Personal Blogs

Last night in my local, the Moon Under Water, talk turned to how the Roman road known as Ermine Street, which runs near here, got its name.

One theory was that it was called after the animal, the stoat in its white winter coat with a black-tipped tail, and derived from this a heraldic 'tincture' which is a background of white with black tail tips arranged in a pattern .

Few saw easily what the connection could be though, and in fact the explanation is totally different.

Ermine street is a corruption of an Anglo-Saxon name Earninga Straete, which would mean "the Roman road of Earn's people", Earn presumably being a tribal leader.

The word earn is the Anglo-Saxon for eagle and survives today in the form erne, meaning the sea eagle (or possibly the golden eagle too). Probably the tribal leader wasn't actually called Earn, because Anglo-Saxon names tended to be dithematic — composed from two parts, such as Alfred, "elf counsel" or Mathilda, "mighty battle".

However these names often got shortened. To any Maddys reading: did you realize you were warlike? Alfs, did you think of yourself as guided by supernatural beings?

In a similar way Earn was perhaps short for Earnwald, "eagle power". In forms such as Arnold it remains a common name today. Arnie?

And where did Earnwald's people live? Probably somewhere near the Cambridgeshire village of Arrington, which lies on Ermine Street. In the Domesday book it is Erningtone, "Ern's people's farmstead", which lends support to this idea.

I wondered what the Romans called this road. We have no idea. It seems we know the Latin names of few, or no, Roman roads in Britannia, although names were certainly given to roads elsewhere.

To end on a Roman note: here is an example of true eagle power. Jupiter was supposed to ride a chariot pulled by eagles, as shown in this spirited engraving. Sorry it is a bit dark but there was a bit of weather about as you can tell.

Picture credit

Welcome images, via Wikimedia commons

Did Lancelot
Use his lance a lot
Or not?

Guinevere
Would whisper in our ear
If she were here.

These are the converse of Bertrand Russell's linguistic invention of the emotive conjugation, but still drawing attention to the way that language is both denotative and connotative (the meaning and the feeling) and how loaded language stops us thinking clearly. Plus they help you feel bad about yourself. To illustrate:

I am a worm.
Compared with me you are cool
She is a diva.

Here are some more I thought up, in my poor way.

I do not have a Phd
You do.
She is a professor.

I am no longer even moderately attractive
You have retained your appearance quite well, considering
She is photographed for the Daily Mail whenever she appears on a beach.

I am lazy.
You relax regularly, so you are fresh enough to maintain high standards
She has progressed beyond the workload illusion and founded a ground-breaking consultancy.

None of these are very good. You must be able to do better.

This form of word play is reputed to have been introduced first by Betrand Russell on the radio program The Brains Trust. One of his examples was

Russell seems to have been (at least partly) making a serious point about loaded language but these "emotive conjugations" have since been popular for their humorous content. The New Statesman featured emotive conjugations in one of its weekly competitions. My favorite entry was

Inspired by these I had a go at writing some, with the following results.

        I pay attention to detail; you are a little finicky, if you don't mind my saying; she is a pedantic monster.

        I employ a light touch; you are occasionally rather lax; she is negligent.

        I enjoy social drinking; have you ever thought of talking to your doctor? She is an alcohol abuser.

        I am a scholar; you have read widely; she will believe anything.

 Some underground definitions

Eftsoons the Lady Guinevere bethought her

That Lancelot hadde much ex kaliber.

Listen how

Each breath we take

Advances and retreats.

Breaking on a fragile shore—

The heart.

An Angel caught me by the throat.

"Is this in the rules?", I cried.

"No, but it's quicker", she replied.

Until the spellchecker intervened Bach had intended to be a composer.

Image credits

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Johann_Sebastian_Bach#/media/File:Johann_Sebastian_Bach.jpg

The object below is an Iron Age (Celtic or early Roman) brooch that was found near here.

It's actually bronze—not gold as the photograph makes it appear—and about 30 mm across. The style is 'La Tène III', named after La Tène in Switzerland where an enormous cache of artifacts in this characteristic style was excavated in the 19^th century.

It took me a long while to work out what the geometry would have been but after looking at lots of pictures and consulting a friend I now have a reasonable idea. There would have been a pin, wound round one end to make a spring, and at the other end a catch for the pin, something like this

The missing parts being more fragile have broken off, or possibly just corroded away. Indeed it's possible the clip breaking caused the brooch to get lost, or perhaps when it broke the owner simply slung it away. It would have been the budget-friendly jewellery of its time, and very large numbers of similar brooches are found.

All the same I felt a thrill to handle it and reflect that until a few days ago no other human being had touched it for two thousand years.