Colum Cille & the Picts notes

Another Facebook comment  from my Celtic Surnames and Place-names - History and Origins group. We were discussing the roots of placenames with aver, inver. I created a long list. I will post it here later—when I find it! I am conversing with someone whose handle is Celtic England (in italics.) The rest is mine

St. Adamnán, 9th abbot of Iona (627– 704 AD), in a centennial celebration of his distant cousin, St. Columba, scribed Vita Columbae. St. Adamnán wrote that Colum Cille (521-597 AD) was able to converse with King of the Picts, Bridei ca. 565 AD in Inverness.

Of course, Inverness—Inbhir Nis—is a Gaelic word—dating from at least 679 AD—according to Adamnán.

Bridei is mentioned in 558–560 AD in the Irish annals. The Annals of Ulster report "the migration before Máelchú's son, i.e., king Bruide"—which makes him a pagan Irish king in Pictland? Or Bruide— son of Máelchú, or Maelcom/n, an Irish name, or Melcho; or possibly even Maelgwn-Welsh. It would certainly explain why Columba, who spoke Irish, could converse with him. An overlooked detail.

Adomnán of Iona, Life of St Columba, tr. & ed. Richard Sharpe. Penguin, London, 1995.

(Celtic England wrote that Maelchu and Malcolm are different names. He also notes that he used a translator.)

I'm merely gathering from many sources. But we're not so much debating the spelling of King Brude's father's name—the thread is more watery in nature as in river, mouth. Pictish vs Gaelic place names, no?

One source noted Maelwyn. It was also distinguished as Maelchon vs com. I wondered over the spelling. Máel (disciple/follower of) + Con (Máelchon), or Máel Com. Máel + Coluim = Malcolm. I found this too: Mael means 'prince' in Breton and Welsh.

Celtic England: given that he subdues a monster in the river ness we might not want to take what Adamnan says too literally, especially as the Vita Columbae was finished in about 703 and that Columba's visit to Bridei's court was supposed to be in 566 or so. 

Nonetheless, Inverness was an Irish place-name in Adamnán's time. That, we can take literally. Forms: inber; Inber; indbir. VC, Book 1: chs, 26, 29, etc.

Abhainn is Irish for river. Don't let the spelling throw you off*, it sounds like Aven, or Awen.

(*IE in which the consonants count for very little and the vowels for nothing at all.)

You disparage the text because of the Loch Ness monster? Note that Adamnán refers to the monster as an account told to Columba by the Pictish inhabitants of Loch Ness: "according to the account of those who were burying him…"

"ON another occasion also, when the blessed man was living for some days in the province of the Picts, he was obliged to cross the river Nesa (the Ness); and when he reached the bank of the river, he saw some of the inhabitants burying an unfortunate man, who, according to the account of those who were burying him, was a short time before seized, as he was swimming, and bitten most severely by a monster that lived in the water;"

ALIO quoque in tempore, cum vir beatus in Pictorum provincia per aliquot moraretur dies, necesse habuit fluvium transire Nesam: ad cujus cum accessisset ripam, alios ex accolis aspicit misellum humantes homunculum; quem, ut ipsi sepultores ferebant, quaedam paulo ante nantem aquatilis praeripiens bestia morsu momordit saevissimo: —Book II, ch 28.

Vita Columbae was written in Latin–so I doubt that the translator's veracity is in question. Vita Columbae was written 100 years after the death of St Columba aka Colum Cille (521-597 AD) —to commemorate the centennial of his death. It would've been completed loser to 697AD  than 700 AD. So 703 AD is a bit late. Besides, Adamnán was doing some serious traveling in 703 AD, the year before he died. No time to work on a treatise that was due in 697 AD. 

"Adomnan had almost certainly finished the Life of Columba before traveling to Northumbria for his last visit. Bede tells us that Adomnan had an extended visit in Northumbria and then traveled to Ireland where he discussed eucmentical relations between the Irish and Rome and then he returned home where he died before the next Easter"

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/columba-l.asp

Merovingians notes

A Facebook group I belong to, Celtic Surnames and Place-names - History and Origins is:

A repository and discussion about the history behind placenames and the original Celtic names pre-anglicisation and before local corruption. Feel free to post in any Celtic language or English. 

For some peculiar reason, someone in the group keeps posting bits on Merovingians. What they have to do with Celtic Sur- and Place Names, is beyond me. Of course, he didn't see any problem with posting something on the Merogingians in a Celtic studies group. So I decided to tie in his post with a Celtic context.

Understand that the moderator is a bit harsh if you post anything without some sort of back-up analysis. I might also add, these guys are mostly GoBs—good old boys—clubbers who barely tolerate women posting in the group. As a result, few women post, after being ridiculed and bullied. I'm sure these GoBs are not aware of their generic or genetic arrogance, but sometimes they can be quite funny, if not bordering on the rabid. 

I love the subject mater, and so, call them on their general twattiness and happily arm-wrestle with them. Besides, I don't respond well to attempted silencing.

I posted:

Merovingians seem to be wholly Frankish at first glance, but at an anthropological dig I attended in Rogny, near Marle, we could see the Merovingian dressed with Celtic La Tene style artifacts—specifically Celtic style silver inlay belt buckles. Lots and lots of them. 

Of course, belt buckles don't point to identity, but it does suggest many of the Merovingians may have been Gallo-Frankish. All those Gauls of Gaul weren't killed off by the Franks. 

The Merovingians were also called the "long-haired kings" (Latin reges criniti) as their preference for long hair was considered an oddity among the short-haired Franks. And Irish monks held great influence in the Merovingian court—St. Columbanus, especially. And most of the Merovingian clergy were from the Gallo-Roman aristocracy. 

I got a lot of flack for this comment—bordering on the mysogenistic. Rip me a new asshole. So I deleted my comment. As if archaeology wasn't proof enough that there was indeed a Merovingian—Gaulish contingency.

So this then, sir, is my revenge.

Cloudburst

A cloudburst in September? Really? I didn't think it would reach the Bay Area. Now I'm drenched, covering up the outside summer beds.

Hmm, I knew I shouldn't have washed my hair yesterday. Just got an extra rinse. Rainwater conditioner. 

Malcolm posted that rain had hit Sonora about an hour ago. I just didn't think it would hit us. And on the equinox too. We usually don't get rain until November. There go the huckleberries. They weren't sweet at the beginning of September. Not enough heat. Not now either.

I paid for that drenching, my virus came back to visit.

SNAPPY MOUSETRAP haiku

Erm. One snappy mousetrap
just caught the other mousetrap
in its snappy jaw.

Junior mouse is still 
on the lam. Cute bugger but
clueless as they come.

Now I have 10 traps 
all set and at the ready. 
Springform death; heh heh.

It's a three-mouse-night. 
Make that 4. One at dawn. But
I was too tired to count.

Many false alarms, 
traps bit air, I tried a new
configuration.

Bleary-eyed I lay
a row of traps in a row.
All snickety-snap.

Junior: an ex mouse. 
Maybe now I can get plan 
a decent night's sleep

added 9/17

Fall fever

Ugh, day 3 of virus, no more sore throat or dull earache, but everything has that strange new penny feeling, an odd synaesthesia of light and sound, lets me know I ain't quite out of the woods yet. Acute hearing out of both ears at once is vastly overrated. Worse than a hangover. I only made it worse by being in denial about it. 

One thing good about a raging virus is that I've read a string of bad ebooks & haven't had apoplexy over myriad typos. Simple plural nouns don't need apostrophes, just because it's spelled right doesn't mean it's  the right word. And what's with authors evading com pound  words? It's a safe bet that if an Amazon book teaser is spangled with gratuitous apostrophes & typos, that I won't download the ebook. Just sayin'.

I found a poem I had written Aug 20, Cluster Sneeze—where I was sneezing so hard, I lost my brains. That must've been inception of this virus. Yes, I had a bout of it a while ago—replete with earache and headaches. It's like it dribbles out the symptoms in drabs so it's not so obvious. Sneaky, crafty virus. Mimics allergies. Had me fooled for quite some time as Sudafed takes care of the earache. I was beginning to run through a mental list of obscure diseases—including the plague—like a first-year med student. Now the symptoms have stacked up like a domino race. Gotcha! I could do without the jelly-knees, though. Uh-oh, want a little nappy-poo. I NEVER nap. Definitely still in the woods.

Speaking of obscure symptoms. The mice are back. I bumped Big Mama off but Junior is still on the lam. How's that for a plague segue? Junior is the size of a quarter. Too small to trigger the traps, he snags the pecans and makes a run for it. I now have acute cat's hearing but not the reflexes to go with it. Probably a good thing or I'll be leaving little prezzies on the doorstep for Neil. I have 10 mouse traps set TEN! And Junior climbs right over them, he's so small, they don't even snap. I am thinking of velcro, sticky fly paper, or hair wax removal gunk. I once accidentally caught a mouse with the gunk when it spilled over. Really, really.

Coming up Redhead

Blogspot has this nifty overview feature called Traffic Sources so I can see some of the Google search keyword parameters that lead people to my posts. (Other than my biggest pageview fan, vampirestat.com—a spamspider, or a web crawler domain.)

Nearly all my traffic sources are redheaded questions. OK, I get that. THE VIKING IRISH REDHEAD GENE (at 27,127+ page views out of a total of 95,005 page views) is, by far, my most popular blog post. It accounts for 1/3 of all my blog traffic. (But, why this rabid fascination with redheads? Especially Vikings and redheads—she asks.)

By comparison, a spin-off redhead post, Red-headed step-children ranking number 5 on my top 5 blog posts, at 952 page views, doesn't even come close. Not even remotely. I even changed the filters on my Hot Blogs list. So THE VIKING IRISH REDHEAD GENE post is somehow Google-charmed.

So I created a spin-off post to see what would happen:
REDHEADS IN THE GRECO-ROMAN REALM

Would it too leap off the charts? At 86 page views, that would be nada. To level the playing field, I even used the exact same searchword list (like i did with this post): 

Celts, ginger, Irish redheads, red hair, red hair gene, redheaded stepchildren, redheads, Scottish redheads, Viking redheads

I used to think that traffic popularity had to do with total back-links within a blog post. So I began to add links right, left and center—to see if it made any difference. Nope. Let's just see of this post suddenly gets a lot of hits. I changed the title to Coming up Redhead.

However, in my all time Top Ten Pageviews by Countries list, I have 48,663 US readers ('splains that lack of historical acumen), my Number 9 ain't even close at 6023 UK readers, and in Ireland, the land of redheads, only 747 readers. No Scandinavian countries even made the Top Ten list. 

So, I guess that answers my question: who are my readers. So if I may extrapolate, Americans, in love with a skewed post-neoclassical notion of repatriation of Vikings as a romantic ideal, assume that raping Irish women lead to red hair? 

Not that any of this is even remotely blogworthy, but….

But when I saw this latest search question in my traffic sources, I nearly had butt-apoplexy:

are celts descended from vikings? 

(Warning: dangerous segues ahead.)

AGH! Talk about acute historical cluelessness. Really?

FWIW: List of outside traffic source search words (note: the largest entry is Vikings!):

red hair gene
redhead origin
"types of red hair"
redheads decent
are red haired people warriors
worrior model red hair
redhead origin red hair gene
where do red heads trace back to
what countries is it good to be a redhead
ancestory of natural strawberry blond fair skinned womanhighest redheads per country
why do some redheads have afros?
are redheads descended from africans
do the spanish like the irish red hair

red hair gene portuguese
german red head experiment
ancient history of redheads

origin of fair hair freckles blue eyes
what is the dominant eye color of red heads

algernon redhead wife willing
do men lime redheads

irish redheads
ireland women redheads
redhead irishman
redheaded celtic male
the irish vs the scots genes
why is it thought that red hair is irish?
are irish people known for red hair
where did the irish get their red hair
red heads in ireland when did they come about?
do all redheads have irish
does red hair mean your irish
are all gingers of irish descent

irish red hair gene discovered

irish genes
irish travellers genes
red hair regressive gene irish traveller
samhain redheads
ginger hairy scottsmen

vikings genes irish scotish
irish red hair vikings

irish genes red hair vikings ireland
redheaded irish people related to vicking chieftans
are blue eyed irish descended from vikings

when did blond hair ireland

are there redheads in russia

redheads in ukraine

are redheads nordic
red hair norse trait
redheads in norse mythology
does red hair come from scandinavia
are redheads from norwegian dicent
did the vikings bring red hair in ireland and scotland

are redheads from ireland really vikings
red heads in iceland
redhaired dane

redheads in sweden
pictures of swedish redheads

between skandinavia and eastern europe where are green eyes & red hair more prevelant
can scandinavians have redhair
vikings genes irish scotish
irish red hair vikings
viking redhead
vikings red hair
red hair green eyes vikings
are blue eyed irish descended from vikings is it true that red headed people desended from vickings
were there dark headed vikings

scandinavian genetic traits

viking bloodtype
norse blood type
is a+ blood from the vikings?
? how dna can tell you have viking blood
vikings steal irish women

scandinavian rape irish
redheads of viking rape
irish genes red hair vikings ireland

are celts descended from vikings

are celts descended from vikings? What?
nononononononooooooooo! 

And it's killing me to leave the spelling errors stet.

Are Celts descended from Vikings? Let's see. A timeline would help, dude.

The Late Neolithic Copper Age Bell Beaker culture (ca. 2800 – 1800 BC), is probably the ancestor of the Celts. They had distinctive pottery drinking vessels and made barley beer. The Bell Beaker culture was a linguistic ancestor of Proto-Celtic. Also linguistically associated was the Pre-Hallstatt  Urnfield Culture in central Europe, as an ancestral culture of Celtic culture.

Iberian Bell Beaker culture had strong ties with Ireland—which hosted an archaic form of  Bell Beaker culture. Irish copper from Kerry had a specific lead isotope—was found in N. & C. Europe from ca. 2300 to 1700 BC. Central European Únětice Culture which predated the Celtic Hallstatt culture, also had strong ties with Britain and Ireland during the formation of Bronze Age Europe. (Irish gold lunulae, and later La Tène gold torcs).

Celts date back to at least 1200 BC (if not earlier), during  the Late Bronze Age, (Hallstatt culture was in full swing by 800-450 BC), followed by the La Tène culture (450 BC) of antiquity— and the Vikings first landed in Great Britain ca. 789 AD, but didn't stick around.

When did the Celts arrive in Ireland? There were several migrations. The Late Bronze Age, or earlier—mid 2nd millennium BC.

The arrival in Britain of cultural traits identified as Celtic is usually taken to correspond to Hallstatt influence and the appearance of chariot burials in what is now England from about the 6th century BC. Genetic studies regarding Y-DNA Haplogroup I-M284 have concluded that there was Late Iron Age migration of Celtic La Tène people to Britain and then onto north-east Ireland. —Wiki

The first recorded Viking raid in Irish history occurred in 795 AD when Vikings from Norway looted the island. —Wiki

The Vikings (from Old Norse víkingr) were seafaring north Germanic people who raided, traded, explored, and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia, and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th centuries AD. —Wiki

The Viking Age is the period from 793 AD to 1066 AD in European History, especially Northern European and Scandinavian history, following the Germanic Iron Age  In England, the Viking Age began officially on 8 June 793 when Vikings attacked the abbey on Lindisfarne. The Vikings who invaded western and eastern Europe were chiefly pagans from Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They also settled in the Faroe Islands, Ireland, Iceland, Scotland (Caithness, the Hebrides and the Northern Isles), Greenland, and Canada. It is unknown what triggered the Norse expansion and conquests. This era coincided with the Medieval Warm Period (800–1300) and stopped with the start of the Little Ice Age (about 1250–1850) —Wiki

Maybe the person who wrote that query was dyslexic or didn't know the difference between BC and AD.

The only way it could remotely work is if you switched the query around:
are Vikings descended from Celts? And even then it would be problematic, unless you were referring to the Dublin Norse who took Irish (and Scottish) wives. Their children and grandchildren (who settled Iceland and the Faroes) would be Viking Celts. Agh! So their descendants were Vikings descended from one branch of Celts.

But that wasn't the question, was it?

Can I fish-slap someone now? What about a fish dance? With a redheaded salmon? Huh? Huh? Can I? Can I? Please, pretty please with a redhead on top? (No, not that way! Ya scurvy-ridden....)

This moment was probably brought to you by Monthy Python. Or not.

It is, however, Friday the Thirteenth.

Algernon?

What's Algernon doing in this list anyway? FWIW, even a detailed Google search didn't shed light on that one. (Sigh.)

Heh. This list ought to keep them occupied.

Denial, a river of ice. (Knee chronicles)

Rather than fight it,
I should ice my torn knee.
Denial, a river of ice.

Someone tells me they had to ice their knee for two years.. Two years?  Same bag of frozen peas? Talk about mushy peas. I also use frozen peas. I like petit pois best. They mold to the anatomy. I need surgery but insurance is stalling. I got a cortisone shot on Friday and it made a huge difference—I was able to get around at the Highland Games, but it's only a stopgap. Paying for it now. I've kept off my knee the whole week. It really makes a difference. It still has phantom twinges of pain for no reason, but icing always helps. Trying not to take Advil. Reading a lot of ebooks these days to pass the time.

Facebook conversation added 9/19

Mouse Wars, redux

MAUSIAN DIARIES: MAUSGATE 9132013

9/3 It's officially Fall. Forget the equinox. The mice are back. A little early. I can't help but think they are foul weather predictors. Like little groundhogs. Apparently that lone August mouse was not an anomaly.

Over Labor Day weekend, the mice moved in and got cozy with the tea cozy and all my Rabbie Burns napkins. This won't do. Mice in the condiments/ tea drawer. I spend the morning pulling out kitchen drawers, and cleaning. TIme to dust off Victor-the-trap. If I can find it. Aha! Under the stove. Still set, patiently waiting all these years for a wayward mouse.

9/7 Gotcha! Good old Victor-the-trap, fit as a fiddle after years of benign neglect. Badda-boom! Can't say the same for my metal clippie mousetrap—a casualty of time. Rust is a great equalizer. I still have hope for my plastic clippie mousetrap—but my faith is eroding.

Uh-oh, the second one is a big mama mouse. Still nursing. There will be more. Mark my words.

91/2 All quiet on the mousy front. Victor-the-trap has been silent for days. Maybe I was lucky and got them all.

9/15 Oh no! Mouse poop on the cutting board. Fuck Rabbie Burns' To a Mouse. This is war. They've wiped out two old boxes of D-Con, but here's the dilemma: Dora the Cat is hanging out, so something's gotta go. Wow. I haven't checked out these cabinets in years. So that's where they went.

After a comical interlude where I asked the clerk for espejos (mirrors) instead of Miguel Ratóncito mouse traps in Spanish, I snagged two old-school mouse traps at the Dollar store. Do you know how hard it is to find old fashioned mousetraps? Now I get Build a better mousetrap. Otherwise, it's D-Con all the way, baby. Poison. Arsenic and old mice. But what about the environment? The outside cats? I'm uneasy about using all this poison.

My last major mouse invasion was Fall Equinox, 2009. See MOUSE WARS (warning: cute mouse pictures). Sure, we've had a few wayward mice since then. But nothing big. They never stuck around. Not like this.

9/17 Victor is victorious. But the knockoff mousetraps are worthless. I bumped Big Mama off, but Junior is still on the lam. Junior is the size of a quarter. Too small to trigger the traps, he snags the pecans and makes a run for it. What if he's carrying a disease?

How's that for a plague segue? I madly Google The Plague. No outbreaks reported—not even at Fallen Leaf Lake. I imagine I have symptoms like a pre-med student before exams. Swollen glands? That can't be good. No fleabites.

I have…a virus: oh, thankgawd. I also have acute hearing from my earache but not the cat reflexes to go with it. Probably a good thing or I'll be pouncing on the curtain and leaving little mouse prezzies on the doorstep for Neil.

I read up on house mice again. Definitely different than field mice. I learn that house mice (from Asia) are the same species as lab mice and pet store mice. And the chances of wild mice carrying disease are about the same as a pet hamster or rabbit. It's just that they poop all over the place. Now I'm afraid to use my cutting board. Three-seed baguette is out. Fennel seeds remind me of mouse turds.

Sorry, I'm not into those hav-a-heart traps. What's the point of live traps? All I'm doing by relocating the mice, is sicking vermin on unsuspecting neighbors. Too NIMBY. And all that goin' out to the country and feel-good wild release crap? Pl-ease! House mice are not native species. I repeat. Not native. Got it? They're from Asia, just like city rats. Introducing non-native species into a rural ecosystem is far worse than killing them in a humane manner. Besides, the mice won't even enter those live traps. Far too smart for that.