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TelMiles
In: London
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| Pulp History wrote: | Re: the battle of Mons Badonicus
Mons Badon = Baydon Mound = Baydon Hill (apparently OE for Berry Hill)
Baydon lies on the Roman Road, Ermin Street - what better place for a battle and mobilising troops than on a pre-existing road...... BUT why would the site of a battle between 'britons' and 'saxons' take place at a place with an apparently OE name if the land belonged to the 'celts' before the battle?? Wouldn't the place be called Brynaeron if it were a 'celtic' location? Why would Gildas refer to it by an OE name? |
This only works if you are certain Berry Hill was the site of Badon Hill. "D" (or double D) often translates as "TH", giving the name of Bathon = Bath. This is the simplest explanation, and the best one that makes sense. Also, there was a second battle there, on Solsbury Hill (I think) and it's mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as: The Battle of Badan.
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Against all Gods.
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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Yes, DD is a TH in Welsh (hard TH, as in 'that' - not soft, as in 'myth') so Baddon would be pronounced 'bathon' (with a hard TH).... so if this were true a 'Celtic' place has a name in a 'Celtic' tongue which just happens to sound exactly like 'Bath', which just happens to be in the place where the Romans built baths..... actually this is interesting:
OED gives the word Bath as OE in origin from Baeth, Old Frisian is Beth, Germanic as Batha. So, the English Bath is 'Germanic' (or the other way around!!). So BATH is called Bath because of, er, the Baths....
Welsh for the place of Bath is Caerfaddon - Fort Faddon = Fort Baddon (Bathon - hard TH)..... Welsh word for 'bath' is 'baddon', hence the association of Badon=Baddon....... so did the Welsh word come from the English / Saxon, or did the English get the word from the Welsh?
If the Welsh got the word from the Saxon origins, then why name a supposedly 'Celtic' place with an AS name? If the English got the word from the Welsh, then why does this word turn up in Frisian and German?
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Question everything!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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We use the word widely but specifically to mean 'personal immersion in water' . Do the cognates mean the same thing in all these languages? Or have we acquired the word gradually because of the importance of Bath in our history?
And is it significant that we have managed to wring three vowel sounds (southern English, northern English and past participle) from the b and the th?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| If the Welsh got the word from the Saxon origins, then why name a supposedly 'Celtic' place with an AS name? If the English got the word from the Welsh, then why does this word turn up in Frisian and German? |
Welsh for bath, ymdrochfeydd, is unrelated to English bath , German Bad and the rest, so Caerfaddon is presumably the Welsh rendition of the English name - which is just an English description, not a version of the Latin name. (Baddon also borrowed into Welsh, perhaps in some sense different from ymdrochfeydd? There's no cognate of bath in Irish, is there?)
I love the way Wikipedia says about possible locations of Mons Badoncius: Solsbury Hill near Bath, suggested by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Bath was known to the Saxons as Ba�on, Ba�on, and Ba�anceaster. It is obviously situated amongst many hills, any one of which could have been the epicentre of the battle. The word "bath" is Germanic, but "Badon" is a Celtic name.
Glib, to say the least.
Anyone ever suggested Matlock Bath? There's a pretty prominent hill there.
| We use the word widely but specifically to mean 'personal immersion in water'. |
Or immersion of animals or objects; or similar liberal application of water, medicine, sand, etc.; or the place or receptacle for doing so.
Do cognates include fathom... bathus... spa...?
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Pulp History
In: Wales
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Bath
1. Caerfaddon n.
bath
1. ymdrochfa n.f. (ymdrochfeydd)
2. baddon n.m. (baddonau)
3. bath n.m. (bathau/baddon)
4. badd n. (baddau
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Question everything!
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Or immersion of animals or objects; or similar liberal application of water, medicine, sand, etc.; or the place or receptacle for doing so. |
No, I thought carefully about this. It seemed to me there is a very specific 'caring' quality to bathing. Bathing ones eyes. It is true we nowadays extend the meaning a little (in industry for instance) but if you try to use the term to embrace animals you will find we use words like dip or wallow as both verb and noun. A cow-bath? Even filmclips of race-horses in swimming pools to get fit would not, I think, employ the word bathe.
This is not (necessarily) a matter of pedantics since most pools are for animals and humans alike. It's only special pools, sacred pools, underground pools, briny pools that are strictly for humans-only.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| It seemed to me there is a very specific 'caring' quality to bathing. |
Yes, rather medicinal. I suppose we bathe pets rather than other animals. And there is a difference between wild animals plunging into water and bathing in it (or in sand).
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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mmm...let's think about this for a moment. Ritual ablutions. One of the general characteristics of Western Europeans generally is that historically they made no connection between bathing and health. It was noted that many people would go a lifetime without having a full bodybath and in fact the whole idea of bathing was rather mixed up -- in a negative way -- with sexuality and being unChristian.
This is in stark contrast to, say, India (where despite...because of... the generally dirtier conditions) everyone is always popping in and out the Ganges or wherever. Similarly Muslims and Scandinavians seem to have had a thing about keeping really clean via steam. Deep down clean. For less than half-a-crown.
On the other hand there is no necessary connection between cleanliness and health. So perhaps for the Ancient Brits jumping into Bath was for health reasons not for getting cleansed (in either the biological or the religious sense).
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| On the other hand there is no necessary connection between cleanliness and health. |
The two are linked even if disguised as ritual; there's a whole raft of injunctions in the OT regarding bathing, particularly for women who are considered even now as potential carriers of disease. They'd have to immerse themselves in specially prepared baths prior to marriage and be 'inspected', a practical means of ensuring that the man wasn't getting damaged goods.
Maybe the concern over bathing is practical rather than 'mystical', in desert climates it's more desirable to wash but if water is in short supply it stands to reason that it would be reserved for special occasions such as rites of passage.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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But this is my point. Before the modern Theory of Germs there was no necessary link between cleanliness and health (and apart from invasive surgery and stuff, there's still no demonstratred generalised connection -- rather the reverse I would say if today's coddling of children and their constant illnesses is anything to go by.).
It is a matter for discussion whether cultures that make a fetish about cleanliness are actually any healthier than those that don't. But none of this has anything directly to do with Bath. There is no question here of people using the baths to get clean, but as a health treatment. They might have got clean too but that is not why they went all that way and paid all that money.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Taking the waters has a long history, internal and external. Classical authors were on the whole unenthusiastic about recommending water for drinking purposes it seems; there was obviously an awareness of the dangers of 'bad' water and lots of instructions on which sort of water, how much and when to drink it, etc.; an article in the Cambridge World History on water points out that there was a notable lack, or lack of mention, of waterborne diseases in classical times. [Cholera must have around though the causes wouldn't necessarily have been understood. The article points out that the pandemics are nineteenth-century phenomena.]
Such descriptions clearly indicate that classical authors were much concerned with the effects of waters on health. One can understand their views in terms of a four-part scheme for classifying waters. Some waters are seen as positively beneficial to health, medicaments to be taken to cure various maladies. Others are viewed as good, "sweet" (the term has long been used to describe waters) waters, of acceptable taste and suitable for dietetic use..... Finally, authors recognize some waters as pathogenic in some sense, even lethal.
Beyond taste and health effects, waters (particularly spring waters) were characterized in terms of a host of bizarre properties they were believed to have. |
Not much has changed then, looking at the claims on the bottled water labels... But the fact that we are so conscious of the potential dangers makes us more ready or willing to believe in such claims if backed by 'experts' armed with evidence.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| On the other hand there is no necessary connection between cleanliness and health. |
The two are linked even if disguised as ritual |
I'm having trouble separating them, too. For one thing, odours were thought to carry disease and dirty people are smelly. Then again, when everyone is equally smelly, no one notices... But surely cleaning houses and utensils and belongings to keep them in good order and prevent decay is obvious enough to apply to ourselves?
As if water isn't miraculous enough, in some places it comes out of the ground hot and stains the earth and tastes bad. Doesn't medicine always taste bad? Isn't it worth going all the way to a spa once in a while {Once in a life-time? A pilgrimage?} to get the special kind of clean?
'Ere, do all the methods of preparing food apply to ritual purification, too? Bathing/boiling, smoking, steaming, purification by fire...
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What's all this about houses getting "leprosy" and having to be burned? Is the OT full of houses getting invaded by funguses that can not be prevented or removed by normal cleaning methods? Were they known to cause illness (irrespective of what they thought about spores or germs)?
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Is it more desirable to wash in the desert? There are some well known ancient cities in the desert, a striking feature of which is elaborate water management infrastructure, but often they are built on rivers, with real dirt (not just sand): riverine silt. Perhaps farmers and citizens had different ideas on what cleanliness meant and what needed it.
Even if bathers are healthier, clean bodies, clothes houses and streets might also go along with diet and exercise and other things that promote health... or recurrent warfare and other things that mask the lack of it.
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What do readers think of the recent suggestion that Arthur was a Bronze Age hero who kept being updated by later generations? Throwing swords, bronze ones, into lakes was a favoured though expensive Bronze Age pastime. Of course for this suggestion to be true there must have been language continuity from the Bronze Age onwards, or the legend would have been lost. So it would rule out the theoretical 'Celtic invasion' of 600-150 BC which is favoured by Welsh, Scots and Irish. The Irish are so besotted with Celtishness that the Celtic Invasion has pride of place on the Irish Government's official web site, and is precisely dated to 400 BC. What may have happened to the autochthonous population is left to the imagination.
Or should we class the Arthurian romancers with Owen Wister and Zane Grey who created the Wild West mythology one and two decades after the cowboy age was over?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Certainly King Arthur resembles Robin Hood in being a) apparently a British archetype but b) squeezed very clumsily into a particular historical period. One interesting difference is that Robin Hood lacks even the most cursory efforts to spatchcock Christianity into his general persona.
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TelMiles
In: London
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That may be Mick 'cause Robin was basically a byword for Devil in the middle ages. Like Robin Goodfellow for instance.
_________________
Against all Gods.
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