Re: There was a crooked snake

> Even I know that a serpent is something that serps. But...
>
> "Man må sno sig, sagde ålen(, den lå på stegependen)"
> "You have to [twist, wind, make shady deals] said the eel (it was

lying in the frying pan)".

>
> (Danish saying)
>
> There´s your verb root (ON snúa).
>
> And I wasn't thinking of just creepy-crawliness, but something more

destructive.

>
> Torsten

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> There was a crooked snake... or rather a sneaky snake.
Since you brought it up, I wonder what "sneaky"'s got to do with it
all (in Swedish, sneaking is "slinka", cf. German "Schlange")

>
> I wonder if *neh1-tr-, which underlies Lat. natrix, Eng. (n)adder
and W. neidr, is not derived from the thread/needle root *(s)neh1-,
which would make <adder> related to <needle>.
cf. German nähen "sew".

In that case the specifically Latin meaning "water snake" (= grass
snake) would have been due to a folk-etymological association with
<nato:> 'swim'.

Or the original snake-verb meant "to wriggle", hence "to swim"?

>
> Of the various snakes presumably known to the IEs, only vipers are
really dangerous (the IEs certainly lived within the range of the
common adder, and depending on one's preferred homeland may have been
familiar with one or two other species, such as the asp viper).
Smooth snakes (_Coronella_) can bite quite painfully if cornered, but
are not venomous, while grass snakes (_Natrix_) and the Aesculapian
snake (as well as other species of _Elaphe_) are completely harmless,
except to frogs, mice etc. I wonder how much the IEs knew about the
real "destructive potential" of different snakes, how much they
feared them, and what effect it all had on PIE myth (in particular
the representation of dragons and other monsters as "serpents").
Finally, I also wonder whether the IEs had specific (though confusion-
prone) names for "viper", "grass snake", "smooth snake" etc. (they
look pretty different, after all).
>
> Piotr
>
>
>
Aren't you trying to be Linnaeus again? (By which I mean; Which is
(or rather was) the conceptually primary: the snake or the snakeness?)

There is another "naga" word that means "tree" >? "spear, knife"
> "wound" ("Nóz^ w wodzie", as Polanski filmed). Isn't that also the
world tree at the root of which the snake (not "bad" serpent) gnaws?
Perhaps the porcupine should be related hereto?

The reason I am harping on the theme of snake and destructiveness is
that I am looking at mythology, not fact. The Midgard "serpent" is
much more destructive than any viper in real life.

Other strange facts: "coal, embers" is *n-g-, fire is *n-g- (well,
they are in some peoples' reconstructions). If I had been a PIE poem-
smith and given the task of crafting a story of fire under water,
dragons and killing, I would find a lot of ready-made *n-g-'s at hand.

But take a look around here:
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Hng.html
It's an armory for constructing nice stories of the Marvel comics
type. (You are of course welcome to ignore anything outside of IE).

Torsten