Re: Ethandune and Andunie

Larry Swain wrote:

I've been able to do a little more checking and haven't gotten much
further. The only 2 possiblities seem to be ethan or the related adj
ethe, waste, barren plus dun, hill. But just to be sure I've sent a
note off to the English Place Name Society, but I truly can think of no
other alternatives.

Certainly "waste" would be applicable, too. The EPNS is probably the
more appropriate source, but I'll send a letter to OWLS, too (air from
America--it will be a little while before there is a response).


I am less sure about the Gaelic "dun" for fort: Alfred was on Athelney
island, but was there a fort on it?

According to the Anglo Saxon Chronicle entry for 878, he built one there.

Surely the water that surrounded
it then was protection enough. And even if there had been a fort on
the island, the name would be applied where the fort had stood rather
than to the battlefield.

Yes, Athelney and Ethandun are not related in any way other than as
places Alfred stayed.

There I displayed my total lack of understanding of early history on
your isle. I had some impression that Alfred had been on Athelney, was
closely pressed and then broke out and defeated the Danes at a
relatively nearby site: Ethandune.

One thing that has developed is an appreciation of the humor Sir Arthur
Conan Doyle intended in the Holmes stories when he gifted a relatively
minor character -- a detective at Scotland Yard -- with the name of
Athelney Jones. I suppose it balanced the French-sounding name of
another detective there: Lestrade.


Also, JRRT, unfortunately, cared very little for the Gaelic language;
it's hard to imagine him even accidentally deriving one of his words
from it, though I suppose it's possible that he did.

Well, "dun" for fort is probably not Welsh in origin. Yes, we do have a
Gaelic word that appears in Welsh and Irish, dun, that means hill, hill
fort etc. But there appears in OE, and Old Dutch dun, meaning much the
same thing that has suggested to many linguists that dun was a word in
the West Germanic family while still in Batavia and Lower Saxony and
before the languages split (the Saxon form of OE anyway since in the
early period dun seems restricted to Saxon areas). It could be a
development from tun, modern town, meaning an enclosed space (and other
meanings derived from there) and PERHAPS! since many towns and in
particular enclosed fortresses were built on hills, the term in some
languages came to indicate the hill as well. The latter is just a guess
though; and the former is a theory. In any case, dun meaning fortress
is a well attested word in Old English regardless of its origins.

I don't know if it contributes much here, but they say the word
developed into the modern Edington. Perhaps in the long-ago past
someone confused the meanings of "dun" and "tun." It might be
difficult to trace back the originally intended meaning, then.


I disagree too about saying that Tolkien didn't care for Gaelic: I don't
know that he ever looked specifically into Scots Gaelic, Old Irish,
Manx, or Brittonic, but he certainly expressed an early interest in
Welsh and if memory serves taught a Welsh course or two while at Reading
(??)

"In October 1920 I went to Leeds as a Reader in English Language, with
a free commission to develop the linguistic side of a large and growing
School of English Studies, in which no regular provision had as yet
been made for the linguistic specialist. I began with five hesitant
pioneers out of a School (exclusive of the first year) of about sixty
members. The proportion to-day is 43 literary to 20 linguistic
students. The linguists are in no way isolated or cut off from the
general life and work of the department, and share in many of the
literary courses and activities of the School; but since 1922 their
purely linguistic work has been conducted in special classes, and
examined in distinct papers of special standard and attitude. The
instruction offered has been gradually extended, and now covers a large
part of the field of English and Germanic philology. Courses are given
on Old English heroic verse, the history of English*, various Old
English and Middle English texts*, Old and Middle English philology*,
introductory Germanic philology*, Gothic, Old Icelandic (a second-year
and third-year course), and Medieval Welsh*. All these courses I have
from time to time given myself; those that I have given personally in
the past year are marked *."
-- from Letter 7, his application for the Rawlinson&Bosworth
professorship at Oxford (he got the job)

"I do know Celtic [tales] (many in their original languages Irish and
Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their
fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken
stained glass window reassembled without design."
--Letter 19

"...a fascination that Welch names had for me, even if only seen on
coal-trucks, from childhood...though people only gave me books that
were incomprehensible to a child when I asked for information. I did
not learn any Welsh till I was an undergraduate, and found in it an
abiding linguistic-aesthetic satisfaction...Most important...was the
discovery in Exeter of a Finnish Grammar. It was like discovering a
complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind
and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me; and I gave
up the attempt to invent an 'unrecorded' Germanic language, and my 'own
language' -- or series of invented languages -- became heavily
Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure. That is of course long
past now. Linguistic taste changes like everything else, as time goes
on; or oscillates between poles...I mentioned Finnish, because that set
the rocket off in story."
-- Letter 163, to W. H. Auden

It set off quite a rocket.

"I am indeed in English terms a West-midlander at home only in the
counties upon the Welsh Marches; and it is, I believe, as much due to
descent as to opportunity that Anglo-Saxon and Western Middle English
and alliterative verse have been both a childhood attraction and my
main professional sphere. (I also find the Welsh language specially
attractive [note]The 'Sindarin,' a Grey-elven language, is in fact
constructed deliberately to resemble Welsh phonologically and to have a
relation to High-elven similar to that existing between British --
properly so-called, sc. the Celtic languages spoken in this island at
the time of the Roman Invasion -- and Latin...[end note])"
--Letter 165

"I love Wales (what is left of it, when mines, and the even more
ghastly sea-side resorts, have done their worst), and especially the
Welsh language. But I have not in fact been in W. for a long time
(except for crossing it on the way to Ireland). I go frequently to
Ireland (Eire: Southern Ireland) being fond of it and of (most of) its
people; but the Irish language I find wholly unattractive."
-- Letter 213

He had worst things to say about Gaelic in other letters (including
late in life, so he apparently never got over it), but there's the
general gist of it. I included the part about story in some of the
quotes because with JRRT it is so difficult to separate language and
story.

As for A-S, in Letter 297 JRRT mentions a few words (names and a few
words for Rohan as described in Appendix F, Deagol, Smeagol; Gladden
River, Gladden Fields; and Earendil, to which he devotes several
paragraphs) and then says categorically that "[o]utside this restricted
field reference to A-S is entirely delusory."

Well then. However, he did always allow for "unconscious" influences.
There is even an intrusion of Gaelic in his work, he realized after
many years:

"nazg: the word for 'ring' in the Black Speech. This was devised to be
a vocable as distinct in style and phonetic content from words of the
same meaning in Elivish, or in other real languages that are most
familiar: English, Latin, Greek, etc. Though actual congruences (of
form + sense) occur in unrelated real languages, and it is impossible
in constructing imaginary languages from a limited number of component
sounds to avoid such resemblances (if one tries to -- I do not [note:
in another letter, he does mention that he tried very hard to avoid
naming the northern Kingdom 'Ardor']), it remains remarkable that
'nasc' is the word for 'ring' in Gaelic (Irish: in Scottish usually
written 'nasg'). It also fits well in meaning, since it also means,
and prob. originally meant, a 'bond,' and can be used for an
'obligation.' Nonetheless I only became aware, or again aware, of its
existence recently in looking for something in a Gaelic dictionary. I
have no liking at all for Gaelic from Old Irish downwards, as a
language, but it is of course of great historical and philological
interest, and I have at various times studied it...It is thus probable
that 'nazg' is actually derived form it, and this short, hard and clear
vocable, sticking out from what seems to me (an unloving alien) a mushy
language, became lodged in some corner of my linguistic memory."
--Letter 297

Ah well. One can always fall back on the dates: /Alarms and
Discursions/, in which "Ethandune" appears, was published in 1911.
JRRT began work on his secondary world roughly in 1916. One can hear
the tone of Chesterton's style in the essay in parts of Tolkien's /Lord
of the Rings/ and I still find it hard to rule out that the "tolling"
sound of "Ethandune" as well as the battle, its significance in British
history, the struggling king, and so forth had quite an effect on the
young Tolkien.



The directional names, west, north, east, south are all of Germanic
origin. We didn't "get them" from anywhere so much as they are part of
our native word stock. More later.


Well, they didn't spring out of our initial Ancestor's forehead
fullblown, like Minerva from Zeus; that's the sense of derivation I was
alluding to there (poorly, 'tis true).

Well, no, I just meant that we didn't borrow them from another language.

"Our native word stock." I understand.

PS: And that's a very good point about Dunharrow. I must check on the
Dunlendings.....

I'm working on a theory that the Dunlenders are a "double entendre",
hill dwellers, and "dark landers", and conflation of dun and dunn. Not
sure I can make it work though. Anyway, remember that the Dunlenders
live in and about the foothills of the White Mtns.

And used to occupy all of Calendardhon, generally a flat land. But
they weren't called Dunlendings then, so perhaps it could work.
Certainly the root "ndu," meaning 'down, from on high," might possibly
contribute to the sense of A-S "dun," though of course the Rohirrim
wouldn't have used Sindarin. I seem to remember JRRT addressing this
and our word "dunn," but can't find in /Letters/ on a quick search. If
one postulates that in the days of their wandering in Anduin Vale they
did pick up some Sindarin, then "du" perhaps -- "night, dimness"?

Barb

.

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