Re: CHAT: The etymology of (King) Arthur (was Re: CHAT: reign names)

Wesley Parish scripsit:

> Future generations of historians will say there was an Anglo-German
> Queen with the Corgi as her standard, and they will go slowly mad trying
> to connect her and the corgis - the sacred animal of the British Isles,
> apparently - with the English Lion and the Welsh Dragon.  Perhaps some
> of them will connect the British Throne with the creature known in
> its Australian Commonwealth as the Drongo, and argue that "Dragon"
> is a misspelling.  :-)
/me laughs out loud, a rare thing at this hour of the morning.
For the etymology of "drongo", see http://www.anu.edu.au/ANDC/Austwords/drongo .

> (I don't propose to precede them into madness. ;)
"To many, perhaps to most people outside the small company of the
great scholars, past and present, 'Celtic' of any sort is, nonetheless,
a magic bag, into which anything may be put, and out of which almost
anything may come.  Thus I read recently a review of a book by Sir Gavin
de Beer, and, in what appeared to be a citation from the original*, I
noted the following opinion on the river-name _Arar_ (Livy) and _Araros_
(Polybius):  'Now Arar derives from the Celtic root meaning running
water which occurs also in many English river-names like Avon.'  It is
a strange world in which _Avon_ and _Araros_ can have the same 'root'
(a vegetable analogy still much loved by the non-philological when being
wise about words).  Catching the lunatic infection, one's mind runs on
to the River Arrow, and even to arrowroot, to Ararat, and the descent
into Avernus.  Anything is possible in the fabulous Celtic twilight,
which is not so much a twilight of the gods as of the reason."
	--JRRT, "English and Welsh"

The footnote reads:

"*For my purpose it does not matter at all whether Sir Gavin or his
reviewer was the author of the remark: both were posing as scholars."

--
I am expressing my opinion.  When my            John Cowan
honorable and gallant friend is called,         jcowan@reutershealth.com
he will express his opinion.  This is           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
the process which we call Debate.                   --Winston Churchill