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Current group: alt.divination
Re: Lugh, see
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| | From: | moi | | Subject: | Re: Lugh, see | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 01:27:24 GMT |
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"Kevin Jones" wrote in message
news:clud0p$1q2$1@ngspool-d02.news.aol.com...
> OTOH, I've known native Gaelic speakers -
> there are a few left - who have looked totally baffled at the idea that
> the
> sun could be represented by a male divinity.
There are more than a 'few' left!
> There is, of course, the observation that the Welsh word for sun takes the
> masculine gender.
Actually the gender appears to vary and Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru - The
University of Wales Welsh Dictionary records it as being both.
> It wouldn't have been too much of a linguistic leap. The Brythonic sul is
> the root of the name of the goddess Sulis (see Bath) and appears to be
> cognate with the Irish súil, which now means 'eye', but which originally
> meant both 'sun' and 'eye'.
The Brythonic form couldn't have been Sul as that would have given 'hwl' not
Haul. Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru gives a hypothetical Brythonic form of Saul
(it has particular marks under the a and above the u but I cannot reproduce
them here!)
> Now sul (feminine) is very close to the Latin sol (masculine) in
> pronunciation - in fact its possible that local dialects might have meant
> that the difference in pronunciation was minimal or possibly even
> non-existent (think of the wild vagaries of accents in Britain). Bear in
> mind that quite a lot of people were bilingual - they needed to be.
Apart from the fact that 'Sul' couldn't be the base form for 'Haul' and that
the Welsh 'S' and the Latin 's' were distinctly different and have developed
differently in modern Welsh. Native 'S' as found in 'Saul' has invariably
given 'H' and hence 'Haul' where as Latin 's' gives modern Welsh 'S' so for
example the prefix 'so' gives modern Welsh 'Hy' and modern Irish 'so'- as in
'hyweld' a 'sofheicthe' but Latin Sagitta gives Saeth. This occurs so
regularly through the language that it is safe to say that Brythonic
speakers would have taken the two 's' sounds to have been phonemically
different and so would have differentiated between the words. Indeed
Kenneth Jackson in his book 'Language and History in Early Britain' actually
used two different symbols to differentiate between them.
It should also be remembered that Sol- (which had a long O sound) has
actually continued on in Welsh and gives us the Welsh name for Sunday - dydd
Sul - with Sul (approximately pronounced 'Seel' but in early Welsh as
'Sool' - with the 'oo' standing for a sound similar to French 'u')
representing Latin "Sol"-. This is the natural development that one would
expect from 'Sol-' and as there hasn't been any confusion between the two
forms one can only suggest that Brythonic speakers could and did see the two
words as being distinctly different from each other.
Interestingly, there was a programme on UK TV the other day which examined
the question of early religious beliefs and argued that monuments such as
Stonehenge were really moon temples or from a period of transition to a sun
orientated religion. The arguments were very persuasive and the programme
seemed to suggest that they reflect a change (over a very long period in
time) from a hunter gatherer lifestyle where the moon would have been
important to a farming lifestyle when the sun would have been more
important. It marshalled a lot of evidence for the moon hypothesis.
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| | From: | 1X2Willows | | Subject: | Re: Lugh, see | | Date: | Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:21:59 GMT |
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| "moi" wrote
> "Kevin Jones" wrote
>> OTOH, I've known native Gaelic speakers -
>> there are a few left - who have looked totally baffled at the idea that
>> the sun could be represented by a male divinity.
>
> There are more than a 'few' left!
>
>> There is, of course, the observation that the Welsh word for sun takes
>> the masculine gender.
>
> Actually the gender appears to vary and Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru - The
> University of Wales Welsh Dictionary records it as being both.
Actually, the same applies to Germanic languages.
"Die Sonne" and "Der Sonn" both apply, although the latter
is nowadays considered rather archaic poetic use.
Dan
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