About the Yew1

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 11:31 AM

> Steve Long (21 May 2001) wrote:

[snip]

>> My real problem with all this is that the "yew" is not really that
>> recognizable as a tree or as a wood.  And there is evidence that the name
>> was not altogether that stable, even among cultures that had writing and
>> could communicate long-distances about something as local and variable as
>> the appearance of a tree.  Even if PIEists knew the tree, chances are they
>> would have soon confused it with other trees.

> I'm well aware that cognate dendronyms can refer to different trees in
> different languages, and examples from IE and Semitic occur in my own
> postings. But in fact Taxus baccata _is_ quite distinctive as trees go.
> First, it has prominent red berries. Second, its wood is prized for making
> bows and arrows. Third, its leaves are highly toxic (unusual, if not unique,
> for a tree native to Europe). The Belgic king Catuvolcus took his own life
> with yew-poison (Caes. B.G. VI.31). A persistent superstition (Diosc. IV.79)
> holds that anyone sleeping under a yew will die: hence the epithet "albero
> della morte". It is very unlikely that a name for this particular tree, once
> established among a body of speakers, would be applied by those speakers to
> any other tree. They could, of course, migrate out of its habitat and forget
> the name.

>> The main problem I think with using the yew word to locate PIE is, of
>> course, that the "yew" was not always a "yew."  And this only makes sense,
>> since trees don't move and that means what you call a yew or don't call a
>> yew and what I call a yew in the next valley could be two different trees --
>> up until such time as we obtain Polaroid cameras. Or up until we get around
>> to cutting them down and selling the wood, scrapping their bark for extract
>> or perhaps in the case of the yew, eating their berries.  It would be the
>> by-products, not the tree, that we could discuss in common.

> I don't see that Polaroid cameras are necessary. If you and I belong to the
> same tribe, and we don't agree on what to call trees in the next valley, then
> our use of language is dysfunctional. Do you really believe that prehistoric
> humans were linguistically incompetent?

> I don't think any serious objections have been presented to the thesis that
> PIE-speakers didn't know the yew. As I mentioned before, "yew" itself has
> ancient congeners only in Celtic and Germanic, plausibly derived from PIE
> *eiw- 'berry'. Latv. <ive> and Old Pr. <iuwis> are from MLG <i:we>, not
> Proto-Baltic. Evidently northern IE-speakers _did_ name the tree after its
> distinctive "by-products" when they encountered it by moving west. Other
> groups of IE-speakers entered yew-country by other routes and either adopted
> pre-IE names or fixated on other features.

> Celtic has preserved pre-IE *ebur- 'yew' rather extensively in toponyms,
> ethnonyms, and personal names, and also Irish <ibhar> 'yew; bow' beside <eo>
> 'yew'. The stem *ebur- also appears in toponyms in Iberia, Liguria,
> Campania, and probably Greece (Ephura:, old name of Corinth and other
> places). In my opinion *ebur- belongs with the Old European substrate
> associated with the expansion of Neolithic farmers across Europe (ca.
> 5500-4000 BCE). If you believe, like Renfrew, that these farmers (who
> entered Europe from Anatolia) spoke PIE, then you must explain why "IE"
> *ebur- should have been superseded by *eiw- in the north and by other words
> in the south and east. This can be done if you posit movement of IE-speakers
> out of Anatolia and east of yew-country, then back into Europe. But then
> we're begging the question of what IE and non-IE are. It is pointless IMHO
> to extend "Indo-European" back to the first European farmers, and equally
> pointless to regard PIE as arbitrarily old.

> It should be noted that Hans Krahe, whose research did much to substantiate
> the Old European substrate, regarded this substrate as IE. I think Krahe
> succeeded in showing that Old European shares a few suffixes with PIE and is
> probably related, but again I disagree with the characterization of
> something this old as "Indo-European".

> DGK

[Ed Selleslagh]

1. The very well known case of Lat. 'fagus' (Eng. beech and similar in other
Germanic, e.g. beuk in Du.) and Gr. 'phe:gós' (Dor. phagós) (Eng. oak)
proves that different trees can be meant by a name from the same IE source,
even when all the peoples involved were probably equally familiar with both
species. Can anybody suggest how this could happen?

The only thing beech trees and oaks (but: what kind of oak? There are widely
different types in N. and S. Europe) have in common is that they provide us
with good quality (and dense) wood for making furniture. Any child can see the
difference between a beech tree and an oak, especially by the leaves and the
'fruits'. Seeing the difference between the two types of wood requires a little
more competence, but not much.

[Anecdotal info: I was born in Hoboken, a S. suburb of Antwerp, Belgium, which
was founded by the Salic Franks after the 5th. c. (date unknown). In the 10th.
c. a Latin text calls it Hobuechen, meaning 'High Beeches'. It is located on a
former heath on glacial sand deposits. On less inhabited parts of this heath
belt you can still find the odd taxus, but they are rather rare, if not
exceptional]

2. There was a Belgic tribe called (by J. Caesar) the Eburones. Anything to do
with ebur-, yew, bows, etc.? (I guess real ivory is to be excluded).

Ed.