--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...>
wrote:
>
>
>
>
> To complicate things, my It. etym. dictionary (by M. Cortelazzo and
> P. Zolli) questions the derivation of the verb brigare and of its
> substantived participle, brigante, from the term briga, although in
> this work, too, the latter is considered a probable loan from Celtic
> bri:go- 'strength' as says Watkins.
>
> Cortelazzo and Zolli think as follows:
>
> 1. It. BRIGA may have originally meant 'strength, vigour' (it is
> used with this meaning by Dante). The semantic development
> into 'strife, quarrel, controversy' would have occurred later, and
> still later would that into 'nuisance, harassment, difficult
> problem'. If this is the case, it is not necessary to postulate, as
> does Watkins, a Proto-Celtic lemma *bri:ga:- 'strife' to accout for
> It. briga 'strife etc.' Indeed, Cortelazzo and Zolli think Pr.Celt.
> bri:go- 'strength' is the direct source of It. briga.
>
> 2. It. BRIGARE has as its original meaning 'to deal, to intrigue
> (secret plans) to obtain something' (in Dante, 'to struggle to do
> one's best'); to frequent (someone), to meet in small groups'. In
> Old Italian texts, a tenuous link with the meaning 'to fight' is,
> thus, only found in Dante, who also uses the noun briga with the
> meaning 'strength'.
>
> 3. It. BRIGANTE has as its original meaning -- in early authors
> such as G. Boccaccio and G. Villani -- 'good companion, man-about-
> town'. Thus, a positive meaning. This is a semantic development
> from the meaning 'to deal, to meet in small groups' of the verb
> brigare. The negative meaning of the term brigante ('one who
> behaves badly', then just 'a brigand') would have evolved later.
>
> In sum, a brigante would not be 'one who fights' (= a member of a
> confraternite of mercenaries)! At least, not plainly, i.e. with no
> break in the chain of semantic transmission, from a supposedly
> Celtic-derived Vulgar Latin term briga meaning 'strife'!
>
> Sigh! I hope someone's gonna make up something of all this...
I checked 'Unsere Vorfahren die Veneter', and came up with meager
results, which puzzled me, since I recalled the Bregent-/Venet-
association to come from there:
p. 51 'Der Bodensee [Lake Constance] selbst führte zur Römerzeit außer
Lacus Brigantinus auch den Namen Lacus Venetus (Pomponius Mela, De
Corographia III, 24 um 44 v. Chr.). An diesem See liegt auch die
österreichische Stadt Bregenz, röm. Brigantium (bregec Diminutivform
von breg das Ufer).' (The author is trying to trace supposed
Slavic/Venetic place names in the western Alps).
Which I kind of knew already.
So I checked instead Stephen Oppenheimer's The Origins of the
British', and found:
pp. 73-77
'Tribal names
When we look at what Roman writers have to say about the
tribes of northern England, we find that they mention one group which
occupied all the areas where the Cumbrian celtic-language relicts are
still found. They were known as the Carvetii, but that is about all
that is known about them from the texts. Their terri-tory included all
of Cumbria (the Lake District) and parts of north Lancashire and
south-west Durham (the Pennines), and south-east Dumfries and Galloway
in Scotland (Figure 2.3). They were probably mainly hill farmers, with
few large settlements apart from ones associated with the numerous
Roman forts in the area. They did not make their own coins. For some
obscure reason their entire county and its towns were left out by
Claudius Ptolemy from his famous second-century Geographia (chapter 2
'Geography of Albion Island of Britannia'). This omission was probably
a block clerical error, since there is none of the concordant detail
that should be expected, for instance cross-classification of
Carvetian towns with their neighbours, the Brigantes. Their Roman
provincial capital was Luguvalium (Carlisle). Further north into
western Scotland, the area occupied by the Damnonii would have
corresponded geographically to where today's remnant Brythonic
counting numbers are found in Ayrshire.
Although connections have been and still are made between the Carvetii
and their neighbours, the Brigantes, the evidence is indirect. The
Brigantes were also a putative Celtic people and much the largest
tribal grouping of northern England. They occupied most of England
north of the Rivers Humber and Mersey that was not occupied by either
the Carvetii on the west or the Parisii in East Yorkshire.
Much is known about the Brigantes' interactions with the Romans, for
whom they were generally a collaborating client
tribe. They had a queen, rivalling Boudicca in fame, who feigned
to shelter the fleeing rebel leader Caratacus and then promptly handed
him over to the Romans in chains. They had a Roman capital at Isurium
Brigantum (Aldborough, North Yorkshire). However, the Celtic claims
rest mainly on their distinctive tribal name, which, having a Celtic
derivation, was shared with various other contemporary tribes also
thought to be Celtic. The derivation of the name may be from the
Celtic mother-goddess Brigit, also known as Brigantia. Ptolemy
mentions in his Geography three tribal locations with this name, one
in northern England, another in south-east Ireland and Brigantinus
Portus of the northern Gallaeci tribe. Also known as Brigantium
Hispaniae, this was the ancient seaport of La Coruña in northwest
Spain and the western terminus of a major trade route in tin, gold,
lead and silver.25
There was also a clutch of similar place/tribal names connected with
Lake Constance on today's Swiss/Austrian border. The people of Central
Raetia were called the Brigantii. Their tribal capital was Brigantium
Raetiae (now Bregenz), and Lake Constance itself was then called
Brigantinus Lacus.26
John Collis has an interesting map on which he shows the relevance of
such Brigant-name links between the Continent and various parts of the
British Isles. He assigns three levels of relevance: accepted,
possible and rejected. He seems to accept the name link between the
south-east Irish and English Brigantes tribes,27 which would tend to
favour the 'celtic-speaking' label as well as 'Celtic', since there is
no lexical evidence for any non-celtic ancestral languages in Ireland.
However, he implies, reasonably, that such a general name may lack
tribal specificity. The Roman town name Cambodunum, however, does
appear in both the northern English and west-Austrian locations,
implying that the sharing of the root 'Brigant-' is more than just a
coincidence.
The story of the British Brigantes does not stop there, since such a
general label may have been supplied to the Romans, as a tribal
description, by celtic-speaking informants, without the tribe
necessarily being celtic-speaking. The English historical linguist
Kenneth Jackson, in his classic Language and History in Early
Britain,28 has a whole appendix on the problematic name used by Bede
and others for the northernmost 'Anglian' tribe of Anglo-Saxon
Britain, the Bernicii, who inhabited Bernicia on the east coast of
Northumberland. Although he opposes the idea, Jackson shows that the
name could be derived through Welsh from the tribal name Brigantes. As
he points out:
if Bede's Bernicii ... really represents a British tribe-name borrowed
for the designation of the northernmost Anglian settlers, it can
hardly have been taken over any later than the seventh century ... it
is plain that it had become ... recognised by the Britons as now an
English and not a British name, before c.600.29
The paradox of Welsh writers naming a northern 'invading
Germanic-speaking tribe' by the name of the British tribe they wiped
out, and calling them English, can be resolved if the original
Brigantes of the north country were not celtic-speaking, and were not
really wiped out merely invaded by new elites from Scandinavia.
There is also the problem that the Celtic stem brigant- (meaning 'high
person' or 'high place') was used alternately to mean highlanders or
people of the goddess Brigit. The former could simply be a description
of terrain, the latter of religion.'
Or that they were not Celtic- but Venetic-speaking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigantes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian%C3%A7on
which city is on the river Durance
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/59258
and the thread starting at
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/58459
Then there are these
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brig
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigantine
Now this matches well with your glosses 1. and 2.
So we could imagine it was a trading seafaring people, a kind of early
Hanse, which took to piracy when it fell on hard times?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgundians
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bornholm#History
According to Wulfstan, Bornholm had its own king.
Torsten