One shouldn't copy whole chapters etc etc, but I found this one so interesting
re our recurring conflicts on the same theme; it seems most of the theories
thought up here have been in circulation for centuries.
Karin Friedeich
The Other Prussia, ch. 4
'History, myth and historical identity
Every time a society finds itself in crisis it instinctively turns its eyes
towards its origins and looks there for a sign. (Octavio Paz)1
Since the revival of interest in national origins during the Renaissance,
prompted by the rediscovery of Tacitus's history of the pagan tribes which
challenged the decaying Roman Empire, history steadily gained respectability as
an academic subject at schools and universities. The questioning of
philosophical and theological certainties and authorities during the Renaissance
and Reformation period engendered an identity crisis, when late medieval
Christian societies were confronted with the un-Christian heritage of classical
antiquity. Poland-Lithuania was no exception: Italian and German Humanism had
reached Cracow, the old Polish capital, even before Bona Sforza (1494-1557), the
daughter of Gian Galeazzo, duke of Milan, and Isabella of Aragon, married king
Sigismund I in 1518 and brought Italian artists and scholars to the Polish
court. A society as steeped in the culture of classical antiquity as that of the
Polish-Lithuanian nobility took seriously Cicero's dictum that 'not to know what
happened in the past, means ever to remain a child'.2 Its sense of the past was
greatly enhanced by the accumulation of political, legal and economic privileges
since the late fourteenth century, which prevented the Polish king from
collecting taxes, declaring war or passing any new laws without the nobility's
consent. For politically active citizens, the past provided a valuable set of
examples and models for future action and political legitimacy, boosting their
self-confidence.
The same was true for the citizens of Royal Prussia, who regarded themselves in
historical, political and national terms as a distinct group within the Common
wealth. For the burghers in particular, collective historical memory was
patriotic scripture: being citizens of the fatherland - the city, the Prussian
province or the wider Commonwealth - involved rights as well as
responsibilities. History was a crucial instrument for the education and
formation of loyal and able citizens, both burgher and noble. Since their
incorporation into the Polish kingdom, the Prussian social and political elites
had looked to Humanist Cracow and its university, compelled by the need to
produce qualified councillors and burgomasters, secretaries and delegates to the
Polish Sejm and the Prussian diets. The activities and influence of a large
circle of international Humanist scholars at Cracow, many of South-German,
Alsatian, Silesian or Hungarian origin, peaked in the 1520s.3 Between 1493 and
1517, until the Reformation shattered the link, eighty-eight students from
Danzig alone studied at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, but student
numbers from Royal Prussia dropped sharply after 1525 as the Prussians created
their own, Protestant education system.4 Urban Latin schools were remodelled
into institutions of higher learning; from the middle of the sixteenth century,
the three academic Gymnasia in Danzig, Thorn and Elbing transformed Royal
Prussia into a centre of classical studies. New curricula combined Protestant
theology and the traditional Humanist disciplines of philosophy, poetry, grammar
and rhetoric with an emphasis on new subjects such as law, political theory and
history.5 From 1535, the Gymnasium in Elbing flourished under the leadership of
the Dutch Humanist Wilhelm Gnapheus, who introduced Melanchthon's educational
ideas. Danzig followed in 1558 with the foundation of a Humanist school which,
in 1580, received the title of Academic Gymnasium, and became the most prominent
Prussian school, particularly in the early 1600s when Barthel Keckermann, the
Calvinist natural law thinker, taught there. After the decline in significance
of the university of Cracow, a large number of Protestant and even Catholic
nobles from all over the Commonwealth sent their children for a solid Humanist
education to the Royal Prussian Gymnasia, whose attraction increased markedly
until the success of Tridentine Catholicism depleted student numbers in the
early seventeenth century.6
The Gymnasium in Thorn was reorganised in 1568, around the time when the first
Jesuit schools were established in the province. Although the Protestant
Gymnasia have been credited with higher educational standards than their rival
Jesuit colleges, the school which the Jesuit Order opened in Thorn in 1605
enjoyed growing popularity, not only among the Polish-speaking Catholic
population, but also among the families of Protestant craftsmen and
day-labourers. The competition between the Society of Jesus and the Protestant
schools for the hearts and minds of future citizens, especially those of Polish
and Lithuanian noble extraction, became fiercer in the late seventeenth century.
In 1684 the Thorn Jesuits compiled a curriculum which reveals heavy borrowing
from their Protestant counterparts: Latin, Greek, rhetoric, poetry and
metaphysics, as well as natural sciences and history. As a result, the Thorn
Protestant Gymnasium increased its provision of Polish language classes to avoid
alienating Polish-speaking Lutheran or Calvinist families. Thorn had a
substantial Protestant Polish-speaking population among all groups of society,
as evidenced in 1698 when the guild masters thanked the city council for cutting
back the time allotted to sermons and organ-playing in the 'Polish church
services for Polish Protestant servant folk', so that they could go back to work
sooner rather than later.7
Preparation for political activity in the city and the Commonwealth included
training in rhetoric and oratorical skills. As Joachim Pastorius, director of
the Gymnasium in Elbing from 1651-4 and history professor in Danzig from
1654-67, recommended in his letter to the son of the Danzig burgrave Adrian von
der Linde, Cicero's 'robust and accurate style' was best suited for political
speeches.8 The core program of eruditio historica included the study of Pliny
and Cassiodor, two of the most frequently quoted sources for sixteenth-century
Polish and Prussian historians. Knowledge of heraldry, Kleinodia Polona
Libertatis, for noble students was balanced with the writing of treatises on the
usefulness of cities in Poland, designed for the sons of burghers.9 Following
their Order's Ratio Studiorum of 1599, the Jesuits in Thorn echoed the patriotic
tone of Protestant teaching and similarly stressed the future role of the
students as citizens of the Commonwealth, in the diet or city council's public
affairs. From the mid-seventeenth century, the Jesuits carried on training their
students in law, rhetoric and public speaking, while Protestant curricula
started to emphasise theology, literature and mathematics.10
Religious differences did not prevent the burghers in the Royal Prussian cities
from sharing with the nobility views on the necessity of political education.
Georg Wende, rector of the Thorn Gymnasium towards the end of the seventeenth
century, compared the tasks fulfilled by city councillors with those of Chinese
mandarins, whose high standards of education and their noble descent made them
the most suitable for state service. Wende warned that political education for
the common good should not be neglected even in schools where theological
education (Confucianism in China - Lutheranism in Royal Prussia) was generally
preferred.11 History and its great men were used as examples, while the
knowledge of past constitutions, governments and kingdoms served as a
treasure-trove of models, bad and good, for criticism and imitation.12
Public-spirited education, intended to fortify urban burghers' pride in their
citizen status, was also valued by Michael Mylius, a history professor in
Elbing, who in 1642 wrote on the occasion of the death of the royal envoy and
palatine of Pernau in Livonia, Count Ernst Dönhoff, of the greatest achievements
of the deceased nobleman: '[He] travelled all over Europe's regions and
kingdoms, especially those whose languages he easily mastered, and after his
return as a great citizen of this body politic he made use of [what he had
learned] for the good of the republic.'13
Patriotic behaviour was therefore measured by the use made of education for the
common good of the state and the province: Dönhoff 'restored peace for God, the
king and the people, for holiness, majesty and utility, publicae salutis
summam'.14 Personal virtues and qualifications were not an end in themselves,
but a means to serve - in Dönhoffs case - the city of Elbing and the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1651, Gottfried Zamehl, from a prominent
family of burgomasters and poets laureate in Elbing, whose father had collected
the manuscripts of medieval Prussian chronicles, went on a study trip to Western
Europe. After his return, he summed up the patriotic purpose of his experience
abroad:
We travel to various nations and regions, but meanwhile we do not lose our love
for our fatherland, nor shall we ever hold it in contempt;. . . it is not enough
to live well abroad, but the motivation for all industrious activities [in
foreign countries] is to come back with fame and honour to the fatherland.15
The hope that burghers would adopt the ideal of education recommended by the
city authorities was also expressed in the appeal by the theology professor and
senior pastor of Thorn, Jan Neunachbar, to appoint a local Thorunian or Prussian
preacher to a vacant parish in the city: 'not only do locals know the nature of
their fatherland, and what is good for it, better than foreigners: but also the
citizenry will be encouraged to spend something on their children and educate
them for the benefit of the fatherland'.16
Most historical works in Royal Prussia were written by burghers and disseminated
from local printing presses, some of them attached to the schools. Jurisprudence
ranked highly among the career choices of the urban elites, who wished to grasp
the intricacies of their own constitutions and laws, the traditions of Kulm law
and their ancient privileges granted by the Order and the Polish monarchy. But
even law was approached from a historical angle. It was not merely historians
who were sought, but lawyers who knew history, in the words of Pastorius 'the
parent of all sciences'.17
Under the influence of the universities of the Empire and other European states,
where the teaching of Roman law in the Renaissance had laid the foundations for
the rationalist school of natural law, legal training at the Prussian Gymnasia
adopted the focus on 'public law'. The academic preparation for public office
was inspired and guided by the science of cameralism (Kameralmissenschaften) in
the German universities of the late seventeenth century such as Jena, Halle,
Frankfurt an der Oder, Helmstedt, Heidelberg and Leipzig, where many future
burgomasters and councillors of Royal Prussian cities completed their studies.18
Prussian students and scholars who visited German universities followed the
debates about Athenian democracy, the mixed constitution of Sparta and the
advantages of aristocracy or monarchy; upon their return to Royal Prussia they
applied what they had learnt to their domestic context, focusing on the dangers
of tyranny, on the defence of their privileges and immunities inherited from
previous generations, on the advantages of the aristocratic and democratic
elements in the polity and on the prospects for reform of the practice of
government in their own state, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.19 German
political science (Staatenkunde) appealed not only to Royal Prussian students:
the idea that laws and constitutions had no power and meaning unless they were
backed by true political power in the service of the common good held a strong
attraction for seventeenth-century Polish constitulional thinking.20
In such an environment, the writing and teaching of history was central to
contemporary political debate, which consciously used the past as an instrument
for expressing present political needs. Poland and Royal Prussia were no
exception. The Dutch republic used the republican myth of Venice in the same
way.21 The Poles certainly seemed to know their origins. The mythical common
descent of all nations of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from the ancient
Sarmatian warrior-heroes, who successfully resisted Roman attempts to conquer
them, was fashioned into a statement of the Commonwealth's constitutional and
political superiority over West European societies oppressed by absolute royal
power. Szymon Starowolski founded his reputation as a patriotic historian early
on by collecting a pantheon of Sarmatian heroes, of bellatores et scriptores,
who included representatives of all nations of the Commonwealth, similar to the
gallery of Swedish-Gothic heroes assembled by Johannes Magnus.22 References to
great historical rulers and nations pointed at the imitation of past virtue. As
the Goths were to the Swedes, or the Batavians to the Dutch, so were the
Sarmatians to the Poles.23 Roger Mason exposed a very similar process in
medieval Scottish mythology and chronicles, expressed politically in the
Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, where Sallust's idea of liberty stood
godfather.24 History, applied as a political instrument, forged a community's
sense of the past by several means, including a collective name, a myth of
origin and descent, a shared history and a specific political culture based on
the freedom of its citizens, within a limited territory.25
The degree to which thinking was guided by mythical analogies was expressed by
the Italian Jesuit Possevino, a widely travelled expert on Poland: 'legends and
fabulae, as hidden and obscure they may be, are more powerful than poems'.
Mythology and miracles were accepted as long as they had a purpose. The
Renaissance historian Scaliger confirmed this view: no mythology was created for
its own sake, all myths pointed beyond themselves to some political or didactic
purpose, helping nations to identify with their own past and to apply historic
virtues and values to the improvement of their present situation.26 Although the
Renaissance clearly popularised the genre of national history-writing, Kurt
Johannesson has stressed that the creation of identity based on myths of the
origin of peoples, cities, families or nations was not linked to one specific
historical period but corresponded to a general human need to harmonise past and
present.27
Under the influence of the Humanists, secular history was now commonly
structured in historia locorum, temporum, familiarum et rerum gestarum - the
study of an area or place, of chronological events, of dynastic and national
descent, and finally of all events relating to a society and its institutions,
the church, schools, governments and magistracies. Jean Bodin's attack on the
German theory of translatio imperii, the idea of continuity between the ancient
Roman Empire and the Holy Roman Empire, sparked renewed interest in other themes
of history: historia humana (the history of secular society), historia naturalis
(including the laws of nature), and historia divina (on religion and revealed
truth).28 Despite the unpopularity of Bodin's political theory, his historical
methodology, focusing on historical particularia, suited the Prussian burghers.
The historical tradition of cosmography and Sleidanus's theory of the four world
monarchies, Babylon (or Egypt), Persia, Greece and Rome, had never put down
strong roots in Prussia.29 Guided by patriotism, national and provincial history
was much more popular.
In the sixteenth century Danzig secretary Caspar Schütz had stressed the need
for historical education. He regretted that little knowledge of the Prussian
past survived, due to ignorance and lack of learning not only among the pagans,
but also among the Teutonic Knights. Historians of the following century wanted
to remedy this situation.30 In De natura et proprietatibus historiae
commentarius, published posthumously in 1613, Keckermann was one of the first
Prussians to follow Bodin's history of particularia. In contrast to the usual
Ciceronian approach, the Danzig professor did not accept rhetoric as the main
instrument of history, but considered historical research a branch of philosophy
and, more specifically, of logic: 'nobody can write history well who is not a
good logician'.31 Throughout the seventeenth century, the Royal Prussian
Gymnasia included Bodin's historical methodology in their curriculum, a fact
mentioned in the 1676 lecture notes of the future burgomaster Johann Gottfried
Rösner, who attended the lectures of the Thorn historian Ernst König on Bodin's
Historia pragmatica. Rösner followed Bodin's subdivision of history into new
subjects, as recommended by Keckermann: the history of ethics, political economy
and history, and ecclesiastical history, as well as the history of scholarship
(prudentia) and philosophy.32 These subjects were no longer inferior to
Ciceronian rhetoric as they had been in the early sixteenth century. Not only
biblical empires, but individual states, nations, peoples and even cities should
be looked at from the angle of their universal significance, using the same
tools and categories as ecclesiastical or world history in the past.33
Starowolski echoed this approach in his early seventeenth-century treatise on
the utility of history aimed at students at Cracow University: history only
makes sense when 'it reflects the deeds and events of all peoples of all times
and all areas as in a great mirror'.34
Prussian urban historians followed these recommendations. Unlike most histories
of German Hanseatic cities in the Empire, Royal Prussian Particular-Historie
never ignored the larger dimension of the wider commonwealth: 'nam pius est,
patriae scribere facta, labor' - it is pious work to write the history of one's
fatherland.35 Amor patriae, love of the fatherland, however, never entirely
eclipsed the larger context. Walter Hubatsch observed that even
sixteenth-century Prussian chronicles of monasteries and small towns never lost
sight of the history of the whole Prussian province, in which such chronicles
were embedded.36 This is an important point, as German historians, transfixed by
the power of nineteenth-century Prussia, have often argued that Danzig, Thorn
and Elbing were in fact 'city-states' which possessed quasi-independence from
the Polish-Lithuanian state. The view behind this interpretation was that the
Royal Prussian burghers were at odds with a foreign, hostile Polish environment,
whose culture they never accepted. A closer look at the historical and political
writing of several Prussian burghers, however, reveals, a rather different
picture.
Keckermann's idea of a perfect education combined patriotic with cosmopolitan
values and suggests that his definition of patria did not end on the ramparts of
his city. The fatherland, whose history one knew best, was also the place where
one developed talents useful for public service and the common good. Such an
endeavour made the burgher a precious and honoured member of society - his own
local community, as well as human society at large.37 The writing and teaching
of history, especially at grammar school level, were therefore recognised public
services for the good of the republic, and not merely an amateur's hobby-horse.
Two other historians of Royal Prussia in the later seventeenth century,
Pastorius and Hartknoch, wrote comprehensive guides to the history of the
Polish-Lithuanian state to instil patriotic sentiments and a sense of duty among
the young.38 History-teaching had to focus on the need of young Prussians to
acquaint themselves with the history and constitution not only of their cities
but also of the Commonwealth. After their travels abroad, their peregrinatio,
the young returned to the service of their patria as the new generation of their
cities' political elite. This fatherland was the city, as referred to by fellow
Danzigers or Torunians in Samuel Schönwald's travel album; but the patria nostra
could also be the Commonwealth and Poland, whose historical greatness was felt
to be at stake in 1655, the year of the Swedish invasion, when Schönwald and
other youngsters studied abroad and discussed their anxiety about the fate of
their various home provinces. Such diary entries from the 1650s demonstrate the
similarity of attitudes of young burghers and nobles towards their Commonwealth,
assuring mutual friendship and lamenting the war that was afflicting their
common fatherland.39 Dedication to the respublica was the very essence of the
Ciceronian idea of the active life, shared by the Polish nobility.
The intellectual life and high educational standards in the Prussian Gymnasia,
as well as Keckermann's ideals, inspired one of the Polish szlachta's most
outspoken supporters of noble patriotic duty, Andrzej Maksimilian Fredro. In his
educational programme of 1666 he voiced the need not only for nobles, but also
for Polish burghers to imitate the Prussian cities in regularly sending their
sons to foreign countries to learn languages and observe foreign customs,
although Fredro did not explore why educational standards were higher in the
Prussian Protestant schools. Protestant preachers had to undergo an academic
training which included theological studies at a university, while Catholic
priests, with the rare exception of those who could afford to go to Rome, or who
received an adequate stipend, launched their careers in one of the numerous
local seminaries or Jesuit colleges in Poland.40 In many respects, however, the
educational ideals of nobles shared similar requirements and a similar spirit of
public duty as the education of the Prussian patriciate. Just as young burghers
were prepared for public office, noble education was aimed at active
participation in the political structure of the Commonwealth, as deputies to the
Sejm, court officials, or even for a post as a senator. What Germany later
called staatsbürgerliche Erziehung (civic education) was the most important
element of the curriculum for a Polish or Lithuanian nobleman. History was
central. A young nobleman had to be told of his origins so as to fill him with
pride and a consciousness of the obligations connected with his role as a member
of the noble Sarmatian nation.
Thus from the early seventeenth century the Humanist genre of history as
descriptio orbis terrarum was replaced by a history of nations and fatherlands:
the idea that the values of the past had an immediate impact on the present made
anachronism a virtue. Changes in the patterns and contents of myths serve
therefore as valuable tools for measuring alterations and shifts in a society's
political culture. The economic and social crises in the Royal Prussian cities
following the Swedish wars of the seventeenth century, the decline of their
privileges and the political disappointment felt among the Prussian burghers
about the behaviour of the nobility and the Polish king towards them - all this
was reflected in the writing of history and in political publications. The
period from early Humanism, when myths of origin were invented and first
disseminated, to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which under the impact of
the political and military crisis of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
discarded many old legends, is crucial for the development of historical writing
in the Prussian cities. Its citizens never turned away from history; on the
contrary, when old myths no longer rang true, new myths had to be developed to
account for a change in political attitudes and mentalities.
TRADITIONS OF HISTORY-WRITING IN POLAND AND PRUSSIA
Despite the hostility of Royal Prussian historians towards the legacy of the
Teutonic Order after 1454, chronicles from the Teutonic period still exerted
considerable influence on the political and intellectual atmosphere of Royal
Prussia and the view burghers and nobles held of their Prussian nation's past.
The following three traditions formed the source base for Prussian
historiography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: chronicles
commissioned and controlled by the Teutonic Order, a separate religious
chronicle tradition, and secular provincial history or Landesgeschichte, based
mainly in the Prussian cities.
In numerous chronicles the Teutonic Knights celebrated their conquest of the
Prussian lands as a victory of Christianity over the heathens. Their chronicle
tradition found its first and foremost exponent in Peter von Dusburg, whose 1326
history of the Teutonic Order, based on the Order's archival material in
Marienburg as well as oral tradition, not only offers a vivid description of the
life, wars and political organisation of the Knights, but also attempts to
explain pagan Lithuanian and Prussian society and customs to a Christian
audience.41 Preserved in several transcriptions, Dusburg's chronicle held great
attraction for historians of the early modern era and was published in 1679 by
the Prussian historian Christoph Hartknoch.42 Until this date, the more popular
version of this chronicle was the translation into Latin verse by Nikolaus von
Jeroschin, a chaplain with the Teutonic Knights, but not a member of the Order's
hierarchy itself, a fact reflected by numerous departures from Dusburg's highly
favourable account of the history of the Order. A contemporary of Jeroschin and
a parish priest from Deutsch-Eylau, Johann von Posilge, left a chronicle of
Prussia which also demonstrated its independence from the panegyrical school
promoted by the Grand Masters of the Teutonic Order. Posilge, who was not an
immigrant from Germany but a native Prussian from nearby Marienburg,43 exerted
great influence on later historians hostile to the Teutonic Order. In general,
however, the majority of the Order chronicles presented a positive picture of
the knights' activities in the Ordensland.44 After 1454, a secular branch of
chronicle-writing emerged among laymen and clergy with an interest in the pagan
and Teutonic past, albeit from an anti-Order point of view. This third tradition
was located in Königsberg, the capital of Ducal Prussia after the secularisation
of the Order in 1525, and in the three main Royal Prussian cities, who had
headed the opposition movement against the Teutonic Knights alongside the
Prussian nobility. The Prussian burghers, who started to compile the history of
their cities and province, continued using the Grand Masters' chronicles
alongside anti-Teutonic traditions, which had the greatest impact on the
chroniclers of Danzig.45 Foreign sources, including the histories of the
Livonian Order, German medieval chronicles, and ancient sources before and
during the time of the migrations in Europe, were also consulted, especially on
the pagan past. One of the most influential post-Reformation sources was Simon
Grunau's strongly anti-Teutonic Prussian Chronicle.46 This work sparked
controversy from the time of its composition in the early sixteenth century. The
Teutonic Order, and subsequently historians from Ducal Prussia and Germany,
accused its author, a Dominican from Tolkemit, not only of being uninformed and
highly selective in his use of sources, but of maliciously distorting the
history of the Order, dwelling on local customs and inventing sources that never
existed. Grunau also attacked the Reformation, especially in the cities of Thorn
and Danzig, and has therefore frequently been called anti-German. Remarks
against 'die Deutzschen', however, are exclusively directed against the Teutonic
Knights or against Lutheranism, not against Germans as a nation.47 It was
precisely these features and the admittedly anti-Teutonic bias that made it
popular reading among contemporaries to whom the account was accessible in
manuscript form. It was not printed until the nineteenth century, but was
frequently copied. In the eighteenth century, the canon of Heilsberg Adalbert
Heide expressed his preference for Grunau, because 'Schütz, Dusburg and
Jeroschin did not oppose the Teutonic Knights strongly enough'.48 Modern German
historians, however, have not only shown little tolerance for Grunau's work, but
have given little thought to the meaning of his much-criticised stories.
Although Grunau rejected the un-Christian, sinful heathens, his fantastical
legends convey a more positive picture of the life and character of the Prussian
tribes than of the Teutonic Knights, who are described as cruel and malicious.
Overall, the image of the brutish pagan Prussians, in whose condemnation Aeneas
Sylvius Piccolomini had delighted in his influential chronicle of the Slavs in
the fifteenth century, little by little began to change. Genuine interest in
Prussian ancestry gradually replaced the horror felt towards non-Christian
customs and idolatry. In 1584, Caspar Hennenberger described in great detail the
pagans' gruesome life-style, their sacrifices of human beings to their gods,
their fierceness in war and their brutishness, but continued with Helmoldus'
reference to their talents, their patience and their friendliness towards anyone
who was well-disposed towards them.49
Caspar Schütz, the first historian who systematically used the protocols of the
Prussian estates before and after 1454, was critical of Grunau's fantastical
stories and myths about the Prussians.50 His own details of Prussian customs and
superstition, however, are surprisingly rich for somebody who rejected all
fabulas. His emphasis on the kindness and hospitality of the pagan forefathers,
who were, according to Helmoldus, 'men with numerous favourable natural
dispositions, full of humanity and by necessity patient', once more paints a
positive picture. For the Order Schütz had only disgust and contempt. The pagans
were 'in their majority almost completely wiped out by the hand of the Order',
and the Teutonic Knights continued to ravage the country even after the forcible
conversion: the knights raped and killed wives, children and servants, abused
the courts and hampered justice,'and let people rot in their prisons, while the
emperor unjustly favoured the Order.51
Polish historiographical influences had already grown stronger during the
alliance of Poles and Prussians in the last wars against the Teutonic Knights.52
From the time of Grunau and Schütz, Prussian chronicles started to depict the
Teutonic Order in dark colours as the main foe of the cities and as a collective
tyrant, composed of a power-hungry German immigrant nobility which was
interested only in destroying the liberties of the country and its political
elites: the Prussian Georg Kunheim, for example, wrote in his early
sixteenth-century history of the Teutonic Order, 'Franconian, Swabian and
Bavarian folk do no good to Prussian land'.53 Another anti-Teutonic chronicle in
Danzig, the Ebert-Ferber-Buch, named not after its author, but after the Danzig
burgomasters in whose ownership it was discovered, continued to influence
Prussian history until the later seventeenth century.54 Historians in the Royal
Prussian cities accurately caught the spirit of bitterness and rebellion which
dominated the war against the Order. The fact that the eastern parts of Prussia
were retained by the Knights in 1466 did not escape wry comment. The handwritten
marginal notes by a sixteenth-century reader of the chronicle of Johann Lindau
of Danzig, which recounts the recapture of Königsberg by the Teutonic Order,
indignantly exclaim: 'Yes dear Königsberg, if you had just allowed it, you could
now be as free as a bird . . . but you gave [the Order] a friendly kiss of
Judas.'55
The 1520s, which saw the final victory of Poland and Royal Prussia over the
Teutonic Knights and resulted in the secularisation of the Order by its last
Grand Master, Albrecht of Hohenzollern, were an especially productive period for
historiography in both Royal Prussia and in the newly established Duchy, from
1525 a vassal state under the Polish crown. Despite the political separation,
early sixteenth-century chronicles reveal that both parts of Prussia remained
intellectually very close. Grunau in Elbing and Oliwa, Hennenberger in
Königsberg, and Schütz in Danzig - the three main chroniclers of the sixteenth
century - all based their accounts of their pagan ancestors largely on one
source: Erasmus Stella. The latter, who continued to exert a great influence on
Prussian history-writing for the next 200 years, was no native Prussian. As
burgomaster of Zwickau in Saxony, he was only linked to Prussia by his
friendship with the bishop of Pomesania and the early sixteenth-century Grand
Master of the Order Friedrich, duke of Saxony and count of Thüringen. Lacking
access to the rich manuscript archives and chronicles in the possession of the
Order and subsequently of the libraries in Königsberg, Danzig, Elbing and Thorn,
Stella was the first historian to base his research on the Prussian past almost
exclusively on the literary and historical sources of antiquity.56 He added a
new element to Prussian historiography: his chronicle aimed at a comprehensive
history of the province (Landesgeschichte) in the context of a world history of
res gestae from biblical times, through the age of the four world empires and
the migrations, and ending in his own period. In contrast to Humanist
cosmographies, history in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was expected
to be nationally focused and complete. What could not be known had to be
invented.57
Stella examined the ancestry and lifestyle of the ancient Pruzzi, many of whom,
according to Dusburg, 'had remained in the country'.58 Stella's De Borussiae
Antiquitatibus libri duo, took ample evidence from a combination of several
contradictory historical sources, such as Herodotus, Jordanes and Ptolemy,
Tacitus, Pliny and Helmoldus, Aeneas Sylvius, Strabo and Otto Frisingensis.
Although he did not invent the derivation of the ancestry of the Prussians from
the Ulmigeri - so called by Jordanes - or Culmigeri (with etymological reference
to the Prussian heartland of Kulm), he was an early and powerful propagator of
this thesis. Thus he filled the much lamented historiographical gap between the
origin of all European nations from Noah's son Japheth, a common feature of
Humanist historiography,59 and the discovery of the Pruzzi by the first
Christian missionaries of the ninth and tenth centuries. The 'dark age' of the
migrations, known at the time only from very rare sources, was now enlivened
with the mythology of the Prussian descent from king Waidewutus and his brother
Prutenus. This king had three sons (later inflated to seven, then twelve in
Grunau), who represented the Prussian provinces. As Prussians and Lithuanians
were said to be brothers, Stella included one son with the name Litalanus,
leader of the Alani, who broke away from the 'common mother Borussia' to found
his own country and people in Lithuania.60 The idea that the Baltic peoples,
including Lithuanians, Livonians, Samogitians (from z.mudz´) and Prussians, were
all one nation (una gens), had already been a commonplace in Dusburg's work in
the fourteenth century.
According to Stella, the ancient Prussians were a branch of the Sarmatian tribes
described by Tacitus (Venedi, Daci, Alani). They had come to the lands east of
the Vistula and the Baltic shore as immigrants and mixed with the remnants of
the Gothic peoples.61 Impressed by Tacitus's description of the ancient Germanic
tribes, who had no fortified houses, lived simply and worshipped nature, Stella
attached the same attributes to the Baltic Prussians. The Saxon historian
belonged to a generation of German scholars who had reacted to the Italian
shunning of the Gothic-Germanic barbarians with a counter-attack: Tacitus was
their weapon and proof that the Germans were not just cruel barbarians but
possessed piety and a communal spirit, strength in war and nobility by merit.
Rejecting the sophistication of high Roman culture as decadent, the 'noble
barbarians' were part of the Humanist cult of ancestor-worship which Stella
introduced to Prussia.62 Significantly, neither Stella nor his imitators in
Prussia integrated the Prussians into Germanic culture, but into the Sarmatian
world.
THE GOTHIC MYTH
Gothic mythology in Poland-Lithuania received a boost not only from Germany but
also from Sweden, where it was even more powerfully propagated by the Magnus
brothers, who used the history of the Goths by Jordanes to confirm the
association of the Swedes with the Gothic tradition. The myth had expanded by
the late sixteenth century, when Sigismund III, from the senior branch of the
Swedish Vasa dynasty, was elected to the Polish throne. Hartknoch reports that
from this time the Poles thought the Goths were in fact of Sarmatian origin like
themselves. According to Hartknoch, this theory gained particular significance
in 1622, when Adam Macovius, legate of the Polish king Sigismund III, was sent
to the Spanish court in order to inquire about any remaining Gothic monuments
and sources from which the Sarmatian-Gothic relationship could be deduced.
Pawel/ Piasecki, Sigismund's court historian, was employed on a similar
mission.63 The Gothic-Sarmatian myth was also meant to facilitate the task of
Jesuits sent to Sweden from Poland in order to make proselytes among opponents
of King Charles IX, Sigismund's uncle, who - in Polish opinion - had usurped the
Swedish throne. Persecution of his opponents caused an exodus of about 400
Swedish Catholic emigrés to Poland, where the Jesuit college in Braniewo
(Braunsberg) became the favourite place of education for young Swedish
Catholics. Some of them found a cruel end after their return to Sweden under the
rule of Gustav Adolf, while others joined the Polish court and fed the
Sarmatian-Gothic myth with panegyrics to the Vasa king on the Polish throne.64
An appreciation of the foundations of Prussian mythology is vital for an
understanding of the further development of Prussian historical identity. The
most significant feature was not the fact that the Prussians invented their
specific version of the past, but what was absent from it: the German element.
There was no attempt to construct a bridge to the Holy Roman Empire, nor to the
Germanic past of Tacitus's vision of Germania which was so valuable for German
Lutheran reformers and Humanists.65 Despite the clear recollection by Prussian
burghers that most of their families originated from Germany, they not only
signed an act of political and administrative incorporation with the Polish
crown in 1454; they also founded a historical association with the Poles, as
their historiographical tradition had to find a new home in a Sarmatian
environment. The result, the creation of a highly adaptable and complex
mythology which combined the Gothic-Germanic with the Sarmatian-Polish
traditions, suited the political needs of the Prussian nobles as well as the
townspeople.
The main source for Gothic history was the adaptation by Jordanes, bishop of
Ravenna, of Cassiodorus's twelve books on the history of the Goths from 551 and
their victories in Italy under Theodoric's rule. The great warrior genealogy of
the Goths had gained fame from the legend that the god Mars had been born among
them, while several other Gothic heroes supposedly descended from Hercules.66
The strong emphasis on military skills and prowess, however, was not the only
characteristic which endeared the Goths to later European historiography and
national literature, most aptly expressed in baroque Germany in Lohenstein's and
Gryphius's anti-French Arminius dramas. It was what Jordanes had written about
the deep religiosity, the wisdom and the honest simplicity of their lifestyle,
which made them superior to the 'corrupt Romans' who were identified in
seventeenth-century Germany with the French enemy. In the forefront of the
pro-Gothic literature that began to flourish in Europe during the Renaissance
and the baroque periods were the Swedes, who exploited Jordanes's extravagant
claim that Scanzia, the Gothic homeland, was the cradle of all nations: 'quasi
officina gentium, aut certe velut vagina nationum'.67
The popularity of Gothic mythology reached its first climax during the Swedish
Reformation in the debate between the Catholic Magnus brothers, the Lutheran
Vasa dynasty and its court historians, each side trying to establish its
politically and religiously correct descent from their Gothic forefathers.68
With the Reformation victorious, the independent Gothic heritage changed its
connotations. As the Lutheran confessionalisation of the country progressed, the
dynasty's historical legitimacy and power had to be asserted against rival
aristocrats and a suspicious rural population. To overcome the internal and
external reluctance to recognise Vasa monarchical rule, a Protestant version of
the Gothic myth proved highly useful. It was no coincidence that Johannes
Magnus's Latin History of All Goths and Vandals of 1554 was published in Swedish
in 1611, the year when Gustav II Adolf became king of Sweden. The book not only
provided the justification for a long genealogy of Vasa kings whose names were
attached to high numerators of dubious validity, including Erik XIV and Charles
IX, but enabled Gustav Adolf to identify with the expansionist designs of the
mythical Gothic king Berik, who united his people behind him and conquered the
Baltic regions.69 Although strict Lutheran ism rejected chiliastic ideas,
seventeenth-century Pietism carried deterministic notions into Sweden. Gustav
Adolf's sobriquet, the 'Lion of the North', was taken directly from the four
books of Ezra, prophesying the coming of the end of the world in the time of the
fourth world monarchy, the time of eternal peace.70 This image of the Swedish
Lutheran saviour-liberator, aptly promoted by the Swedes during their
involvement in the Thirty Years War but barely believed in the cities of Prussia
targeted by Gustav Adolf's armies after 1626, struck a chord similar to the
last-emperor ideology of Joachim of Fiore and other chiliastic thinkers.
It was not just Sweden which was affected by the Gothic myth, which travelled in
the baggage of the invading Swedish armies that spread Swedish domination across
the Baltic after 1621. In particular Livonia, conquered by Sweden in the 1620s
and Pomerania, which was partitioned in 1648 at the peace of Westphalia between
Sweden and Brandenburg, became outposts of Gothic mythology. Jordanes's theory
that the Goths came from Scandinavia and settled on the mainland, subjugated the
Germanic Vandals and drove a conquering path eastward into the territories of
the Scyths and Sarmatians, was eagerly picked up by Swedish historians but just
as strenuously rejected by Polish and Prussian authors.
As Erasmus Stella had done for Prussian history, so the German chronicler Albert
Krantz, who was influenced by Tacitus and the new 1515 edition of Jordanes,
effectively rehabilitated the Goths in Germany. His Vandalia, published in 1518,
became the German historiographical credo of the century. This work considered
the barbaric Germanic peoples to be the root of all Gothic-Germanic and Slavonic
nations, descending from Noah as a big family of gentes who all originated from
continental Europe. For Krantz, the Gothic-Germanic Vandals and
Slavonic-Sarmatian Venedi were the same people. Krantz based his idea of
Germanic Vandal-Goth unity on the old idea of a universal German monarchy the
fourth and last empire according to the biblical prophecies. This monarchy was
based on 'communis ditio (power or law) a Germania', which implies that German
law (Magdeburg and Lübeck law) spread widely in central and east central Europe.
This legal concept, rather than culture or language - 'from the river Don to the
Rhine, there are many different languages' - was central to Krantz's definition
of Germanic-Vandal hegemony.71
Stella published too early on Prussia to adopt any of these new theories
concerning the Goths, but they proved highly influential in Poland. The most
intriguing document is the history written by the Alsatian Humanist Jodocus
Ludwik Decius, a Habsburg diplomat at the court of Sigismund I, who tried to
prove the common descent of Poles and Germanic Vandals, making the German king
Tuisco the ruler of both the Poles and the Germans over an empire which
stretched from the Don to the Rhine. He interpreted the wars between both
peoples as a conflict between equal brother-nations, whose sense of honour did
not aim at one-sided domination; they fought 'for the dignity of political power
and the freedom to rule . . . and not to eliminate each other's cultures and
languages'.72 Few Polish and Lithuanian writers sympathised with this line of
interpretation. In open defiance of this Gothic-Slavic myth of cohabitation and
friendship, Jan Dl/ugosz traced the Prussians back to the Romans, the ancient
enemies of the Germanic and barbarian Goths, while historians of Lithuania, like
Augustin Rotundus, increased the Lithuanians' fame by assigning them a descent
from Roman senatorial families, to the extent that the Latin language became an
integral part of the cultural identity of the szlachta of the Grand Duchy of
Lithuania.73 With the chances of the Polish Vasas regaining the Swedish throne
steadily diminishing, the Gothic mythology receded and the Sarmatian ideology
gained ground, particularly during the Polish-Swedish wars from 1600 to 1660.
Starowolski repudiated Decius's harmonising approach and fiercely rebutted
condescending German criticism of the Commonwealth's military power and
political constitution. He wrote in his Declamatio contra obtrectatores Poloniae
in 1631 that it was not the Goths or Vandals, but the Sarmatians who had
dominated Europe for centuries. In a Europe that barely took Swedish power
seriously until the early seventeenth century the Swedes had formulated their
own myth of Gothic greatness against all odds and found unexpected ideological
support from German writers after the success of their arms in the Thirty Years
War, while Polish prestige had suffered from the Swedish invasion. In a
counterattack against the Tübingen professor Thomas Lansius, Starowolski
therefore placed the Sarmatians as rulers over Asia, Europe and Africa. With
undisguised sarcasm he asked how anyone could nowadays call those powerful
tribes 'non-militaristic, cowardly and ignorant of the art of war.'74
THE SARMATIAN COUNTER-MYTH
The Sarmatian mythological reversal turned out to be powerful. Ulewicz
discovered a copy of Schedel's Chronicon in the Jagiellonian University Library
bearing the marginal remark by a sixteenth-century hand that the Bavarians, as a
Slavonic-Sarmatian people ('because their name derives from boyars'), were part
of a Slavic realm stretching as far as the Rhine.75 But early modern Polish
authors were not content with merely turning the Gothic theory on its head. It
was easy enough to replace the Goths with the Sarmatians as the great family of
nations between the Don and the Vistula, Oder or Rhine - wherever the taste for
expansion found its limits. The Sarmatian myth, however, was not an ad-hoc
invention to counter Gothic-German or Swedish historical theories accompanying
diplomatic or military warfare, but had deep roots, like Gothic mythology, in
ancient and medieval chronicle literature.76
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, on the basis of works by Herodotus,
Juvenal, Ptolemy, Pomponius Mela and the Anonymous Gaul, the Sarmatians were
identified in early Humanist sources as Slavonic tribes which had migrated from
the Balkans or Asia Minor.77 By the second half of the sixteenth century, the
historical canon of the great Slavic-Sarmatian family which included the Poles
and their brothers, the Czechs, Ruthenians, Lithuanians, Mazovians, Prussians,
Pomeranians, and even the Croats and the Dalmatians, was firmly established. The
ground had been laid by the Polish histories of Kadl/ubek, bishop of Cracow, and
Jan Dl/ugosz (1475), and by Maciej Miechowita's history of Sarmatia (1521) and
the works of his followers.
Dl/ugosz placed greatest emphasis on the biblical formulation of the Sarmatians;
the story of Babylon and the descent of the Sarmatians from Japheth, who lived
in Pannonia and the Carpathian mountains, continued to influence most chronicles
over the following two centuries.78 The legendary founder of the Polish nation
was Lech, which explained why many foreigners called the Poles Lechitae. Maciej
Miechowita's main merit was to transfer the notion of a faraway country called
Sarmatia to Poland-Lithuania and to give it a fixed place on the central
European map. His concept of a European and an Asian Sarmatia established
great-power status for the Poles' mythical homeland and their historical
identity, overcoming - as the Germans did with the help of Tacitus - the stigma
of obscurity and barbarity. Still a vague concept during the first half of the
sixteenth century, by the first interregnum in 1572-3 the Sarmatian theory was
already influencing the Polish-Lithuanian nobility's political agenda. The
expressions Polonus, Poloni were frequently replaced by Sarmata, Sarmatae.
Outside Poland, foreigners started to acknowledge the identity of the Sarmatian
Poles, like Melanchthon in his 1558 letter De ongine gentis Henetae, Polonicae
seu Sarmaticae.
The culture of Sarmatism has usually been accused of breeding xenophobia,
narrow-minded chauvinism or plain expansionism. The development of a
Polish-Sarmatian superiority-complex has been blamed for the decline or even
collapse of Polish culture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.7'
One of the voices considered representative of this megalomania belonged to the
republican writer Stanisl/aw Orzechowski, himself of Ruthenian origin and a
convert to Catholicism from Protestantism: 'Let it be known that Lithuania
cannot be equal to the Polish crown, nor can any Lithuanian, be he the most
important and famous, equal the most lowly Pole - Lithuanian-born, you spend
your life under the yoke - but I, as a Pole, like an eagle unbound under my
king, fly freely.'80
Although Polish and Sarmatian have frequently been used synonymously, the
question is how other nations within the Commonwealth dealt with this ideology.
If Orzechowski excluded the Lithuanians - officially the second nation in the
republic - from the Sarmatian concept, then what degradation was in store for
the Prussians? Not all Polish writers, however, agreed with Orzechowski. Aware
of the discrepancies between social reality and the Sarmatian noble utopia, the
Warmian bishop Marcin Kromer, like Starowolski, rejected the socially exclusive
version of the Sarmatian myth, preferring to use it as a geographical
demarcation between the ancestral tribes. According to Kromer, Sarmatians
already lived between the Oder and the Don when Tacitus was taking great pains
to decide whether the tribes between the Oder and the Vistula were Germanic or
Slavonic-Sarmatian.81 Forgiving Tacitus for his ignorance, Kromer drew a sharp
line between the Germanic tribes and the Slavonic peoples at the Vistula river:
the Sarmatian Slavs, settling east of it, descended from a different branch of
Noah's large family, and therefore had no historical or cultural link with the
Germanic Vandals or other Germanic tribes.82 Kromer also turned Jordanes's
account of the Gothic immigration from Scandinavia on its head: it was not the
Germanic Goths, who, according to Tacitus, were autochthonous peoples, but the
Sarmatians who came from the North. With this reinterpretation he reconciled the
Sarmatian origin with the Swedish descent of the Vasa dynasty on the Polish
throne and set an agenda which was respected not only by historians for two
centuries to come, but also by the contemporary political establishment, as was
first demonstrated in the official recognition he received as Poland's foremost
historian by the Sejm.
Whether because of his commoner background or his involvement in Royal Prussian
political life, Kromer exerted great influence on urban Prussian historiography,
and his Sarmatian theories gained general recognition in Royal Prussia. Although
he was appointed bishop of Warmia against the wishes of the majority of the
Prussian estates, who rejected him as an aliengena83 and as an outspoken
supporter of the heavily contested incorporation of the Royal Prussian diet into
the ranks of the Polish Sejm in 1569, Prussian burgher historians frequently and
affirmatively referred to his work. Throughout the seventeenth century, he was
approvingly quoted as one of the best and most reliable historians and Polish
sources, while Joachim Pastorius recommended his Polonia in a manual for the
education of young noblemen as the most essential Polish history textbook.84
Even foreign authors who were highly critical of the Polish point of view and
the Sarmatian mythology, such as Hermann Conring and the Saxon professor Samuel
Schurtzfleisch, knew and quoted the Warmian bishop. As a Royal Prussian senator,
Kromer knew that the Prussian nobility would never have consented to being
called Poles, but that as nobles they accepted the Sarmatian myth and the
political privileges connected with it, the diets and noble courts, the free
election of the king, and the mixed form of government. This was possible
because the Sarmatian mythology was not one uniform, stereotypical concept, even
though it was sometimes used to cover up the extreme differences that
distinguished noblemen from each other in the multinational Commonwealth.
SARMATIA'S BORDERS: THE POMERANIAN-PRUSSIAN DIVIDE
In the political environment of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the
myth of the Gothic-Sarmatian family of nations must have appeared an ideal
compromise which equally reflected both the older German identity of the
Prussian estates and their new allegiance to the Sarmatian world. Indeed,
Matthaeus Praetorius, a historian from Memel (1630-1704) who left the Duchy of
Prussia to convert to Catholicism, constructed a suitable Gothic-Slavic identity
for Prussia on the basis of the similarities between the Gothic, old Prussian
and Slavonic languages. His Sarmatian Goths included the Bohemians, the
Mecklenburgers, Cashubians, Prussians and the Pomeranians. For his work he was
rewarded in Poland with the title historicus Serenissimae Majestatis Regiae.85
Praetorius was the only historian to distinguish between Germania and Teutonia,
a division often assumed but rarely explained by seventeenth-century historians
of Germany. Germania, according to Praetorius, stretched across all areas and
countries between the Vistula, the Oder and the Weser (Visurgis), including many
regions where Slavs and Germans had lived together, such as Magdeburg,
Brandenburg, Lüneburg and Brunswick, while Teutonia was the name for Germany
west of the Weser up to the Rhine. This distinction reflects the habit of
calling the Knights of the Prussian and Livonian order Teutonic, since they came
mainly from upper German or southwest German territories (Swabia et Allemania).
The heartland of the Sarmato-Goths, however, was in Germania, with Prussia and
Pomerania in the centre.
What was the purpose of Praetorius's efforts to set clear geographical and
historical boundaries? Did he have a political claim in mind? His mythology
provides the answer. Referring to the fake stone inscription in honour of
Bolesl/aw Chrobry which hailed the Polish king as 'athleta Christi, regnum
Slavorum, Gothorum seu Polonorum', Praetorius credited the Polish crown with the
power of ruling over the Goths, the Prussians and the Pomeranians, i.e. over
Germania.86 He did not go as far as Decius, however, who extended Sarmatian rule
to the Rhine. This Orbis Gothicus was fiercely contested by historians outside
the Commonwealth, who did not pledge their loyalty to the Polish king. The most
outspoken opponents of this thesis were Pomeranian historians whose allegiances
lay either with the Holy Roman Empire or with the Swedes, who had occupied and
successfully retained parts of Pomerania by 1648. Pomeranian historians insisted
on the clear distinction between the Germanic Goths or Vandals and the Sarmatian
Vends (Wenden, Venedi) who had both settled in Pomerania, although at different
times: Germanic Vandals had left these lands before the Slavic Vends invaded
them, which meant that the most ancient origins of Pomerania belonged to
autochthonous Germanic tribes, the same tribes that Erasmus Stella had
discovered in Tacitus.
The endeavours of Praetorius and like-minded Prussian and Polish historians to
create a locus for Prussian historical identity in the borderlands between the
Slavs and the Teutons, between the Sarmatians and the Goths, found an echo in
Micraelius's Pomeranian chronicles. Although Micraelius rejected Polish claims
that the Pomeranian territories had rightfully belonged to the Slavs since the
time of their mythical Slavic-Vendish king Wissimirus, he accepted that the
languages and the nations of Germanic Vandals and Sarmatian immigrants had mixed
and assimilated with each other, creating a specific new people and culture in
Pomerania.87 The longing to find an explanation for this past harmony in a
historical synthesis between Slavs and Germanic peoples emanates strongly from
Micraelius's treatise. At the same time he made clear where the Sarmatian roof
ended. In his first and third books on Pomerania, he showed that the
Sarmatian-Slavonic immigration was just a phase in Pomerania's history, which
passed without leaving deep traces, as the German Saxons returned and reversed
the Sarmatian fortunes in the province. Pomerania became German again.
There was even neighbourly hostility felt between Pomeranians and Prussians. The
chronicler Matthias Waissel from Ducal Prussia, whose compilation of
sixleenth-century sources and ancient literature on the Goths and the Sarmatians
contains a useful collection of historical references, pointed to the conflict
that arose from the annexation of Pomerelia (Eastern Pomerania) by the Teutonic
Knights, a province originally independent of Prussia.88 Reinhold Curicke from
Danzig expressed his pride in his descent from Pomerelia, not from Prussia, and
boasted that the Pomerelians were more peaceful and cultured than the savage
pagan Prussians, who took so much military persuasion to be converted to
Christianity, unlike the Pomerelians, who became Christians more quickly.89 The
clearest reference to this rivalry is made by Egidius van der Mylen, who alludes
to the 'hatred which was caused by the oppression inflicted on the neighbouring
Vends by the German nation'. According to this author, the nobility of Pomerania
was mostly of Saxon-German origin, although some Slavic families remained. Among
the Pomeranian chroniclers only Martin Rango adopts a conciliatory tone in
referring to the identical origin of Vandals and Vends, who had overcome their
hatred for each other by unanimously accepting German (Vandal) culture and
language.90
Historians in Swedish pay took a different view. Samuel Schurtzfleisch
considered the Swedes the 'Greeks of the North', who joined the Germanic battle
against Sarmatians (Catholic Poles) and the corrupt Romans (the emperor, the
Pope, and the Catholic princes during the Thirty Years War).91 While recognising
the Prussian claim to be a separate nation ('vetus natio, orti sunt ex Slavis'),
Schurtzfleisch denied this status to the Pomeranians, who descended 'ex
Vandalis', from the Germanic Goths. Like Micraelius, Schurtzfleisch agrees that
the Pomeranians turned German again after a Slavonic intermezzo; they stopped
speaking a Slavonic language after 1404.92 The fact that the last duke of
Pomerania, Bogusl/aw XIV, had died only three years before Micraelius's
publication, leaving Pomerania to the fortunes of war, was probably the decisive
influence behind this insistence on the German historical link. Micraelius
emphasised strongly that the recently extinct Pomeranian dynasty had never had
blood relatives among the Polish kings, despite close cultural and linguistic
ties with Poland. These Slavic links were now broken, and the Pomeranians had
'rejected the Slavic language entirely, declaring themselves Saxons under the
authority of the Holy Roman Empire'.93 This statement provides the key to
Micraelius's idea of the Pomeranian nation. Not part of the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, and no longer under their own dynasty, Pomerania must fall back on
the Holy Roman Empire. German traditions returned, and together with them came
the political allegiance to the emperor. There was a need, therefore, for the
Pomeranians to call themselves German or Saxon again, a condition that did not
apply to the Prussians, who were members of the Sarmatian nation under the
umbrella of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Polish crown. They had no
reason to identify with Germans. Ethnic origins yielded to political allegiance:
the Sarmatian roof ended where German imperial power started.
The Pomeranian nobleman van der Mylen was even more explicit: after forsaking
its political independence and its past glory with the death of the last
hereditary ruler of the Pomeranian dynasty, Pomerania had to suffer renewed
subjection to the Saxons and the Empire, as well as partition by Sweden and
Brandenburg in 1648.94 Rejecting Schurtzfleisch's view of Pomerania's purely
German character, van der Mylen asserts that the noble families (many of whom
were of Slavic origin) and the mixed form of government with its privileges for
the estates had once formed the essence of the Pomeranian nation. His
description of such a political nation is very reminiscent of the
Polish-Sarmatian mythology of noble freedoms, and it comes therefore closest to
the idea of the nation that we find among Prussians and other nations (including
the Polish) in the Commonwealth.95
The core of the disagreement between Pomeranians and Prussians concerned their
differing attitude towards the Holy Roman Empire. Pomeranian historians accepted
and identified with imperial rule, whereas the Prussians rejected it. While
Pomeranians, Brandenburgers, Lusatians, Saxons and other peoples in the Empire
divided their national consciousness into a German (and imperial) identity on
the one hand, and an identification with their own territory (Landesbewußtsein)
on the other, the Prussians had no reason to assume a German identity.96
Although they would not deny their ancestors' descent from German families, who
had either immigrated or mixed with pagan Prussian families, they, unlike the
Pomeranians, identified neither with the German nation nor with the Empire.
Instead, in accommodating the Sarmatian myth with their own historical identity,
the Prussians accepted Sarmatian citizenship not by becoming Poles but by
associating themselves with the constitution and the political system of the
Commonwealth. This construction produced a rhetorical tool actively used by
Prussian burghers and urban elites in particular in their fight for recognition
as fully-privileged citizens under the power of the Polish crown. Historical
mythology therefore became the powerful basis of a Prussian burgher vision of
Sarmatian history and self-definition, often used to counter their exclusion
from citizenship, which the majority of the Polish nobility interpreted against
them. Anyone who would listen, particularly other nations represented in the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, received this message: we are Sarmatian
Prussians, not subjects but free men and citizens.
...
1 Quoted by Harold Berman, Law and Revolution. The Formation of the Western
Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Mass : Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 558.
2 'Nescire autem, quid antequam natus sis, acciderit; id est semper esse
puerum', quoted by the Polish historian Szymon Starowolski, Simonis Starovolsci
Penu Historicum seu de dextra et fructuosa ratione Historians legendi
Commentarius (Venice: Zenarii Haeredes, 1620), p 19.
3 Jacqueline Glomski, 'Erasmus and Cracow, 1510-1530', Yearbook of the Erasmus
of Rotterdam Society 17(1997), 1-18.
4 Wl/adysl/aw Pniewski, Je,zyk polski w dawnych szkol/ach gdan´skich (Gdan´sk:
Towarzystwo Przyjaciól/ Nauki i Sztuki, 1938), p. 14; Pawlak, Studia
uniwersyteckie, table 6.
5 For example the curriculum of 1688, Catalogus Lectionum et Operarum Publicarum
in Athenaeo Gedanensi hoc cursu annuo expendiendarum proposito Januario ineunte
(Danzig: in Atheneo), which offered a course by Joachim Hoppe, history professor
in Danzig, on 'Historiam nonnullorum Regnorum publice in Jure Institutiones
Juris Civilis & Canonici' (paragr. 2).
6 Janina Freilichówna, Ideal/ wychowawczy Szlachty Polskiej w XVI i XVII wieku
(Warsaw: Nakl/adem Naukowego Towarzystwa Pedagogicznego, 1938), p. 68;
Stanisl/aw Tync, Dzieje Gimnazjum Torun´skiego, 2 vols, vol. II: 1600-1660,
Roczniki TNT no. 53 (Torun´: TNT, 1949), pp. 82-3.
7 Ephraim Praetorius, 'Kirchen-Sachen', KM 130, p. 272.
8 Pastorius started his career as a Calvinist with Arian sympathies, but ended
his life a canon at Frauenburg (Frombork): Ad nobihum Adolesc[entem] Sigismundum
de Linda, Magntfici & Nobili 1 111 Adriani de Linda Burgrabii & Praeco[n]s[uli]
Dant[iscani] Filium Epistola, de recte eloquentia Romanae studio (Danzig: Georg
Rhetii, 1649), p. 327; Lech Mokrzecki, 'Dyrektor Gimnazjum Elbla,skiego Joachim
Pastorius (1652-1654) i jego pogla,dy na historie,', Rocznik Elbla,ski 4 (1969),
50.- 83.
9 'An expediat Polonis habere civitates munitas, respondetur affirmative'
(1684),Ossol. 1552/I, p. 117
10 Stanisl/aw Salmonowicz, 'Nauczanie prawa i polityki w Torun´skim Gimnazjum
Akademickim od XVI do XVIII wieku'. Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne 23 (1991),
53-85.
11 Lech Mokrzecki, 'Zainteresowanie historyczne Jerzego Wendego, rektora
Gimnazjum Akademickiego w Toruniu 1695-1705', in Zdrójkowski, Zbigniew (ed.),
Ksie,ga Pamia,tkowa 400-lecia Torun´skiego Gimnazjum, vol. I: XVI-XVIIIw.,
(Torun´: TNT, 1992), p. 338.
12 Lech Mokrzecki, Studium z dziejów nauczania historii, Wydzial/ nauk
spol/ecznych i humanistycznych 46 (Gdan´sk: GTN, 1973), pp. 81, 87, 132-3.
13 Michael Mylius, Exequiae Ill[ustrissimi] D[omini] D[omini] Magni Ernesti
Comitis a Dönhof, Palatini Parnaviensis Torpat[ensis] Praefecti Elb[ingensis]
(Elbing: Bodenhausen, 1642), folio A2.
14 Ibid., folio A4V.
15 Gottfried Zamehl, Studiosus Apodemicus, sive de peregrinationibus studiosorum
Discursus Politicus (Leiden: Jacobi Köhleri, 1651), preface and pp. 77-8.
16 The appointment was for a pastor's position in the new town of Thorn, in
1671; Praetorius, KM 130, p. 172.
17 Joachim Pastorius, Orationes duae quarum prima inaugurates de praeceosis
Historiae Autoribus altera de potissimis eiusdem argumentis agit (Elbing:
Corell, 1651-2), folio Ev.
18 Salmonowicz, 'Nauczanie prawa', 54-6; also Klaus Neumaier, Jus Publicum.
Studium zur barocken Rechtsgelehrsamkeit an der Universität Ingolstadt, Ludovico
Maximilianea Forschungen 6 (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1974), pp. 13-15, and
Notker Hammerstein, Jus and Historie. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des
historischen Denkens an deutschen Universitäten im späten 17. und im 18.
Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1972), pp. 72-6.
19 Adrian von der Linde, 'Beschreibung der Pohlen Art und Policey' (Bibl. PAN
Gd. Nl 27.4, no. 9); David Braun, De jurium regnandi fundamentalium in Regno
Poloniae (Cologne: Theodor Brabeus, 1722); Andreas Baumgarten, De majestate
principis (Thorn: Coepselius, 1686); Martin Böhm, Commentarius de Interregnis in
Regno Poloniae (Thorn: Nicolai, 1733), and numerous dissertations by the
students of Hartknoch (see bibliography). On the use of republican concepts in
the seventeenth century, see Wilfried Nippel, 'Bürgerideal und Oligarchie.
"Klassischer Republikanismus" aus althistorischer Sicht', in Koenigsberger
(ed.), Republiken und Republikanismus, pp. 17-18.
20 Hammerstein, Jus und Historie, p. 101; similarly, Kazimierz Kocot, Nauka
prawa narodów w Ateneum Gdan´skim, 1580-1793, Seria A, no. 97 (Wrocl/aw:
Wrocl/awskie Towarzystwo Nauk, 1965), p. 105.
21 Eco O. G. Haitsma Mulier, The Myth of Venice and Dutch Republican Thought in
the Seventeenth Century (Van Gorcum Assen, 1980), p. 3.
22 Kurt Johannesson, The Renaissance of the Goths in Sixteenth-Century Sweden
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), p. 82.
23 Notable are the chronicles Batavia by Hadrianus Junius (Adriaen de Jonghe,
1511-1575) and Cornelius Aurelius' Divisiekroniek (1510) on the mythical
Batavian king Bato, or the Batavian hero Claudius Civilis, who successfully
fought the tyrannical Roman governor of Emperor Nero, Vitellus.
24 Roger A. Mason, 'Chivalry and Citizenship. Aspects of National Identity in
Renaissance Scotland', in Mason, Roger A. and MacDougall, Norman (eds.), People
and Power in Scotland. Essays in Honour of T.C. Smout, (Edinburgh: John Donald,
1992), p. 51
25 Kenneth Schellhase, Tacitus in Renaissance Political Thought (Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. xiii.
26 Elzbieta Sarnowska-Temeriusz, S´wiat mitów i s´wiat znaczen´. Maciej K.
Sarbiewski i problemy wiedzy 0 staroz.ytnos´ci (Warsaw: PAN, 1969), pp. 93-4,
109; see also Johannesson, Renaissance, p. 78, and Hans-Werner Goez, 'Die
Gegenwart der Vergangenheit im früh- und hochmittelalterlichen
Geschichtsbewußtsein', Historische Zeitschrift 255 (1992), 66-8.
27 Johannesson, Renaissance, p. 83.
28 Werner Goez, Translatio Imperil (Tubingen: Mohr, 1958), p. 365; Johannesson,
Renaissance, p. 243.
29 Johann Philippi (Sleidanus), De quattuor summis imperiis On Prussia see Udo
Arnold, 'Geschichtsschreibung im Preußenland bis zum Ausgang des 16.
Jahrhunderts', Jahrbuch fiir die Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 19
(1970), 83-7.
30 Caspar Schutz, Historia Rerum Prussicarum Wahrhaffte und eigentliche
Beschreybung (Danzig: Groß, 1599), preface; Karl Kletke, Quellenkunde der
Geschichte des Preußischen Staates: Die Quellenschriftsteller zur Geschichte des
Preußischen Staates, vol. I (Danzig and Berlin: Schroder, 1858), pp. 73-157;
Gottfried Centner, Gelehrte und Geehrte Thorner (Thorn: Bergmann, 1763).
31 Emil Menke-Gluckert, Die Geschichtsschreibung der Reformation und
Gegenreformation. Bodin und die Begrundung der Geschichtsmethodologie durch
Barthel Keckermann (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1912), pp. 124-5.
32 Rösner, 'Lectiones publicae habitae in celebri Gymnasio Thoruniensi Ao 1676
et 1677 et 1678', KM 40, R 4° 16, pp. 22-3.
33 Menke-Glückert, Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 130-2.
34 Starowolski, Penu Historicum, p. 4.
35 Joachim Cureus, Newe Chromica des Herzogthumbs Ober und Nieder Schlesien
Wahrhafte und grüntliche Beschreibung (Eißleben: Rätel, 1601), p. ii.
36 Walter Hubatsch, 'Zur altpreußischen Chronistik des 16. Jahrhunderts',
Archivalische Zeitschrift (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Munich), 50/51 (1955),
429. This idea is best reflected in the German concept of Landesgeschichte; see
Pankraz Fried, Probleme und Methoden der Landesgeschichte (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978).
37 Keckermann, quoted by Zamehl in Studiosus Apodemicus, p. 84.
38 Joachim Pastorius, Florus Poloniae seu Polonicae Historiae Epitome Nova
(Leiden: F. Heger, 1641), and Hartknoch, Respublica Polonica duobus libris
illustrata (Lipsiae: Hallervorden, 1678).
39 A similar diary, also from 1655, is Andreas Baumgarten's 'Stammbuch', APT
Kat. II, XII.12: 'in this highly unhappy and most afflicted state in which our
fatherland finds itself, I sign, Matthias Stanislaus Grodzki, Polish nobleman'
(p. 195).
40 Henryk Barycz, Andrzej Maksimilian Fredro wobec zagadnien´ wychowawczych
(Cracow: PAU, 1949), pp. 51-2.
41 Steven C Rowell, Lithuania Ascending. A Pagan Empire within East-Central
Europe, 1295-1345 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 38-41.
42 Petri de Dusburg Ordinis Teutonici Sacerdotis Chronuon Prussiae, cum Anonymi
cujusdam Continuatione, aliisque Antiquitatibus Prussicis C[hristoph] Hartknoch
e MSS codicibus recemuit notisque illustravit (Frankfurt and Leipzig
Hallervordi, 1679, 2nd edn, Jena. Nisius, 1679), see Max Toppen, Geschichte der
preußischen Historiographie von Dusburg bis auf Schutz (Berlin: Verlag Wilhelm
Hertz, 1853), p. 9.
43 Arnold, 'Geschichtsschreibung', p. 83
44 Hubatsch, 'Zur altpreußischen Chronistik', pp 420-62, and
'Deutschordenschroniken im Weichselland', Ostdeutsche Monatshefte 22 (1956),
713-18
45 Arnold, 'Geschichtsschreibung', p 79
46 Simon Grunau, 'Preußische Chronik', in Die preußischen Geschichtsschreiber
des 16. und 17. Jahrhunilals, vols I-III (Leipzig. Duncker und Humblot,
1876-1896).
47 David Braun, De Scriptorum Poloniae et Prussiae Historicorum, Politicorum &
J[uris] C[onsul]torum (Elbing: Bannehr, 1723), p 247, Wippermann, Der
Ordensstaat, p 76.
48 Heide, 'Archiwum Vetus et Novum Ecclesiae Heilsbergensis ex variis Historiae
Prussicae Scriptoribus', ADWO H.37, p.8.
49 Kurze und wahrhafftige Beschreibung des Landes zu Preußen (Königsberg: Georg
Osterbergern, 1584), pp. 19f. Similarly, Murinius's Polish chronicle, Kronika
albo krótkie z kronik rozmaitych zebranie spraw (1582), ed. K. W. Wójcicki,
Biblioteka staroz.ytna pisarzy polskich 4 (Warsaw: n.pub., 1844), p. 10; there
is also a new edition, ed. Zenon Nowak, Kronika Mistrzów Pruskich (Olsztyn:
Wydawnictwo Pojezierze, 1989).
50 Schutz, Historia, continued from 1525 to 1598 by David Chytraeus.
51 Schutz quotes approvingly from the speech of von Baysen, the governor of
Prussia, against the Teutonic Knights during the rebellion of 1454 (edition of
1599, pp. 199-199v).
52 For example the work of Jan Dl/ugosz and Wincent Kadlubko, and from the early
sixteenth century, Maciej Miechowita's work on Sarmatia, De Duabus Sarmatiis
Asiana et Europaeana (Cracow: Vietor, 1517); see Tadeusz Ulewicz, Sarmacja.
Studium z Problematyki sl/owian´skiej w XV i XVI wieku (Cracow: Biblioteka
Studium Sl/owian´skiego U.J., 1950), pp. 53ff.
53 'Franken, Schwaben, Baierart, dem Lande Preußen nicht gut ward'; Toppen,
Geschichte, p. 102
54 Udo Arnold, Studien zur preußischen Historiographie des 16. Jahrhunderts
(Bonn Bad-Godesberg: Wissenschaftliches Archiv, 1967), p. 99 and Kletke,
Quellenkunde, pp. 93-4.
55 Toppen, Geschichte, p. 100.
56 Erasmi Stellae Libonothani De Borussiae Antiquitatibus libri duo (Basel:
Johannes Frobenius, 1518); Arnold, Studien, p. 118.
57 Sonia Brough, The Goths and the Concept of Gothic in Germany from 1500 to
1750. Culture, Language and Architecture, Mikrokosmos 17 (Frankfurt, Bern, New
York: Peter Lang, 1985), p. 56.
58 Hartknoch quotes Dusburg in Altes- und Neues Preußen, preface.
59 Benedykt Zientara, 'S´wiadomos´c´ narodowa w Europie Zachodniej w
s´redniowieczu. Powstanie i mechanizmy zjawiska', in Gieysztor, A. and Gawlas,
S. (eds.), Pan´stwo, Naród, Stany w S´wiadomos´ci Wieków S´rednich, Pamie,ciu B.
Zientary 1929-1983 (Warsaw: PWN, 1990), pp. 11-26; also Paul Joachimsen,
Geschichtsauffassung und Geschichtsschreibung in Deutschland unter dem Einfluß
des Humanismus, vol. I (Leipzig, Berlin: Teubner, 1910), and Ulewicz, Sarmacja,
pp. 25-6.
60 The other two sons were Pomesanus and Galingius, the two other old Prussian
territorial names. The remaining regions in Prussia were then named after the
grandsons of Waidewutus and Prutenus: Warmia, Natangia, Sudavia, etc.; Stella,
De Borussiae, chapter II and pp. 29-30.
61 Ibid., pp. 24-5.
62 According to Rowell, Dusburg had already used the example of the pagan
Lithuanian 'noble savages' to criticise the Roman church; Rowell, Lithuania, pp.
39-40; also Johannesson, Renaissance, p. 87.
63 Hartknoch emphasized that there were Swedes 'who at the court of king
Sigismund were not men of little learning'; De Originibus Gentium Prussicarum
Dissertatio III (Königsberg: Reusner, 1679), p. 45.
64 For example, Johannes Messenius, Genealogia Sigismundi Tertii (1608); see
Oskar Garstein, Rome and the Counter-Reformation in Scandinavia. Jesuit
Education Strategy 1553-1622 (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp), xxiv, xliif.
65 Else-Lilly Etter, Tacitus in der Geistesgeschichte des 16. und 17.
Jahrhunderts (Basel and Stuttgart: von Helbing and Lichtenhahn, 1966).
66 Brough, The Goths, p. 21.
67 'Chronica Iordani Episcopi Ravennatis civitatis, de origine ac vocabulis
Gentis Gothorum edita ad Castalium, sumptaque ex auctoribus', in Variarum libri
XII & Chronicon ad Theodoricum Regem (Lyon: J. Chouet, 1595), chapter 13.
68 Brough, The Goths, p. 24 and Johannesson, Renaissance, pp. 78-87 and 126-7.
69 Ringmar, Identity, pp. 157-60.
70 Pentti Laassonen, 'Die Anfänge des Chiliasmus im Norden', Pietismus und
Neuzeit 19 (1993), 22-4, 27.
71 Albertus Krantz, Vandalia (Cologne: L. Soter alias Heil et Socii, 1519),
prooemium; see also Ulewicz, Sarmacja, p. 134. 72 Ulewicz, Sarmacja, pp.
71-3.
73 Maria Baryczowa, 'Augustyn Rotundus Mieleski - pierwszy historyk a apologeta
Litwy', in Z dziejów Polskiej kultury umysl/owej w XVI i XVII wieku (Cracow and
Warsaw: PAN, 1976), and Jerzy Ochman´ski, 'The national idea in Lithuania from
the 16th to the first half of the 19th century: The problem of
cultural-linguistic differentiation', Harvard Ukrainian Studies 10 (1986), 304.
74 'Mowa przeciw oczczercom Polski', in Wybór z pism, Biblioteka Narodowa seria
I, no. 272 (Wroclaw: Zakl/ad Ossolin´skich, 1991), p. 187.
75 Ulewicz, Sarmacja, p. 78.
76 Ulewicz, Sarmacja, p. 17; Stanisl/aw Cynarski, 'Sarmatyzm - ideologia i styl
z.ycia', in Tazbir, Janusz (ed.), Polska XVII wieku. Pan´stwo, spol/eczen´stwo,
kultura (Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna, 1974), pp 269-95; Tadeusz Man´kowski,
Genealogia Sarmatyzmu Polskiego (Warsaw: PWN, 1946); Wieslaw Müller, 'Epoka
baroku i sarmatyzmu', in Kl/oczowski, Jerzy (ed.), Uniwersalizm i swoistos´c´
kultury polskiej, vol. I (Lublin: KUL, 1989), pp. 217-40.
77 Ulewicz, Sarmacja, pp. 4-6.
78 Stanisl/aw Cynarski, 'Uwagi nad problemem recepcji Historii Jana Dl/ugosza w
Polsce XVI i XVII wieku', in Dlugossiana - Studia historyczne w pie,csetlecie
s´mierci Jana Dl/ugosza (Cracow, Warsaw: PWN, 1980), pp. 281-90, esp. p. 286;
Urszula Borkowska, 'Uniwersalizm i regionalizm w Rocznikach Jana Dl/ugosza', in
Uniwersalizm i regionalizm w kronikarstwie Europy s´rodkowo-Wschodniej (Lublin:
Instytut Europy S´rodkowo-Wschodniej, 1996), pp. 7-26 (with English summary).
79 Cynarski, 'Sarmatyzm', p 277, Tazbir, 'Ksenofobia w Polsce', passim, and
Salmonowicz, 'Prusy Królewskie i Ksia,z.e,ce', p 71
80 Stanisl/aw Orzechowski, Quincunx (Cracow L/asarz Andrysowicz, 1564), quoted
by Cynarski, 'Sarmatyzm', p 275
81 Tacitus, De Germania, XLVI
82 Poloniae sive de situ, populis, moribus, magistratibus et respublica regni
Poloniae libri duo (1575), ed. Wiktor Czermak (Cracow. Gebethner 1 Wolff, 1901),
p 11, see also Kromer, De origine et rebus gestis, p. 2
83 See chapter 2 above, pp 34-5
84 Braun, De scriptorum Poloniae, p 33, Pastorius, Palaestra Nobilium, p 347
85 Orbis Gothicus, id est Historica Narratio omnium fere Gothici nominis
populorum qua simul Gothicae Sarmaticae acceptam debere et originem (Oliwa:
Textor, 1688), pp. 19ff, 37; Kurt Forstreuter, 'Matthaeus Praetorius', in
Krollmann, Christian (ed.), Altpreußische Biographie, vol. II (Marburg:
Herder-Institut, 1967), p. 517.
86 Praetorius, Orbis Gothicus, p. 100.
87 Johannes Micraehus, Altes Pommernland, teutsch, wendisch, sachsisch, nebenst
Historischer Erzehlung dero in Nahigsten Dreißig Jahren biß auff des letzten
Hertzogen Bogislai XIV Todt, in Pommern vorgegangenen Geschichten (Old Stettin:
Georg Rheten, 1640), book I, pp. 16,140-2,161; books I and II are respectively
dedicated to the Gothic Vandals and the Sarmatian Vends
88 Matthias Waissel, Chronica alter Preußischer, Liffländischer und
Curländischer Historien von dem Lande Preussen und seiner Gelegenheit
(Königsberg: Osterbergern, 1599), p. 5.
89 Reinhold Curicke, Der Stadt Dantzig Historische Beschreibung (Amsterdam and
Danzig: Johann and Gillis Janssons von Waesberge, 1687), part I, chapter 2, and
Micraelius, Altes Pommerland, vol. II, p. 241.
90 Egidii van der Mylen viri Nob[ili], 'Antiqua Pomeranorum Respublica', in
Rango, Martin, Pomerania diplomatica sive de antiquitates Pomeranicae
(Frankfurt: Renisch, 1707) vol. III, p. 80; Rango, Martin, Diplomata quaedam
vetusta Pomeraniae Antiquitates quam maxime illustrantia, in Pomerania
diplomatica, p. 14.
91 Konrad Samuel Schurtzfleisch, Res Sueo-Gothicas recensebunt Conradus Samuel
Schurtzfleisch & Johannes Bering (Wittenbergae: Schrodteri, 1678), paragr. 2.
92 Konrad Samuel Schurtzfleisch, Dissertatio de origine Pomeranorum (Wittenberg:
Schrodter, 1673), folio A2v-A3; Konrad Samuel Schurtzfleisch and Daniel
Tesmarus, Origmes Pomeranicas (Wittenberg: Schrodter, 1673), pp 8, 23-4.
93 Micraelius, Altes Pommerland, vol. II, p. 208 and vol. III, p 305.
94 Mylen, 'Antiqua', in Rango, Pomerania diplomatica, vol. III, p 84.
95 Ibid., pp. 238-9.
96 Rainer Christoph Schwinges, '"Primäre" und "sekundäre" Nation,
Nationalbewußtsein und sozialer Wandel im mittelalterlichen Böhmen', in
Grothusen, Klaus-Detlev and Zernack, Klaus (eds.), Europa Slavica - Europa
Ortentalls. Festschrift für Herbert Ludat (Berlin. Duncker and Humblot, 1980),
pp 490-532'
Note that Friedrich, like a good historian should today, considers all the
contents of that old historiographical discussion as fabrication, or at best as
factually irrelevant. In the introiduction, she quotes from
Ernest Renan, 'Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?':
'The essence of a nation is that all individuals have a lot of things in common,
but also that they have eliminated many things from their collective memory.
Forgetting, and, I would say, historical error are an essential factor in the
creation of a nation, and thus the advances of historical study are often
threatening to a nationality.'
Note the characteristic sentence above:
'The idea that the Baltic peoples, including Lithuanians, Livonians, Samogitians
(from Z.mudz´) and Prussians, were all one nation (una gens), had already been a
commonplace in Dusburg's work in the fourteenth century.'
Unfortunately for the general domestic peace of the humanistic sciences,
Linguistics has decided that that 'idea' is true (minus Livonian, of course).
Problems of that type means linguist get a lot of well-intended advice from
historians to shut up about the historical implications of their hard-gained
knowledge because 'we can't know that'.
Cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Szlachta
Torsten
From: Torsten <tgpedersen@...> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com Sent: Tue, February 9, 2010 5:15:25 AM Subject: [tied] Re: Nordwestblock, Germani, and Grimm's law
> > > Wrong, *kaN-t-. And there was no professional military. The
> > > society was the army was the society, as in to a certain extent
> > > until recently in Turkey and some Latin American countries.
> > A meaning attested anywhere at all, or made up by you?
>
> In Latin America, the army has traditionally been the scourge of
> society, more like an anti-society or a legalized mafia.
You forget that all governments are mafias and all governments are mafias, distinguished only by the ideological justification of governments, which is what European pagan kings etc sought in conversion to Christianity. Also, there is the ethnic aspect in that division in Latin America, at least in its origin, which means that 'the law' is only the law of the ruling class. North America has with its different policy towards the original population, or else the attitude of the immigrants towards manual labor on the land, marginalizing the natives, whichever theory one prefers, had a law that was recognized, at least in principle, by the whole population. But, demographically, it's getting there.
> It's been a
> lumpen-based organization, one of the few means by which outcasts
> could accrue wealth, at least until the rise of the drug cartels
I translate that to mean that deciding to work for the government was interpreted as a betrayal of one's own community. Am I right?
Torsten
Military-based governments, yes, because they often sought to replace the old oligarchy with a new military caudillo system. And to be an honest politician would be a betrayal of the oligarchy --e.g. Salvador Allende.
In Latin America, the army has either been at the beck and call of the land-owning and factory-owning elite or it has risen up to replace them with counter-oligarchies.
Interestingly enough, with the rise of "democracy" -i.e. popularly elected semi-transparent governments on a very short leash (demodura--as Eduardo Galeano calls them), drug cartels have truly gotten out of control. Under the military thug-ocracies, drug-trafficking was given a minimal space.
> > > Wrong, *kaN-t-. And there was no professional military. The
> > > society was the army was the society, as in to a certain extent
> > > until recently in Turkey and some Latin American countries.
> > A meaning attested anywhere at all, or made up by you?
>
> In Latin America, the army has traditionally been the scourge of
> society, more like an anti-society or a legalized mafia.
You forget that all governments are mafias and all governments are mafias,
distinguished only by the ideological justification of governments, which is
what European pagan kings etc sought in conversion to Christianity. Also, there
is the ethnic aspect in that division in Latin America, at least in its origin,
which means that 'the law' is only the law of the ruling class. North America
has with its different policy towards the original population, or else the
attitude of the immigrants towards manual labor on the land, marginalizing the
natives, whichever theory one prefers, had a law that was recognized, at least
in principle, by the whole population. But, demographically, it's getting there.
> It's been a
> lumpen-based organization, one of the few means by which outcasts
> could accrue wealth, at least until the rise of the drug cartels
I translate that to mean that deciding to work for the government was
interpreted as a betrayal of one's own community. Am I right?
Torsten
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" wrote:
[...]
>> (corresponding to Old Japanese words in -e with compounds in
>> -a-)).
> Are you bringing this up as a parallel or as some sort of a
> Ural-Altaic scenario?
Sean has previously said that '[a]ll known languages not currently
classified as IE are actually from one branch of IE: Indo-Iranian'.
<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62316>
Brian
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@ wrote:
< *so:-ma: is certainly not "nearly certain" in the sense of being the accepted
option, nor in the sense of being problemless (no regular process based on this
etymology explains the final *-i, and Finland Proper is not particularly
swampy).
> > The stem is Suoma-, and several Finnish words ending in -i have stems with
-a- (this is because of an old nom -y
> No, words from *-Vj have stems with -i- (but may derive from a root in -a,
which I suppose you meant).
That's not what I meant. The nom. of a-stems was -a-j, the acc. -a-m, etc.
For example, all words ending in -mpi '-er' have stems in -mpa-. Analogy got
rid of the alt. in most words (in either direction). The analogy you suggest in
suoma-lainen seems unlikely considering my explanation exists and explains more
words (-aj > -ej > -e; analogy in most stems to all-a or all-e, -e > -i). Also,
some Finnish words in -i correspond to other Uralic words that are a-stems (in
Hungarian, etc.); since there's no reason for i > a anywhere in Hungarian, as
far as I know, and there is ev. for i \ a-alt. in Finnish, I stand by my
explanation.
>
> > (corresponding to Old Japanese words in -e with compounds in -a-)).
>
> Are you bringing this up as a parallel or as some sort of a Ural-Altaic
scenario?
Broader than that.
> > The 'fenland' meaning explains the names in Gmc.
>
> An original exact correspondence between "Suomi" and "Finland" is not
required.
I didn't say it was, but since suoma-lainen means 'Finnlander' and
suo-maa-lainen would mean 'fenlander', I'm not willing to accept coincidence.
>
("Finn" appears quite a bit more widely than in this compound, which also makes
me think "fen" is not correct here.)
>
How is that ev. either way? If the Gmc languages acquired a calque of
*soo-maa at a time when its meaning hadn't been obscured by sound changes,
calling a place 'fenland' and its inh. 'fenlanders' and (by analogy after the
source and meaning were forgotten) 'fens' wouldn't be odd.
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@ wrote:
>
> > > I'd also add, if you did take Piotr's message seriously, that he once was
open to the consideration that F Suomi << Indic *ks.oom 'earth', which is
similar in its lack of certainty and its need for assumptions to my *kantli:x \
*kantla:x >> kítharis \ kithára: (in this case, I'd say the former was actually
much less likely than the latter, since F Suomi < suo + maa 'swamp land' or 'fen
land' is nearly certain).
>
Piotr also suggested that Finland is from 'pesno-' penis rather than 'fen' bog.
See here...
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/25413http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/25504
One remaining question is, would the Germanic speaking Finnish neighbours think
of the Finns as those manly ones, or those pricks?
The record on neighbours having endearing terms for each other is rather poor.
Peter P
From: Torsten <tgpedersen@...> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com Sent: Mon, February 8, 2010 3:43:06 AM Subject: Re: [tied] Vacation
--- In cybalist@yahoogroup s.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> W dniu 2010-01-28 09:28, Torsten pisze:
>
> > Be back in a week.
> >
> > Torsten.
>
> Have fun, Torsten!
>
> Piotr
Thanks, Piotr! We took my now almost habitual periplus by car around the Baltic, clockwise this time. I thought of returning our last cafe meeting in Copenhagen since Poznan´ isn't that far off, but bad planning and bad weather got in the way. For getting in the mood of a Sarmatian, nothing beats barreling down Polish two-lane highways in a blizzard in order to make up for lost time.
Torsten
Lucky you. Here in the Mid-Atlantic, Siberian took a vacation and visited us
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@ wrote:
>
> > > I'd also add, if you did take Piotr's message seriously, that he once was
open to the consideration that F Suomi << Indic *ks.oom 'earth', which is
similar in its lack of certainty and its need for assumptions to my *kantli:x \
*kantla:x >> kítharis \ kithára: (in this case, I'd say the former was actually
much less likely than the latter, since F Suomi < suo + maa 'swamp land' or 'fen
land' is nearly certain).
>
> > You seem to be tossing "nearly certain" around lightly. *so:mi < *so:-ma: is
certainly not "nearly certain" in the sense of being the accepted option, nor in
the sense of being problemless (no regular process based on this etymology
explains the final *-i, and Finland Proper is not particularly swampy).
>
>
> The stem is Suoma-, and several Finnish words ending in -i have stems with
-a- (this is because of an old nom -y
No, words from *-Vj have stems with -i- (but may derive from a root in -a, which
I suppose you meant). The stem here is however -e-. "Suomalainen" may have been
influenced by "hämäläinen", while I see no motivation for turning *soomi- into
*soome-.
(And even if we would assume *so:ma as more original, a number of contesting
etymologies still apply, of which *so:-ma: is not the least problematic.)
> (corresponding to Old Japanese words in -e with compounds in -a-)).
Are you bringing this up as a parallel or as some sort of a Ural-Altaic
scenario?
> The 'fenland' meaning explains the names in Gmc.
An original exact correspondence between "Suomi" and "Finland" is not required.
("Finn" appears quite a bit more widely than in this compound, which also makes
me think "fen" is not correct here.)
> > (Which is not to say that *ks.o:m sounds any better - but not really much
worse either. This should yield **ho:mi.
>
> That depends on when it was borrowed. ks > s could have happened at the
start of a word at any time;
Not after ruki.
Anyway, Piotr's clarification of having referred to an older *g´ho:m works
better.
John Vertical
W dniu 2010-02-07 22:40, Brian M. Scott pisze:
> Strictly speaking, it isn't needed: Celtic need only have
> remodelled *mr.to- on *gWihwos 'alive'.
Just as it was remodelled into *mr.two- in several branches.
Piotr
W dniu 2010-02-07 21:27, johnvertical@... pisze:
> (Which is not to say that *ks.o:m sounds any better - but not really
> much worse either. This should yield **ho:mi. A relationship to IE
> *gh´mo: "man" is also a proposed possibility, but with even more
> assumptions required. I consider most likely the possibility of the word
> being cognate to the self-appellations "Sami", "Häme" (both < *Sämä <
> Baltic *Zeme: "land"), probably as an erly loan from Samic.)
Just for the record, I did NOT suggest a borrowing specifically from
Indic or a porototype initial /ks./. Here is my original posting to
which, I suppose, Sean refers. Gosh, it was more than ten years ago!
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/86
Piotr
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
> W dniu 2010-01-28 09:28, Torsten pisze:
>
> > Be back in a week.
> >
> > Torsten.
>
> Have fun, Torsten!
>
> Piotr
Thanks, Piotr! We took my now almost habitual periplus by car around the Baltic,
clockwise this time. I thought of returning our last cafe meeting in Copenhagen
since Poznan´ isn't that far off, but bad planning and bad weather got in the
way. For getting in the mood of a Sarmatian, nothing beats barreling down Polish
two-lane highways in a blizzard in order to make up for lost time.
Torsten
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:
>
> > > > > > t > s is a weird consonant alternation?
>
> > > > I assume one of the transmission languages was the language
> > > > of geminates (which I assume is the same as the ar-/ur-
> > > > language), and that type of alternation is included the
> > > > defining alternations for that language.
>
> > > Also I recall the phonetically unconvincing *kunt vs. Uralic
> > > *kun´s´i "urine" vs. Baltic *ku:Si "pubic hair" (which doesn't
> > > even involve a plain *s at any point) as one "example" of this
> > > change.
> >
> > That was Schrijver; I haven't included it.
I haven't included it since I think the semantic link is a bit tenuous ("object
of the 'hunt', and fare, of the lower classes / sedentary people" > "filth").
> > > Was there ever any more?
> >
> > I hope this refreshes your memory
> > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62677
>
> I did look thru that one before posting (and now again), and I
> still see no other examples of t/s alternation.
The -ss-/-tt- alternation is from Kuhn's ar-/ur- language (see above)
http://tinyurl.com/ydr24ga
> > > > You obviously have a beef with Pokorny and Prellwitz. Please
> > > > keep me out of it.
> > >
> > > Can't do, if your approach is to appeal to "the same privilege
> > > of exemption they enjoy".
Non sequitur.
> > > And it seems that I would not grant the
> > > words YOU were referring to any "privilege of exemption".
> >
> > So if I choose a Wanderwort, you get to decide if it is?
>
> What we call them is not the point (your link to the WP article on
> "tea", "coffee" etc. just sent me off your intended meaning). But I
> do get to decide if I'm granting them any "privilege of exemption".
Whatever.
> > > > > > You misunderstand. I was pointing out that such words
> > > > > > would be irrelevant to the new concept of placing the
> > > > > > responsibility for providing a certain number of cavalry
> > > > > > on a particular group or area.
>
> > > > > Yes, that sounds fine too. But it does not seem that this
> > > > > actual specific meaning ever surfaces in the words you have
> > > > > in there.
> > > >
> > > > What specific meaning and in where? Please be more specific.
> > >
> > > "Group of civilians tasked with providing a certain number of
> > > cavalry" for *LuN-.
> >
> > Wrong, *kaN-t-.
>
> Okay. Anyway, to repeat, this does not seem to be an attested
> meaning.
Leave out the the civilian/military distinction, which is your own addition, not
mine, thus:
'group/area tasked with providing a certain number of cavalry'
and you get the meaning attested in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satakuntahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maakondhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundertschafthttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_%28county_subdivision%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drenthehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viducasseshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiocasseshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen (Veliocasses)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesse
[Dio Cassius] has the emperor fight "..." ("the Kenni, a Celtic people")]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattuariihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasuariihttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent
> > And there was no professional military.
>
> Yeah, so what?
So don't add that assumption to my proposal.
> > The society was the army was the society, as in to a certain
> > extent until recently in Turkey and some Latin American countries.
>
> You're the one who's been arguing for the existence of a basic
> semantic distinction between military (organized, *kaNt) and
> civilians (unorganized, *LuN).
No. I never said 'military' and 'civilian'. In my proposal the basic division in
society originated with different ethne of which one imposed itself on the
other, offering 'protection'. Apparently you disliked that aspect so much that
you had to redefine it and attribute that new definition to me. The *kaN-t- vs.
*LuN- definition was one of modes of command, plus the latter refers also to the
totality of society, including non-combattants.
> > > > > > > > Note that it is involved in the "long" sense.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I have no idea what you mean by that.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > Pokorny here
> > > > > > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65525
> > > > >
> > > > > A root meaning "long", so?
> > > >
> > > > A root in *dl-, which is very rare combination in PIE.
>
> > > Therefore it is tempting to consider that they have the same
> > > source (as in some substrate), but it does not follow they
> > > should have any further connection: since we are alreddy
> > > assuming this was a perfectly normal sound in our substrate,
> > > there is noproblem in having more than one root that has it.
> >
> > True. You may assume that if you want, I'll test the possibility
> > they are related.
>
> No bad in testing. But you too are assuming it was a normal
> phoneme/cluster/etc. occurring in the substrate.
Erh, okay.
> > > > > Basic vocabulary does not tend to come from sophisticated
> > > > > cultural concepts.
> > > >
> > > > That is generally assumed, and I think that's wrong.
> > > > Vocabularies abound with words having suffered a sociological
> > > > deroute.
> > >
> > > Vocabularies in general, yes. Swadesh-list-level basic
> > > vocabulary, no.
> >
> > Yes; see above.
>
> Is this in reference to your previous message?
Yes, it was. Sorry for the misleading reference.
> I see nothing of the sort there.
"eye" and "hand" are not 'Swadesh-list-level basic vocabulary'?
> > > > > I don't see you even trying to explain there how a single *L
> > > > > could yield all of *g *gl *dVl *d *l etc.
> > > > > That has to rake up some half a dozen assumptions at least.
> > > >
> > > > No assumptions, those are all documented IRL.
> > >
> > > All those substitutions are attested elsewhere, you mean? The
> > > assumptions are that this or that particular substitution
> > > happened.
> > > "Possible sound change" is still different from "sound change
> > > for which there is evidence".
> >
> > That's right, there is evidence for them elsewhere.
>
> We need corroborating evidence for the substitutions *in these
> specific languages*, or they remain assumptions.
Of course they are assumptions. I assume the sun will rise tomorrow, and likely
my assumption will turn out to be justified. But you never know.
> "Evidence elsewhere", ie. English substitutions of Welsh _ll_, is
> not relevant for that.
Is too.
> > > > > > > > So it has to do with ordered vs. unordered (single
> > > > > > > > file) march through the landscape.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > More assumptions.
> > > >
> > > > No, this is part of the proposal.
> > >
> > > Same thing. All these assumptions are part of your proposal.
> >
> > The proposal was that *Lun,- and *kam-t- were borrowed together
> > as antonyms.
>
> And you require a number of assumptions to argue for that proposal.
Assumptions are proposals are assumptions. What is your point?
> It doesn't matter for their status as assumptions which of them you
> want to hold on to and which you are willing to discard if
> something else comes along.
Of course if I choose to discard an assumption it changes its status since I
won't assume it anymore. What is your point?
> Your later comments make me suspect that this was a red herring
> anyway.
Your whole approach makes me suspect you're being willfully obstructive.
> > > > > > It's the way to do it.
> > > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching
> > > > >
> > > > > First this was supposed to refer to unordered masses, now
> > > > > it's supposed to also refer to the military too, and also
> > > > > in a specific formation this time.
> > > >
> > > > What 'this'? Which of *kaN-t- and *Lun,-?
> > >
> > > The latter, if I've stayed on track.
> >
> > I'm afraid you haven't.
>
> Okay, where AM I off the track then?
In mixing up the two.
> If we are on the derivation of "long", I do presume you're arguing
> for an origin from *LuN and not *kaNt.
I do indeed argue for an origin of "long" from *LuN and not *kaNt.
> > > You're trying to derive *LuN > "unordered group" > "marching
> > > soldiers" > "line" > "long", right?
> >
> > No, leave out the "marching soldiers".
>
> Well then; a line is not an unordered group. Very much the contrary.
This is my definition, so I get to call the shots. It is an unordered (and
un-orderly) line of people moving through the landscape.
> If you are NOT basing the argument on such an intermediate, was
> "having to do with march thru the landscape" just a diversion after
> all?
Oh, I see what you mean; it's in
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65755
'So it has to do with ordered vs. unordered (single file) march through the
landscape.'
I shouldn't have used the word 'march' here, since I later referred you to a
Wikipedia article on marching. Make that instead
'So it has to do with moving ordered vs. unordered (single file) through the
landscape.'
Torsten
At 7:28:39 PM on Sunday, February 7, 2010, stlatos wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <BMScott@...> wrote:
>> At 6:08:25 PM on Friday, February 5, 2010, stlatos wrote:
>> [...]
>>> I showed five changes; one of which ( r > ar ) is known to
>>> all, and one of which ( t. > s. ) is needed to change *
>>> mr.twos > * mar.s.wos > * mar.wos in most types of Celtic
>> Strictly speaking, it isn't needed: Celtic need only have
>> remodelled *mr.to- on *gWihwos 'alive'.
> I don't understand what you mean.
Perfectly straightforward verbal shorthand: in the course of
the development of PCelt. from PIE, the 'dead' word could
have been remodelled on the 'alive' word (which becomes
PCelt. *biwo-).
> If there was remodelling of *mr,to- by *gWih3wo-, it would
> have been in PIE, with the result *mr,two-.
*mr-wo-, actually.
> Since *mr,two- is the known source of many IE words for
> 'dead', why should the Celtic be different?
*mr-two- is irregular in the first place, and
straightforward remodelling is certainly preferable to your
alphabet soup.
>>> Also, how extensive are these "mere orthographic
>>> variations" supposed to be? For Belatucadros \
>>> Balatucadrus \ Blatucadrus \ Balatocadrus \ Belatucairus
>>> \ Balatucairus \ Blatucairus \ Belleticaurus \
>>> Baliticaurus \ Balaticaurus \ Belatugagus in Britain,
>>> how does -d- vary with -i-?
>> Possibly in the same way that Lat. <cathedra> became OW
>> <cateir> by vocalization of the /d/ before /r/.
> As far as I remember, the disappearance of -d- lengthened
> the -e- > -e:- with no intermediate form with -i-.
See Jackson, LHEB, 429-31. It's parallel to -gr- > -yr-.
[...]
Brian
At 7:00:15 PM on Sunday, February 7, 2010, stlatos wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> <BMScott@...> wrote:
>> At 11:04:23 PM on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, stlatos wrote:
>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Christopher Gwinn"
>>> <sonno3@> wrote:
>> His post is ten years old, and I believe that Chris left
>> Cybalist a while back.
> Not all of João's questions were answered, so I replied. I
> found the old message when searching for something else
> about Celtic gods.
>>>> Gilfathwy or Gilfaethwy. Once again, an uncertain name
>>>> - Gilfaethwy looks like the preferrable form.
[...]
>>> This is definitely 'child/servant of [Math]'.
>> What have you for such a <Gil-> element in British?
> I'm not the one who came up with this, though I agree with
> it. I don't remember where I first saw it, but you could
> probably find something on the Internet about it.
In other words, you've no apparent reason for thinking that
<Gil-> in a Welsh name means 'child/servant of'. I asked
because I've reason to be skeptical; had you had any
evidence, I'd have been happy to consider it, but I'm not
about to go on what may well be a wild goose chase.
>>>> Gofannon comes from *Gobantonos "the divine smith." I
>>>> am unaware at the moment of the PIE root which gives
>>>> Celtic gobant-o "smith."
>> Why *gobant- rather than *goban(n)- or the like?
> There is no reason, which is why I said he was wrong and
> ignored historical evidence.
I know Chris well enough to be quite sure that he had a
reason. On the other hand, I also know that he's far more
knowledgeable now than he was ten year ago, and if by some
good fortune he were occasionally still reading the list, I
was hoping to get his current views. My guess is that he's
following Hamp (*gobnt-n-). At any rate it appears that the
details are still open, which is why I said 'general shape'
later.
[...]
>> Trying to squeeze <Gebrinius> into this soup makes no
>> sense at all, either formally or semantically: he's
>> identified with Mercury
> For his crafts.
I'm not sure that we actually know enough about him to say.
>> His suggestion that Lat. <faber> and PCelt.
>> *gob-ens/ns-(n-) might have a common PIE root is
>> interesting.
> That seems impossible, since the *dHabHros explanation
> works fine,
If you accept all or most of the connections in Pokorny;
Blažek agrees with Schrijver in rejecting all but Arm.
<darbin>, for which he offers another possible etymology.
> only *gWH > f- in L and there is no evidence for gw- in
> 'smith', etc.
There's nothing against *gWH- here, so far as I know.
Brian
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:
>
> At 6:08:25 PM on Friday, February 5, 2010, stlatos wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I showed five changes; one of which ( r > ar ) is known to
> > all, and one of which ( t. > s. ) is needed to change *
> > mr.twos > * mar.s.wos > * mar.wos in most types of Celtic
>
> Strictly speaking, it isn't needed: Celtic need only have
> remodelled *mr.to- on *gWihwos 'alive'.
I don't understand what you mean. If there was remodelling of *mr,to- by
*gWih3wo-, it would have been in PIE, with the result *mr,two-. Since *mr,two-
is the known source of many IE words for 'dead', why should the Celtic be
different?
> > Also, how extensive are these "mere orthographic
> > variations" supposed to be? For Belatucadros \
> > Balatucadrus \ Blatucadrus \ Balatocadrus \ Belatucairus \
> > Balatucairus \ Blatucairus \ Belleticaurus \ Baliticaurus
> > \ Balaticaurus \ Belatugagus in Britain, how does -d- vary
> > with -i-?
>
> Possibly in the same way that Lat. <cathedra> became OW
> <cateir> by vocalization of the /d/ before /r/.
As far as I remember, the disappearance of -d- lengthened the -e- > -e:- with
no intermediate form with -i-. I don't remember what sound Welsh spelling -ei-
indicates, or if late e: > ei occurred in loans. This doesn't matter for the
Old British forms, as I have already said that since y > dY occured, this showed
dY > y. I was not asking what sound change occured, but arguing that sound
changes occured in the names of gods to create the variation, not mere
orthography. My argument was that there was no way d/i could be orthographic
variations but must show a change of some type.
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:
> > I'd also add, if you did take Piotr's message seriously, that he once was
open to the consideration that F Suomi << Indic *ks.oom 'earth', which is
similar in its lack of certainty and its need for assumptions to my *kantli:x \
*kantla:x >> kítharis \ kithára: (in this case, I'd say the former was actually
much less likely than the latter, since F Suomi < suo + maa 'swamp land' or 'fen
land' is nearly certain).
> You seem to be tossing "nearly certain" around lightly. *so:mi < *so:-ma: is
certainly not "nearly certain" in the sense of being the accepted option, nor in
the sense of being problemless (no regular process based on this etymology
explains the final *-i, and Finland Proper is not particularly swampy).
The stem is Suoma-, and several Finnish words ending in -i have stems with -a-
(this is because of an old nom -y (corresponding to Old Japanese words in -e
with compounds in -a-)).
The 'fenland' meaning explains the names in Gmc.
> (Which is not to say that *ks.o:m sounds any better - but not really much
worse either. This should yield **ho:mi.
That depends on when it was borrowed. ks > s could have happened at the start
of a word at any time; o: > uo at one time.
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:
>
> At 11:04:23 PM on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, stlatos wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Christopher Gwinn"
> > <sonno3@> wrote:
>
> His post is ten years old, and I believe that Chris left
> Cybalist a while back.
Not all of João's questions were answered, so I replied. I found the old
message when searching for something else about Celtic gods.
> >> Gilfathwy or Gilfaethwy. Once again, an uncertain name -
> >> Gilfaethwy looks like the preferrable form. The -f- can
> >> stand for a -b-, -m-, or -u-, the -aethwy from -axteios
> >> (-axt from PIE -ag-t-, -ap-t- or -abh-t) and the -i- from
> >> an original Brittonic -u-, so we may have
> >> *Gul[o]baxteios, *Gul[o]maxteios or *Gul[o]uaxteios.
> >> Perhaps the first element is related to Gaulish Gulba
> >> "peak/beak" and -aethwy from -axt (PIE -ag-t-)
> >> "works/does/leads." The -wy suffix comes from a Celtic
> >> -ei-os which is found sometimes as a patronymic.
>
> I'm not sure that PCelt. *gulbV- 'beak' will work here: I
> may be missing something, but it seems to me that it should
> yield <Gylf...> as in Welsh <gylf> 'beak, bill'.
>
> > This is definitely 'child/servant of [Math]'.
>
> What have you for such a <Gil-> element in British?
I'm not the one who came up with this, though I agree with it. I don't
remember where I first saw it, but you could probably find something on the
Internet about it.
> >> Gofannon comes from *Gobantonos "the divine smith." I am
> >> unaware at the moment of the PIE root which gives Celtic
> >> gobant-o "smith."
>
> Why *gobant- rather than *goban(n)- or the like?
There is no reason, which is why I said he was wrong and ignored historical
evidence. Similarly, there was no *ri:gantona:, even though this theory has
been spread widely.
> > No, this once again ignores historic evidence. None of
> > the ancient names related to this support such a form.
>
> The basic shape of the PCelt. etymon is pretty clear, so the
> obvious conclusion is that you're wielding your shoehorn too
> vigorously again.
What are you talking about? I'm arguing against Christopher Gwinn's positing
of *gobant-, as you seem to be doing as well.
> > *gYón.u+ 'bend, curve, curved horn'
>
> The 'knee' word?! The gloss doesn't really fit the cognates
> that I know, ...
Since the words for 'knee' and 'chin' were seen to both contain *gYen- it was
theorized that they both came from a root 'bend, curve' (this happened long
before I made my own reconstructions).
> > *gYón.u+mYHó+ 'little curved horn, nail'
>
> ... a better gloss would make it a bit hard to justify
> 'nail', even if that were a plausible route to 'smith'.
The word usually rec. *gYombHo+ has often been given as the source of Gobannus
(there is no other plausible origin, and the only problem is the existence of
-m- in one and -n- in the other (the second < *-ixYn.os (and in the word for
'god' < -n.os 'god', common in Celtic, (usually dissimilated so the word is
identical to 'smith', or else dissimilated n-n>l, etc.), but my rec. of
*gYombHo+ < *gYón.u+mYHó+ takes care of that, (there is no ev. that -mb- must
come from PIE -mb- instead of -nb-, etc.) as well as other problems for names in
other branches). You can judge the range of meanings below, which have been
given as "tooth or toothlike object" before me; I see no problem with what I
wrote:
gYón,ubYhó+s < gYón,u+mYhó+;
gYón,ubYhó+s > gYóÑëbYhó+s > gYómbYhó+s; gómphos 'bolt/pin' G; dhëmb Al; kam TA;
keme TB; jámbha-s S; zoNbU OCS; z^am~bas 'sharp edge' Lh; kambr 'jagged edge /
c' ON; comb OE;
gYón,ubYhyó+s < +y; gomphíos 'molar/tooth of a comb' G; jambhya-s 'm/incisor' S;
z^am~bis Lh;
n >> v?; cemban OE; já(m)bhate S; [???] camem 'chew', cameli 'jaw/cheek/mouth'
Al; zeNboN zeNbsti 'tear' OCS; z^embiù 'cut up' Lh;
> > This last word underwent many opt. changes, including
> > metathesis, to known Celtic forms, including Gebrinius, as
> > well as to Lith. Gabjaukuras \ Gabjauge: \ Gabjauja \
> > Gabjaugis \ Gabjàujis, Jagaubis.
>
> Trying to squeeze <Gebrinius> into this soup makes no sense
> at all, either formally or semantically: he's identified
> with Mercury
For his crafts.
> Balto-Slavic and Indo-European Linguistics. His suggestion
> that Lat. <faber> and PCelt. *gob-ens/ns-(n-) might have a
> common PIE root is interesting.
That seems impossible, since the *dHabHros explanation works fine, only *gWH >
f- in L and there is no evidence for gw- in 'smith', etc.
At 6:08:25 PM on Friday, February 5, 2010, stlatos wrote:
[...]
> I showed five changes; one of which ( r > ar ) is known to
> all, and one of which ( t. > s. ) is needed to change *
> mr.twos > * mar.s.wos > * mar.wos in most types of Celtic
Strictly speaking, it isn't needed: Celtic need only have
remodelled *mr.to- on *gWihwos 'alive'.
[...]
> Also, how extensive are these "mere orthographic
> variations" supposed to be? For Belatucadros \
> Balatucadrus \ Blatucadrus \ Balatocadrus \ Belatucairus \
> Balatucairus \ Blatucairus \ Belleticaurus \ Baliticaurus
> \ Balaticaurus \ Belatugagus in Britain, how does -d- vary
> with -i-?
Possibly in the same way that Lat. <cathedra> became OW
<cateir> by vocalization of the /d/ before /r/.
Brian
Another element in that old discussion (Lat. caupo:, etc):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokhovoye
Would *kaup-Vn- make sense as a name for an inhabitant of *Kaup-?
Torsten
> > > > > t > s is a weird consonant alternation?
> > > I assume one of the transmission languages was the language of
> > > geminates (which I assume is the same as the ar-/ur- language),
> > > and that type of alternation is included the defining
> > > alternations for that language.
> > Also I recall the phonetically unconvincing *kunt vs. Uralic
> > *kun´s´i "urine" vs. Baltic *ku:Si "pubic hair" (which doesn't
> > even involve a plain *s at any point) as one "example" of this
> > change.
>
> That was Schrijver; I haven't included it.
>
> > Was there ever any more?
>
> I hope this refreshes your memory
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62677
I did look thru that one before posting (and now again), and I still see no
other examples of t/s alternation.
> > > You obviously have a beef with Pokorny and Prellwitz. Please
> > > keep me out of it.
> >
> > Can't do, if your approach is to appeal to "the same privilege of
> > exemption they enjoy". And it seems that I would not grant the
> > words YOU were referring to any "privilege of exemption".
>
> So if I choose a Wanderwort, you get to decide if it is?
What we call them is not the point (your link to the WP article on "tea",
"coffee" etc. just sent me off your intended meaning). But I do get to decide if
I'm granting them any "privilege of exemption".
> > > > > You misunderstand. I was pointing out that such words would
> > > > > be irrelevant to the new concept of placing the
> > > > > responsibility for providing a certain number of cavalry on
> > > > > a particular group or area.
> > > > Yes, that sounds fine too. But it does not seem that this
> > > > actual specific meaning ever surfaces in the words you have
> > > > in there.
> > >
> > > What specific meaning and in where? Please be more specific.
> >
> > "Group of civilians tasked with providing a certain number of
> > cavalry" for *LuN-.
>
> Wrong, *kaN-t-.
Okay. Anyway, to repeat, this does not seem to be an attested meaning.
> And there was no professional military.
Yeah, so what?
> The society was the army was the society, as in to a certain extent
> until recently in Turkey and some Latin american countries.
You're the one who's been arguing for the existence of a basic semantic
distinction between military (organized, *kaNt) and civilians (unorganized,
*LuN).
> > > > > > > Note that it is involved in the "long" sense.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I have no idea what you mean by that.
> > > > > >
> > > > > Pokorny here
> > > > > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65525
> > > >
> > > > A root meaning "long", so?
> > >
> > > A root in *dl-, which is very rare combination in PIE.
> > Therefore it is tempting to consider that they have the same
> > source (as in some substrate), but it does not follow they should
> > have any further connection: since we are alreddy assuming this
> > was a perfectly normal sound in our substrate, there is no
> > problem in having more than one root that has it.
>
> True. You may assume that if you want, I'll test the possibility
> they are related.
No bad in testing. But you too are assuming it was a normal phoneme/cluster/etc.
occurring in the substrate.
> > > > Basic vocabulary does not tend to come from sophisticated
> > > > cultural concepts.
> > >
> > > That is generally assumed, and I think that's wrong.
> > > Vocabularies abound with words having suffered a sociological
> > > deroute.
> >
> > Vocabularies in general, yes. Swadesh-list-level basic
> > vocabulary, no.
>
> Yes; see above.
Is this in reference to your previous message? I see nothing of the sort there.
> > > > I don't see you even trying to explain there how a single *L
> > > > could yield all of *g *gl *dVl *d *l etc.
> > > > That has to rake up some half a dozen assumptions at least.
> > >
> > > No assumptions, those are all documented IRL.
> >
> > All those substitutions are attested elsewhere, you mean? The
> > assumptions are that this or that particular substitution
> > happened.
> > "Possible sound change" is still different from "sound change for
> > which there is evidence".
>
> That's right, there is evidence for them elsewhere.
We need corroborating evidence for the substitutions *in these specific
languages*, or they remain assumptions. "Evidence elsewhere", ie. English
substitutions of Welsh _ll_, is not relevant for that.
> > > > > > > So it has to do with ordered vs. unordered (single file)
> > > > > > > march through the landscape.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > More assumptions.
> > >
> > > No, this is part of the proposal.
> >
> > Same thing. All these assumptions are part of your proposal.
>
> The proposal was that *Lun,- and *kam-t- were borrowed together as antonyms.
And you require a number of assumptions to argue for that proposal. It doesn't
matter for their status as assumptions which of them you want to hold on to and
which you are willing to discard if something else comes along.
Your later comments make me suspect that this was a red herring anyway.
> > > > > It's the way to do it.
> > > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching
> > > >
> > > > First this was supposed to refer to unordered masses, now
> > > > it's supposed to also refer to the military too, and also in a
> > > > specific formation this time.
> > >
> > > What 'this'? Which of *kaN-t- and *Lun,-?
> >
> > The latter, if I've stayed on track.
>
> I'm afraid you haven't.
Okay, where AM I off the track then? If we are on the derivation of "long", I do
presume you're arguing for an origin from *LuN and not *kaNt.
> > You're trying to derive *LuN > "unordered group" > "marching
> > soldiers" > "line" > "long", right?
>
> No, leave out the "marching soldiers".
Well then; a line is not an unordered group. Very much the contrary.
If you are NOT basing the argument on such an intermediate, was "having to do
with march thru the landscape" just a diversion after all?
John Vertical
> If you weren't actually saying they were unrelated, so no one would think
kantele and *kantlo- were related, what was the joke?
One interpretation of the joke is pretty clear: since we can outline an IE
etymology, maybe it's actually a loan from Polish to Finnic? ;)
> I'd also add, if you did take Piotr's message seriously, that he once was open
to the consideration that F Suomi << Indic *ks.oom 'earth', which is similar in
its lack of certainty and its need for assumptions to my *kantli:x \ *kantla:x
>> kítharis \ kithára: (in this case, I'd say the former was actually much less
likely than the latter, since F Suomi < suo + maa 'swamp land' or 'fen land' is
nearly certain).
You seem to be tossing "nearly certain" around lightly. *so:mi < *so:-ma: is
certainly not "nearly certain" in the sense of being the accepted option, nor in
the sense of being problemless (no regular process based on this etymology
explains the final *-i, and Finland Proper is not particularly swampy).
(Which is not to say that *ks.o:m sounds any better - but not really much worse
either. This should yield **ho:mi. A relationship to IE *gh´mo: "man" is also a
proposed possibility, but with even more assumptions required. I consider most
likely the possibility of the word being cognate to the self-appellations
"Sami", "Häme" (both < *Sämä < Baltic *Zeme: "land"), probably as an erly loan
from Samic.)
John Vertical
From: Torsten <tgpedersen@...> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com Sent: Sun, February 7, 2010 10:04:01 AM Subject: [tied] Re: Nordwestblock, Germani, and Grimm's law
--- In cybalist@yahoogroup s.com, johnvertical@ ... wrote:
>
> Sorry for not combining this with the previous reply.
>
> > > > t > s is a weird consonant alternation?
> > >
> > > Like I just said, it's unmotivated, therefore weird (to see it
> > > in this supposed word, not in general).
> >
> > I assume one of the transmission languages was the language of
> > geminates (which I assume is the same as the ar-/ur- language),
> > and that type of alternation is included the defining
> > alternations for that language.
>
> So you get out of assuming one sound change by making some
> assumptions about the transfer route involved. I'm not sure if
> that's helping.
If you have any objections, please tell me.
> Also I recall the phonetically unconvincing *kunt vs. Uralic
> *kun´s´i "urine" vs. Baltic *ku:Si "pubic hair" (which doesn't even
> involve a plain *s at any point) as one "example" of this change.
> > > Precisely the point I was making: wanderwords such as "tea" do
> > > not require assuming any sound laws just for the purpose of
> > > their propagation.
> >
> > That is assuming tea/chai is a typical wanderwort which it isn't,
> > since its two forms were borrowed into written languages, and
> > their propagation since then is thus documented. Here is a real
> > wanderwort from Pokorny:
>
> Shifting goalposts. I've not called that stuff Wanderwörts, and I
> would prefer not to.
I would prefer for you to call them Wanderwörter. But it's a free country.
> > You obviously have a beef with Pokorny and Prellwitz. Please keep
> > me out of it.
>
> Can't do, if your approach is to appeal to "the same privilege of
> exemption they enjoy". And it seems that I would not grant the
> words YOU were referring to any "privilege of exemption".
So if I choose a Wanderwort, you get to decide if it is?
> Most older etymological dictionaries contain plenty of invalid
> comparisions.
True. How is that relevant here?
>
> > > > You misunderstand. I was pointing out that such words would
> > > > be irrelevant to the new concept of placing the
> > > > responsibility for providing a certain number of cavalry on a
> > > > particular group or area.
> > >
> > > Sounds better.
> > >
> > > > No doubt some languages would use existing words, but others
> > > > used the new one.
> > >
> > > Yes, that sounds fine too. But it does not seem that this
> > > actual specific meaning ever surfaces in the words you have in
> > > there.
> >
> > What specific meaning and in where? Please be more specific.
>
> "Group of civilians tasked with providing a certain number of
> cavalry" for *LuN-.
Wrong, *kaN-t-. And there was no professional military. The society was the army was the society, as in to a certain extent until recently in Turkey and some Latin american countries.
A meaning attested anywhere at all, or made up by you?
In Latin America, the army has traditionally been the scourge of society, more like an anti-society or a legalized mafia. It's been a lumpen-based organization, one of the few means by which outcasts could accrue wealth, at least until the rise of the drug cartels
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:
>
> Sorry for not combining this with the previous reply.
>
> > > > t > s is a weird consonant alternation?
> > >
> > > Like I just said, it's unmotivated, therefore weird (to see it
> > > in this supposed word, not in general).
> >
> > I assume one of the transmission languages was the language of
> > geminates (which I assume is the same as the ar-/ur- language),
> > and that type of alternation is included the defining
> > alternations for that language.
>
> So you get out of assuming one sound change by making some
> assumptions about the transfer route involved. I'm not sure if
> that's helping.
If you have any objections, please tell me.
> Also I recall the phonetically unconvincing *kunt vs. Uralic
> *kun´s´i "urine" vs. Baltic *ku:Si "pubic hair" (which doesn't even
> involve a plain *s at any point) as one "example" of this change.
That was Schrijver; I haven't included it.
> Was there ever any more?
I hope this refreshes your memory
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62677
> > > Precisely the point I was making: wanderwords such as "tea" do
> > > not require assuming any sound laws just for the purpose of
> > > their propagation.
> >
> > That is assuming tea/chai is a typical wanderwort which it isn't,
> > since its two forms were borrowed into written languages, and
> > their propagation since then is thus documented. Here is a real
> > wanderwort from Pokorny:
>
> Shifting goalposts. I've not called that stuff Wanderwörts, and I
> would prefer not to.
I would prefer for you to call them Wanderwörter. But it's a free country.
> > You obviously have a beef with Pokorny and Prellwitz. Please keep
> > me out of it.
>
> Can't do, if your approach is to appeal to "the same privilege of
> exemption they enjoy". And it seems that I would not grant the
> words YOU were referring to any "privilege of exemption".
So if I choose a Wanderwort, you get to decide if it is?
> Most older etymological dictionaries contain plenty of invalid
> comparisions.
True. How is that relevant here?
>
> > > > You misunderstand. I was pointing out that such words would
> > > > be irrelevant to the new concept of placing the
> > > > responsibility for providing a certain number of cavalry on a
> > > > particular group or area.
> > >
> > > Sounds better.
> > >
> > > > No doubt some languages would use existing words, but others
> > > > used the new one.
> > >
> > > Yes, that sounds fine too. But it does not seem that this
> > > actual specific meaning ever surfaces in the words you have in
> > > there.
> >
> > What specific meaning and in where? Please be more specific.
>
> "Group of civilians tasked with providing a certain number of
> cavalry" for *LuN-.
Wrong, *kaN-t-. And there was no professional military. The society was the army
was the society, as in to a certain extent until recently in Turkey and some
Latin american countries.
A meaning attested anywhere at all, or made up by you?
>
>
> > > > > > Note that it is involved in the "long" sense.
> > > > >
> > > > > I have no idea what you mean by that.
> > > > >
> > > > Pokorny here
> > > > http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65525
> > >
> > > A root meaning "long", so?
> >
> > A root in *dl-, which is very rare combination in PIE. Therefore
> > it is tempting to connect it with other PIE roots in *dl-
>
> Non sequitur.
Temptatus sum, ergo secutus est.
> Therefore it is tempting to consider that they have the same source
> (as in some substrate), but it does not follow they should have any
> further connection: since we are alreddy assuming this was a
> perfectly normal sound in our substrate, there is no problem in
> having more than one root that has it.
True. You may assume that if you want, I'll test the possibility they are
related.
>
> > > Basic vocabulary does not tend to come from sophisticated
> > > cultural concepts.
> >
> > That is generally assumed, and I think that's wrong. Vocabularies
> > abound with words having suffered a sociological deroute.
>
> Vocabularies in general, yes. Swadesh-list-level basic vocabulary,
> no.
Yes; see above.
>
> > > I don't see you even trying to explain there how a single *L
> > > could yield all of *g *gl *dVl *d *l etc.
> > > That has to rake up some half a dozen assumptions at least.
> >
> > No assumptions, those are all documented IRL.
>
> All those substitutions are attested elsewhere, you mean? The
> assumptions are that this or that particular substitution happened.
> "Possible sound change" is still different from "sound change for
> which there is evidence".
That's right, there is evidence for them elsewhere.
> > > > > > So it has to do with ordered vs. unordered (single file)
> > > > > > march through the landscape.
> > > > >
> > > > > More assumptions.
> >
> > No, this is part of the proposal.
>
> Same thing. All these assumptions are part of your proposal.
The proposal was that *Lun,- and *kam-t- were borrowed together as antonyms.
>
> > > > It's the way to do it.
> > > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marching
> > >
> > > First this was supposed to refer to unordered masses, now it's
> > > supposed to also refer to the military too, and also in a
> > > specific formation this time.
> >
> > What 'this'? Which of *kaN-t- and *Lun,-?
>
> The latter, if I've stayed on track.
I'm afraid you haven't.
> You're trying to derive *LuN > "unordered group" > "marching
> soldiers" > "line" > "long", right?
No, leave out the "marching soldiers".
>
> > > Not to say that this particular meaning also seems to be
> > > unattested.
> >
> > Which particular meaning?
>
> "Soldiers marching in a line".
Erh, what?
Torsten
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, johnvertical@... wrote:
>
> > > > 'Wing' has the most diverse explanation in DEO, de Vries
> > > > and Skeat.
> > >
> > > Whatever the etymology of the word, you still haven't given
> > > an example of 'side' > 'limb'.
> >
> > But the sense I derive it from is not just "side", but "a body
> > (of people) on the side", and seeing society (= its army) in the
> > image of a body with organs is pretty common, cf.
> > Karin Friederich, The Other Prussia,
> > p. 55
> > 'One of the most widely read tracts of the seventeenth century,
> > which stressed the exclusivity of noble-Sarmatian citizenship,
> > was the anonymous 1671 eulogy of the Commonwealth, Domina Palatii
> > - Regina Libertas. It described the king as the head, the
> > senators as the teeth, the szlachta as the main body with the
> > free vote at its heart, and the commoners as legs and feet, on
> > which the body stands.'
>
> No luck, that's STILL "limb" > "team" and similar metaphoric
> usages. What we would like to see is something along the lines of
> using "regiment" or "company" or "team" or "platoon" to mean "arm"
> or "leg" or "wing" or "hand".
You guys are sending me on a wild goose chase in etymological dictionaries here,
since
1) everybody assumes as a matter of course that names of limbs, being somehow
fundamental, must have 'arisen' or 'been thought up' first, and
2) since fundamental concepts are used more frequently that cultural ones, they
are documented earlier, leading eg. Brian to the seeming conclusion that the
limb name 'wing' began being used in a metaphorical sense sometime between the
10th and 14th centuries.
However, there are exceptions:
Mallory:
'HAND
*g^hés-r- 'hand'. [IEW 447 (*g^hesor-); Wat 22 (*ghesor-); GI 707 (*g^hes-r.-);
Buck 4.23; BK 220 (*gasy-/*g&sy)]. Lat (from Osc-Umb) hi:r 'hollow of hand', Alb
dorë (< *g^he:sr-ex-) 'hand', Grk kheír 'hand', Arm jern 'hand', Hit kissar
'hand', TochA tsar 'hand', TochB s.ar 'hand' (Toch < *s´s.a:r-< **g^heser-).
Archaic in morphology and widespread; there is no doubt that we have here the
original PIE word for 'hand'.
*g^hós-to-s 'hand'. [IEW 447 (*g^hesto-); GI 707 (*g^hes-tho-); Buck 4.33; BK
220 (*gasy-/*g&sy)].
Lat praesto: (< *prai-hesto:d) 'at hand',
Lith pa-z^aste.~ ~ pa-z^astìs 'arm-pit',
Av zasta- 'hand', OPers dasta- 'hand',
OInd hásta- 'hand'.
A derivative, of at least late PIE date, of the previous entry.
*méxr. (gen. *mx.nós) 'hand'. [IEW 740-741 (*m&-r); GI 707 (*mH.r-/n-(th)-);
Buck 4.33].
Lat manus 'hand', Umb manuv-e 'in the hand',
ON mund 'hand',
OE mund '(palm of the) hand, protection',
OHG munt 'hand, protection, guardian' (Gmc < *mn.x-tó-),
Alb marr (< *mar-n(y)e/o-) 'take, grasp',
Grk máre: 'hand',
Hit ma:niyahh- 'hand over'.
Its exact shape is difficult to reconstruct (what is given here seems to be the
most likely possibility). Though less well attested, it is clear that we have a
word of PIE date. How it may have differed in meaning from *g^hés-r- is unclear.
GI have suggested that the underlying meaning of *mexr. was 'hand, power, put
into someone's possession', e g , Lat manus 'hand, power' and Hit ma:niyahh-
'hand over, turn power over, rule', ma:niyahhai- 'government, power' This would
suggest that *mexr. symbolized or implied 'power' while +g^hés-r- was solely an
anatomical term.
*pólxm. (gen. *pl.xmós) 'palm of the hand'
[IEW 806 (*pl.:-ma:), Wat 49 (+pl.&-ma:-), Buck 4 33, BK 49 (*p[h]al-/
*p[h]&l-)]
OIr la:m 'hand', Wels llaw 'hand',
Lat palma 'palm', palam 'openly',
OE folm 'palm, hand', OHG folma 'hand',
Grk paláme: 'palm'.
All of these words are immediately from the derivative +pl.xm-ex- but the
archaic underlying morphology speaks of great antiquity within IE. Presumably
ultimately a derivative of +pelx- 'flat'.
*dhénr. 'palm (of the hand)'
[IEW 249 (+dhen-), Wat 13 (*dhen-)] OHG tenar 'palm', Grk thénar 'palm, sole of
the foot' Though not widely distributed, it looks by its shape to be an old
word.
*pólik(o)s 'finger, thumb' (*pólixos 'pertaining to a finger)
[IEW 840-841 (+polo-), Wat 52 (+pol-), Buck 4 34(2), BK 56 (*p[h]al-/*p[h]&l-)]
Lat pollex (with secondary doubling of the -l-) 'thumb',
RusCS palIcI 'thumb', Rus pálec 'finger, toe' (< *poliko-), s^esti-pályj
'six-fingered', bez-pályj 'without fingers',
cf also
ON felma ~ falma 'grope about',
OE fe:lan 'touch, feel, perceive' (> NE feel),
OHG fuolen 'feel' (Gmc < *po:lye/o-),
Bulg palam 'seek',
NPers pa:lidan 'seek', and possibly more distantly
Lat palpo: 'feel'.
Though only found in Slavic and Latin, the similarity in form and identity of
meaning strongly suggests at least late PIE status for this word. Certainly no
other word for 'finger' looks to be reconstructible for PIE.
*mustí- 'fist' [cf IEW 745 (+meuk^-)]
Av mus^ti- 'fist', OInd mustí- 'fist',
TochB mas´ce (< *muste:is) 'fist'.
Possibly an "easternism" in late PIE.
*pn.(kw)stí- 'fist'
[IEW 839 +pn.ksti-), Wat 49 (*pn.k-sti-), GI 747 (*ph(e)nkho-th-)]
OE fy:st 'fist' (> NE fist),
OHG fu:st 'fist',
Lith kumste (< +punkste) 'fist',
OCS pe,stI 'fist', Rus pjast 'metacarpus'.
Probably a derivative of *penkwe 'five'. Possibly a "westernism" in late PIE.
See also Anatomy, Arm [D Q A ].
Further Readings
Markey, T L (1984)
The grammaticalization and institutionalization of Indo-European hand
JIES 12, 261-292
Pedrero, R (1985[86]) Las nociones de mano, brazo y codo en
indoeuropeo
Ementa 53, 249-267'
(I've substituted /x/ for Mallory's h-sub-x, which is his /h2/ laryngeal.)
In other words, no principle forbids us to assume a metaphorical origin of some
term for a limb. Specifically, the *man- root (my reconstruction *maN- (> *mar#,
with -n# > -r#, and with > *-aN- > *-an-/*-un-, also needed to expain the
ar-/ur- alternation) seems to imply a metaphorical use of an originally
'command' concept.
Cf. on manus
Ernout-Meillet
'manus, -u:s f.(employé surtout au pluriel): main, partie du corps humain;
symbole de la force et de l'autorité maritale du uir sur la femme, mulier; de la
puissance du pater familia:s; et instrument de lutte, ou de travail: de là, les
expressions juridiques, militaires ou techniques;
1° in manu: esse, manu:s iniectio:, manu: mittere, le composé manceps (cette
valeur juridique se retrouve en irlandais et en germanique; cf. re:ctus);
2° manum co:nserere, ueni:re ad manu:s (manum), dare manu:s "se rendre",
e:minus, comminus;
3° manu: sata, urbs manu: mu:nitissima (opposé à na:tu:ra:), Praxitelis manus;
manupretium "salaire"; "façon" (d'un ouvrage, par opposition à "re:s" "matière",
cf. Dig.50,16, 13).
Sert à distinguer les deux côtés du corps: laeua:, dextra: manu:. Désigne un
objet ressemblant à une main: manus ferrea = khei~r sidera~, et a servi souvent
à traduire des expressions techniques du gr. avec khei~r. De l'expression seruus
a: manu: (comme a: litteri:s) a été tiré a:manue:nsis "secrétaire" (Suét.), d'où
ont été extraits à basse époque manue:nsis "prókheiron" Gl., et admanue:nsis
(Cassian.).
Manus, en tant que synonyme de ui:s, ui:re:s, s'est employé comme lui pour
désigner dans la langue militaire des "forces", c.-à-d. des troupes. Ce n'est
pas, comme on l'enseigne, du sens de "poignée d'hommes" qu'il faut partir: il
n'y a pas dans cet emploi de manus d'idée diminutive, cf. Ces., BG 5,37 magnam
manum conducere; T.L.30,7 fin, Hasdrubalem propediem affore cum manu haudquaquam
contemnenda. - Usité de tout temps. Panroman, M.L.5339. Britt. man.
Dérivés, et composés: manicae f.pl. (= khei~rís; singulier rare): manches,
brassards, manchettes, mitaines; grappin; menottes. De là: manicarius, sorte de
gladiateur; manica:tus, muni de manches; manicula, manche de charrue. Cf. M.L.
5300 manica (passé en celt.: irl. manic, muinchille, gall. maneg, germ. : v.h.a
me.nihha, et en alb. me.nge.; 5303a manicusi, 5303 manicula, 5303a *manicella.
Pour la forme, cf. pedica.
manua f. (lat. imp.): poignée, M.L. 5329, 5330;
manua:lis: que la main peut tenir; manuel, maniable, M.L. 5331;
manua:le n.: étui de livres manuel; manua:rius, même sens que manua:lis, M.L.
5333; subst.(populaire, argot?),
manua:rius "voleur" (cf. manuor, -a:ris: Laberius in mimis scripsit manuatus
est pro furatus est, Gell. 16,7,2);
manu:tus: magnas manus habens (Gloss. ), cf. cornu:tus;
manua:tus (b.lat.): muni de mains;
manucium (mani-) n.: gant (Gloss.); M.L. 5333a *manucia:re;
manuciolum (cf. toutefois manipulus): petite poignée, bottillon, bouchon de
paille, M.L.5334;
manulea (manuleus): manche de vêtement; manche de catapulte.
Dérivés: manulea:rius; manulea:tus.
Cf. encore manipulus, manufestus, etc., et les composés en man-, mal-, manceps,
etc.;
malluuiae, et ceux, récents, en manu-,
manufactilis (St-Jér.),
manuinspex = kheiroskópos, manutigium (Cael. Aur. ),
manifolium: personacia, etc.;
voir aussi
M.L. 5335 manum leua:re,
5336 manu opera:re,
5337 manupara:re
5338 manupastus,
5340 manutene:re;
5299a *manibella.
comminus: Vég.Mil.3,23 comminus, hoc est manu ad manum, pugnatur Terme de la l.
militaire; c'est surtout pour désigner une lutte ou l'on est aux prises que
l'adv. est employé (cf. gr. en khensín). Le sens de "près" est dérivé, de même
celui de "aussitôt" que Servius, ad G. 104, affirme être en usage dans la Gaule
cisalpine. V. Brugmann, IF 27,243 a:minus: sans en venir aux mains, eminus
fundis sagittis reliquisque telis pugnabatur, Cés., BC 1,26,1. Puis "de loin, à
distance". Comminus, e:minus sont sans doute d'anciens adj. composés, dont le
nomin. est demeuré comme adverbe invariable.
Manus figure encore comme second terme de composé dans anguimanus (Lucr.) "à la
trompe semblable à un serpent";
u:ni-, quadri-, centimanus (= ekatógkheir, Hor. Ov.); Lucrèce, Horace, Ovide
déclinent angui-, centimanus, -u:s à l'imitation des composés grecs en -kheir;
les autres formes sont déclinées comme les adjectifs de la seconde déclinaison.
Les noms de la "main" diffèrent suivant les langues. De même que les types de
skr. hástah. et de gr. kheír (v. hortus) ont des correspondants seulement dans
deux aires dialectales étroites (v. cependant praesto:), lat. manus n'a de
correspondants que dans les dialectes occidentaux. Le mot est italique, en
partie thème en -u- comme en latin: ombr. manuv-e "in manu:", en partie thème en
-i-: osq. manim "manum", en partie thème consonantique: ombr. manf ( acc.pl. ).
L'ablatif ombr. mani "manu:" est ambigu, parce que les thèmes ombriens en -u-
ont tous l'ablatif en -i-. Le thème man- se retrouve dans lat. mancus, man-ceps,
man-do:, man-sue:tus, man~te:le, malluuiae. En ombrien, on a mani nertru "manu:
sinistra:" au masculin. Hors de l'italique, cf. v.isl. mund (fém.) "main" et
mundr (masc.) "droit de tutelle qu'on a sur la fiancée grâce au prix payé", v.
angl. mund, v.h.a. munt "main" et "tutelle, protection" (noter le sens
juridique, à rapprocher de manceps, mancipium; sur irl. montar, v. sous mando:),
il y a ici le thème consonantique *mn.- élargi par un suffixe. Le type en -u- de
manus rappelle celui de got. handus. - Le nom de la "main" est en général
féminin (le genre masculin de skr. hástah. est secondaire). - En celtique, on a
le dérivé corn. manal "gerbe"; pour le sens, cf. manipulus. Cf. aussi gr. máre:
"main"?
...
manipulus (-plus), -i: m.:
1° poignée, et spécialement poignée de tiges que le moissonneur prend de la main
gauche pour la couper avec la main droite; gerbe, botte;
2° étendard, enseigne d'une compagnie, parce que, disait-on, sous Romulus
c'était une botte de foin portée sur une pique, cf.Ov., F.3,116-118; Rich, s.u.
Peut-être plaisanterie de la langue militaire, la hampe que tient le
porte-étendard étant assimilée à une poignée qui emplit la main? En tout cas,
comme cohors, terme emprunté à la l. rustique;
3° manipule, compagnie: manipulus, exercitus minima manus quae unum sequitur
signum, Varr., L.L.5,88. Manipulus dont la formation n'apparaissait pas a été
traité comme un diminutif de manus, d'où manuculus, commanuculus, et peut-être
manuciolum (-lus, v. manus). Attesté depuis Pl. Les formes romanes remontent à
manupulus, manuculus, M.L. 5306.
Dérivés et composés:
manipulo:, -a:s;
manipulo:sus;
manipula:ris (-pla:ris), -rius, et
com-manipulus, -la:ris, -lo:, -o:nis;
manipula:tim.
Cf. encore M.L. 5305 *manipellus.
Composé de manus dont le second terme est obscur (cf. pleo:?) et populus? Pour
le sens, cf. corn. manal "gerbe" (v. H.Pedersen, V.G.d.k. Spr. I p.493).'
My own suspicion is that the *maN- root is identical to Ruhlen's supposed
Proto-World *mano- "man, people" (15. in
http://forums.skadi.net/showthread.php?t=109221
) and the Celtic/Germanic/Slavic/Finno-Permian "many" word Schrijver mentions in
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62677
; in any case, the origin of the Italic *man- "hand" must be from the command or
servitude term *maN- and not the reverse. This means BTW that the Latin
manipulus becomes a (almost) cognate of English 'manifold'.
BTW, cf. on the Fr. gerbe "sheaf" sense of *maN-
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/49041
cf. 'shock troops'
And since I propose this root belonged to or was transferred through the ar-/ur-
language, I can assume an a/u alternation in it.
Ernout-Meillet:
'mu:nio:: v. moene.
1° mu:nis, -e (ancien *moinis, moenis): qui accomplit sa charge ou son devoir,
cf.P.F.127,7, munem significare certum est officiosum; unde e contrario immunis
dicitur qui nullo fungitur officia; Pl. Mer. 105, dico eius pro meritis gratum
me et munem fore. Adjectif rare et refait secondairement sur les composés du
type normal immu:nis, commu:nis (de mu:nus, cf. barba/imberbis).
1° immu:nis,-e (noté inmoenis dans Pl. Tri. 24): exempt de charge;
quelquefois synonyme de ingra:tus (à cause du double sens de mu:nus "charge" et
"présent", v. le mot; de là le sens de mu:nis dans Mer. 105), cf. Pl. 1.1.,
amicum castigare ob meritam noxiam | inmoene est facinus; et la glose du
P.F.97,18, inmunis, uacans munere aliquotiens pro improbo ponitur ut apud
Plautum; et le scoliaste de Cic. Sest. 57,
o immunes Grai. Et haec uerba sunt de tragoedia, in qua uerbum istud "immunes"
ingratos significat quemadmodum munificos dicebant esse nos qui grati et
liberales existerent. Par dérivation "exempt de, exempté de"; traduit en poésie
le gr. ámmoros (Ov. M. 13,292). De là immu:nita:s.
2° commu:nis,-e (graphie étymologique comoinem dans le SC. Bacc):
1e sens ancien devait être "qui partage les charges", mais ce sens n'est pas
attesté, et commu:nis ne signifie que "commun" (par oppos. à proprius), et
correspond au gr. koinós, e.g. Ter., Ad. 804, communia esse amicorum inter se
omnia. De ce sens général sont dérivés des sens spéciaux:
1° dans la l. grammaticale: genus commune, syllaba commu:nis (= anceps), uerbum
commune;
2° dans la l. de rhétorique: locus commu:nis = tópos koinós.
Du sens de "commun, qui est partagé entre tous" sont issus les sens de
"bienveillant"; commuis infimis, par principibus, Corn. Nep., Att.3,1; et aussi
de "médiocre, vulgaire", et même, dans la l. eccl., de "sale, impur" (traduisant
akáthartos, koinós). Le neutre commune traduit tò koinón. M.L. 2091.
Dérivés:
commu:niter; commu:nita:s (= koinóte:s);
communio:, -o:nis, mot de Cic. au sens de "communauté" repris par la l. eccl. au
sens de "communion", d'où
excommu:nis, -nio:-, -o:nis, synonymes de
excommu:ni-ca:tus, -ca:tio:;
celt.: irl. comman, britt. cymmun.
Il a dû exister aussi un adj. dérivé *mu:nicus (*moenicus), cf. ci:uis/cïuicus,
hostis/hosticus, amnis/amnicus, classis/classicus, attesté en osque múíníkú. Du
reste l'abrégé de Festus, P.F.141,1; a la glose municas pro communicas dicebant,
qui atteste l'existence en latin d'un dénominatif mu:nico:, -a:re; et l'on
trouve dans le Gloss. de Plac., CGL V 33,13, moenicare, communicare, dictum a
moeni<i>s i.e. operibus, qui a encore l'ancienne diphtongue. C'est de
*com-mu:nicus (et non de commu:nis qui aurait donné commu:nio:) qu'a-été dérivé
commu:nico: (sans doute pour éviter une confusion avec commu:nio: de munio:)
"communiquer" (sens absolu et transitif) adopté par la l. de l'Église, demeuré
dans les l. romanes, sous la forme *commu:nica:re (commi:-) qui y a le sens de
"donner le repas du soir" (pris en commun). M.L. 2090. De là: commu:nica:bilis,
-tio:, -ti:uus, -to:, -to:rius; excommu:nico: (l. eccl.), d'où irl. escoimne,
britt. escymmum.
2° mu:nia, -ium (arch. moenia) pl.n.: même sens que mu:nera "fonctions
officielles, devoirs, charges d'un magistrat". La langue classique n'emploie le
mot qu'au nom. acc.; les formes de gén. et de dat. abl. sont fournies par
mu:nera. Sur mu:nia a été bâti un nomin. sg. mu:nium qu'on trouve dans les
gloses, traduit par leitourgía CGL II 504,37; 361,40. Ce n'est qu'à basse époque
(IIIe et IVe s. de l'empire)
que l'on trouve des génitifs mu:nium et mu:nio:rum, des dat. abl. mu:nibus et
mu:nii:s. Mu:nia est un archaïsme de la l. officielle; la forme vivante est
mu:nus, -eris. Conservé en logoud. et campid., M.L. 5751.
3° mu:nus, -eris (pl. arch. moenera dans Lucr. 1,29) n.: - significat <officium>
cum dicitur quis munere fungi. Item donum quod officii causa datur, P.F.125,18.
Le sens de "présent que l'on fait" (et non
que l'on reçoit) est secondaire, mais très fréquent; de là: mu:neralis (le:x);
mu:nero:, -a:s (et mu:neror) "faire présent de"; re:mu:nero: (-ror)
"récompenser, gratifier", et leurs dérivés, M.L. 5750a; mu:nusculum (Cic).
Les devoirs d'un magistrat consistant notamment dans les spectacles offerts au
peuple, mu:nus a souvent le sens de "représentation, jeux offerts, combat de
gladiateurs". De là, à l'époque impériale, mu:nera:rius: relatif aux spectacles
de gladiateurs, mu:nera:tor: celui qui donne des spectacles de gladiateurs;
-tio:.
Composés en mu:ni-: mu:niceps m.: proprement "celui qui prend part aux charges",
cf. P.F.117,8, item municipes erant, qui ex aliis ciuitatibus Romam uenissent,
quibus non licebat magistratum capere, sed tantum muneris partem, ut fuerunt
Cumani, Acerrani, Atellani, qui et ciues Romani erant, et in legione merebant,
sed dignitates non habebant. Par extension "habitant d'un municipe",
mu:nicipium. Autres dérivés: mu:nicipa:lis; et (tardifs) mu:nicipa:tus (=
políteuma), -pa:tim, -pa:tio: mu:nicipiolum;
mu:nidator (CE 511); mu:nifex; 1° -es, milites qui munera facere coguntur
(Vég.Mil. 2,6), sens auquel se rattache mu:nificium; 2° syn. de mu:nificus;
mu:nificus: qui accomplit les devoirs de sa charge; généreux (cf. beneficus);
d'où munifico:, -a:s; -ficentia; immu:nificus (Pl.).
D'une racine *mei- "changer, échanger", attestée par lette miju, mi:t
"échanger", skr. ni-mayate "il échange", l'indo-européen a eu des dérivés en -n-
qui sont largement représentés; ces mots ont servi à désigner des échanges
réglés par l'usage, et plusieurs ont une valeur juridique. A lat. mu:nia
"fonctions officielles d'un magistrat" cf. v.irl. móin "objet précieux"
(dag-móini "dons, bienfaits") et ga:th. mae:nis^ "punition" (?). L'élargissement
par *-es- dans mu:nus est propre au latin; *-nes- figure souvent dans des
substantifs de la même classe sémantique que mu:nus, ainsi fe:nus, facinus,
pignus. Lat. com-mu:nis est fait comme got. gamains "commun"; autre composé
im-mu:nis. Le lituanien a mai~nas "échange" et le slave me^na "changement". La
racine est souvent élargie: v. migro: et muto:.'
Another example of a loaned "limb" word is Slavic *glazU- "eye"
Gol/a,b, the Origins of the Slavs, pp. 362-363
'A List of Germanic Loanwords in Proto-Slavic
A) First period: borrowings from Eastern Proto-Germanic and Early Gothic, before
the 2nd century A.D. (Kuryl/owicz's layer I).
...
2) glazU primarily 'shining pebble,' attested only in North Slavic:17
ORuss. glazky stekljanyi 'Glaskügelchen,'
Russ. glaz 'Auge' (undoubtedly a secondary metaphoric and euphemistic use),
Pol. glaz 'Kieselstein; Probierstein; Felsenstück,'
OCz. hlazec 'roteris' (a stone).
The word is most probably borrowed from prehistorical
NGermc. *gla:za- 'Beistein' (cf.
OE glær 'Berstein, Harz,'
MLG gla:r 'das aus den Bäumen tröpfelnde Harz,' and an earlier PGermc. form
*gle:sa-, attested by Tacitus: "Aestii...soli omnium sucinum, quod ipsi glesum
vacant...legunt");
for details and discussion see Kiparsky (1934:172-74 and 1958:23) and Martynov
(loc. cit., 63-65). There are some hesitations in accepting glazU, as an early
Germc. loanword because it has mobile stress in Russian, but the geography of
the word seems to indicate its connection with the ancient amber-trade, whose
centers were at the southern Baltic coast.'
Personally, I think the word is from Aestian, since Tacitus tells us so.
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/64397
That also saves us the trouble of explaining the a/e alternation (Rozwadowski's
change?) and the fact that the mobile stress required to explain the root's
Verner alternation -s-/-r- is attested in Slavic (Russian, with -z- even), not
in some PIE form. The word occurs in the list of Verner-alternating Germanic
nouns cited by Schaffner,
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62159
and I think this strengthens (along with the many /a/'s) the suspicion that they
are all actually loans (from Venetic?).
>
> > > (The sources readily available to me all derive it, if at all,
> > > from *h2weh1- 'to blow'.)
> >
> > So does de Vries, I discover after looking first in the wrong
> > place
> > 'vængi n. 'kajute' (poet.), nschw. da. vinge 'flügel'.
> > — Zu vængr m. 'flügel, fittich, ausbau am hause',
> > (< urn. *wa:ingja),
> > nisl. vængur, far. vongur,
> > nnorw. veng 'flugel, kajute', dial. auch 'ausbau',
> > — > me. weng, wing, ne wing (Bjorkman 225); >
> > lpN. væn,n,ga 'kajute' (Qvigstad 353).
> > — Zur idg. wzl *we: 'wehen', vgl. vindr I,'
> > Skeat has
> > 'Lit. "wagger" or flapper; nasalised form from the base WIG, as in
> > Got. gawigan, to shake (pt.t. gawag). Allied to Wag'
> >
> > I'm not impressed by the "blow" etymology, and I suspect you
> > aren't either. Obviously the "on the side" sense was there from
> > the beginning in ON (cf. the "cabin" sense).
>
> As was the "wing" sense, so this tells nothing about which was the
> original.
And that's the problem with trying to prove the "limb" > "army/society part"
hypothesis the Popper way by eliminating its opposite. Therefore we'll have to
make do with the Occam way of preferring the hypothesis which explains the most
with the least assumptions.
Here's my attempt:
The traditionally assumed roots *weng- (> PGmc *wing-) "wing" (both senses) and
*wang- "cheek; side pieces"
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/35458http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/45312http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/61961
could be related via Rozwadowski's change (e/a alternation, see the thread
starting in
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65418
) in an original (PPIE) *wang- "(sloping) meadows/banks on both sides of a
river" (and be Venetic? cf. Vangede in
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/57206
) from which a metaphorical use of "something belonging on both sides on
something" could be derived. This allows us to derive both the *weng- "wing" and
*wang- "cheek" sense from one single root. This is not possible in the "body
part" > "part of society/army" hypothesis.
> > > > The basic distinction in military disciple, as manifested
> > > > in the command language of parades is between being
> > > > directly subordinated to the will of a superior, and being
> > > > "on your own time" (within limits, of course). The
> > > > mode-changing commands are 'Attention' and 'At ease'. For
> > > > an army, getting through the landscape in a single file is
> > > > done on your own time, so to speak, like the legions of
> > > > Varus did at Kalkriese. Calling that formation, or rather
> > > > non-formation "an arrangement of soldiers" is therefore
> > > > misleading. It is, if anything, a lack of arrangement.
> > >
> > > I think that you'll have a hard time persuading anyone who's
> > > actually served.
> >
> > I did.
>
> So did I. And being "on your own time" does not change the fact
> that a soldier is still part of the command chain,
which is what I meant by 'within limits, of course'
> and that would appear to be the relevant structure here (soldier
> vs. civil).
Are you deliberately 'misunderstanding' me? Of course 'At ease' doesn't turn you
into a civilian.
> Not rigid geometrical formations.
?? I'll repeat my above question. I was talking about being under immediate
command, from which the geometrical formation would follow. In that connection
the single line is a lack of geometrical formation.
> Feel free to provide attestations to the contrary.
I don't feel any obligation to provide attestations to your miscontrued
representations of my hypothesis.
>
> > > all that we actually know is
> > > that the color term is from the feminine name. The example
> > > itself is irrelevant: the color term in question is hardly
> > > basic vocabulary, and a personal name is not an example of a
> > > sophisticated cultural concept.
> >
> > I was trying to match John's example. Will 'purple'
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple
> > meet your standards?
>
> A purple pigment is very much a technological advancement. See also
> (l)azure, carmine, etc.
Yes.
> You're probably aware that "red" by contrast is one of the more
> basic color terms.
Yes. None the less, 'purple' is an color term in English.
> > > > > I don't see you even trying to explain there how a single
> > > > > *L could yield all of *g *gl *dVl *d *l etc.
> > > > I assume you already know that the /L/ is meant to denote
> > > > an unvoiced /l/.
>
> Yes.
>
> > > > That's a rather rare phoneme, and tends
> > > > to get substituted with exactly those combination when
> > > > words containing it are loaned.
>
> How /gl/, /d/ etc. if it's voiceless?
It is interesting that the stops in the reflexes are voiced (except in the
'interpret, popularize' sense). I'm not sure of the nature of '/L/-like' phoneme
I posited in my reconstruction.
> Why several different substitution variants in one language?
Several loan paths.
> How do you motivate the substitutions that don't preserve the
> laterality?
Cluster simplification. What need would there be to preserve the laterality?
> Why does the simple /s/ not appear among them?
Why would it? But *sl- does, cf. Da. sløse etc in the therad starting in
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/44457
> Is transferring laterality to the coda of the syllable actually
> attested in similar subsitutions?
I'm not sure what you mean here. If it's why we seems to get *tel-/*del- etc
from the *L-, it's presumably because the loan substitution *tl-/*dl- was
interpreted as zero grade of an imaginary root *tel-/*del- (which therefore
'became real').
> Is there any independant reason to think pre-IE languages had
> lateral obstruents?
No, it seeems my hypothesis pretty much exhausts the PIE supply of *tl-/*dl-
roots, so we have no linguistic reasons to think that.
> Can we estabilish reoccurence for any of these substitution
> patterns, preferrably in regular correspondence to one another?
See above.
Torsten
At 11:04:23 PM on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, stlatos wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Christopher Gwinn"
> <sonno3@...> wrote:
His post is ten years old, and I believe that Chris left
Cybalist a while back.
[...]
>> Gilfathwy or Gilfaethwy. Once again, an uncertain name -
>> Gilfaethwy looks like the preferrable form. The -f- can
>> stand for a -b-, -m-, or -u-, the -aethwy from -axteios
>> (-axt from PIE -ag-t-, -ap-t- or -abh-t) and the -i- from
>> an original Brittonic -u-, so we may have
>> *Gul[o]baxteios, *Gul[o]maxteios or *Gul[o]uaxteios.
>> Perhaps the first element is related to Gaulish Gulba
>> "peak/beak" and -aethwy from -axt (PIE -ag-t-)
>> "works/does/leads." The -wy suffix comes from a Celtic
>> -ei-os which is found sometimes as a patronymic.
I'm not sure that PCelt. *gulbV- 'beak' will work here: I
may be missing something, but it seems to me that it should
yield <Gylf...> as in Welsh <gylf> 'beak, bill'.
> This is definitely 'child/servant of [Math]'.
What have you for such a <Gil-> element in British?
[...]
>> Gofannon comes from *Gobantonos "the divine smith." I am
>> unaware at the moment of the PIE root which gives Celtic
>> gobant-o "smith."
Why *gobant- rather than *goban(n)- or the like?
> No, this once again ignores historic evidence. None of
> the ancient names related to this support such a form.
The basic shape of the PCelt. etymon is pretty clear, so the
obvious conclusion is that you're wielding your shoehorn too
vigorously again.
> *gYón.u+ 'bend, curve, curved horn'
The 'knee' word?! The gloss doesn't really fit the cognates
that I know, ...
> *gYón.u+mYHó+ 'little curved horn, nail'
... a better gloss would make it a bit hard to justify
'nail', even if that were a plausible route to 'smith'.
[...]
> This last word underwent many opt. changes, including
> metathesis, to known Celtic forms, including Gebrinius, as
> well as to Lith. Gabjaukuras \ Gabjauge: \ Gabjauja \
> Gabjaugis \ Gabjàujis, Jagaubis.
Trying to squeeze <Gebrinius> into this soup makes no sense
at all, either formally or semantically: he's identified
with Mercury (<Mercurius Gebrinius>). If there were any
evidence that he was a horned god, one might look to PCelt.
*gabro- 'he-goat' (OIr. <gabor>, Welsh <gafr>, Gaul. toponym
<Gabromagus> 'Goatfield'), but it seems that he's often
depicted as an animal whose head resembles a lion and whose
body is rather reminiscent of a fat sheep. As I understand
it, Gabiáuja is a goddess of wealth; like Václav Blažek, I
find the semantics a bit problematic. As he points out,
Lith. <gabe.> ~ <gube.> (<gabija> ~ <gubija> 'goddess of
fire'; 'fire' in elevated speech) is a better fit.
The article is Václav Blažek, 'Celtic "Smith" and His
Colleagues', in Alexander Lubotsky, Jos Schaeken, & Jeroen
Wiedenhof, eds. (2008). Evidence and Counter-Evidence.
Essays in Honour of Frederik Kortlandt. Vol. 1:
Balto-Slavic and Indo-European Linguistics. His suggestion
that Lat. <faber> and PCelt. *gob-ens/ns-(n-) might have a
common PIE root is interesting.
Brian
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@...> wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson" <liberty@> wrote:
>> []
> *
> gWeNY0xá:x (nom), gWeNY0xáik+m (acc), gWeNY0xik+ós (gen)
By the way, the C0 = C-voice (I've used it before but thought I'd mention it
for those who didn't remember my earlier messages). I copied most of this from
my notes so I wouldn't have to write it out again (if I had I would have
simplified since some aspects (like NY0 instead of NY) relate to matters not
important to Toch. met.).
> > I'm sorry that my comments so deeply bothered you that
> > they stuck in your craw and brought you back to respond
> > after all this time, I truly am, but, if you really need
> > to have the last laugh, it's such claims as the above
> > that you are going to have to prove.
>
>
> I've been busy, haven't responded to messages for a while, and haven't read
messages, haven't searched the list. When I had free time, I went back and read
the archive and saw some things I wanted to respond to, including your message.
>
I also should mention that no one had replied to Arnaud's question about why
it ended in -e for that year, so I don't think my response should be considered
inappropriate because of its lateness. I also wanted to know why the other
responses to Arnaud's question had been made.
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson" <liberty@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson" <liberty@> wrote:
> > >
> > > I was joking myself, actually, with the recent sitar thread in
> > > mind, though I find now in the archives that Piotr did indeed
> > > once suggest such an etymology. Those messages can't be found
> > > searching for 'kantele', however, as 'kant&le' was used.
> > >
> > > See http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/48755
> > > and http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/48756 .
> >
> > Well, some odd things have apparently happened since I last
> > looked here.
>
> - edit -
>
> > Also, I was absolutely stunned when I saw "I was joking myself".
> > There was no reason he, or I, would think you were joking. The
> > reason? Because kantele and *kantlo- are so obviously related
> > that no one with any knowledge of linguistics and of right mind
> > could think otherwise
>
> No, it would require besides some specific knowledge of
> Estonian or Finnish (to whichever the word is supposed
> to belong), but which I do not myself have.
Let me put it this way: if you knew that *kantlo- existed, remembered it, had
it in mind at the time, and even wrote it out, then you should be aware of it as
a likely source of F kantele even if, due to some possible lack of knowledge
about what might happen upon it being borrowed into F, you thought you might not
have enough knowledge to consider it the most likely and almost certain.
If you thought you didn't know enough to say they were related, then I suppose
you thought you didn't know enough to say they were unrelated. If you weren't
actually saying they were unrelated, so no one would think kantele and *kantlo-
were related, what was the joke? Brian M. Scott apparently thought the
suggestion that kantele and *kantlo- were related was the joke, and so responded
sarcasticly to Arnaud's attempt to figure out how kantele and *kantlo- were
related. Then you said:
> > > I was joking myself, actually, with the recent sitar thread in
> > > mind, though I find now in the archives that Piotr did indeed
> > > once suggest such an etymology. Those messages can't be found
> > > searching for 'kantele', however, as 'kant&le' was used.
In "the recent sitar thread" you argued that my *kantli:x \ *kantla:x >>
kítharis \ kithára: was wrong, so I took it that you considered the kantele and
*kantlo- connection equally dubious. That is, maybe you meant that only I would
suggest something like kantele << *kantle: < *kantliya: <mix *kantli:x +
*kantla:x; your suggestion of anything similar would be a joke.
Saying that "though I find now in the archives that Piotr did indeed once
suggest such an etymology" suggests that you now realize the kantele and
*kantlo- connection is possible, since you've now seen an argument including PIE
*kantlo- being borrowed into another language made by one you probably consider
a competent linguist, where before you had only seen me make a similar argument.
Again, if I'm wrong in my interpretation, what was the joke? What
interpretation did you want to convey to Arnaud? How did your belief change
after seeing Piotr's message? What about your joke did you mean to change or
retract in the above message after seeing Piotr's message?
I'd also add, if you did take Piotr's message seriously, that he once was open
to the consideration that F Suomi << Indic *ks.oom 'earth', which is similar in
its lack of certainty and its need for assumptions to my *kantli:x \ *kantla:x
>> kítharis \ kithára: (in this case, I'd say the former was actually much less
likely than the latter, since F Suomi < suo + maa 'swamp land' or 'fen land' is
nearly certain).
> > I dislike being accused of incompetence by someone who could
> > not only make this error but then assume his interpretation
> > was so right and obvious that he could make an ironic statement
> > otherwise that would be immediately clear.
>
> You don't seem to like being accused of incompetence
> by _anybody_, but then you've never really responded
> to any of mine or others' very specific criticisms of
> your method.
>
> Instead you repeatedly make claims like your recent
> one that you "use established and proven methods of
> linguistic reconstruction (including borrowing,
> metathesis, and dissimilation), mostly regular rules
> (and those that aren't mostly optional", but which
> have led you to radically different conclusions from
> those of all others claiming to use the same methods.
I think I have really responded. For example, I've said that positing
metathesis is a known, established, and proven methods of linguistic
reconstruction. For some reason, most of my opponents consider this evidence of
my lack of skill. I can understand why someone might not agree with many uses
for the same derivation, or to connect words thought to be unrelated due to some
difference in meaning, but this should be true of any change. I am faced with
those who are unlikely to accept even *waruna- \ urwana-. For example, I think
you argued against my connection of TARGITAUS \ TIRGATAO \ TIRGUTAWIYA (though
you might have changed your mind after learning the same argument was made by
one you consider a competent linguist).
I have no idea why so many professional linguists never posit metathesis, even
when it is obvious. For example, Alexander Lubotsky derived the Tocharian words
for 'Indra' (wla:(M)-ñkät TA; ylai-ñäkte TB) from the old nom. of 'king' from a
proto-form *welans (since another had argued for TB -an > -ai in an unrelated
matter) and so contorted himself in all directions trying to figure out how
*welant- could exist in PIE derived from *wal- 'rule, be strong'. It is obvious
that *wale:ns > *wela:ns by metathesis in the path from PIE to Tocharian (just
as in Celtic Vellaunus \ Veraudunus; compare also *waldaz > *dalwaz in
Heim-dallr). There are many similar cases of metathesis in Tocharian, most of
which I've never seen another posit:
*
...
wale:ns
wela:ns
wela:n
wYela:n
wYëla:n
...
wla:(M)- TA; ylai- TB
*
...
wergHso:n
werkso:n
wo:rksen
...
wa:rs,(s,)e 'robber' TB;
*
gWeNY0xá:x (nom), gWeNY0xáik+m (acc), gWeNY0xik+ós (gen)
*
gWeNY0xá:n. (nom)
gWaNY0xé:n.
...
kWaNYxé:n
kWaLYxé:n (nasal dis.)
kWaLxYé:n (met. of features)
kWLaxYé:n (met. of position)
kWLayé:n
...
kWLaye
kWLiye
kwli TA; kli:ye 'woman' TB;
(compare
*
gWeNY0xá:n. (nom)
kWina:N
qino: Go; cwene OE;
)
*
gWeNY0xán,-m (acc)
gWaNY0xén,-m
...
kWLayenum
kWLayënë
kWLaiñ
klaiñ \ [ana] klaiM TB;
*
kóL-xW-ká:x (nom), kóL-xW-kik+ós (gen)
/
kóL-xW-kó:n. (nom)
kóL-xW-ká:x
kóL-xw-ká:x
kLów-x-ká:x
cloa:ca L
mix>
kóL-xW-kikó:n.
kóL-xw-kikó:n.
kLów-x-kikó:n.
kLów-x-t.ikó:n. (opt. or dis.)
kLów-s.-t.ikó:n.
kLóws.-t.ikó:n.
kLóws.-t.ikú:n.
...
kLAwstikun
kLAwkustin
kLAwkustYin
...
klokësYtYën+
klokaçce 'pore/follicle' TB; [0>Y-Y assim.] klyokäçc TA;
Well, some are more obvious than others, but my point stands (that is, there
are plenty of words for 'woman' with e-a, so a-e in T should be < met., etc.).
> So either you don't truly understand those methods, or
> else you alone do and nobody else does, for you seem
> to stand entirely alone in your conclusions.
>
> Are we truly to believe that only Sean and Sean alone
> in all the world has the intelligence to see the truth
> while all others are blind fools?
Well, in linguistic matters I suppose I'd have to agree to something like
that. However, in the history of linguistics many professional linguists have
had theories that might have looked like the work of "blind fools" to their
contemporaries but come to be accepted. Others are considered foolish now as
well as then, and still many professional linguists disagree with each other in
ways that about certain things that sometimes are just a matter of
interpretation, but about certain other things must indicate at least one is
deluded, incompetent, or unduly influenced by personal desire or esthetic sense.
For example, some might say that *-om > -U instead of -oN in Slavic indicates
the nasality was lost because m > w in certain positions, or optionally, then uw
> u. This might be extended to:
*
kYm,to- 'hundred'
kYimto-
tYimto-
sYimto-
sYiwto-
sYuwto-
suwto-
suto-
sUto-
Something like this is believed by Andrew L. Sihler. Piotr said he believed
it was borrowed from Iranian sata-. Would you say Andrew L. Sihler was
incompetent because he believed what was likely an optional change? Would you
say Piotr was incompetent because he went against a rule with other evidence and
used borrowing to explain something that could be explained by sound changes? I
have used borrowing to explain things that have not been explained by sound
changes, or in any way by professional linguists, which you seem to be
criticizing me for. What is the difference, if any?
> > I don't know why you seem so opposed to ancient borrowings that
> > you would take this path,
>
> Nothing I've ever said justifies the assumption that I'm
> opposed to ancient borrowings.
I suppose most professional linguists would say that kítharis \ kithára: were
borrowings, and from an unknown source. What I wonder about is why you wouldn't
accept my work as showing a possible source, from an IE language, and instead
say I "don't truly understand those methods", and similar things about my other
theories.
> As far as my so-called contempt goes, I think I arrived
> at it quite justifiedly, from such claims as the one of
> yours that "All known languages not currently classified
> as IE are actually from one branch of IE: Indo-Iranian",
> archived at
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62316 .
True.
>
> I'm sorry that my comments so deeply bothered you that
> they stuck in your craw and brought you back to respond
> after all this time, I truly am, but, if you really need
> to have the last laugh, it's such claims as the above
> that you are going to have to prove.
I've been busy, haven't responded to messages for a while, and haven't read
messages, haven't searched the list. When I had free time, I went back and read
the archive and saw some things I wanted to respond to, including your message.
> First, Fin kantele was borrowed from Baltic *kantle: (a feminine form <
*kantliya: <mix *kantli:x + *kantla:x, not the neuter referenced above, like
Lith kañkle:s) with a final long V > short, then V-insertion in a non-native
cluster.
>
> Also, I was absolutely stunned when I saw "I was joking myself". There was
no reason he, or I, would think you were joking. The reason? Because kantele
and *kantlo- are so obviously related that no one with any knowledge of
linguistics and of right mind could think otherwise (I wouldn't even expect
anyone who connected them to make an argument, just showing the two words should
be enough, as in Piotr's message).
Well, there does happen to be a contesting etymology as a derivativ from the
common Uralic *kamti > BF *kanci (stem *kante-) "lid".
Also the original BF form is *kantel, suffixed only in F/Kar as *kantel-eh. If
this is an IE loan, it would have to be quite old to have participated in loss
of final vowels.
I don't recall other examples involving vowel insertion as a nativization
strategy either - what usually occurs in nCC clusters is loss of the nasal (cf.
the derivativ *kant-tta- > *katta- "to cover") Also, *tl is forbidden (*neekla
"needle", < Gmc). Straightforward from *kantle: I would expect a development >
**kankli > **kakli > **kauli.
OTOH the existence of "lid" offers an opportunity to reform or reanalyze a
potential loan *kantle: as *kantel anyway.
John Vertical
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "david_russell_watson" <liberty@> wrote:
> >
> > I was joking myself, actually, with the recent sitar thread in
> > mind, though I find now in the archives that Piotr did indeed
> > once suggest such an etymology. Those messages can't be found
> > searching for 'kantele', however, as 'kant&le' was used.
> >
> > See http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/48755
> > and http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/48756 .
>
> Well, some odd things have apparently happened since I last
> looked here.
- edit -
> Also, I was absolutely stunned when I saw "I was joking myself".
> There was no reason he, or I, would think you were joking. The
> reason? Because kantele and *kantlo- are so obviously related
> that no one with any knowledge of linguistics and of right mind
> could think otherwise
No, it would require besides some specific knowledge of
Estonian or Finnish (to whichever the word is supposed
to belong), but which I do not myself have.
So by me *kan-tlom could indeed have only been offered
jokingly, not by any means with certainty.
> (I wouldn't even expect anyone who connected them to make an
> argument, just showing the two words should be enough, as in
> Piotr's message).
No, merely showing the two words shouldn't be enough.
> I dislike being accused of incompetence by someone who could
> not only make this error but then assume his interpretation
> was so right and obvious that he could make an ironic statement
> otherwise that would be immediately clear.
You don't seem to like being accused of incompetence
by _anybody_, but then you've never really responded
to any of mine or others' very specific criticisms of
your method.
Instead you repeatedly make claims like your recent
one that you "use established and proven methods of
linguistic reconstruction (including borrowing,
metathesis, and dissimilation), mostly regular rules
(and those that aren't mostly optional", but which
have led you to radically different conclusions from
those of all others claiming to use the same methods.
So either you don't truly understand those methods, or
else you alone do and nobody else does, for you seem
to stand entirely alone in your conclusions.
Are we truly to believe that only Sean and Sean alone
in all the world has the intelligence to see the truth
while all others are blind fools?
> I don't know why you seem so opposed to ancient borrowings that
> you would take this path,
Nothing I've ever said justifies the assumption that I'm
opposed to ancient borrowings.
> though your apparent contempt for my work may have influenced
> you.
My "contempt" for your work (I thought I was always more
polite to you than that) did indeed influence me to make
the joke, but it didn't influence what I thought about
'kantele', because I really had no opinion about it in
the first place. I have never studied Finnish, I have
never studied Estonian, and I have never before given any
serious thought to the etymology of 'kantele'.
As far as my so-called contempt goes, I think I arrived
at it quite justifiedly, from such claims as the one of
yours that "All known languages not currently classified
as IE are actually from one branch of IE: Indo-Iranian",
archived at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62316 .
I'm sorry that my comments so deeply bothered you that
they stuck in your craw and brought you back to respond
after all this time, I truly am, but, if you really need
to have the last laugh, it's such claims as the above
that you are going to have to prove.
David
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