LL-L "Literature" 2005.06.05 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

======================================================================
L O W L A N D S - L * 05.JUN.2005 (07) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
http://www.lowlands-l.net * lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
Rules & Guidelines: http://www.lowlands-l.net/index.php?page=rules
Posting: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org or lowlands-l at lowlands-l.net
Commands ("signoff lowlands-l" etc.): listserv at listserv.net
Server Manual: http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8c/userindex.html
Archives: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-8) [Please switch your view mode to it.]
=======================================================================
You have received this because you have been subscribed upon request.
To unsubscribe, please send the command "signoff lowlands-l" as message
text from the same account to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or
sign off at http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================
A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
=======================================================================

From: "Arthur Jones" <arthurobin2002 at yahoo.com>
Subject: neo-gothic poem based on Go folklore

   John the Goth Rescues the Priestess Iona

             By Arthur A. Jones
             June 2005

   That night I stole you from the caravan,
        Bound up your auburn hair in sorrowing strands.
   Then rode we two swift horses to the mountains
        ---wet, dark hills,
   When none would know your absence ‘til the dawn.

   We’ll neither eat nor sleep, nor drop our guard,
        You said at daybreak, paused and listened hard,
   As hordes of warsteeds slipped through sandy shoals
        ---eyes torch-fire red,
   To slay the nomad priestess and her bard.

   Our rocky, mossy perch above the fen
        Was no fit shield against that tide of men,
   Whose coming bade us choose ‘tween death and slavery
        ---grab the reins!
   We struggled down the cliff to safer glens.

   We reached the vale of winding vines and groves,
        Where once your clan held council, sang and wove.
   Wellspring of your muse! Now smouldering farmsteads
        ---splintered forts,
   A treachery smoke-borne from Halja’s stove.

   We’ll be not chattel for your sad sarai,
        You said, as in the mist I saw you cry;
   Not for yourself, but for a vanquished people
        ---warrior nation,
   As ravens shrieked of fat satraps and spies.

   I’ll ride my ancient horse in this last battle-trial,
        You said as winds whipped flames around your throne,
   Now promise me I shall not die in exile
        ---gadráuhtins mein,
   I’ll promise you we shall not die alone.

***
NOTES:

This poem, or song, commemorates an historically attested event in Gothic
history. In the late eighth Century A.D., much of the Crimea was populated
by Ostrogoths, who were Christianized and, from the beginning, incorporated
into Arian Christian beliefs. At that time, Arianism was a predominating
theology, and only later was labeled a heresy. In that branch of the
Eastern, or Byzantine, Church, women were accepted on occasion as
priestesses. That practice also disappeared together with Arianism.

About 785 A.D., as Khazars (a Turkic semi-nomadic tribe) invaded the Crimea,
they kidnapped the Gothic priestess Iona and imprisoned her in their
newly-conquered city which they named Bakhşisarai, now translated as Charity
Palace, although at that time the word “Sarai” was usually associated with
“Caravansarai”, or a way-station, inn and safe supply depot on a caravan
route.

This was the last straw for Crimean Goths. Their local hero, John the Goth,
was also a church official (“Metropolitan”). John rescued Iona from the
Sarai in a daring raid, escaped, and together they gathered a Gothic army
that drove the Khazars from the Crimea. However, the Goths had already
antagonized the Byzantine Empire at Constantinople by persisting in Germanic
ways and heretic ideas of Christianity. Thus the Goths could not persuade
the Empire to help them keep the Khazars at bay.

Within a few years, the Khazars returned and decimated the Gothic
population. Crimean Ostrogoths were never again in a position to assert
themselves politically. However, the tale of John the Goth survives in the
folk memories of a few of the older Tatar residents of the area, i.e., near
Mangup-kalé and Bork-khol-burun in the southern part of the peninsula.

The song (not the foregoing poem, for which I take full responsibility)
incorporates a few words that are occasionally, if unconsciously, repeated
by a handful of elderly farmers and shepherds in the district. They
strenuously deny the Gothic derivations, as many generations have been
taught to do. Avoidance or denial of any remaining linguistic or cultural
heritage of “those evil Goths” runs very strong in most segments of
Ukrainian society, reinforced by centuries of Tatar, Ottoman, and other
Muslim influences. During the Soviet era all such dialect or vocabulary
vestiges were pronounced “autochthonous”, meaning roughly that all languages
within the USSR generated themselves entirely locally and were never from
foreign settlers, especially not Gothic settlers.

Despite the almost universal, blanket condemnation of the historical Goths
throughout the Crimea, the remaining Tatars (now totaling almost a quarter
million since their repatriation from Stalin-imposed exile in Kazakhstan)
insist that they practically “adopted” and absorbed the Goths into their own
culture over the centuries.

We found, through some wearisome and deep digging, that a handful of Gothic
words and place names still exists, although they have experienced wrenching
changes in the process of assimilation into Turkic languages. Among the
words and phrases we heard were a large number that we initially suspected
to have Germanic origins, but on closer inspection turned out to be
undeniably Turkic. Others, however, are just as undeniably Gothic. As we
used them in the poem, the words for “…dark hills” were approximately “riki
rindi”. Gothic _riqis_=darkness; Go. _Rindzhil_= hill, ridge.

The phrase “rocky, mossy perch” –I took liberties, naturally—approximates
the present place name “Sitankam”, which local residents assume to be of
Turkic origin. However, in both etymology and meaning, it has an attested
derivation from Gothic “_stáinhamma_”=rocky dwelling place. The Turkic
practice of inserting vowels between certain consonants will be discussed in
another document, as it doesn’t advance the poem at all. Vowel insertion,
however, occurs frequently enough to make any number of Gothic place names
all but unrecognizable: “Kavarna” for Go. _Qaírnus_(mill); “Burun” for Go.
_Brunna_ (spring); “Lilaburgaz” for Go. _Leitilbaúrgs_ (little
town/fortress).

“Down the cliffs”: The word used in the song is “kalasι” for Go. “hallus”,
cliff.

So much for the remnants of Gothic we heard in old folk music as sung by
three elderly Crimean Tatars. The music itself is haunting enough, what with
minor key harmonies and the repetition of the last two lines of each verse,
the second time featuring a voice one octave higher than in the first, and a
crescendo almost to the point of a banshee’s wail.

We came away with the firm conviction that there is still a sizeable
_corpus_ of Gothic awaiting discovery in the Crimea. What is needed is a
modicum of scientific objectivity and some interdisciplinary connections
between historic linguistics to establish the various sound shifts under
Turkic superstrate influence, archaeology to establish time lines and
cultural patterns (much material has recently been “rediscovered” in a
university basement in St. Petersburg, Russia), and closer perusal of
Crimean manuscripts (Greek, Slavic, and Turkic) in the light of more recent
scholarship.

Also, there has been an understandable tendency to discard linguistic
evidence that is not attested by Wulfila’s Bible translation into Gothic.
Wulfila admitted to censoring out hundreds of Gothic words associated with
their heathen, bloody past, and substituted words more “politically correct”,
assigning them new meanings and communicative tasks. As a result, the
pre-Christian religious and ritualistic vocabulary of Gothic has been lost
almost in its entirety.

To contrast, much pagan terminology survived in Old English and Old Saxon
because it was tolerated by the converting priests, and sometimes even
subsumed or absorbed by the Christian church. The Old Norse pagan vocabulary
survived in even better condition, because it was already the subject of
extensive epic poems and other widespread literature.

Finally, the poem is merely a neo-romantic soap opera. Everything in its
turn.

Regards,
Arthur

==============================END===================================
Please submit postings to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
Postings will be displayed unedited in digest form.
Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
Commands for automated functions (including "signoff lowlands-l")
are  to be sent to listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or at
http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
=======================================================================