Didier Machu (off-list to JM) I had second thoughts about the Elephant. Scholars more versed in chess and its history than I am would tell you that in Chinese xiangqi (still practiced and from which modern chess derives*), the Elephant is a leaper that moves a distance of two diagonally (i.e. in four possible directions), cannot jump over another piece and is restricted to one half of the board. In (Persian and Arabic) shatranj, the elephant is Fil or Alfil** (known as Tamerlane Elephant in Tamerlane chess, a Persian game derived from shatranj).

I hope this is all correct. Somehow I seem to have succeeded in making things a little bit more obscure?

* India: chaturanga ('four forces') -> China and Persia: shatranj -> Arabian world: ash-shatranj -> Spain: acedrex -> axedreç -> ajedrez [and xadrez in Portuguese?]

** alfil (Spanish) = bishop (English) = fou (French) = bispo (I think, in Portuguese): al fil (Arabic) = el elefante. Somehow delfim (in Portuguese) seems to have a hand in the matter too but I'm not quite clear about this.

 

JM: In RLSK a link to chess is made through the name of a city where Knight lies dying [in Brazil the checkered board, and a specific game, is named “Damas” (damas,ie: ladies, queens?)].
IN PF there is a poem on “The Nature of Electricity”, quoted by Kinbote to follow the story of Hazel’s will-of the-wisp and other obscure matters, which mentions Tamerlane (until now I’d only associated this name to the historical figure, Timur, or to Poe’s Tamerlane). Its lines (p.193): “The torments of a Tamerlane/ The roars of tyrants torn in hell.”  
For me, that’s the end of the “lane,” unless fate intervenes again.