Post by Heron on Jan 31, 2017 15:25:19 GMT -1
Now that Megli is calling in here again, I wonder if I can try a possible discussion topic: the relationship between the Irish Síd and the Welsh Gorsedd.
I read in Ireland’s Immortals ( a recommended text for anyone interested in how the Irish gods have appeared in the literary record and interpreted over many centuries up to the present day), that the word síd comes from Celtic *sídos ‘abode’, derived from a root related to English ‘seat’. Also its developed use as ‘abode of the gods’, tumulus etc. and that this was a specifically Irish innovation.
So I wonder about the Welsh word ‘sedd’ (seat) and the word ‘gorsedd’ (high seat, throne; but also ‘tump’, ‘mound, ‘barrow’ etc.) There is no suggestion in the Geiriadur that the words are related, but the independent development of ‘gorsedd’ and its use in the Ist and 3rd Mabinogi as, if not a síd in the sense of an abode or hollow hill, at least as a place of interaction with the Otherworld. The site of Gorsedd Arberth is usually identified as Camp Hill, an Iron Age site (unexcavated) near to the town of Narberth. So not an old megalith or even Bronze Age barrow which might have been seen as an abode of the gods in the Iron Age, but perhaps so to a medieval cyfarwyddwr?
Should we see Gorsedd Arberth as a síd, as John Carey implicitly suggests, or as an independent development, something like a Brythonic ‘mound of marvels’, or might both share a common origin, mythically if not linguistically, in an earlier Celtic abode or portal of the gods?
I read in Ireland’s Immortals ( a recommended text for anyone interested in how the Irish gods have appeared in the literary record and interpreted over many centuries up to the present day), that the word síd comes from Celtic *sídos ‘abode’, derived from a root related to English ‘seat’. Also its developed use as ‘abode of the gods’, tumulus etc. and that this was a specifically Irish innovation.
So I wonder about the Welsh word ‘sedd’ (seat) and the word ‘gorsedd’ (high seat, throne; but also ‘tump’, ‘mound, ‘barrow’ etc.) There is no suggestion in the Geiriadur that the words are related, but the independent development of ‘gorsedd’ and its use in the Ist and 3rd Mabinogi as, if not a síd in the sense of an abode or hollow hill, at least as a place of interaction with the Otherworld. The site of Gorsedd Arberth is usually identified as Camp Hill, an Iron Age site (unexcavated) near to the town of Narberth. So not an old megalith or even Bronze Age barrow which might have been seen as an abode of the gods in the Iron Age, but perhaps so to a medieval cyfarwyddwr?
Should we see Gorsedd Arberth as a síd, as John Carey implicitly suggests, or as an independent development, something like a Brythonic ‘mound of marvels’, or might both share a common origin, mythically if not linguistically, in an earlier Celtic abode or portal of the gods?
