about Witches & Bones-throwers

[colkitto]

"It's a reflex of the normal East Slavic root vorog- 'evil, inimical/
enemy, bane, misfortune' which is also so familiarly represented in
its South Slavic variant in the OCS/RCS borrowing in Russian vrag,
and known throughout the Slavic world in its appropriate phonetic
guises.  From Common Slavic *varg-/*vorg-.

Cf. Lithuanian vargti [circumflex accent on r]  'be impoverished',
'be in torment',  Latv. vargt [long a] 'be ailing', 'pine away';
Lith. vargas [circumfl. on r] 'misfortune, misery', Latv. vargs [long
a] 'puny, sickly', Old Prussian wargs 'evil, malevolent'.  Other
relatives are known in Germanic, Latin, and elsewhere"

It should be noted that Germanic forms such as wearg, warch, vargr,  etc., 
(cf. Tolkien's wargs) are probably borrowed from Common Slavic 
*varg-/*vorg-. (cf. also related forms with original zero-grade ablaut such 
as Russian  изверг; извергать).   Germanic forms such as English wretch, 
Icelandic reka, German rächen are the actual cognates of *varg-/*vorg.

V. V. Martynov suggests that there are quite a few such original Slavic 
loans in Germanic, his work is well worth reading.

Please reply off-list if interested in references.

Robert Orr 

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