Re: CHAT: RPGs (was Re: Wargs)

Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> Sally Caves wrote:
> > for how can I also say hermaphrodite in Teonaht?  man woman-like?  That
> > just doesn't cut it, does it?
>
> "One Who Is Both Man And Woman" perhaps?  Probably wouldn't be a single
> word, but a phrase.  Of course, in langs with gender, that's another
> issue.
I'm just gonna have to come up with a compound that is probably a
juxtaposition
and a mutation.

>
> > Wergild did not mean "man money," as it is popularly conceived.  Wer(e)
> > was "pledge," with a long e.  I have no proof of what the were in
> > werewolf
> > is, but I suspect it was a distorted form of OE wearg, werig, or WARG,
> > bringing it in tradition with the Scandinavian forms.
>
> Interesting.  Why "pledgemoney"?
It was the money a man promised to pay to the family of the man he
killed, in
order to avoid retribution or to compensate for the loss.  If a man was
deemed
a "wolfshead," though, or a vargr in Old Norse tradition, no one had to
pay
any pledge money to his family because he was deemed a non-person.
Vargr meant
wolf... therefore, expendable being, one that could be killed with
impunity.
I.e., outlaw.  He hung out in the woods or the moors, kept company with
the
wolves.  Full outlawry, or exile, was the worst punishment.

> As for werewolf, could it have been an anglicization of the var- in
> vargulfr?
I'm trying to argue that it was an anglicization of the element VARG,
cognate
with OE wearg, cursed being.  Vargulfr is a compound with varg + ulf:
so
wolf wolf, or outlaw wolf.  It has cognates with garulf, in Marie de
France,
and the variations throughout Old and Middle High German, Old Saxon, and
even within Middle English, especially Scots Dialect (warwolf, warewolf,
warwoof)
suggest that it was more than wer, "man."  The problem is the "g"/ what
happened
to the "g"?  Wearg did have variations with werig, however, where the
"g" becomes
silent.  The thing is, the term for werewolf and its meaning and its
association
with humans or the hybrid human wolf is very foggy in the Germanic
developments.
It's clearer in the Greek.  Lycanthropos.  Wolf-human.

Jacob Grimm, in Deutsche Mythologie, says that Ninth century OHG had a
variant
weriwolf.  I'd like to know if this is the closest cognate with OE
werewulf
and what it means.  But until I can see an Old High German dictionary,
I have to take Grimm at face value, and genius though he was, I'm not
sure
I trust this nineteenth-century philologist.  His DM has no notes, and
his
references are obscure.

So if any German speaking person on the list has an Old High German
dictionary,
or access to one, I'd be much obliged.

The OED casts doubt on the first element of werewolf for "man" but
doesn't offer
any solutions.

Sally


============================================================
SALLY CAVES
scaves@frontiernet.net
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves (bragpage)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/teonaht.html (T. homepage)
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/contents.html (all else)
=====================================================================
Niffodyr tweluenrem lis teuim an.
"The gods have retractible claws."
                                from _The Gospel of Bastet_
============================================================