Archaic England : $b an essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitionsBayley, Harold
History
Archaic England : $b an essay in deciphering prehistory from megalithic monuments, earthworks, customs, coins, place-names, and faerie superstitions
Bayley, Harold
Archaeology; England -- Antiquities
In addition to _great_ or _mighty_ it is clear that the radical in
question meant _high_. The German trisagion of _hoch! hoch! hoch!_ is
still equivalent to the English _high! high! high!_ the Swedish for
_high_ is _hog_, the Dutch is _oog_, and in Welsh or British _high_ is
_uch_. It is presumably a trace of the gutteral _ch_ that remains in our
modern spelling of _high_ with a _gh_ now mute, but the primordial Welsh
_uch_ has also become the English _ok_, as in Devonshire where _Ok_ment
Hill is said to be the Anglicised form of _uch mynydd_, the Welsh or
British for _high_ hill. I shall, thus, in this volume treat the
syllable _'k_ or _'g_ as carrying the predominant and apparently more
British meaning of _high_. That the sounds 'g and 'k were invariably
commutable may be inferred from innumerable place-names such as
_Og_bourne St. Andrew, alternatively printed _Oke_bourne, and that the
same mutability applies to words in general might be instanced from any
random page of Dr. Murray's _New English Dictionary_. We may thus assume
that "Kalbion," meant Great Albion or High Albion, and it remains to
analyse Alba or Albion.
B and P being interchangeable, the _ba_ of _Alba_ is the same word as
_pa_, which, according to Max Müller, meant primarily _feeder_; _papa_
is in Turkish _baba_, and in Mexico also _ba_ meant the same as our
infantile _pa_, _i.e._, feeder or father. In _paab_, the British for
_pope_, one _p_ has become _b_ the other has remained constant.
The inevitable interchange of _p_ and _b_ is conspicuously evident in
the place-name--Battersea, alternatively known as Patrickseye, and on
that little _ea_, _eye_, or _eyot_ in the Thames at one time, probably,
clustered the padres or paters who ministered to the church of St.
Peter--the architypal Pater--whose shrine is now Westminster Abbey.
It is a custom of children to express their superlatives by
duplications, such as _pretty pretty_, and in the childhood[143] of the
world this habit was seemingly universal. Thus _pa_, the Aryan root
meaning primarily _feeder_, has been duplicated into _papa_, which is
the same word as _pope_, defined as indicating the father of a church.
In A.D. 600 the British Hierarchy protested against the claims of the
"paab" of Rome to be considered "the Father of Fathers,"[144] and there
is little doubt that Pope is literally _pa-pa_ or _Father Father_. In
Stow's time there existed in London a so-called "Papey"--"a proper
house," wherein sometime was kept a fraternity of St. Charity and St.
John. This was, as Stow says, known as the Papey;[145] "for in some
language priests are called papes".
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account