Re: Hercynian (again)

dgkilday57:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Trond Engen<trond@...> wrote:
>
>> I should probably read what's been written at lengths before, but
>> I'm lazy.
>>
>> <Hercynia> is seen as a latinization of a Celtic word corresponding
>> to Gmc. *fergun- "mountain". Today it struck me that if Lith.
>> <Perkunas> "god of heaven and thunder", ON<Fjörgyn> "mother of
>> Thor" is the same word, that would give us an independent example of
>> the IE dualism "stone/hammer" ~ "sky" that we glean from the
>> "hammer" word.
>
> I have no doubt that all the above reflect *perkW-, but <Hercynia>
> cannot reflect an inherited Celtic word, since both Celtic and Italic
> assimilate *p...kW... to *kW...kW... (hence Latin <quercus>). As the
> Volcae were associated with Hercynia, and were encountered by the
> Germans before the Celts were (hence *Walxa- as the Gmc. term for
> 'southern foreigner'), I suspect that Volcan *Perku:nia: (with *kW >
> *k as in their self-name 'Wolves') was borrowed into Proto-Celtic
> after the *p...kW... assimilation but before the loss of inherited
> *p, hence PCelt *Ferku:n-, *Herku:n- to the Greek geographers who got
> the name from Celtic. *Arku:n- and *Orku:n- attest different routes
> of the same name to the Greeks.

Orcus?

>> And now I'm thinking: Since the Hercynian forest spanned across
>> central Europe from the Rhine to the horizon of the known world, is
>> it actually possible that *perkW-un- is reconstructable for
>> Indo-European not only as a generic "mountain (range)" but as a
>> toponym designing the Carpathian mountains, and could that be the
>> very origin of the IE semantic duality? Would the Carpathians be the
>> "sky mountains" seen from the Pontic plain? Would that be where the
>> god of thunder killed the dragon and unleashed the waters?
>
> The problem here is that the Carpathians appear in Old Norse as
> Harfadh- (I am lacking edh today). Whatever the origin of this name,
> it was known to the Germans before the consonant-shift, and it is
> unlikely that *Fergu:n- specifically referred to the same area.

Yeah. It would have to have been extended along the mountain range as
Indo-European peoples or mythology or whatever moved west and to have
been replaced in it's original area. It's a huge stretch.

>> [The reason I came to think of this was Bjorvand & Lindeman's entry
>> for <furu> "pine tree". It's easily derived from IE *perkW-, but,
>> paraphrasing, the semantic shift is almost unsurmountable unless we
>> take the common origin to be a mere descriptive "mountain tree" as in
>> OE <ferg'enbea:m>. My reason for looking was actually the word <bark>
>> "barch", thinking it might be something like a back-formation from
>> compounds with *perkW-, providing another possible semantic bridge.
>> But "mountain" is better.]
>
> Hubschmid, in regard to the Jura Mountains and related appellatives,
> discussed the connection between 'oak-forest' and 'forested mountain'
> ('Berg', 'Bergwald', usw.), and this is probably another example.
> That is, if the primary sense of *perkWu- is 'oak', we can easily get
> to 'oak-forest' and 'forested mountain' in derivatives, then back to
> 'pine-forest' and 'pine' in appropriate areas. Oaks are supposedly
> immune to lightning (also laurels, eagles, and seals, if you believe
> the ancients), so the transfer of *perkWu- to the epithet of the
> thunder-god, which could easily become his name, is straightforward.
> In the Norse case, the connection with hammering may have arisen
> independently. With a great deal of smith-work going on in their
> economy, thunder could easily be portrayed as divine hammering.

I was trying to hand-wave in the direction of Indra and dragonslaying!

(I do, however, find that much of what goes for reconstructed mythology
is overstating small pieces of evidence that could easily have risen
independently or be wander-motifs.)

--
Trond Engen