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Post by crowman on Jan 2, 2011 10:08:43 GMT -1
Just taking a look at names or meanings of Gods and goddesses and came across the Dobunni Goddess Cuda...
From Celtnet.... "Cuda is Brythonic goddess known from an inscribed sculpture found at Cirencester, England where she is depicted as a mother goddess with fertility symbols and she represents prosperity and health....Cuda's name relates directly to the concepts of wealth and well-being (with the substituton of c/q sounds to p/b the modern Cymric form is budd) which would fit with a role as a deity of fertility and possibly of healing."
So far so good. Then I read about Andraste which is a Goddess of the Iceni. Another site infers that Boudica may be linked through worship and says this...
"There is also a possible link to the Celtic goddess Boudiga (Welsh root, 'budd'), whose name means "Victory." It is possible that the name is a religious title, perhaps given to her during the early part of the rebellion."
My question here is the wlsh root and the cymric root budd,,, which one is which and can Cuda be linked to Andraste? Or are they, as I suspect separate and totally different?
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Post by crowman on Jan 2, 2011 10:11:51 GMT -1
Found this on Celtnet....
"Andraste's name is derived from the reconstructed proto-Celtic elements *an-drixtâ- (darkness) along with the feminine ending -a. Thus Andraste may be interpreted as 'The Dark One'. And thus she is probably cognate with the Irish Goddess 'Morrigan'."
Which would suggest Cuda and Boudiga arent the same. Cant find any mention on Celtnet about Boudiga however
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Post by deiniol on Jan 2, 2011 12:12:17 GMT -1
Celtnet is a dreadfully unreliable source. Virtually everything on it which discusses linguistics is wrong.
We have no records of a goddess named Boudica, just the famous Queen of the Iceni. Andraste and Andate are both found only in Dio Cassius's account of the Boudican rebellion. The two names have no clear Celtic etymology. We don't even know what the original Celtic forms were, as Dio wrote in Greek and transliterated Celtic names in a rather haphazard way- he writes "Boudica" in three different ways in the same text: Boudouika, Boundouika and Bodouika. It's not even outside the realms of possibility that the historian is just making the entire episode up.
The moral of the above: if you find something interesting on Celtnet, be inclined to think it's bollocks until you've verified the facts from a reliable source.
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Post by nellie on Jan 2, 2011 12:13:48 GMT -1
I don't know loads about this but my understanding has always been that Andraste is quite a fierce goddess, a goddess of war and conflict? It doesn't sound like She was a mother type goddess, but maybe that is only because the sources that mention Her are those that concern Boudicca's rebellion? I don't believe there are any other references to Andraste, though I've read in unremembered places that She might be be a Gaulish goddess. It's possible to believe that a mother goddess, especially if She was (I'm just speculating) taken as an ancestor type of goddess, would also be a fearsome goddess that protects Her people when threatened? Hence Andraste appearing very war-like in the surviving references to Her? As to 'dark one', does this have to have connotations to a war like nature? Isn't it possible that Andraste was seen to be present in a particular natural phenomonon. Could 'dark one' not refer to maybe river? In some of the Iceni lands there is (at least now) parts of the agricultural land that is a really rich, dark colour; strikingly so. The 'dark one' might refer to an aspect of Her nature other than merely being a reference to being warlike?
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Post by Tegernacus on Jan 2, 2011 12:27:54 GMT -1
Loads of river names can be translated to "dark one", "black one", "fierce one". So you're going along the right lines with this imo. Question is: was there/is there a river/stream in Norfolk with an Andraste-ish name? No. The River Tas? Tat? Thet? (The Italians build Venta Icenorum on the river Tas, which is why I mentioned it)
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Post by deiniol on Jan 2, 2011 12:31:17 GMT -1
As to 'dark one', does this have to have connotations to a war like nature? Isn't it possible that Andraste was seen to be present in a particular natural phenomonon. Could 'dark one' not refer to maybe river? In some of the Iceni lands there is (at least now) parts of the agricultural land that is a really rich, dark colour; strikingly so. The 'dark one' might refer to an aspect of Her nature other than merely being a reference to being warlike? Unfortunately, it's highly unlikely that "Andraste" means anything like "the dark one", rendering the point somewhat moot.
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Post by nellie on Jan 2, 2011 14:43:25 GMT -1
Tegernacus, are you asking if there is a river Thet? Or are you saying that the river Thet has nothing to do with Andraste? I live right by the river Thet and was wondering if it has any history of being associated with any deities so I would be hugely excited if you were supposing that it might have some links with a goddess. The river Thet runs right past iron age earth works associated with both Boudicca and the Iceni, and further along also runs past the site that was supposedly (I haven't researched this, just pulling it up from memory of local history) the site of a rather important Iceni spiritual complex.
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Post by arth_frown on Jan 2, 2011 15:25:40 GMT -1
The woodland here was called Anderida then the Anglo Saxons called it Andred Wald, now is just called the Weald. Supposed to be associated with Andraste.
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Post by Tegernacus on Jan 2, 2011 17:26:45 GMT -1
Nellie: I was merely suggesting you look for local rivers with the meaning "dark one".
Arth: I thought Anderida was called that because the legion stationed there was from Spain?
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Post by Tegernacus on Jan 2, 2011 17:40:03 GMT -1
ah no sorry, that was the Anderida in Pevensey, and that garrison was the Abulci from Spain.
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Post by deiniol on Jan 2, 2011 17:43:42 GMT -1
Anderida, to the best of my knowledge, is a corrupt form of Anderitum, which just means "big ford".
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Post by arth_frown on Jan 2, 2011 21:56:17 GMT -1
Anderida, to the best of my knowledge, is a corrupt form of Anderitum, which just means "big ford". LOL like a Cortina? Seriously the same as a road through a river?
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Post by megli on Jan 2, 2011 23:03:57 GMT -1
Yup, sounds convincing to me.
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Post by megli on Jan 2, 2011 23:04:35 GMT -1
From Celtnet.... "Cuda is Brythonic goddess known from an inscribed sculpture found at Cirencester, England where she is depicted as a mother goddess with fertility symbols and she represents prosperity and health....Cuda's name relates directly to the concepts of wealth and well-being (with the substituton of c/q sounds to p/b the modern Cymric form is budd) which would fit with a role as a deity of fertility and possibly of healing." This is linguistically impossible, by the way, and the person who wrote it (to warn you, Crowman) clearly has no idea about how Celtic languages work. Brythonic was just as p-Celtic as Welsh is: the distinction is between q-Celtic Goidelic (Irish, Sc gaelic, Manx) and p-Celtic Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish, breton.) [Very crudely!] So Cuda (= *Kouda) would give Welsh Cudd, cf. the verb cuddio, 'to hide'. Cuda prob meant 'Hidden Lady', 'Goddess of the Secret Places', or something similar, by the way. Nothing to do with the *boudi-, 'victory' root at all.
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Post by deiniol on Jan 3, 2011 0:04:11 GMT -1
This is linguistically impossible, by the way, and the person who wrote it (to warn you, Crowman) clearly has no idea about how Celtic languages work. Brythonic was just as p-Celtic as Welsh is: the distinction is between q-Celtic Goidelic (Irish, Sc gaelic, Manx) and p-Celtic Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish, breton.) [Very crudely!] So Cuda (= *Kouda) would give Welsh Cudd, cf. the verb cuddio, 'to hide'. Cuda prob meant 'Hidden Lady', 'Goddess of the Secret Places', or something similar, by the way. Nothing to do with the *boudi-, 'victory' root at all. I would contest this! (Because I'm a contrary bastard, natch) Proto-Brythonic * ou was generally rendered by Latin ō (or eu, q.v. * toutātis > Teutatis) never ū. For example, let us take the name of London. The W. Llundain points to * loundonyon, which was rendered in Latin as Lōndinium, not Lūndinium. "Cuda" therefore must be either * cūdā or * cudā, which does not immediately suggest anything (* kuti- "skin", perhaps?)- we could be looking at a non-Celtic deity? Not knowing the inscription in question makes contextualising the name somewhat difficult.
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Post by megli on Jan 3, 2011 10:19:30 GMT -1
Really?! Hm. Poss. Oh bollocks, you're right! *noudons coming out as Nodons, etc. Argh. Still---even if CVDA is a mysterious name (and yes, it would be interesting to have date and context), it's still wholly unrelated to Boudica and 'victory'. PS BUT to be contrary in turn, if I may: there actually IS an British Latin inscription at Lydney which shows Celtic -ou- as -u- by the way, so it's not quite 'never': PECTILLVS VOTVM QVOD PROMISSIT DEO NVDENTE M DEDIT 'Pectillus dedicates this votive offering which he had promised to the god Nudens Mars.' If they could write *Noudens as NVDENS (Nudens) why not *Kouda as CVDA (Cuda)? I stick by Cuda as 'Hidden Lady' or similar.
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Post by crowman on Jan 3, 2011 10:21:07 GMT -1
the goddess cuda is frequently shown (at least in the cotswolds) with the three 'hooded ones' the cucillati so i would be inclined to go with megli's description... although also frequently she is depicted recieving or giving things to the hooded ones so thats where they possibly confused the fertility/ plenty description...i think ive learned a lesson about celtnet here so thanks, the other lesson ive learned is to not worry about what a god or goddesses name meant... the main thing is what it represents, so for instance if forests call to you how about recognising the god of the forest rather than getting tied up with their exact brython/ celt/roman/ latin prefix name. This is one of the most confusing parts of Brython for me. To find out what is meaningful from the lanscape to me, then to try and find a god or godess from unreliable sources that represents that meaning... its like double translation!
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Post by megli on Jan 3, 2011 10:30:18 GMT -1
the goddess cuda is frequently shown (at least in the cotswolds) with the three 'hooded ones' the cucillati so i would be inclined to go with megli's description... although also frequently she is depicted recieving or giving things to the hooded ones so thats where they possibly confused the fertility/ plenty description...i think ive learned a lesson about celtnet here so thanks, the other lesson ive learned is to not worry about what a god or goddesses name meant... the main thing is what it represents, so for instance if forests call to you how about recognising the god of the forest rather than getting tied up with their exact brython/ celt/roman/ latin prefix name. This is one of the most confusing parts of Brython for me. To find out what is meaningful from the lanscape to me, then to try and find a god or godess from unreliable sources that represents that meaning... its like double translation! Yes...important to try though. Because otherwise, if historical sources are abandoned, what's the point of Brython at all? It all becomes Restall-Orrian neo-shamanism.
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Post by Rion on Jan 3, 2011 11:26:58 GMT -1
I love it when you two get your geek on.
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