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SABRINA
Jul 27, 2008 22:05:12 GMT -1
Post by Heron on Jul 27, 2008 22:05:12 GMT -1
Anyone know anything about Sabrina? I'm drafting a blog entry on a walk to the source of the Severn and I want to include a bit about Sabrina. Here's my draft paragraph: .....In this case Sabrina. Such is the name the Romans gave her and, it seems, they took the name from the Brythons who already knew her by the same name. So we come to a different question of origins and continuations. Given known sound-changes between Latin and early Welsh, initial 'S' changes to 'H' and the hard 'b' within the word changes to 'f' (or 'v'). So the transition from Sabrina to the modern Welsh Hafren is not hard to construe. More intriguing is that the saxons called the river 'Saefern' (from which comes the modern English Severn). They could only have got the softened 'f' in the middle of the word from the Brythons. But Sabrina maintained her earlier name long after the common usage had changed it. Geoffrey of Monmouth supplies a story about her and the poet Milton, as a young man before he developed the stern puritanical outlook displayed in Paradise Lost, wrote a masque - Comus - which was performed in Ludlow Castle in 1624 (on the river Teme rather than the Severn) where Sabrina takes her place as the tutelary goddess of the border country between England and Wales. If anyone knows a good source of further info I'd be happy to know it (most web sources seem vague and/or inaccurate or simply re-cycle the Geo of Monmouth story about Locrinus).. I'd also appreciate comment on the linguistic transitions if Megli is about.
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SABRINA
Jul 28, 2008 5:26:48 GMT -1
Post by Tegernacus on Jul 28, 2008 5:26:48 GMT -1
"The real etymology of the Sabrina/Hafren is no doubt from haf (summer), part of the adjoining country being called the Gwlad yr Haf or Land of the Summer (Summersetshire) "
- Notes to The Irish Version of the Historia Britonum of Nennius By Nennius, James Henthorn Todd, Algernon Herbert, Irish Archaeological Society
"The Saxons in all probability adopted Romano British words for incorporation into their own language in like manner Ignoring the myth they felt that by the natural change of B into V the name would be not only significant but appropriate and Sabrina the nymph became Saeferan, by elision Saefren, from Sae feran , Anglo Saxon to go to the sea, "the sea fare or way" by which name it is still known preserving amongst the people of the district through all the changes of language which have since taken place its ancient pronunciation
- Proceedings of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club By Cotteswold Naturalists' Field Club
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SABRINA
Jul 28, 2008 5:45:39 GMT -1
Post by Tegernacus on Jul 28, 2008 5:45:39 GMT -1
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SABRINA
Jul 28, 2008 9:14:23 GMT -1
Post by megli on Jul 28, 2008 9:14:23 GMT -1
Both of those etymologies are wrong, alas. (Can't be to do with 'summer' because that root was sam- not sab-; she would have to have been **Samina, or sonmething like it!)
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SABRINA
Jul 28, 2008 9:19:37 GMT -1
Post by megli on Jul 28, 2008 9:19:37 GMT -1
What's nice about the word is that the A-S form helps us derive relative chronologies of British sound-changes: by the time the Saxons got to that neck of the woods, the change [internal b] --> [v] had clearly taken place in the British language, but the change [initial s-] --> [h-] hadn't.
There may well be a discussion of the name in Kenneth Jackson's 'Language and History in Early Britain'. (not holiday reading!)
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SABRINA
Jul 28, 2008 9:47:27 GMT -1
Post by Tegernacus on Jul 28, 2008 9:47:27 GMT -1
yeah, page 82
I posted those snippets to highlight the confusion that is around, even in historical/archaeological circles. Either that or regurgitated Geoffrey.
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SABRINA
Jul 28, 2008 11:29:12 GMT -1
Post by megli on Jul 28, 2008 11:29:12 GMT -1
What does Jackson say? It's one of the books I don't have.
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SABRINA
Jul 28, 2008 14:31:13 GMT -1
Post by Heron on Jul 28, 2008 14:31:13 GMT -1
Thanks for the refs. I had in fact looked at the White Dragon article but was put off by the location of Pumlummon in the Black Mountains and the apparent confusion of Ystwyth (spelt ystwith) with the River Rheidol. If the geography's that bad .... But have had another look and there's a good summary of available stuff in there but with some doubtful things thrown in. Thanks too for the page ref in Jackson and thanks Megli for suggesting this. I'm going home via the library to have a look and will report back later.
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SABRINA
Jul 28, 2008 20:25:05 GMT -1
Post by Heron on Jul 28, 2008 20:25:05 GMT -1
I've now looked at Jackson. Apart from the brief reference on P. 82 there's quite a bit further on in the section on consonants. He says that the -> [H] transition is independent of, and older than, the Brittonic system of lenition and is therefore not to be confused with process of lenition in Irish. The process began before the main body of Latin loan words made their way into British. He estimates that Severn < Sabrina was borrowed into Old English in the last quarter of the sixth century. He proposes an intermediate sound (possibly something like an aspirate sh). Quite a lot on why others have oversimplified things but nothing much clearer (to me) emerges from his more detailed analysis.
So I've gone ahead and posted my blog, which, if anyone's interested, has pics I took of the source of the Severn and some thoughts on sources of rivers generally. (link below)
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SABRINA
Jul 28, 2008 21:48:34 GMT -1
Post by Tegernacus on Jul 28, 2008 21:48:34 GMT -1
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SABRINA
Jul 29, 2008 7:10:16 GMT -1
Post by megli on Jul 29, 2008 7:10:16 GMT -1
so: Sabren* > (lat. Sabrina) > Safren > (as. Severn) > Hafren ?? or was it Habrena > Sabrina > Hafren > Severn Neither. The orignal word in British was Sabrina, of unknown original meaning. I wondered last night if the summer-etymology might be possible after all, if Sabr- arose from earlier Samr-, which is possible. But I'll ask an expert. But in terms of the shape of the word and its ending, Sabrina fitted Latin phonology very well, so the Romans simply borrowed it as was and slotted it into their language. Then a sequence of changes took place, from around 350 onwards. These changes were regular, and affected every word in the British language. Internal consonants softened (this is known as lenition), so: Sabrina --> Savrina Then a process called 'vowel affection' took place, whereby the final -a altered the quality of the -i-, changing it to -e-. (This is immensely common.) Savrina --> Savrena Then 'apocope' or loss of final syllables occured: Savrena --> Savren Then initial s- changed to h-, probably via an intermediate sh- sound: Savren --> Havren (or in Modern W. orthography, Hafren) I'm not convinced by Jackson's argument that the change s ---> h is older than lenition; it fails to explain why the Saxons borrowed the name as Saefaern and not **Haefaern, which is what one would expect if he were right. Unless the change occurred in two stages - first s- --> sh-, then, some centuries later, sh- --> h. The Saxons might then have heard something like Shavren and spelled it saefaern with a s-. (But they could write the sound sh-, with the digraph sc-; so why didn't they write **Scaefaern (roughly, 'Shavarn')? It's a puzzler. I'll check out the volume which superseded jackson, which is Kim McCone's 'Towards a Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change' tomorrow. He may shed light on this.
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SABRINA
Jul 29, 2008 8:45:58 GMT -1
Post by Tegernacus on Jul 29, 2008 8:45:58 GMT -1
I wonder how much the local accent would affect it? I mean, not just in vowel changes, but in the whole shape of the word. When did the West Country accent appear? It is said it is old, having similar forms to Cornish and Breton. That would make it older that the Wessex Saxon surely?
So when Ceawlin and his people began to move into the Severn valley in 577, they would have heard the word in Brythonic AND with a West Country-ish accent. If you say Savren in your best Phil Harding, it sounds like Shavren (at least they way I say it lol). So maybe there wasn't an intermediate s>sh stage, it's just the way they pronounced it. Maybe.
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SABRINA
Jul 29, 2008 9:06:16 GMT -1
Post by megli on Jul 29, 2008 9:06:16 GMT -1
Who knows?! Accents are funny things and rather beyond the metaphorical linguistic spectrometer's ability to read at this kind of time-depth. The question would be 'how much is the modern west country accent a reflection of the phonology of the late British of the region carried over into Old English by speakers who switched their linguistic alliegance? (Much like the modern Irish accent has some features which are drawn from the Irish language.)
In order to answer this, we'd need -
a) sound samples of all A-S dialects (as a control) b) sound samples of west country British speakers c) sound samples of Old English as spoken by people whose family tongue had been British, but who had switched to Old English.
Without a time machine, obvs, we're never going to get them!
I suspect - suspect - that the rural burr of west country English was common to a lot of Old English dialects, or at least the Wessexy ones less affected by intermingling with Old Norse in the Viking period. (A startlingly high number of ordinary English words are Old Norse - 'they', for example!)
It's more likely to my mind that Cornish picked up the burr from English, I think, from which it was after all under high pressure for the whole of its history. Similary, Breton has borrowed certain pronunciation features from French (e.g. most Breton speakers now pronounce /r/ in the dark, 'French' way, not in the rolled, 'Celtic' way.)
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SABRINA
Jul 29, 2008 11:05:09 GMT -1
Post by Heron on Jul 29, 2008 11:05:09 GMT -1
Not so so sure about this as a poem, but there's some good history and geography in there. I particularly like the fact that he has identified 'The Berth' (from 'Perth', signifying a hedged-in place?) as the location of Pengwern.
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SABRINA
Jul 29, 2008 11:16:05 GMT -1
Post by Heron on Jul 29, 2008 11:16:05 GMT -1
I suspect - suspect - that the rural burr of west country English was common to a lot of Old English dialects, or at least the Wessexy ones less affected by intermingling with Old Norse in the Viking period. (A startlingly high number of ordinary English words are Old Norse - 'they', for example!) It's more likely to my mind that Cornish picked up the burr from English, I think, from which it was after all under high pressure for the whole of its history. Similary, Breton has borrowed certain pronunciation features from French (e.g. most Breton speakers now pronounce /r/ in the dark, 'French' way, not in the rolled, 'Celtic' way.) I remember David Crystal, in a wide-ranging talk ostensibly about Shakespeare's English accents, mentioned that his analysis of West country accents suggests elements of Welsh intonations in them, amongst other things. To me, People speaking English in parts of Radnorshire in mid Wales sound more West-country than Welsh, though their nearest bit of England is Hereford/Worcester. Whereas people from Gwent don't sound like this. All subjective stuff of course!
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SABRINA
Jul 29, 2008 12:34:57 GMT -1
Post by Tegernacus on Jul 29, 2008 12:34:57 GMT -1
well, there is a document, written in 1137-47, where Cardiff is written "Kerdif" - which, if you've ever been to Cardiff, you will recognise because that's how they still speak down there. So the Gwent dialect was more like the modern Cardiff accent probably, which is... kind of West-Country-ish, certainly moreso than the Swansea accent( which spread East to the Valleys with the migration of mine-workers).
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SABRINA
Jul 29, 2008 18:50:03 GMT -1
Post by megli on Jul 29, 2008 18:50:03 GMT -1
Indeed. 'Kerdif' (Old welsh Cair Teim) is a classic staple of my history-of-Welsh classes: the -dif bit is genius....clue - it's to do with the river Taf...
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SABRINA
Jul 29, 2008 19:21:59 GMT -1
Post by Tegernacus on Jul 29, 2008 19:21:59 GMT -1
aye, the genitive form Tyf, mutated to Dyf. Caer-Dyf. Llandaff is the same, Llan-Daf, except they stopped using the genitive by that point (so I've been told). The Taff is interesting in that it has a similar name to other rivers (similar root?). The Romans called their fort there the Tamion, which, if it follows other fort-near-river patterns, must mean the original name for the Taff was the Tam or something similar to the Team, Tame, Thames and Tawe etc . I love local history, far more interesting than yer six-wives.
I mentioned Sabrina to a mate of mine earlier, and they, in their non-academic non-historic state-the-obvious kind of way said "Aber-ina? Is that near Aberystwyth?".
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SABRINA
Jul 29, 2008 20:34:41 GMT -1
Post by Heron on Jul 29, 2008 20:34:41 GMT -1
I remember the poet and translator Gwyn Williams (the one who published 'The Burning Tree' and other translations much used by David Jones) had a personal campaign going to get rid of 'Caerdydd' and replace it with 'Caerdyf'. No-one took any notice though.
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