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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| The boy would be suspended upside down and his head gently tapped against the stone. |
Sure sounds like a ritual sacrifice.
Reminds me of Thor's job being to beat back the Giants all the time. Isn't Norse mythology all about the world being poised between fire and ice, always on the brink of destruction? Doesn't everyone have a thing about chaos? (And ravens flying away.)
Defining the limits of your/the World is the same as creating them, maintaining the realm of (civilised) human existence.
Can we assume parish boundaries pre-date Christian parishes? "Spiritual cells" making up the structure of the World. Very important.
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| Mick Harper wrote: | I see no snakes! Must dig harder.
"Beating the bounds" is certainly very important and requiring of our attention. What is its purpose? would be my starting point. It is often (and even reasonably) supposed that surveying/ geometry/ science generally started/ flourished when it was necessary to re-mark land every year because of annual inundation by the Nile or the Euphrates or whatever. But why would Ancient Brits need to constantly mark out boundaries that were there for all to see anyway? |
Rivers were much shallower and wider then, so winter inundations would have happened with any reasonable sized river, so if you needed to do it for the Nile why not the Thames or Severn?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Reminds me of Thor's job being to beat back the Giants all the time. |
Thor and hammer and stone... reminds me of quarrying, a highly skilled occupation by all accounts, selecting, chiselling, 'bedding' ie. planing the right stone.
Sort of in this vein, came across something called 'The Book of Dennis' which refers to a medieval charter giving miners in the Forest of Dean free mining rights after a year and a day if they were inhabitants, denizens I should say, of the Forest. Except that the tradition goes back much further than the charter of course. Dennis comes from Anglo-Norman so they say, deinz as in dans/dedans denoting inside/inner, perhaps hidden.
[I read somewhere that the Dennis in the Book of Dennis is 'a corruption of 'denu', a Celtic wood for an area of wooded valleys'. Dean sounds like 'dene' defined as a "sandy tract by the sea" (dune?)]
As Deejay pointed out, stone is more permanent than wood; 'boundary' stones were perhaps used to shore up rather than say 'keep out'. Wouldn't flooding be just as, maybe more, urgent on the littoral as in a valley, necessitating protecting the shore line?
PS. Is there a connection between parish and Paris? All very muddy.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Thor and hammer and stone... reminds me of quarrying |
Yeah, except that Thor's hammer isn't a hammer-and-chisel kind of hammer: it's more of a hammer head on a chain or rope, for swinging and hurling.
| I read somewhere that the Dennis in the Book of Dennis is 'a corruption of 'denu', a Celtic wood for an area of wooded valleys'. Dean sounds like 'dene' defined as a "sandy tract by the sea" (dune?) |
Denizen sounds right enough. How is Dean spelled in the book? Dennis could be pronounced "deans" or " dens" easily enough.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Yeah, except that Thor's hammer isn't a hammer-and-chisel kind of hammer: it's more of a hammer head on a chain or rope, for swinging and hurling. |
True. It struck me that the extraordinary strength and accuracy required by quarrymen swinging heavy axes has something noble about it.
| How is Dean spelled in the book? |
This Book of Dennis is oddly absent, reminiscent of comments posted elsewhere vis-a-vis charters.
| All the documents from the Mine Law Court were, however, stolen at the end of the 18th century and not all of them were recovered. A record entitled "The Laws and Customs of the Miners in the Forest of Dean" became known locally as the "Book of Dennis" and this is thought to be a translation of an earlier miners' charter as it contains ancient legal terms probably translated from Latin or early French. No charter is known to exist today. |
I wonder whose interests were served by the removal of the docs. Precious little seems to come to light concerning mining laws and privileges.
| The earliest known copy of the Dean Miners' Laws and Privileges is from 1610 but the copy itself contains references to much earlier origins. The document contains 41 laws and privileges for the winning of Myne (iron ore) and Sea Cole (coal). The rights for access and the method of staking a claim, known as a "gale" are outlined. |
'Gale' is a Gallic term perhaps (cf. regalo in Spanish meaning gift). The gaveller was the 'keeper of the gale', the official who regulated mining practices.
The Hundred of St Brieval is central in all this free mining malarkey; St Brieval is a Cornish or Welsh or Breton saint, spelt variously as Breock, Breoke, Brioc, Briog and so on, "one of the seven founder saints of Brittany" (wiki says). His feast day is 1st May.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Rivers were much shallower and wider then, so winter inundations would have happened with any reasonable sized river, so if you needed to do it for the Nile why not the Thames or Severn? |
Why would rivers be shallower and wider then? And when is then? When did rivers cease being wider and shallower? Blimey, the Thames Embankment at London is nineteenth century! And can you show any kind of relationship between this magic moment in history and bounds ceasing to be beaten? And are you saying that only parish boundaries subject to inundation are beaten? And when did I claim that boundaries were ever beaten in Egypt?
Come on, DJ, you must think matters through and not just sit on your haunches as they sink slowly into the mire.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| A record entitled "The Laws and Customs of the Miners in the Forest of Dean" became known locally as the "Book of Dennis" |
Just "Book of Deans" then? Cf. Pepys, "peeps". (Plenty of this in Chaucer, I think.)
Dunno why the Forest of Dean deserves special charters and wotnot... except that it's on the England/Celtland borders and, as you said, denizen "a person who lives within a country, as opp. to a foreigner who lives outside its boundaries" is an important factor for the forest and the country round there.
I previously reckoned on Devon denoting the borderland, with its divide/even/etc. connotation {or OE Defenascire = "defence shire"}, but I didn't know that Devonshire is also known as Denshire. Just how big was the Forest of Dean in the (early) charters?
dean, Dean: [AN de(e)n, OFr. d(e)ien (mod. doyen), f. late L decanus chief of a group of ten, f. L decem ten, after primanus member of the first legion, perh. infl. by Gk deka ten.] The head of the chapter of a cathedral or a collegiate church...
doyen: [Fr.: see dean] A leader or commander of ten...."
They don't say where the C/K went, but it's a suitably administrative word. Cf. don, dom, dan, dame.
dene, dean: [OE denu f. Gmc. Rel. to den] a valley; now usu. spec., the deep narrow wooded valley of a rivulet.
dene, den: [Perh. rel. to LG (whence G) düne, Du. duin dune.] a bare sandy tract by the sea; a low sand-hill...
OK, between them, we're on undulating ground, up and down. (What was that about sea cole/coal?)
dent, dint, dunt (denned, dinned, dunned?): a stroke or blow, esp. one given with a weapon...a clap of thunder... a hollow or impression in a surface, as made by a blow with a sharp or edged instrument... a firm dull-sounding blow...
din: a continuous confused distracting noise...
As from the incessant clatter of miners' picks, perhaps? Are the ups and downs of dunes and denes, figuratively, dents in the landscape? Or is it literally about terraforming, holes dug down, slag heaps built up? Compare:
dene-hole, dane-hole: [Origin uncertain: perh. f. Dane + hole. Assoc. by later archaeologists with dene and den] an ancient excavation of a kind found in chalk-formations in England and France, consisting of a narrow shaft sunk down to the chalk, and there widening out into one or more chambers.
Grimes Graves kinda thing.
Is Devon the land of the miners? Or of the rulers, as with the Danes?
thunder: [OE Þunor = OFris. thuner, OS Þunar (Du. donder), OHG donar (G Donner), ON Þórr, f. Gmc base repr. IE base also of L tonare to thunder.] {Remember the discussion of Thor and thorn and that dental refers to teeth.}
donner, donnered, donnard: [Origin unkn.] Daze, stun, stupefy.
Origin unknown? Origin bleedin' obvious!
And praps this adds a blitz-krieg dimension to Den/Devon, the land of invaders. (Invading, ruling miners.)
[asides]
Is donating about an unexpected gift, a bolt from the blue; or something bestowed by a superior, such as a mantle to be donned?
dennage, dunnage: [Origin unkn.] mats, brushwood, gratings, etc., stowed among a cargo to prevent wetting or chafing
Stuff given away to shore up the cargo, or stuff wedged into prevent dents/dints/dunts, or to control the cargo?
[/asides]
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| 'Gale' is a Gallic term perhaps (cf. regalo in Spanish meaning gift). The gaveller was the 'keeper of the gale', the official who regulated mining practices. |
Isn't regalo the same as regale/regalia (= regal, royal, rule), same as don/donate?
gale: [Contraction of gavel] a periodical payment of rent; the amount of rent so paid. In the Forest of Dean, a royalty paid for a plot of land and for the right to mine on this land; land granted for this purpose... Grant or take the gale of (a mine).
gavel: [OE gafol f. Gmc, rel. to base of give] a Payment to a superior; tribute...
gaveller: a usurer. In the Forest of Dean: an officer of the Crown who grants mining rights and collects dues... a person who pays gavel for rented land.
Gave to a superior: two senses of don again.
Variations on the theme:
gavel: a quantity of corn cut and ready to be made into a sheaf.
lie on the gavel: (of corn) lie unbound.
'Sfunny, low-lying is a sense of den/dene/dean...
gavel, gavelkind: a partition of land made among a whole tribe or sept on the death of the holder...
Gavel Act, Gavel Law: a statute (1704) enforcing the practice of English gavelkind on Irish Catholics...
'Sfunny, it's like England vs. Celtland.
gavel: [Origin unkn.] a stonemason’s mallet... a small hammer used by a chairman, judge, etc.
A small hammer used by a don, in other words? Origin to be found in Devon/Forest of Dean?
[asides]
gale: [OE gagel, gagelle = MDu. gaghel, Du. & G gagel: the present form is unexplained] Bog myrtle, Myrica gale. Also sweet gale.
That's an easy one: G = Y.
galea, galeate, galeated: [L = helmet.] ...resembling a helmet in shape, function, or position.
The kind of helmet that denotes rank (and is meant to get dented in lieu of your head)? All these cross-overs between don/dent and gales... anyone would think Forest of Dean/Devon is where you cross-over into Gaul.
calash [Fr. calèche, g- f. G Kalesche f. Pol. kolasa (or Czech kolesa), f. kolo wheel.] a light low-wheeled carriage with a removable folding hood... a two-wheeled one-horse vehicle with a seat for the driver on the splashboard... a woman’s large and folding hooped hood... a folding hood on a vehicle.
Why would they equate calash with wheel when it has more to do with hoods/helmets, galea?
[/asides]
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| St Brieval is a Cornish or Welsh or Breton saint, spelt variously as Breock, Breoke, Brioc, Briog and so on |
P = F = V = U = G = K. Are P- and Q-Celtic pure artefacts of literacy...? Or are P and K near enough (in the right position in the word) just (glottal?) stops?
St. Brieval anything to do with Brecon? (Severed from the Forest of Dean?)
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| Why would rivers be shallower and wider then? And when is then? When did rivers cease being wider and shallower? |
"Then" is before people started to mess about with rivers to make them of a navigable depth for large boats and hold a head of water to drive mills. If you don't think rivers in their natural state were shallower and wider, then try fording the Thames at Wallingford, Shillingford or Oxford. The river bed has been dredged, the banks raised to prevent flooding and restrictions made to enable shorter bridges to be built.
| It is often (and even reasonably) supposed that surveying/ geometry/ science generally started/ flourished when it was necessary to re-mark land every year because of annual inundation by the Nile or the Euphrates or whatever. But why would Ancient Brits need to constantly mark out boundaries that were there for all to see anyway? |
If the annual inundation of the Nile washed away boundaries why would it be different here? The "re-establishment of boundaries" - if that is what beating the bounds is about, traditionally (hijacked by the Christian Church) took place on Ascension day (Variable but around the beginning of May). The flooding would have gone, the silt would have fertilised the soil and you would want to re-establish the boundaries before major crops were sown. Is this a reasonable theory?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| Dunno why the Forest of Dean deserves special charters and wotnot... |
The miners were highly regarded as fighting men, also as military engineers. Men of iron. The non-existent Book of Dennis giving them free mining rights is said to date from Edward I's reign in exchange for their assistance in bringing about the surrender of Berwick-on-Tweed in the thirteenth century. Seems a long way to transport them, there were after all miners elsewhere like Derbyshire with presumably comparable strength and skill.
| I previously reckoned on Devon denoting the borderland, with its divide/even/etc. connotation {or OE Defenascire = "defence shire"}, but I didn't know that Devonshire is also known as Denshire. |
Digging connotations perhaps, digging in for defence or to extract minerals. Deepdene on the edge of the New Forest was referred to as Dibden in the Domesday Book (dene is considered to be an Anglo-Saxon word, what a hill we have to climb).
| dene-hole, dane-hole: ....an ancient excavation of a kind found in chalk-formations in England and France, consisting of a narrow shaft sunk down to the chalk, and there widening out into one or more chambers. |
Those chambers were sometimes known as churns (the action of boring recalls a horn, in fact a horn/antler would've been used, cf. Cornwall?).
| Just how big was the Forest of Dean in the (early) charters? |
It was set aside as a royal forest for deer hunting, presumably it was in everyone's interest to preserve the perimeters. The free mining came to be restricted to the Hundred of St Brieval eventually, the forest almost certainly covered a more extensive area than the medieval royal hunting ground that remains today.
| What was that about sea cole/coal? |
Coal meant charcoal, seacoal being coal. Scowles or scowls meant quarry or mining works, particular to the Forest of Dean apparently. Sounds like they wielded a lot of clout in the mining business.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Bog-myrtle is interesting. Ivo, the Dean of Wells, wrote about his herb garden known as the Old Deanery Garden:
bog-myrtle "is tried by experience that it is good to be put in beare [beer], both [by] me and by diverse other in Summersetshyre"..
A substitute for wormwood as a beer-preservative perhaps.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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It's uncanny how everything seems to come back to psychoactive substances. My suspicions were aroused when I read that myrtle featured in friezes on the walls of Pompeii showing people wearing myrtle crowns and wreaths and a bowl of carbonised myrtle berries was found, as well as turning up in tombs of Ancient Egyptians.
Myrtle is one of an assortment of names given to calamus: cinnamon sedge, flagroot, gladdon, myrtle flag, myrtle grass, myrtle sedge, sweet cane, sweet myrtle, sweet root, sweet rush, and sweet sedge. As with wormwood calamus was used to kill pests and strewn on the ground as sweet-smelling rushes but more importantly it was often mixed with wine by the Romans, nominated by the Jews as a sacred plant used for temple annointing, and so forth.
It's a reed, Acorus calamus, acorus supposedly from Greek, (kalamos in Greek means both reed and reed pen), narcotic, hallucogenic, aphrodisiacal; the essential oil used in perfume is obtained from the rhizome, the root is listed as one of the ingredients in absinthe. This is perforce speculative though tellingly both calamus and its products such as essential oil have been banned since 1968 by the US Food and Drug Administration.
Wiki says of calamus:
| The root is anodyne, aphrodisiac, aromatic, carminative, diaphoretic, emmenagogue, expectorant, febrifuge, hallucinogenic, hypotensive, sedative, stimulant, stomachic, mildly tonic and vermifuge. |
Interestingly, in view of our discussion about Roman eating habits and wormwood wine, it adds:
| It is said to have wonderfully tonic powers of stimulating and normalizing the appetite. In small doses it reduces stomach acidity whilst larger doses increase stomach secretions and it is, therefore, recommended in the treatment of anorexia nervosa. However if the dose is too large it will cause nausea and vomiting. |
It was also used to improve the flavour of gin as well as beer.
It's thought to be indigenous both to India and north America but grows all over the globe, bar Spain for some reason, in marshy places. The Penobscot, natives of Canada and northern America, used calamus for a variety of purposes including While traveling, a piece of root was kept and chewed to ward off illness.. Akin to Bolivian marching powder perhaps.
I wonder if the Penobscot 'discovered' the plant:
| These people have a prehistoric tie to the river, such that it long ago became a part of their identity. The name of their tribe is the name of a place on the river where they spent most of their time throughout the year |
PS. Chad, don't try this at home. I, on the other hand, should, to test the claim that it can help overcome tobacco addiction. Rather perversely it's also suspected of being carcinogenic.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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I wonder if there's a Bimini Road link.... calamus is linked with calamari (squid):
| Also known in as Kalamari, Kalamar (Greek/Turkish), Galama or Calamares (Spanish), the name derives from the Latin word calamarium for "ink pot", after the inky fluid that squid secrete |
No-one knows where calamus came from, it's clearly older than Greek, Latin, etc. Perhaps it has a Native American origin.
'Kala' has various meanings attached, mainly 'art' and 'virtue' but also 'black' (Hindu).
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| If the annual inundation of the Nile washed away boundaries why would it be different here? The "re-establishment of boundaries" - if that is what beating the bounds is about, traditionally (hijacked by the Christian Church) took place on Ascension day (Variable but around the beginning of May). The flooding would have gone, the silt would have fertilised the soil and you would want to re-establish the boundaries before major crops were sown. Is this a reasonable theory? |
Umm... the Nile is longer than the whole of Britain and the water comes from higher than anywhere in Britain and it meanders all the way though Egypt, where its banks are otherwise (pretty well) featureless desert: open fields, by definition. It makes sense for an annual blank canvass to be marked out by abstract methods from what meagre or distant markers they do have.
When British fields flood (with no great regularity), they're criss-crossed by hedges and roads and dotted with buildings, Mostly, it’s a pain because they flood the bits we live and work in, sometimes catastrophically. The place is replete with physical boundaries, nothing abstract about it.
Everyone knows where the beaten bounds are: it clearly has some other, ritual significance that involves actually going there, like getting married or being knighted.
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