----- Original Message -----From: Hjalmar AnderssonSent: Monday, June 12, 2006 11:46 PMSubject: Re: [norse_course] Re: Wolves
Llama Nom, Patricia and Ulf,Thanks for your interest and advice. I'm doing this 'research' for a minor essay that I will write on the subject as part of a linguistics course. Today I found out that there is a host of French wolf-proverbs. Here is one:les loups ne se mangent pas entre eux = (malevolent) people belonging to the same group will not harm one another.Quand on parle du loup (on en voit la queue) = Swedish när man talar om trollen (står de i farstun)In this proverb the word 'queue' means 'tail', by the way.I'm still a bit confused about the etymology of 'vargr', though. I looked up the word 'vargus' in a Latin-English dictionary (Oxford University Press, I believe) and the only suggested meaning was 'vagabond' followed by [Celtic]. I've read elsewhere that there is a theory saying that the word is related to English 'vagrant', but apparently this is not the most probable origin (the form *wargaz, which may have meant 'strangler', seems to be the widely accepted Gmc. origin)/Hjalmar
llama_nom <600cell@...> wrote:--- In norse_course@ yahoogroups. com, Hjalmar Andersson <hjandr@...> wrote:
>
> Hi!
>
> I'm trying to find out more about the etymology of the ON word
'vargr'. In the attached file I speculate a bit on the basis of what I
have found out so far.
>
> /Hjalmar
Hi Hjalmar,
I just read these messages on the Yahoo Groups website, so I'm not
able to see you attachment. There is an interesting article on the
Swedish 'varg' in Elof Hellquist's Svensk etymologisk ordbok [
http://www.lysator. liu.se/runeberg/ svetym/ ]. The site seems to be
having technical problems at the moment, but if I remember rightly, he
suggests there that PGmc, *vargaz meant criminal, as it does in most
old Germanic languages, and was only later applied to the wolf in
Scandinavia as a noa-name. This is a polynesian term used by
folklorists for a euphemism used in place of a taboo word or divine
name. He cites a German proverb which meant something like "speak of
the wolf and he comes running", and suggests that this alternative
name "criminal, strangler" was needed to avoid the danger that such a
dangerous animal would supernaturally hear its name spoken and be
summoned by it. Contrariwise, derivatives of 'wulf' are used in Old
English to refer to criminals, pirates and violent people: wæl-wulfas
(vikings), wulf-héafod-tré ow (gallows), wylfen (wolvish, used in the
poem Déor of the notorious Gothic tyrant Eormanric).
Llama Nom
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