Potayto, potato. How about tomapotatl as pomato is already taken?

Do check out Cultivariable, a great site for everything potato, including buying seeds.

The other day I recalled reading an article in July, 2017 that claimed that potatoes also grew in North America, and I thought what was dubbed the Indian potato was merely a simile, something lost in translation, or a case of mistaken identity. There was almost no follow-up information on it. I chalked it up to a mistranslation. Looks like, but is not equal to….and then Covid came along and I forgot about it. 

Yesterday, on Facebook, Discover Magazine reposted an archived article from 2021 on Solanum jamesii, or the Indian potato, now renamed the Four Corners “potato,” which renewed my interest. But the somewhat updated article compared it to domestic potatoes because it produces tubers. I thought to myself: hundreds of others solanum species have tubers too. 

However, the Four Corners potato, Solanum jamesii, is not what we think of as the ubiquitous potato. It's related to, but not the same as the garden potato, Solanum tuberosum, domesticated in the Andes 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. 

I let my fingers do the Googling, and found that what are called Apache and Navajo potatoes were hybrid varieties of the domestic potato. A dead end. Back in the summer of 2017, potato farmer /poet Art Goodtimes piqued my curiosity about Solanum jamesii which led to a spirited discussion about the origin and nomenclature of potatoes. And researching "Indian potatoes" led me to another order of plant altogether, an aquatic species related to taro root, Sagittaria latifolia, or duck potato. If it walks like a duck... What quackery!

Growing up Irish meant I ate potatoes every night for dinner. When I traveled through the Andes, I ate many varieties of strange potatoes, the most bitter was black, and grew on the island of Amantani in Lake Titicaca. My GI tract never forgave me. Apparently I was supposed to also eat the arcilla de chaco, or clay jacket—which absorbs the bitterness. When it comes to eating wild potatoes, bitter is not good, and sour is even worse. Spit it out, I tell you.

Astonishing diversity of Incan potatoes in CIP International Potato Center's seed bank.

There are something like 53 known species, and 4000 types, or varieties (not sub-species) of domestic potatoes in Peru alone. And even more in Bolivia and Chile—not to mention the Amazon. According to CIP, the International Potato Center, a genetic seed bank located in Lima, Peru, there are 151 to 180 species of wild potatoes, worldwide. The actual count is in dramatic flux as we discover new species, lose others due to climate change, and make advances in DNA sequencing. 

In fact, the entire Solanaceae family is undergoing genetic reconstruction. Solanaceae is a huge family, there are over 3000 to 4000 species worldwide. And solanum includes a whopping 1500 genera: potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, tobacco, datura, and petunias, to name a few. They’re all members of the nightshade family.

And like most solanum species, the Four Corners “potato,” Solanum jamesii, prefers to grow in disturbed soil—which suggests to ecologist Bruce Pavlik and his wife, Lisbeth Louderback, who is an archaeology curator at the Natural History Museum of Utah, that this wild potato may have been domesticated as early as 11,000 years ago. I'm not so sure about that. It’s not like hybridizing teosinte.

Escalante Valley was once referred to as Potato Valley. Pavlik and Louderback have been genome sequencing the wild potatoes near the pueblos for signs of domestication—they're looking for a genetic bottleneck. Ok, so I have trouble with their advanced reference date, as it predates Andean domestication, and, besides, it was the end of the Ice Age. Potatoes hate frost. (In the 2017 Salt Lake Tribune article, Louderback, in her doctoral thesis, quoted 10,000 to 11,000 years. See also University of Utah News).

Everything about the Four Corners “potato” is toxic—like many members of the nightshade family—unless you boil or eat the immature tubers with gobs of white clay called gleesh’ (think Kaopectate) to counteract the toxins—so it’s different than the domesticated South American potatoes of Bolivia and Peru. It’s more of a dangerous wild potato cousin with a deadly kick.

It also turns out that the Four Corners “potato” toxins are also different than those found in domestic potatoes. The toxin is the same found in tomatoes. So maybe cavalierly calling it a potato just because it has a tiny tuber the size of a grape, is a bit premature. Maybe call it tomapotatl? 

Oddly enough, Santa Rosa, horticulturalist Luther, Burbank, the man who invented the Burbank, or russet potato, aka the Idaho potato, did developed an edible white potato-tomato berry called a pomato. But, unlike the ill-fated Wonderberry, also a nightshade, which resembled a huckleberry, victim of a smear campaign touting its toxicity, the pomato didn’t breed true, so he gave it up. But in 1934, an Australian successfully bred a pomato. Many flowering ornamental solanum produce tubers too, but noshing on them could be a one-way ticket to paradise—no matter how you roll the old snake-eyes.

I realize that it’s a handy linguistic shortcut to call this wild potato cousin a "potato," because it’s so much easier to say potato family instead of saying the nightshade family. Old habits die hard. And then there’s the toxic baggage attached to the word nightshade. Think Atropa Belladonna and deadly atropine. How about an expansionist mindset, with a new name, instead of a reductionist one handcuffed by the tyranny of simile?  

The Diné word for the potato is Nimási. Maybe we should call the Four Corners “potato” that. But then we’d also have to include the Apache, Hopi, Kawaik, Southern Paiute, Tewa, Zia and Zuni names, etc., not to mention the Ancestral Pueblo (Anasazi) names. So maybe calling it the Four Corners “wild potato” is a far better name. Otherwise we’ll have hordes of eco-nuts going afield to nosh on them thinking they’re benign.

For the record, botanists insist that pretty much all wild potato species are not safe to eat, other than in small amounts, due to their high glycoalkaloid content. Also, Solanum jamesii is not native to California, which means it was introduced from somewhere else. But where?

Wiki spells it out: “Solanum jamesii is a species of nightshade. Its range includes the southern United States. All parts of the plant, and especially the fruit, are toxic, containing solanine when it matures. Immature tuber roots are edible.” But they’re the size of grapes, so how do you know if they’re immature? They tell off-color jokes? 

It turns out that Solanum jamesii is not the only “wild potato” in the old pueblo. One or two other southwest wild potato species, depending upon how you count your potatoes, are Solanum stoloniferum aka Solanum fendleri, or Fendler’s horsenettle—genetically speaking, they are variants of one species, the controversy rages on. Horsenettles are generally not called potatoes, BTW. 

Because of the toxicity, they are often considered famine foods. And people sometimes eat the ripe berries, or ground cherries. And since they vary in toxicity, you never know which ones will be real stinkers I’m not willing to be the guinea pig.

Let’s talk toxicity. “The primary glycoalkaloid in this Solanum jamesii species is tomatine, unlike the domesticated potato, in which the primary glycoalkaloids are solanine and chaconine." And there’s also a smidgeon of the nicotine alkaloid too! Tomatine puts this species firmly in the tomato camp—name your poison. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. 

Wow! Potato blossoms. Cultivariable is a great site for everything potato, and then some.

The question begs, how closely related is the Four Corners “wild potato” to South American potatoes? As James Dinneen in The ancient potato of the future, quipped, DNA-wise, “The Four Corners potato, Solanum jamesii, is related to the common potato in somewhat the same way coyotes are related to dogs.” Both are canines and can interbreed. But the domestic dog is descended from wolves. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think they're siblings.

Why does any of this matter? Because, Dear One, genetic diversity. Wild species carry a wide range of unusual survival traits. Take the Irish potato famine—had there been a way to introduce more resilient genes into the potato monoculture against the potato blight (Phytophthora infestans), then one million people might not have needlessly died. Or immigrated.

The USDA is interested in the Four Corners potato’s astonishing 8-year shelf life, resistance to disease, and to drought. Climate change is affecting domestic monoculture potatoes, which is the world's third largest important food crop. Potatoes need specific heat requirements and 12-hours of daylight in order to reproduce. Not all nightshades reproduce by seed, some spread via tubers, or reroot via creeping stolons.

I plowed through a lengthy list of solanum section of Petota, and found that Solanum commersonii is resistant to root rot and nematodes. Solanum demissum, Solanum pinnatisectum, and Solanum bulbocastanum, an ornamental nightshade, are resistant to the potato blight, and "has been used to genetically engineer resistance into the cultivated varieties of potatoes around the world." —Wiki 

Genetic traits from tough wild potato species can be hybridized into our domestic potatoes. And before you go off the deep end about genetic modification, every plant we consume has been genetically modified—from aubergine to zucchini. Especially corn and broccoli. Besides, the voodoo magic of crossbreeding solanum species is far better than sticking pins into a potato. 

Where is Mr. Potatohead when you need him?

DEAR POEM, THE POINT OF NO RETURN, NaPoWriMo, PAD Challenge, Day 12

NaPoWriMo write a poem that addresses itself. Dear Poem…interrogate it.

DEAR POEM

Dear Poem, why did you leave me in the lurch like that, 

surrounded by mundane words, second class ideas 

and turns of phrase so trite, they made me wince?

We had a good thing going, you left me standing,

you walked out the door like an irate lover.

What on earth were you thinking? It’s been said before.

Didn’t you learn anything at all after all this time, 

that metaphor and simile must always be served fresh 

and piping hot out of the smithy’s forge?

There is no way to resurrect or to save a stale poem, 

no matter how precious the subject matter,

without undergoing a linguistic blood transfusion.

They say poems need to be retranslated every generation 

as language takes a powder, words change nuance 

and meaning dissolves into cliché 

whenever you least expect it.

4/12/23

2023 April PAD Challenge write a sound poem

THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Lonely cars on the tarmac late at night, 

remind me of wind soughing in the pines, 

or the restless surcease of the ocean’s roar 

and I want to follow the vagaries of that road 

leading back to the point of no return.

4/12/23

Nothing rhymes with…

City Hall. Used with permission, Donald Kinney photo c. 2023

Last night, City Hall was lit up with orange lights to support the SF Giants, but street photographer, Donald Kinny noted that it looked more red than orange. Well, technically, if this were the early Renaissance, then he would be right—it is red, scarlet or cadmium red. Not orange.

Before 1510, the term yellow-red was used (geoluread in Old English—say it aloud with a swallowed g = y) or red-yellow to describe orange. Or the color orange was referred to as tawny (probably a Celtic loan-word). Saffron and green were the most favored colors for Medieval Irish clothing. I imagine that gold was also used to describe orange. It got me asking, why did the English language suddenly have the need to distinguish the colors red from yellow with a new word?

Weirdly the English word orange is a relative linguistic newcomer. It’s a “new” color name, meaning it wasn’t recognized as a separate color name in English until the 1500s….so, yes, some reds border on orange. Especially the light cadmium reds.  

I didn’t understand that when I was taking painting classes at College of Marin why cadmium orange and red were so close in color. I dislike orange. I was pretty relieved when I discovered that color newcomer, alizarin crimson as I favor the blue reds versus the yellow reds. Also alizarin crimson was way less toxic than the cadmiums. Poor mad Vincent. Was it the cadmium yellows and reds he used responsible for his affliction?

Letting my fingers do the walking through the Google pages, I found this: “The first recorded use of "orange" as a colour name in English was in 1502, in a description of clothing purchased for Margaret Tudor.” Curious as to where the term came from, I discovered that it probably came from the Old French, pomme d'orenge. 

Curiouser yet, the color term took 600 years after oranges arrived in Europe, for the color to be named in English by way of those Normans. Perhaps politics and the Reformation played into it? As in the House of Orange? The word orange, or flan bhui is flag-yellow, as there is no word for orange in Irish (oráiste is the fruit) is a politically charged color in Ireland, signifying oppression and the division of Ireland. 

And of course, as you know, in English, nothing rhymes with orange. Unless it’s a Giants home game. Then all bets are on. Then City Hall and Coit Tower are bathed in a victorious orange afterglow. But here is the clincher, early oranges that came all the way from China, or India, weren’t necessarily orange-colored. They were green! They were bitter as well. I read that Florida farmers dye those green oranges orange.

Valencia oranges marked Christmas season for my grandmother who was raised in Bantry, Ireland. Each year her Christmas gift was one Valencia orange wrapped in foil.

Califia, warrior queen

Someone on Facebook made a big fuss about Califia, the Amazonian warrior queen that California is named after, as being black. And I was off and running. I said, yes, she was called a black Amazonian warrior queen. But it’s complicated. Also, the term black wasn’t used quite the same in the 15th c. as it is now. Anyone dark-skinned or of another faith was referred to as black, even Levant Arabs, Moors, Egyptians, Touaregs, the Kush/Habesha. (In Spain, it could also be interpreted as a metaphor for a non-Catholic, therefore a pagan with a stained black soul.)

The reference is not always a straightforward reference to Black Africa, or Black America (a different kettle of fish) because the Maghrebine Amazigh (indigenous North African Berbers who’ve lived in North Africa and the Canary Islands since the Holocene), are often referred to as Moors, which also complicates things. The word Moor comes from Latin “Maurus,” later referred to the pre-Arab Berbers (sometimes also called Algerians, Lybians, Tunisians, or Tuareg) from the 3rd c. BC Roman province of Mauretania, which included Morocco and beyond), but later, the term also referred to those with dark skin! Yikes! 

Irish Travellers are not related to gypsies

Here we go again, on Facebook people are madly conflating Roma “Gypsies” with Irish Travellers, two itinerant nomadic groups who are ethnically and linguistically unrelated, other than by superficial outward lifestyle. But people persist on keeping the clichés alive. 

During my great-grandfather’s time in Dumanaway, near Bandon, County Cork, the Travellers visited his farm each year to fix broken farm equipment, and to work as laborers on the family farm. My grandmother would tell me stories about how the Tinkers (an older name for Travellers), named for their trade, would make tin household items as well as fix old pails, pots and broken crockery. 

My grandmother had a favorite aluminum pot that had developed a hole in it, and since we were centuries away from Ireland in Northern California, she showed me how the Travellers would have fixed it. She took a nut and bolt and threaded them through the hole in the pot and then hammered it flat with a ball peen hammer. The pot worked fine after that.

The Travellers, an ethnic Irish minority group, named after their lifestyle, camped in my great-grandfather Michael Walsh’s lower fields. They were welcomed, not shunned, not like today. During the 1960s, the Irish government was atrocious when it came to the treatment of Travellers. Of course they were trying to force them to give up their itinerant ways.

The Travellers, who refer to themselves as Pavee, or Rilantu Mincéirí, speak the Cant, the Gammon, or Tarri. Linguists refer to it as Shelta, a term that dates back to the 1870s, which is also the name of the community (from siúltóir, walking people). Shelta, the language, is a crypto-linguistic mixed Hiberno-English and Gaelic-based language. Other names: Sheldru, Shelter, Shelteroch seem to be derivatives of Shelta/siúltóir. 

There may be two distinct dialects of Shelta. The language was also referred to as Bog Latin, a derogatory term meaning Latin as spoken by the Irish, coined before 1811, the Ould Thing, and Tinker's Cant.

The word Shelta appears in print for the first time in 1882 in the book The Gypsies by the "gypsiologist" Charles Leland, who claimed to have discovered it as the "fifth Celtic tongue". The word's etymology has long been a matter of debate. Modern Celticists believe that Irish siúl [ʃuːlʲ] "to walk" is at the root, either via a term such as siúltóir [ˈʃuːl̪ˠt̪ˠoːɾʲ] "a walker" or a form of the verbal noun siúladh (cf. an lucht siúlta [ənˠ ˌl̪ˠʊxt̪ˠ ˈʃuːl̪ˠt̪ˠə], "the walking people" (lit. "the people of walks"),[8] the traditional Irish term for Travellers).[5] The Dictionary of Hiberno-English cites it as possibly a corruption of the word "Celt".[7] Since Shelta is a mixture of English and Irish grammar, the etymology is not straightforward. The language is made up mostly of Irish lexicon, being classified as a grammar-lexicon language with the grammar being English-based..” —Wikipedia

Travellers are thought to be the indigenous people of Ireland, their distinctive DNA bottlenecked around the 16th c. (Due to the Cromwellian?) and they have been genetically isolated since at least the Great Famine, as they tended to keep to themselves and marry within their clans— because they often marry first and second cousins there is some genetic duplication. 

According to a comprehensive recent DNA study, there are four distinct DNA clusters that differ from that of settled Irish people. “One cluster is associated with the “Rathkeale group.” Two other clusters are linked to the Cant or Gammon dialects of the Traveller language Shelta.“ —Irish Times. The study also concluded there is no Roma DNA within the Traveller society. 

The [study] found that Travellers are of Irish ancestral origin but have significant differences in their genetic make-up compared with the settled community…because of hundreds of years of isolation combined with a decreasing Traveller population. “The findings confirm that the Irish Traveller population has an Irish ancestry and this comes at a time where the ethnicity of Travellers is being considered by the Irish State.”—Prof. Gianpiero Cavalleri, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.  Gene study reveals Irish Travellers' ancestry

According to one Traveller, Ellen Mac Donough, there are about 35,000-49,000 self-identified Travellers in Ireland today. Traveller diaspora estimates: 25,000 in England, and 49,000 in the southern US, and 7,000 in Europe. I shudder to think what would have happened to the Travellers if the genetics had not supported the Irish DNA theory.

The Travellers were once called Tinkers in my lifetime, but they do not prefer that title, and it is now considered to be an ethnic slur, along with Pikey, and knacker. If you look at ancient Irish customs, there were always itinerant Irish people who traveled from place to place. Especially the lawyers, doctors and storytellers. So traveling is a long-standing tradition that was disrupted by the British ascendency and occupation of Ireland.

Roma, or Romani people, aka “Gypsies,” originally came from India, by way of  Romania to Britain some 300 years ago. The term, gypsy is considered an ethnic slur, like saying the N-word for African-Americans.

I have musician friends who are Travellers. And I know linguists who have studied the Cant. It’s probably a lost cause to try to educate people on the Travellers’ horses, the Irish cobb, which were imported to America and renamed Gypsy Vanners. Another cultural rip off.

Few Shelta words traveled into English but the word "bloke" may be a 19th c. crossover. 

Moors are not Black

A Facebook poster from LA, in an epic sleight of hand, repurposed the story of Calafia (yes, it’s spelled that way) to fit his own modern socio-political needs, wrote, “The state of California was named after the mythical Black(Moorish) Queen Califia. (Khalifa).” Ok. The story of Calafia stems from a series of medieval stories translated into Spanish from the Portuguese. The term in Spanish and Portuguese, that means dark or black, but not white—is a case of what gets lost in translation. This idea that Amazon warrior queen Calafia was a Black African is a modern American binary interpretation.

Then the poster went on to say, “It is well documented that of the 44 people who founded the City of Los Angeles, 26 were of Afrikan (Moorish) descent. What is amazing and not taught in California schools is that the majority of the founders of San Francisco, San Jose and San Diego were of Afrikan (Moorish) descent, or that Orange County, Beverly Hills and Malibu were once owned by people of Afrikan (Moorish) descent. According to the story, California was an island where only Black (Moorish) women lived, gold was the only metal and pearls were as common as rocks. The women were the most powerful women in the world. When Cortez arrived in California, searching for this mythical queen, her influence on him was so severe, he paid tribute to this powerful Black (Moorish) Woman Queen Califia by naming California after her. California literally means, “the land where Black (Moorish) women live." History has been hidden for a long time.” 

Sigh. Of course he provided no references for that last bit of repurposed history. Whereas it is true that Hernán Córtez named the long peninsula Baja California Sur, thinking it was an island, after Calafia. But we seem to be mixing apples with oranges. Calafia was an Amazon from the Hyperborean north, beyond the realm civilized (Classical) Mediterranean world. She was other, therefore exotic. And the term negra could mean swarthy, or dark, but not African. And certainly not a Moor. This is like saying Cleopatra, a Ptolemaic Greek, was black.

Also the term, Moor is not synonymous with Black. If anything, it’s the opposite. A Moor can be anyone from Arabia to Iberia to North África—Egypt, Alexandria, Morocco Mauritania—which probably means homeland the Moors—regardless of skin color, and the Berbers of North Africa were all called Moors— because they converted to Islam, and spoke Arabic—and literally shoehorned their own culture into Arabic ideals in order to be considered part of the elite ruling classes.

The term Moorish refers more to religion and the Arabic language/culture rather than to skin color. Also, for centuries, the Arabs were the undisputed ruling class, so to self-identify as a Moor was to be part of the ruling elite, or not be a slave (Black). The matrilineal Berbers were in a fix and they had to wholesale invent patrilineal Semitic genealogies in order to fit into an Arabized world.

The Habesha Ethiopians, Eritreans (Abyssinians), and Tuareg—who self-identify as Berbers, though dark-skinned, do not consider themselves as Black, but Semitic, though some are also Christian. And for the record, sub-Saharan and Sahel Africans, the Arabized Maghreb Berbers, aka Moors, during the 15th c., are light-skinned.

Sadly when the Berbers began to identify with the ruling class Arabs they gave up their matrilineal society and had to construct a patrilineal Arabian lineage which create it all kinds of havoc—especially for the Berber women who lost most of their freedoms in a Moorish world.

Moorish means more than anything else—meant non-Christian, therefore, in European eyes, exotic. Shakespeare’s Othello was a Moor. You see where this leads to. Let’s just say, it’s complicated. And if you actually read the novella from which the name comes, Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) penned or collected by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the late 15th c., Calafia is referred to as an Amazonian warrior woman who lived in the far north—beyond civilization.

So here we have a strong woman, with warrior superpowers, from a post-Moorish subjugated world, call it Iberia, where women collectively had few personal rights. Perhaps the model for Calafia was a Sub-Saharan Greek, or a Maghreb woman. 

Note the use of the terms Moor and Arabic in this quote, taken from references of 14th c. Arabic scholars….

“In contemporary Hassaniyya Arabic, the language spoken by the Moors (Arabs) of Mauritania and Northern Mali, the terms ‘Whites’/‘Blacks’ (b ̄ıda ̄ n/su ̄ da ̄ n) are used to distinguish between Moors who are, in status, freemen, and those who have a slave past. A different Arabic word for ‘Blacks’ (kwa ̄r) is used to identify non-Moorish Africans. In contemporary Tuareg discourse, colour-based terminology is used to distinguish internal social status and to denote those who are termed ‘Blacks’ (koualnin), whether people of servile origin within Tuareg society, or to refer to non-Tuareg ‘Blacks’…. In the pre-colonial Arabic literature of the area, the term ‘su ̄da ̄n’ is most often used to refer to ‘Blacks’ who are ethnically and linguistically distinct from the Moors…” THE JOURNAL OF NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES

But Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián), a novela redacted by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in the early 15th century, is a sequel to a popular 14th c. chivalric romance novela, Amadís de Gaula. While the novela suffers from a lack of literary style, it achieved notability “in 1862, when Edward Everett Hale concluded that the novel was the origin of the name California.”

“Sabed que ala diestra mano de las Indias ouo una Isla llamada California mucho llegada ala parte del paraiso terrenal la qual sue poblada de mugeres negras sin que algun uaro entre ellas ouiesse: que casi como las amazonas …”

OK, not only do we have Amazons from somewhere beyond the Black Sea, but also a mythical knight from Gaul. A far cry from Africa. Here’s the thing, the Spanish term negra/o is also used to refer to any people with swarthy or dark-colored skin (both native and foreign). Including the Moors who were considered freemen vs. slaves. 

• Califia, warrior queen
• POETRY TEACHING NOTES: Naming Califia
• CALIFIA SPEAKS:
• I DREAM OF CALIFORNIA

Obscure words and poem fragments

Obscure words lifted from @Haggard Hawks

§

Take the Greek word for running, 

drumos, and we are off to the races. 

The hippodrome is for horses, of course, 

not for hippos, those ill-tempered water horses.

Imagine dromedary camels or dromedary dates

racing a mirage of lost palindromes in the desert. 

A man, a plan, a canal, Suez. 

§

Wielding my pen like a ski pole, 

I am torn asunder by a pain in my shoulder, 

My shoulder sundered, separated, an old wound, 

a bad spill on the last run of the last day of the ski year. 

Don’t worry, a torn rotator cuff and a separated shoulder

are enough to keep a firm grip on my imagination.  

TO A BULLFINCH

 TO A BULLFINCH

The Manx word for bullfinch is roo ruy. 

Embedded in its branches, the Irish rí ruadh hidden within. 

The roots of the teanga, destroyed when the English bearla 

was used to capture a dying language. Hurrah for John Bull.

The red lord of the trees sits high upon his branch,

heralding spring with his red breast so like that

of Cock Robin, anglicized from the Welsh, coch rhi ben, 

Lugh’s little red lordling with his breast made of sunset.

A brû-dearg or spideóg with messages from the Otherworld.

Who killed Cock Robin? I did, said the sparrow.

He was having an affair with Jenny Wren, the dreolín.

And who remembers the crime that traitorous bird committed?

Who tolled the bell? I did, said the bullfinch

as he hung the sparrow for his well-placed arrow.

You’d think that the arrow maker, the fetcher did the deed.

There was a goldfinch, a chaffinch, all manner of finches 

and sundry birds who attended Cock Robin’s funeral.

But only the dove truly mourned for him. 

The story got truncated along the way to a bull.

I have never seen a bull with his hangman’s noose 

sitting in a tree, nor a bullfinch, for that matter.

4/2/22 NaPoWriMo.  variants of Cock Robin here 

Obscure words lifted from @Haggard Hawks

Words from the Arabic

A Facebook friend posted a great word list from the Arabic. Apparently an Arizonan was offended by the word haboob. He snidely said, We don't use Arabic words in Arizona. I had to laugh. There was a habūb in Death Valley once, took the enamel right off my teeth. He said, What we need now is a good monsoon. She should tell him it's monsoon season in Arizona. Words from the Arabic: haboob and mawsim.

But many of the words my Facebook friend posted were actually loanwords into the Arabic, not words FROM the Arabic. So I looked up each word from her lengthy list and came up with these solid Arabic contenders. Candy, cotton, lemon, magazine, mattress, alcohol, sugar, soda, sofa, zero, safari, sirocco, haboob, monsoon, zenith, azimuth, nadir, alchemy, alcove, assassin, adobe, tariff, tabby, sash, ream, mascara, cork, artichoke—all words from the Arabic. 

There was mixed etymological origins on of many so-called Arabic words listed, though. Most words were originally from the Persian, which is an Indo-European language. Moon and wine are Indo-European (IE) words, not Arabic. Chess is from the Sanskrit (also an IE language). Basil is from the Greek basilius (king). Guitar, Gr. kithara, music, Gr. mousa. 

Queen is also an IE word cwēn. There’s a lot of variation on that word, from incanabula to c*nt to quim. I was trying hard not to be a wordc*nt, and I tried to make it interesting but I couldn't let those errors stay—stet. I was on a roll. I wish I had kept the original word lists too. But se la vie. What I noticed on the many wordlists I looked up, was that people play fast and loose with word origins. 

Borax is interesting, Medieval French, from the Arabic, BUT from the Persian burah, (in other words, also an IE word by way of Arabic, call it a double borrowing.) Orange, from the Persian nārang, to Arabic, to Spanish naranja. Ditto that with scarlet: Persian to Arabic to French… Race and rest have Germanic/ Norse origins. And solar is from the Latin, solus. 

Many of our Latin plant names are roundabout travelers by way of the Arabic. And roundabout cloth names are also loaned or derived from Arabic: tabby, satin, possibly gauze, from Gaza. But taffeta is Persian, for woven (tāftah) with Arabic intermediation. Mouth-watering Arabic food names: Baba ghanoush, kibbeh, tahini, falafel—but fattoush is a compound word, Arab + Turkish, halva, is both Persian and Arabic. Neck-and-neck root word origins. 

Any Spanish words that begin with al- are, of course Arabic in origin. Alfombra, alcorque, arsenal, alhambra, algodon, albondigas, algebra, alcohol, amber, admiral, azucar, aciete, achofa, etc., of course are from the Arabic. But sugar is from the Sanskrit, she said sweetly. 

Maybe I'll get back to this list, but for now, it stays stet. A placeholder.

See Spanish words from the Arabic

• Nothing rhymes with… On the origin of oranges. Old Persian, purteghal, or narang, which is derived from the Sanskrit for the orange tree: nāraṅga. In Greek, the word for both the color and the fruit is portokali. In Romanian the fruit is portocala and the color, porticaliu.

Notes to Lùthais MacGriogair, Celtic Languages Facebook group

These were notes to a certain Lùthais MacGriogair, certified boor, and an administrator in a prominent Celtic Languages Facebook group who was always questioning my linguistic background, assuming that I had no right, or scholarly training to make or post comments, that I didn’t have a linguistic leg to stand on. That got me in a lather. My reply grew by leaps and bounds as I hosed him down. I eventually grew weary of his overprivileged snottiness, and left the group, as he was only interested in linguistic slogging matches. I have little patience for the pejorative male ego. So much for having fun in a Facebook group, gawdforbid!

I’ve studied several versions of Irish, from Archaic to modern, skipping Middle Irish—probably the very language I needed in order to read the later manuscripts, but I did make linear translations of the early Irish epics, including the Táin Bó Fraích at UC Berkeley, where I also took a course on medieval Welsh, which didn’t stick. But we did translate a tale from the Mabinogion, and another tale. 

When I was young, my Corkonian grandmother from Bantry, b. 1893—her parents spoke Irish—tried to instill in me some basic Gaelic League Irish. An gort glas. So I can read the old writing. 

When I was in Leuven, there was something written in the old style script, which my Dutch friend couldn’t read, above an iron gate and I turned to my polyglot Dutch companion and told him what it said, it was an Irish college dedicated to St. James. He said you do realize it’s written in Irish, don’t you? Startled, I looked up at the gate. And thus began my lifelong interest in the Medieval Celtic realm—especially the Irish on the Continent. 

When I was young, I traveled to Switzerland to work, and unfortunately I did not know that there were Irish manuscripts in the library in Saint Gall, where I was stuck for a time, but I do remember pondering the beauty of the locked doors of the library. In another Swiss village, I did find Celtic artifacts—mostly weapons—all the small Swiss museums—they have not buried their Celtic heritage. The village where I lived paid homage to their Celtic ancestors. 

I began to realize all that crazy information my grandmother tried to impart in me, long before modern archaeology supported her claims, via the oral tradition, was in fact, true. In my 20s and 30s I did try to keep up my Irish studies by unsuccessfully using various learning systems, including Teach Yourself Irish, and Teach Yourself Gaelic, a Donegal primer, a Scots primer for kids, Buntús Cainte and Myles Dillon. Later, DuoLingo, etc. 

Because I have been so long away from the languages—not much opportunity to converse in Archaic Irish—and since I’ve hardly used any of it, it is all in danger of slipping away. But oddly, language is persistent as well, and sometimes words rise up unbidden in the psyche, and pester me. Ear worms. Chun, for example. At least there are no eels in my hovercraft. 

I can more or less slog through something written in Irish and get the gist of it and make a very rough translation. But the tenses are slipping away, especially the past tense, fittingly. I want to learn more, or keep what little Irish I do have, alive—which is more than the average bear, but bears don’t speak Irish, now do they? That’s why I joined this group.

• A slogging match on Manx orthography

A slogging match on Manx orthography

Someone posted an old Manx grammar book on Manx idioms and phrases. I enthusiastically wrote back, Fantastic. I recounted how at one point I found copies of some Manx manuscripts, and had to read them out loud, in order to hear the cognates in Irish. 

I said, Sadly, Manx was written down with an English orthography, versus Irish which used Latin orthography. Had both been transcribed in Latin, then it would be so much easier to find the common cognates, and that would’ve enriched the early history of both languages/dialects enormously. Can you please copy a few pages and post them here?

And then Celtic languages administrator, Lùthais MacGriogair said, Mo Hurley Manx spelling isn't really "English-based". If you read most words as if they were English, you don't get the Manx pronunciation of the words. The letters and groups of letters don't always have the same phonetic value in English and in Manx. Concerning the "Latin orthography" of Irish, what do you mean?

I said, Lùthais MacGriogair When Old Irish was transcribed into writing, monks used Latin orthography as their model. Since Archaic Irish probably predated Latin, I’m sure there were compromises, and a fair bit of shoehorning to make Irish fit the Latinate grammatical structure.

Manx, first written down in modern times, is much closer to English pronunciation than to Irish! The first transcribing of Manx was by English/Welsh speaker, Bishop Phillips in the 16th century.

“When, however, about the seventeenth century it became so, a system of spelling was adopted which, based upon English with a dash of Welsh, aimed at being phonetic, instead of, like Irish and Scotch, preserving the etymology of words. As a matter of fact it succeeded very well in not preserving the etymology; but unless the pronunciation has materially altered, its other object was not such a success. “

I cited a paper, MANX LANGUAGE ITS GRAMMAR, LITERATURE, AND PRESENT STATE

Lùthais MacGriogair said, "When Old Irish was transcribed into writing, monks used Latin orthography as the model."

Latin orthography with the letters' values they would use when reading Latin with their Irish pronunciation, ie. intervocalic d as [ð], intervocalic g as [ɣ] etc, plus all the innovations needed to transcribe sounds that don't exist in ("hiberno") Latin : χ, θ... and many diphthongs, etc. But nowadays when talking about the Modern Irish spelling, one can't say it's based on Latin because its spelling has become completely different.

I tried to clarify my point: "Manx, first written down in modern times, is much closer to English pronunciation than to Irish! The first transcribing of Manx was by English/Welsh speaker, Bishop Phillips in the 16th century."

Still Lùthais MacGriogair wouldn’t concede the point, he said, If you know the pronunciation of Manx words compared to their spelling you know well that the Manx orthography isn't simply English... Knowing English barely helps to learn how to pronounce Manx words...

I said, exasperated, Lùthais MacGriogair, did I say Manx orthography was simply English? No. I said Manx was transcribed into modern English, not unlike Old Irish into Latin. So, yes, English (with a Welsh sensibility because the bishop was a native Welsh speaker) informs pronunciation.

I explained, Manx was not a written language. It was a spoken language. Somebody had to physically write it down. This happened relatively recently, in the 17th c., unlike Old Irish, which was written down in Latin orthography in the 7th-12th cs. Before that, Archaic Irish was sometimes written using Ogham. But we really don’t have any way of guessing what it sounded like—using Latin as a guideline is about as good as it gets. 

When a language is transcribed, you have to keep in mind the foster language alphabet pronunciation guide. A good example of this going awry is when Americans try to pronounce a Native American word transposed into English via the Spanish. And they fail miserably. Matilija poppy, a Chumash word, transcribed by the Spanish comes out very different in English pronunciation.

Still he kept at it, refusing to acknowledge my point, I sold him, Lùthais MacGriogair you’re nitpicking. If the same orthographic system that was used to transcribe Old Irish was used on transcribing Manx, we would know significantly more about most languages, because, root words.

Have you studied Archaic, or Old Irish? It is different than modern Irish, but there are many words that are spelled similarly—then Modern Irish decided to modernize and reform spelling which created confusion.

Lùthais MacGriogair said, You wrote "Sadly, Manx was written down with an English orthography, and it's just wrong.” Also Old Irish uses a very modified form of "Latin-based" orthography. If you know Latin and try to read Old Irish aloud, your pronunciation will be very, very far from the Old Irish pronunciation.

I said, Lùthais MacGriogair You are still missing the point. If both languages had been recorded with the same orthographic system, we would have far more preserved embedded archaic information about the history and the development of the language itself. As it stands now, it’s a rough translation between the two languages because two different orthographies were used. Old Irish is actually more direct than modern Irish in terms of pronunciation and spelling because modern Irish has changed significantly. Ditto that with Scots Gaelic.

Today I found this: The Manx phonetic system is the worst, being based upon English principles of spelling (if such there be).

Today I was looking for examples of “faoi reim” and look what I found, dated 1901. Page 6. Someone in a Celtic linguistics group reamed me a new one for suggesting that Manx was written in phonetic English

I cited Celtia, a Pan-Celtic Monthly Magazine, 1901, as a reference.

And still he wouldn’t let it go, and followed me to another post. Manx uses certain digraphs borrowed from English but it doesn't mean they have to be pronounced as in English. Actually if you know English and read Manx words as if they were English words, most of the time you won't get the Manx pronunciation.

I said, I never said that you pronounced Manx words as English, I said Manx was written down using English orthography, and that by saying the words aloud in English—it informed me. I was able to grasp an understanding of what was written, that I otherwise had no access to, as there were no Manx speakers available. Irish was written down using Latin orthography, so there are different pronunciation rules.

Now I’m waiting to see if I’ll be kicked out of the group for talking back.

• Notes to Lùthais MacGriogair 

Mis-musing on the name of Kenneth Mac Alpine

Someone in our British Medieval History group, wanted to know why Kenneth MacAlpin, (ca. 800 to 858) the first King of Scots, was also called  "king of the Picts". Was he a Pict who gained the Dal Riata/Gael throne, or the opposite?

Moderator Peter W Graham (whom I adore), said:

Probably of mixed parentage his mother being PICT and father a Dalriada Scotti, it is believed that the pict crown passed through the female line , the Scotti through the male, after the royal families of both were decimated by invading Norse Kinnaed was the most senior of both lines left, ignore the slaughter of the nobles it’s a myth. The Picti and Scotti were forced to unite under him against a common enemy and found the kingdom of Alba.

And of course, I was off and running. I said that Kenneth’s name was not Pictish, but Irish. Cináed mac Ailpin, which means the fire born one, possibly the son of that devotee of Colm, or Columba Aka Malcolm. (No K in either form of Gaelic). Pictish was a Brythonic language, like Welsh, so the very word son, or Mac designates the name as a Goidelic language. Welsh word for son is is mab, or ap. Alpin is likely  Pictish, as p was avoided In early Irish, a loan letter. Some think Alpin was Ailpein, Albin, or possibly alba, or alp.

Peter replied, Well Gaelic Scot and Irish had already started to separate. That got me going and I fell down the rabbit hole (again).

I said Early medieval Scots Gaelic and Northern Irish Gaelic were closely related Goidelic dialects, with Donegal Irish being the closest mutually comparable connection. Despite the fact there were probably about five separate Irish Gaelic (and Scottish) dialects, the grammatical rules don’t change much. (Spelling is another matter entirely.)

I found this on a medieval Scotland site: The nominative, Mael Coluim, Mal Coluim, Mal Colum, Mal Coloum, was spelled Maíl Choluim, or Mal Colaim in the genitive form. So, spelling was variable according to grammatical changes. The references are from Kenneth Jackson’s The Gaelic Notes in the Book of Deer.

Kenneth's origins are uncertain, as are his ties, if any, to previous kings of the Picts or Dál Riata. Among the genealogies contained in the Rawlinson B 502manuscript, dating from around 1130, is the supposed descent of Malcolm II of Scotland. Medieval genealogies are unreliable sources, but many historians still accept Kenneth's descent from the established Cenél nGabráin, or at the very least from some unknown minor sept of the Dál Riata. The manuscript provides the following ancestry for Kenneth:

...Cináed son of Alpín son of Eochaid son of Áed Find son of Domangart son of Domnall Brecc son of Eochaid Buide son of Áedán son of Gabrán son of Domangart son of Fergus Mór ... —Wiki Kenneth MacAlpin, Rawlinson ms B502

Máel is a devotee, or follower (of Christ), and Colm is a dove, pronounced Colum. So Máel+Colm is Malcolm. Máel (pronounced mal) was sometimes also used as a prefix to a Welsh name, Maelgwyn, and Mael Madog, follower of Madoc. And that Ma- in Madog may be a redundancy, máelmáel. But máel is an Irish prefix suggesting tonsured one, a monk. Which type of tonsure, I’m not sure, there were two warring factions of tonsure styles, the Druidic version was most radical.

Since we were covering goidelic languages, I tossed in some Manx too. Manx, though spelled with phonetic English orthography, was probably similar to Leinster Irish and Galwegian Scots Gaelic. Transcribing Manx into English sounds was a language disaster. Root words were lost as well as case endings, phonetic Gaelic is almost impossible to unpack. When I was looking at Manx tales, I had to say the words out loud in order to make any connection. By contrast I can suss out Scottish Gaelic place names via the Irish without too much trouble.

Also, during  the Medieval era, the term Scottii did not necessarily mean somebody was Scottish, it was a fluid concept—it meant they were Irish, or of Irish derivation—hence the term Dál Riada Scotti. Since Roman times, Ireland has been called Scotia Major, and Scotland was called Scotia Minor until the 16Th c. This simple fact seems to confuse people to no end. For the record, most of Scotland’s saints were Irish born.

Still on an odd language roll, I said: Weirdly, a dialect of Munster Irish was spoken in some of the Hebrides—especially Barra. You’d think with Colm Cille, that copyright thief, hailing from the north of Ireland, the Northern Irish dialect would’ve prevailed throughout the Hebrides. Certainly Iona. Munster Irish is very different than Northern Irish. People got around!

Gilbert Markus  caught me up on my references. I said, yes go raibh maith agat, the first part of the Rawlinson B502 was written down in the 11th c. Sometimes referred to as the Lebar Glinne Dá Locha, just to confuse things. Weren’t the annals of Tigernach later? But those early ms were not the works of sole authors, or authorship as we think of it today—same scribal hand, maybe. Well, two, or three hands. Annalists were responsible for organizing the material, not authors. Historians, maybe. But annalists were not necessary historians. And it was a collective compendium of what was thought to be historically accurate at the time. And yes, whoever was commissioning the ms would’ve had an agenda.

Now, speaking of hidden agendas, and constitutional fictions, the late 16th c. Holinshed's Chronicles was recreated history to shore up certain family trees and political agendas. Take Shakespeare’s MacBeth, for example. Poor MacBeth got seriously slammed. Yes, you’re right, there is not a radical divide between Scottish Gaelic, Irish, and Manx other than wildly different spellings, and pronunciation. My Irish teacher was always saying the difference between a language and a dialect is an army.

Well, hello, I just fell down the damned rabbit hole again, lock, stock and bunny tail, chasing the wrong name.

Comparison of Scottish Gaelic and Irish

A Simple Guide to Constructing 

12th Century Scottish Gaelic Names

Linguistic racism

I just called out the senior center lunch lady for being racist. I was talking to Giselda, a volunteer, in her native language, Spanish. I am always eager to practice my Spanish, a legacy from John Oliver Simon. The Lunch lady butted in, and said she thought she was in a foreign country. At first I thought she was joking, but then she chapped me up. She said, This is America, don’t you know how to speak English? I was gobsmacked. She had known me for months, if not a couple of years, and this was the only time I had ever spoken Spanish in the kitchen. The MAGA hat should’ve clued me in. I said, For the record, I’m Irish, and I speak English most excellently. And I can write as well, too. She said Speak English, we don’t want no illegals around here. As if speaking Spanish were somehow illegal, or made me illegal. I was flummoxed. I said, My family has been here since 1904. Spanish was the first European language in California, after myriad native languages were expunged. Russian and liturgical Latin were also spoken here too. I love language. I can speak some Portuguese, Italian as well. There is no mandated, or official language in America—you can legally speak any language you prefer. I might have roped in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo too. I was on a roll. I said, I will speak any language I like. You really don’t want to take me on. Then I walked out. Think I’ll speak to her in Irish next time. Or perhaps in Quechua. Because I can.

On the ambling gait of horses

About 20 to 30 breeds of modern horses carry what is referred to as a "gatekeeper" gene which produces gaited pacers, or amblers—a trait highly prized during the Middle Ages. The jennet and palfrey were considered prized amblers, noted for their smooth rides. Good for traveling long distances.

 

Medieval ambling palfrey. Folio 8r of an Apocalypse. British Museum—Wiki

If you've ever ridden a horse any distance at spanking diagonal-legged trot, it's a jarring staccato of a ride that's murder on the spine and the innards. The smooth ambling, or pacing gait, where one foot never leaves the ground, overstepping, and/or front and back legs moving, not diagonally, but laterally as one unit on each side, like the four-beat walk, but much faster—softens the blow, so to speak. 

Ambling is like having a horse with good shocks and extra speed gears. Think four on the floor, plus two or three extra overdrive gears in car terms. Most horses have three or four gaits: the four-beat walk, the two-beat jog and the faster trot (some horses are unclear on the idea of jog, other can't grok the idea of canter), the three-beat rocking horse canter, and the faster gallop where all four feet leave the ground. Amblers have one or two more gaits similar to a lateral trot. 

Amblers will rarely canter or gallop. Their gallop gear is wonky. Helgar, the Icelandic pony we rode, would begrudgingly gallop, and he preferred trotting to tölting. It was like riding a jackhammer on a knifeblade. But when he tölted, it was like riding on clouds. 

Not all amblers will naturally amble—some need tune-ups. But you can't train a non-ambling horse to amble. Amblers make up for a lack of a working galloping gear (in Icelandic terms), by tölting, or when they really burn rubber with the faster lugskeið or flying paces which is full blast tölting at 30 mph. That's almost as fast as a thoroughbred racehorse. But Icelandic ponies are not the only gaited horses, there are many old or isolated breeds that retain this archaic gene. Where did it come from?

(See Edward Muybridge's photo animated gif of a flying pacer).

During the Middle Ages, there was no such thing as the idea of a modern “breed” though hominids have been cross-breeding plants and animals for eons; selective inbreeding for specific dominant genetic traits is a modern concept. In the past, body “type” was used as a genetic breeding criteria. The Old English word breed comes from bredan which means to "bring young to birth." Not terribly enlightening or specific. The definition of the word breed has changed considerably since the Middle Ages.

During the agricultural revolution of the 18th c., farmer Robert Bakewell of Leicestershire, England, methodically bred superior sheep (Lincoln Longwool), Dishley Longhorn cattle (double the weight of other cattle), and strong workhorses (the Black Cart horse, ancestor of the Shire), by inbreeding livestock for specific traits via artificial selection vs. letting nature take its course, to strengthen and enhance certain traits. His animal husbandry experiments influenced the thinking of Charles Darwin in Origin of Species.

The Celtic horse/pony, with ancient Celtiberian origins, was a probable ancestral carrier of the ambling gene; still present in the surviving indigenous wild horses of Iberia, the Sorraia (a scrawny Guadalquivir marsh horse dubbed Marismeño by Columbus), and other rare breeds including the Garrano, Gallego, Asturcón, Pottok and Losino. (I use the word Iberia loosely vs. Spain and Portugal as the Iberian horses, whose shared ambling DNA traits predate the foundation of those political entities.)

These Iberian wild horses were also the probable ambling ancestors of all the New World gaited horse breeds including the Florida Cracker, Missouri fox trotter (the ambling gait was called the fox trot), Saddlebred, Standardbred, Tennessee Walking Horse, and the Puerto Rican Paso Fino—and the myriad related Latin American ambling breeds. 

In the British Isles, the ambling gene was carried by the extinct Irish hobby, (foundation bloodline of the Connemara pony and the thoroughbred); the Dartmoor, Exmoor, Fell, Highland, and Shetland (but not the Fjord horse), all carry the ambling gene. 

During the early 19th c. like the beleaguered Kerry Bog pony, the tiny Faroe Island pony, a distinct breed related to the Shetland, and the Icelandic pony, was extensively exported to the UK, used as troglodyte pit ponies to haul coal—never to see the light again. The need for pit ponies was so great that almost none were left in the Faroes. 

The term, Irish hobby/hoby has an interesting linguistic lineage, hobin/obann in early Irish, or hobynis in early Scots (the preferred ride of Robert the Bruce), came from the French haubini and morphed into hobbeye; which is cognate with palfrey (Latin, paraveredus, a courier horse, from the Gaulish vorēdos. The German Zelter, or ambler is cognate with Icelandic, tölt.)

And one amang, an Iyrysch man, (he's referring to a hobelar)

Uppone his hoby swyftly ran... —John Barbour, The Brus, 1375

Sweyn Forkbeard on a dappled palfrey.  Life of King Edward the Confessor, 13th c. Wiki

Oddly, two indigenous horse breeds in Northwest India—those weird-cross-eared horses of Marwari or Malani from the Jodhpur region of Rajasthan, and the Kathiawari, a desert war horse of the Gujarat, both have genetic ties to the Mongolian horse (not a pacer), and they are also gaited. Which considerably widens the origin of the ambling gene pool. Northern India, Iberia, Ireland, Iceland.

The native Northern European horses, including the Dartmoor and Exmoor ponies along with the Kerry Bog pony (all have a genetic link to Mongolian horses) are considered to be among the most ancient of breeds, possibly even Neolithic breeds, dating back to the Pleistocene era, along with the Sorraia and Garrano of Iberia, and all carry that gatekeeper gene. Convergent evolution? I think not.

Sadly most nations nearly slaughtered their ancient horse breeds, considering them superfluous and obsolete—especially after WWI, once the combustion engine was developed. Many countries actively slaughtered those horses carrying this rare ancient gene, for dogfood, or for eating the very grass their valuable blooded livestock needed. Those persecuted feral horses that escaped to the fens and bogs of Europe managed to survive, keeping the rare genetic pool alive, but just barely. Once a population gets too low, a genetic bottleneck occurs—which means lost gene variations.

Now here's the mystery: the recessive gatekeeper ambling gene DMRT3 is NOT present in most modern horse breeds, including the venerable Norwegian Fjord Horse breed (which throws a huge spanner into the notion that Icelandic horses and the nearly extinct Faroe ponies (related to the Icelandic horse) are solely descended from fjord horses. (I cannot fathom a chonky fjord draft horse tölting, let alone, traveling to Iceland on a tiny wooden Viking ship).

Pict on an ambling pony, with his carnyx. Bullien Stone, 9th c. Wiki

And yes, you read that right, the Irish Celts inhabited the Faroe Islands as well as Iceland long before the Vikings—and the only reason why the Icelandic pony is called a horse, is that there's no word for pony in Icelandic. Besides, all those island horses were diminutive. Think of Shetlands.

Nor is the recessive pacing gene present in the ancient Przewalski’s horse species. So where did it come from? Mongol horses? Tarpans? Who's on First? Since the ancestor of horses were once a New World species... nah.

The Mongol horse, an archaic breed and foundation stock for all Asian horses, including the Outer Mongolian Tuvan horse, has the most genetic variability of any horse, vs. the extreme bottlenecked Przewalski's horse, a distinctly separate species with extra chromosomes, saved from extinction because of ten horses found in European zoos. (The Botai horse of Kazakhstan may have been a Przewalski's horse, or a hybrid, but it's the earliest reference we have to domestication of the horse— if you consider eating them a form of domestication.)

It is surmised that some wild Mongol horses still exist alongside their more domesticated kin. They are all considered feral or semi-feral, somewhat like the American mustang. But, not all Mongol horses are one homogenous breed; there is the desert horse with big feet, the agile mountain horse, and the Steppe horse—which is used for racing. Has anyone looked at the other Mongol horses for that primitive ambling gene? 

There is some conjecture that the ambling gene might have been inherited from the Eurasian Tarpan, thought to be the original wild horse, Equus ferus ferus. There were two subspecies of tarpan, the forest, and the steppe horse. The Eurasian forest tarpan was the probable ancestor of the European horse of the Pleistocene era, made famous by the paintings on the cave walls of Las Caux, and Altamira. 

Herodotus described pale (dun?) wild steppe horses in what is now the Ukraine in the 5th c. BC. Sadly, the last tarpan, a diminutive grullo with a full falling mane (not a standing mohawk like the Przewalski's horse), and primitive markings, including a dorsal stripe and shoulder stripes, died in a Russian zoo in 1909. The last wild tarpans had been extirpated between 1875 and 1890. And "the last free-ranging mare was accidentally killed during an attempt at capture." (Wiki)

The name "tarpan" or "tarpani" derives from a Turkic language name meaning "wild horse". The Tatars and the Cossacks distinguished the wild horse from the feral horse; the latter was called Takja or Muzin. ... Most studies have been based on two preserved specimens but research has not positively linked the tarpan to Pleistocene or Holocene-era animals.—Wiki

Primitive wild horses still roamed free in Europe and Russia until the 16th century. There were captive wild horses in Russian and Polish zoos ca. 1750s, that were "small and strong, with robust limbs, a large thick head," small eyes, pinned ears, a shaggy dun, or mouse-colored coats with a light belly (primitive pangaré markings), "short dark manes and tails, and a beard." Their whinny was more like a donkey bray. And "They were also absolutely untameable." (Wiki) And no, they weren't wild asses, the European wild ass went extinct during the Pleistocene. 

It seems that the tarpan and Przewalski's horse shared the untameable gene, along with the equally vicious Syrian onager of the Middle East. (Untameable is the main difference between wild and domestic animals—and why zebras can't be domesticated).

So, it's possible the forest tarpan may have carried that ambling gene, but at this point, it's all pure conjecture.

According to Wiki:

In 2012, a DNAstudy found that horses from several gaited and harness racing breeds carried a mutation on the gene DMRT3, which controls the spinal neurological circuits related to limb movement and motion. In 2014, that mutation was found to originate in a single ancestor to all gaited horses....Ambling was described as early as the Hittite writings of Kikkuli. (Kikkuli was a Hurrian charioteer and "master horse trainer of the land of Mitanni.")

Unfortunately the Wiki article does not expand upon that single ancestor to all gaited horses.* But Kikkuli, that master horse trainer, who recorded the presence of amblers on his training regime treatise inscribed on cuneiform tablets. 

Kunga draft hybrids, 'Standard of Ur' mosaic, 3rd m BC, British Museum

While everyone else in the Middle East were using hybrid kunga asses to pull cumbersome war carts, the Hittite charioteers with their superior (Kabarda or Circassian?) war horses, quickly supplanted the kungas, and forged an empire that included Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Northern Iraq. 

The ousted kunga asses were a hybrid between the large Syrian onagers (among the fastest of land mammals—at 40mph, they could easily outrun horses) that were bred with more tractable donkeys. (The hybrid kungas predated the horse-donkey hybrid mule by 1500 years. Imagine what could've happened to warfare advantage if horses and onagers had been crossed). 

So the perhaps the ambling gene arose somewhere in the Middle East. Back to the homeland of the Tarpan. The last known Syrian onager was shot in 1927 in Jordan, and the last captive onager died in a Vienna zoo that same year.

And here's an aside: it seems that ambling, a trait duly noted by the Hittites, would go a long way in ameliorating the origin of those odd amblers of northwestern India. From the Middle East to Iberia is an easy enough connection to understand, but to the bogs of Ireland? I guess we will never know the gene's origin, or why certain isolated horse populations retained the gene, despite the meteoric rise of the modern horse. But we're glad they did.

The oldest known horse sculpture found in the Vogelherd cave, Germany, was carved ca. 32,000 years ago. —Wiki

Kiger mustangs carry rare Iberian Sorraia mtDNA

A chalk drawing on a broken school desk I made for an art show.

Someone posted on Facebook a photo of dun-colored Kiger mustangs, a horse that carries a rare mtDNA recessive dun-color gene from Iberia, and I fell down the Google rabbithole. I noted the phenotype was similar to the endangered Iberian horses related to the Gallego, and Sorraia breeds. The Southeastern Oregon Kiger mustangs were originally flagged as being unusual because of their dun coloring. Instead of shooting the mustangs for dogfood, someone thought to sequence their mDNA. So, being a horse of a different color literally saved a rare genetic pool from extinction.

BLM photo of dun Kiger mustangs in southeastern Oregon

The BLM photos of the Kiger mustangs made me think of the autochthonous, or Neolithic CeltIberian Sorraia (closely related to the Marismeño) horse, also with rare mtDNA markers. Coat coloration was the clue. Horses that are dun colored (a bay, or chestnut dilution gene), or grey-dun grullo (an even rarer black dilution gene—neither roan, nor grey) not only carry a primitive recessive coloration gene, they often have dark faces and points with pangaré markings, body mottling, zebra-striped legs, and dorsal stripes—a primitive dun horse trait similar to those tarpan-like horses represented in paleolithic cave paintings. Their manes and tails are often bi-colored with white guard hairs and black upright manes like that of the feral Polish Konik horse, and the Heck. The wild Przewalski's horse has a solid black upright mane and tail.

Many equines appearing in prehistoric cave paintings such as in Chauvet cave are dun, and several closely related species in the genus Equus show dun characteristics. These include the Przewalski's horse...and an extinct subspecies of horse, the tarpan. —Wiki

Chauvet, Ardèche, France, 31 000 BP —Wiki

Contrary to popular belief, Spanish and Portuguese explorers didn't ship their prized Baroque Andalusian horses to the New World. Instead, they sent primitive native horses on long ocean voyages that lasted two months or more. Hardy and resistant, unlike the valuable blooded horses preferred by the nobility, those diminutive horses captured from the fens and marshes of Portugal, were practically breathatarians, and  could survive the harshest of conditions, and subsist on little food or water.

Paleolithic artwork in Lascaux II, note the horse is pacing, not trotting—Wiki

Because the native ponies weren't valued as blood animals, they also nearly became extinct in both the New and Old Worlds via neglect and distain. The Sorraia was once hunted for food, and the Exmoor ponies of Britain was used for target practice during WWII, they were a source of illegal meat in the cities. During the 1970s, the BLM was infamous for slaughtering entire herds of mustangs for dogfood. And their nearest ancestor, the native American wild horse was probably also hunted to extinction during the Ice Age.