[gothic-l] "hails!" as exclamation

[faltin2001]

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "llama_nom" <penterakt at f...> wrote:
> --- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "faltin2001" <dirk at s...> wrote:
> > The normal 
> > > greeting was hails (as in: hails thiudan Iudaie "hail, king of 
> the 
> > > Jews"). 
> > 
> > 
> > Hi Llama Nom,
> > 
> > I was wondering about this word 'Hails'; was that really a common 
> > greeting formular amongst Goths? and if so where is that 
attested. 
> If 
> > it really occurs only in acclamations like 'hails thiudan 
Iudaie', 
> I 
> > would be rather sceptical about this. Hence, in modern German 
this 
> > would also be 'Heil, dir Koenig der Juden....', without Heil 
beeing 
> a 
> > greeting at all in normal usage.
> > 
> > Cheers
> > Dirk
> 
> 
> Hi Dirk,
> 
> How common?  Well, the short answer is: I don't know!  But there is 
> the Latin epigram 'De conviviis barbaris', a snide comment on 
Gothic, 
> or perhaps Vandal, feasting:
> 
> Inter eils Goticum scapiamatziadrincan
>  non audet quisquam dignos educere versus.
> 
> "Between the Gothic 'eils, scapiamatziadrincan'
> no-one dares utter worthy verses"
> 
> (I hope I've got that right).  From this we can assume that hails 
> (eils) was a current expression in Gothic, in some sense, and not 
> just an artifact of Wulfila's translation.  Okay, in this context 
it 
> might be a toast rather than  a greeting, and it's hard to know how 
> formal it would have sounded, but my guess at the moment is that it 
> could have encompassed all of these functions.  Compare: Old Norse 
> heill!, and Old English hal wes thu!, wesath hale!, etc., which are 
> cognate with Gothic hails, and - as far as I'm aware - could serve 
> both as acclamation and greeting.  Do you know if heil was ever 
> a "normal greeting" in earlier stages of the German language?  (Not 
> counting the politically motivated revival in Nazi times, of 
> course).  Presumably the present-day formal & archaic-sounding 
usage 
> of German "heil", or English "hail", preserves an exclamation that 
> was once more common, and perhaps therefore applicable to a wider 
> range of registers.
> 
>  OE also has "ic grete the", literally "I greet you", so maybe 
Goths 
> said *"golja thuk" as well.  Not attested though.
> 
> so goleins meinai handau Pawlaus, þatei ist bandwo ana allaim 
> aipistaulem meinaim; swa melja "The salutation of Paul with mine 
own 
> hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write." 
> 
> jah meina...
> Llama Nom




Hi Llama Nom and Francisc,

thanks for your replies. On second thought I realised that the 
greeting Heil is still -in some forms- commonly used in modern 
German. Hence, the normal greeting between two hunters/foresters even 
in letters is Waidmanns Heil! To which the other would reply 
Waidmanns Dank!. Also, fire fighters use the greeting Gut Heil!, 
while skiers even say very commonly Ski Heil!. So this probably, adds 
weight to the assumption that Hails was a proper greeting among 
Goths. 

Cheers
Dirk 









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