from the rest is Cayke herself, who leaves the mountain in the company of the Frogman to seek her lost dishpan. This dishpan, which is studded with diamonds, was passed down from mother to daughter through the generations. Cayke is aware that possessing it somehow enables her to be a better cook, but is initially unaware of its powers of transportation, which is why Ugu steals it. As John Bell mentions in a recent blog entry, Cayke herself is described as "dried up" by Baum, but Neill draws her as a young woman. While Lost Princess is the only canonical book to give Cayke a role, she does have a major part in March Laumer's Magic Mirror, in which she dates Till Orangespiegel for a while. Laumer gives her full name as "Cayke L. Baque," but I figure "Cayke the Cookie Cook" is a good enough name. Honestly, I don't see why a small, isolated population like the Yips would have adopted the custom of surnames. Then again, as we'll see in my next Oz post, the similarly isolated Hyups apparently have.

Comments

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

I may have solved the mystery of using a dishpan to bake cookies! My mom told me that in one of her older cookbooks there's a recipe for using a dishpan to mix the dough in. While not quite a dishpan, my mom uses a giant bowl as both a mixing bowl for bread and a washing bowl for dishes. I'll have to ask her for the recipe, if she knows what book it's in...

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I wonder if that was a common practice in Baum's time. If she had been making large batches of cookies (which would make sense if she were making enough for all of the other Yips), it might have been the most convenient place to mix her dough. Another possibility I'd been considering is that mere possession of the dishpan enhances her cooking ability even when she's not actually using it. Or perhaps it's all psychosomatic, but since we know the dishpan really DOES have magical powers, I'd be less inclined to believe that.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

It certainly does make sense. It's far from the only thing that was common in Baum's time but isn't now.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Let's just hope that Cayke's cookies aren't tainted with remnants of dish soap!

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Hopefully she rinses it very well!

[graycardinal]

One sometimes wonders about the geology of Oz, considering that all the tallest mountains apparently have flat or bowl-shaped tops (not just the Yips' mountain, but also Mt. Munch and the mountain where the Flatheads and Skeezers live in Glinda. The thing is, the bowl-shaped top strongly suggests a volcano, and the flat top might be either volcanic or very, very worn down from erosion -- but either way, in any normal geological environment it's darned hard to build houses and villages smack on top of a mountain, not least because you've got to carry all the building materials up there. [Granted, magic might explain some of that, but none of the relevant populations seem to have had that much magic at their disposal....]

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

I imagine, much like Nathan does, that Oz was a battleground for a lot of magical warfare in the ancient past, and the unusual geography (along with some of the stranger species--ABC Serpent, anyone?) is a result of all the magical fallout.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I'm not necessarily convinced it was warfare in particular that caused the fallout of stray magic throughout Oz, but I do think there were a lot of unintentional magical effects. Then again, in the case of the mountains, it's possible that the unusual shapes WERE intentional. If a group of people wanted to hide out somewhere, what better place than on a steep mountain with a flat top?

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

That would make for another argument in favor of Oz being a battleground: Groups of people wanting to hide out. It would also help explain why Ozma was such a pacifist, especially in the earlier books.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I have a sudden, unaccountable craving for cookies ...