"Christopher Gwinn" <sonno3@...>
> It is most like related to the Irish words bag "combat", and
> bagach "combative", as well as Middle(?) Welsh kymwy (*com-bag-
> ) "affliction", and likely meant something like "combatants". It has
> the same suffix as Gaulish alauda "lark" (alouette) and bascauda.
> See Xavier Delamarre's "Dictionnaire de la langue gauloise" (which
> is the best resource for Gallo-Brittonic etymologies right now).
Forgot to add - Pokorny relatesBagaudae to PIE *bhe:gh- / bho:gh-
"streiten" and translates Bagaudae as "aufstaendische Guerillas".>>
Just to give a different slant on this.
Awhile ago, there was a piece in military history magazine about this and as
best as I can recall the interpretation of the name was from the Roman/Celtic
upper class point-of-view. Which is that it is related to the Old Irish
<bocht> which meant poor. The name would have been given by the loyal Gaulish
upper-class and picked up by the Romans.
The Lewis & Short definition is also from that perspective:
<<Bagaudae , arum, m., a class of peasants in Gaul, who rebelled under the
emperor Diocletian, and were finally conquered by Maximian, Aur. Vict. Caes.
39; Eutr. 9, 20.--Hence, Bagaudica rebellio, rebellion of the peasants, Eum.
pro Restaur. Schol. 4.>>
The idea is that this was not a Celtic or Gaulish revolt but a peasants'
revolt and that the Bagaudae are first described in the only text we have as
"peasants and robbers who terrorized the [Gaulish] countryside." Someone
named Herschel suggests a Gaulish form of the Latin "vagatae" - wanderers,
vagabonds.
Steve Muhlberger gives a somewhat different interpretation, mentioning that
recently the peasant idea may have gone out of fashion, citing a book on
peasant revolts, and himself seeing them more as plebs than peasants, but
nevertheless "lower class", at
http://www.ku.edu/~medieval/melcher/matthias/t100/0033.html.
McBain's has something that might offer a more military suggestion, with an
interesting origin: "a cluster, troop, Welsh <bagad>, Breton <bogod>; from
Latin <bacca> (Thurneysen, Ernault)." Bacca would be I believe from the
Bacchae? Wild fun-lovers? Now that's a rebellion.
Finally, I think that <bacc> is a shepherd's crook in Old Irish. Perhaps a
shepherd's revolt?
Regards,
Steve Long