New Views over Megalithia

[macausland]

Ah yes. Ronseal with that silky finish. Shiver me timbers that'll keep the damp out.

The Gaelic for 'kiss' is 'pog' pronounced 'pawk' and with a bit of lenition or aspiration as they used to have it alters the sound of the initial 'p'.

I suppose that means that any relationship in the highlands would be 'sealed with a kiss'.

[hvered]

I wonder if sealers felt a sense of sorrow when they hunted. Probably not, though seals' humanness and attractiveness is quite striking.

[macausland]

Do seals feel a sense of sorrow when they are hunting?

[spiral]

The gaelic 'ron' means seal.

There is an old poem about Sule Skerry in which a 'silkie' a seal which takes human shape has a child with a human woman and takes the child back out to the sea with him.

Under the misapprehension that the Orkneys were seal islands.......

I uncovered this "classic" historical place naming from Wiki, dating back to an ancient Pictish tribe.

Pytheas of Massilia visited Britain - probably sometime between 322 and 285 BC - and described it as triangular in shape, with a northern tip called Orcas.[11] This may have referred to Dunnet Head, from which Orkney is visible.[12] Writing in the 1st century AD, the Roman geographer Pomponius Mela called the islands Orcades, as did Tacitus in AD 98, claiming that his father-in-law Agricola had "discovered and subjugated the Orcades hitherto unknown"[12][13] (although both Mela and Pliny had previously referred to the islands.[11]) Etymologists usually interpret the element orc- as a Pictish tribal name meaning "young pig" or "young boar".[Notes 3][15] Speakers of Old Irish referred to the islands as Insi Orc ("island of the pigs").[16][17] The archipelago is known as Arcaibh in modern Scottish Gaelic, the -aibh representing a fossilized prepositional case ending.
Norwegian settlers arriving from the late 9th century re-interpreted orc as Old Norse orkn "seal", with the added suffix ey "island".[18] Thus the name became Orkneyjar (meaning "seal islands"), later shortened to "Orkney" in English. According to the Historia Norvegiæ, Orkney was named after an earl called Orkan.[19]

I must confess I had been working on the primitive basis that when a seal makes a sound it "ork"s.

It's a good job I have wiki to educate me. I might have been caught out. Oink, Oink, Ork, Ork.

[macausland]

If the 'Orkney's were the isle of the pigs there must have been a noticeable number of the animals there for people to distinguish the area from other places.

'orc † oirc, -an, sm Collop. 2 Calf of the leg. 3 Death. 4 Little hound. 5 Hen's egg. 6 Salmon. 7 Whale. 8 Pig. 9 Cramp, numbness 10 Prince. 11 Hero. 12 Prince's son. 13** Beagle.'

Dwelly gives us the above for a variety of translations of 'orc'.

It's interesting to see 'whale' among the meanings. The modern gaelic for 'whale' is 'pig of the sea', 'muc-mhara'. Although it can also mean porpoise or seal.

Which gets us back to the beginning. Was it the Vikings who used to talk about following the 'whale road'?

'arc-eòlaiche fir. iol. -an archaeologist'

Dwelly also gives us the above for archaeologist. Given the interest generated by the thousands of standing stones and 'temple' complexes that have got the learned gentlemen so worked up in recent years perhaps that will be the name of the islands in another thousand years?

[hvered]

Bird migration routes came up [in What are megaliths made of?] and from the map the main migration route into Europe goes along the corridor between the Med and the Pyrenees. It also happens to be the largest area of salt marshland in Europe, the sort of wetland that attracts birds. In TME birds are important as navigational and hunting aids as well as providing food and down, and Languedoc-Rousillon is a particular Megalithic hotspot.

This may be a chicken and egg situation. It is not only a bird migrating/ watching paradise; apart from salt production the other main activity in the area is fishing which is equally attractive to birds and humans. Birds in general adapt superbly to human habitat judging from wild life documentaries so presumably they always have done so.

Gruissan may mean Holy Crane (grue = crane, sans = sainted, holy). Cranes are important in megalithic lore as Hermes invented the alphabet from flying cranes. Gruissan is on a peninsula dominated by its castle but was formerly an island surrounded by sea and salt marsh, perhaps a Megalithic sea-marker.

[hvered]

Loo/lu appears to be mud, cf. Lutetia, place of mud, the Roman name for Paris, so we might be looking at a high/low juxtaposition which is exactly what island denotes].

That explains Looe Island, another tidal causewayed island, west of Plymouth in Cornwall which could hardly look more man-made. Wiki and everyone else insists on looe meaning logh or somesuch, i.e. deep sea inlet, of which Cornwall has more than its fair share. But not here strangely. Cf. Fowey.

Procopius called the mainland of Britain 'Brittia' as opposed to Brettania by which he may have meant Ireland.

Perhaps the ending '-ia' could be related to 'island' which could mean that 'Brittia' was the 'Bright' island which would tie in with other descriptions of it as 'Albion' supposedly taken from the white cliffs of the south east coast.

I was wondering about 'light' names because of Lugh who is supposed to be a multi-skilled Celtic trickster-god, probably a variation of Mercury/ Hermes. It would be much simpler to assume this so-called "Celtic god" is just another name for light, which is arguably the most important factor in human development. From a sailing point of view the coast of Portugal is a major challenge; such a vital sea-route would surely merit a string of lights and an army of beacon-tenders.

The Romans called Portugal Lusitania and Andalucia or Al-andalus, the mineral-rich south of Spain, is another 'Lus' word. The names may also be tin-related, tin being 'white lead' and used as mirrors as Jon et al. have noted. Britain is the land of Bright-Tin, being the island famous for cassiterite.

[macausland]

Lugh as a hero and god appears in many guises especially as a stone throwing hero defeating enemies with his slingshot rather like David and Goliath. I wonder if the '-liath' element of that name also refers to Lugh?

Lugh is apparently associated with Odin of Norse mythology and wiki discusses several interpetations of the name one of which is indeed 'light' and which they trace back to the middle east etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugh

The festival of Lughnasadh was held at the end of July and beginning of August and has given the modern Gaelic name for August. It is apparently the same as the English 'Lammas' festivals and connected to the harvest etc.

'Lughnasadh or Lughnasa (pronounced LOO-nə-sə; Irish: Lúnasa; Scottish Gaelic: Lùnastal; Manx: Luanistyn) is a Gaelic festival marking the beginning of the harvest season that was historically observed throughout Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Originally it was held on 31 July–1 August, or approximately halfway between the summer solstice and autumn equinox. However, over time the celebrations shifted to the Sundays nearest this date. Lughnasadh is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals; along with Samhain, Imbolc and Beltane. It corresponds to other European harvest festivals, such as the Welsh Calan Awst and the English Lammas.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lughnasadh

Perhaps there is a connection with 'lunar' as well although it seems to be connected more with the sun and the summer solstice.

[hvered]

Slingshot in Spanish is tirachinas, chinas meaning small stones. 'Tira' is from tirar, to throw, naught to do with Phoenician Tyre (probably).

By an odd coincidence chine is a steep gully leading down to the sea in Dorset and southern England. Throwing stones seems to have been popular with residents of Weymouth and the isle of Portland perhaps to keep the beach tidy. All very suggestive of causeway-building and repair or construction work.

[macausland]

When butchers 'chine' a pig they split it down the middle along the backbone with a cleaver.

The chine bone itself is located between the shoulders.

This site gives several old meanings of chine. I doubt if it's got anything to do with 'bone china' though.

http://www.pepysdiary.com/encyclopedia/1705/