Trade Secrets

[macausland]

Here's a crow trying to remember its own ancestral voyages and getting in touch with its internal jolly jack crow on its own causeway island lookout post.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 00166.html

[hvered]

Just read that corvée which I'd taken to be a line of workers means specifically 'road-repairing duty' according to Graham Robb in his 'Discovering France' book (highly recommended).

[spiral]

Spiral

' in English Albania was occasionally also a name for Scotland.'

I think you've been short changed by that Etymological dictionary Spiral.

It should have added that 'Scotland' was known to its own inhabitants as Alba or Albann. Similar names are found in Welsh, Cornish and Manx. The gaelic speaking Scots came to what we now know as Scotland from Northern Ireland and kept the name Alba rather than renaming the country.

Are you sure? Maybe the gaelic Scots travelled in the opposite direction. BN,,,,is white all over the place. AL is hill a lot of the time. But then again, there is a lot of words for hill aren't there. Clearly to distinguish a landmark, you need to be more specific.

[hvered]

In 'Discovering France' Graham Robb refers to an imaginary line, the Saint-Malo - Geneva line, used by historians and geographers to divide France into, roughly, short-and-dark southern people and taller, fairer northerners.

I wondered if anyone has come across the St.-Malo - Geneva line because the strange thing is, if you mark this non-existent line on Google Earth, it runs exactly parallel to another trans-European 'line', dubbed the St. Michael/Apollo Line.

[macausland]

hvered:

That's interesting.

There's a fairly full discussion on this site

http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/25 ... ed-country

And this site gives a map of the michael apollo line for comparison.

http://www.deasol.com/the-apollo-st-mic ... rettyPhoto

In addition to hair colour Bretons are proud of their 'slanting eyes' as well as everything else Breton and non French.

Like most people in Britain I was taught about the fair haired Celts who were deposed by the fair haired Anglo Saxons who were deposed by the fair haired vikings and Danes. Most of the people I knew were rather dark haired and far north of the Michael Apollo line or the St Malo Geneva line.

I found that there seemed to be more fair haired people in the south of England than in the north.

What is stranger is the difference to be seen on the Isle of Lewis. A large proportion of the people there are fair to ginger with usually the pale skin, freckles and quite hefty features associated with most of that group.

The rest have jet black hair, very refined features with grey eyes, often also a bit almond shape.

A friend once said they were vikings, something I found hard to believe although black haired Norwegians do exist.

Perhaps the land locked populations in France would have had difficulty moving out of their native areas as there would always be others to stop them. That may not have been such a problem where people can travel by sea?

[Boreades]

In 'Discovering France' Graham Robb refers to an imaginary line, the Saint-Malo - Geneva line, used by historians and geographers to divide France into, roughly, short-and-dark southern people and taller, fairer northerners.

I wondered if anyone has come across the St.-Malo - Geneva line because the strange thing is, if you mark this non-existent line on Google Earth, it runs exactly parallel to another trans-European 'line', dubbed the St. Michael/Apollo Line.

That line features in discussion of Graham Robb, here
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/threads/25 ... ed-country

Of special interest to us:

From the same book, Robb explains (p. 117-9) that many places named after saints were sites of pre-Christian cults (usually Celtic) renamed by the Catholic Church. It was common to use the name of a saint similar to the old deity, so that, for instance, many of the Saint-Mard or Saint-Maurice were old sites dedicated to the cult of the Roman god Mars. The patron saint of Brittany, Saint Anne, is the Christian adaptation of the Celtic goddess Ana (or Anann or Anu).

Who came before Michael?

[hvered]

Of special interest to us:

From the same book, Robb explains (p. 117-9) that many places named after saints were sites of pre-Christian cults (usually Celtic) renamed by the Catholic Church. It was common to use the name of a saint similar to the old deity, so that, for instance, many of the Saint-Mard or Saint-Maurice were old sites dedicated to the cult of the Roman god Mars. The patron saint of Brittany, Saint Anne, is the Christian adaptation of the Celtic goddess Ana (or Anann or Anu).

According to Robb French saints and megaliths were explicitly local features and seems to have concluded that the stones and/or the village Virgin embodied a spirit of the place. Interestingly, for us, saints' influence was peculiarly localised (just as far as the eye can see?) and only 'worked' when in situ. So, for example, on the Cote d'Azur is a scarcely accessible hilltop shrine, on the Cap Sicie, clearly intended to be seen from out at sea, to Our Lady; a story still popular in modern times describes how another Provencal Virgin 'made herself too heavy to move'. Where have we heard that before?

Something else that's familiar from British megaliths is the French tradition of fairies or demoiselles of the forest from whose feet flowers grow. Virgin-saints in British lore were associated with leaving a trail of hawthorn, or may, blossom along a track just as stars trace a path in the sky.

[hvered]

St Malo or Mach-lou sounds a bit Michael-ish. He is said to have been a disciple of St Brendan, famously credited with long-distance voyages. Brendan set himself up as a hermit on a rock called the island of Cézembre which is opposite St Malo



Cézembre seems to have been another causewayed tidal island

The island features a fine sandy beach facing Saint-Malo on the south, and a steep and rocky coast around the rest of the island. As elsewhere in northern Brittany, the tidal range is among the highest in the world. Until the seventeenth century it was possible to reach the island at low tide on foot from St-Malo.

Malo appears to be another '-lou' (Looe Island, Lihou, etc. etc.). As ever, there is much confusion surrounding the saint's legend which, according to Wiki, incorporated several others

Saint Malo (also known as Maclou or Mac'h Low, in Latin, as Maclovius or Machutus, and in Italian as Macuto) was the mid-6th century founder of Saint-Malo in Brittany, France. He is one of the seven founder saints of Brittany.
Details of Malo's career are preserved in three medieval 'Lives' which seem to include incidents associated with several different people of similar names. Despite this confusion, it appears that Malo was born about the year 520, probably in Wales.
His name may derive from the Old Breton mac'h (warrant) and luh (light)

Wiki also notes that St Malo is the patron of pig-keepers and lost items but is mainly celebrated as one of the seven founding saints of Brittany, rather oddly for such an obscure figure, albeit a supposed companion of a much better-known saint.

[Boreades]

Brendan and Malo studied on Cézembre at the Navigation School founded by Saint Aaron.

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

As a location, it was well-chosen, as the tidal range there is famously huge.

[spiral]

St Malo or Mach-lou sounds a bit Michael-ish. He is said to have been a disciple of St Brendan, famously credited with long-distance voyages. Brendan set himself up as a hermit on a rock called the island of Cézembre which is opposite St Malo



Cézembre seems to have been another causewayed tidal island

The island features a fine sandy beach facing Saint-Malo on the south, and a steep and rocky coast around the rest of the island. As elsewhere in northern Brittany, the tidal range is among the highest in the world. Until the seventeenth century it was possible to reach the island at low tide on foot from St-Malo.

Malo appears to be another '-lou' (Looe Island, Lihou, etc. etc.). As ever, there is much confusion surrounding the saint's legend which, according to Wiki, incorporated several others

Saint Malo (also known as Maclou or Mac'h Low, in Latin, as Maclovius or Machutus, and in Italian as Macuto) was the mid-6th century founder of Saint-Malo in Brittany, France. He is one of the seven founder saints of Brittany.
Details of Malo's career are preserved in three medieval 'Lives' which seem to include incidents associated with several different people of similar names. Despite this confusion, it appears that Malo was born about the year 520, probably in Wales.
His name may derive from the Old Breton mac'h (warrant) and luh (light)

Wiki also notes that St Malo is the patron of pig-keepers and lost items but is mainly celebrated as one of the seven founding saints of Brittany, rather oddly for such an obscure figure, albeit a supposed companion of a much better-known saint.

Lets look at Mac. Online says

common element in Scottish and Irish names, from Old Celtic *makko-s "son." Cognate root *makwos "son" produced Old Welsh map, Welsh mab, ap "son;" also probably cognate with Old English mago "son, attendant, servant," Old Norse mögr "son," Gothic magus "boy, servant," Old English mægð "maid"

A Mac(isle)=Michael..........

Magic eh?