Re: Odp: Cowpokes and Centaurs.

From: Ivanovas/Milatos
Message: 156
Date: 1999-11-02

ÿþ<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content="text/html; charset=unicode" http-equiv=Content-Type> <META content="MSHTML 5.00.2014.210" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Hello,</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Mark wrote:</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT face=Tahoma><FONT size=-1>In early Greece, at least, sheep and goats were the main animals. And anywhere sheep and goats are kept, even today, the shepherds and goatherds usually work on foot -- and always, it seems, in conjunction with dogs.</FONT></FONT> </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Tahoma size=2>As something of a specialist on Cretan shepherds (my book about them is to be published soon in Athens), I'd like to add a little bit in this line of thought.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Tahoma size=2>It's true, they work on foot (the one I know who works riding a donkey because he is so fat is laughed about by others), but there are many who use the dogs only around the sheepfold, not for rustling. They manage large herds of 800 animals with two (sometimes even one) shepherds throwing stones and skillfully using their 'verga', the wooden shepherds' crook. From there I suppose they use the word 'xylono' (from xylo, wood) for moving the herd from a standing position. These words may well be very old in use - their vocabulary often resembles Ancient Greek (e.g. they call a goat still 'aiga', not 'katsika' as other Greeks do).</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Tahoma size=2>Greetings from Crete</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT face=Tahoma size=2>Sabine</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>