There could be something in that.

Wiki tells us that 'emmet' is usually said to mean 'ant' although the Cornish for ant is completely different. The 'ant' explanation hinges on the Cornish picking up an old English word for ant and then using it to describe outsiders

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmet_%28Cornish%29

'It is commonly thought to be derived from the Cornish-language word for ant, being an analogy to the way in which both tourists and ants are often red in colour and appear to mill around. However the use of 'emmet' to mean ants is actually from the Cornish dialect of English and is derived from the Old English word æmete from which the modern English word ant, is also derived (compare Modern German Ameise [ant]). The Cornish word for ant is actually moryonenn (pl. moryon) [1][2][3]'

I can't really see the Cornish describing themselves as ants however hard they were working.

There are plenty of examples in English for the final 'n' attaching itself to a noun and can be seen in Gaelic as well where 'nathair' means snake. Connected with adder or nadder.

There could be a parallel between foreign workers and foreigners travelling to and fro I suppose... figures that all look the same scurrying around. Not an especially flattering analogy even if the Cornish are said to be even more suspicious of outsiders than the rest of the country but everywhere has local terms for 'others'.

On the matter of territoriality, I came across 'heaf' in connection with Herdwick sheep: There are many stories of Herdwick ewes being sold, escaping from their new owner and travelling 50 miles across hard country to their native heaf - the bit of mountainside which they regard with indomitable cud-chewing tenacity as their home. I was interested because plenty of Herdwicks are apparently more or less happily settled in Wiltshire, Berkshire and the Ridgeway.

Heaf, according to the dictionary, is a northern dialect word A piece of mountain pasture to which a farm animal has become heafed; a heft. 2. verb To become accustomed to and attached to an area of mountain pasture, seldom straying from it . Down south, in Folkestone on the Kent coast, heaf is a gaff-hook. A fish- or boat-hook isn't so different from a shepherd's crook in design and a sense of lifting up, heaving. Anyroad, I was wondering if heaf is the same word as heath. There seems to be general agreement that heathland is a man-made or man-generated landscape though it's defined as waste land, untilled or scrubby land generally with sandy, i.e. free-draining, soil, ideal for sheep of course.

I forgot to mention that the Bow Henge is in the same part of Devon, on the level ground about the 100m contour, and near the village of Broad Nymett.

So, despite being in Devon not Wiltshire, it fits the same kind of landscape profile.

Bow was once named ‘Nymetboghe’

This part of Devon has several 'Nymet' place-names.

One of the less pleasant "Early Saints" was St. Boniface. He was well known for his attacks on "pagan sites" involving trees. He was born a short way from Bow. Which is reminisent of St.Patrick, born in a Scottish nemeton.

As we uncover more places of interest, I'm updating the TME's map of "Druid" places.

Here 'tis: https://tme.cartodb.com/viz/aa396d06-30 ... 4b5057/map

Am I still allowed to say "Druid" without emptying my loose change into Hattie's swearbox?

hvered wrote:I was wondering about nemet words on the AEL site as the Cornish 'emmet' means an outsider, tourist, incomer, so perhaps a nemet became 'an emet'. Nemet names are not associated with trees and on the face of it have nothing to do with Druid sacred groves and so forth.

Or perhaps a nemet is the opposite of an emmet?

Nemet = Insider
Emmet = Outsider

Boreades

'Nemet = Insider
Emmet = Outsider'

In most languages 'N' represents the negative.

In that case wouldn't Nemet be the outsider and Emmet the insider?

Err, I'm not sure.

If it's a case of "included" and "not included", we're used to the "not case" being given the "n" prefix. But that's the custom in English, now, and I've no idea what it might have been in Cornish.

Hattie, any ideas?

Nemet means 'German' according to the etymological dictionary, at least in Hungarian:

From a Slavic language, compare Slovak Nemec, Slovene Nemec, Russian немец (némec, “a German”), from Proto-Slavic *němьcь, from *němъ (“dumb”).

'German' as such perhaps represented non-Slavs generally or barbarians, somewhat akin to 'Huns'. Which would be ironic if nemet is indeed Hungarian.