[gothic-l] Re: The Letter H

[keth at ONLINE.NO]

Hi Troels,
>
>Your letter was very long - with a very interesting part about the 
>development of the words in Northern Europe.
Sorry for the length. I hope you will forgive me this time too,
where I also try to respond to all your arguments.


>I have to give you a shorter answer as I have to go back to work.
>
>I have accepted Matþaius' theory which I believe explains my view 
>using following assumptions:

I didn't understand Matþaius' explanation.
I think he must know a lot more than he actually wrote down,
for otherwise it would not suffice.
He did not comment Dexippos' etymology (with H).
And if the H was lost in Italy, why would Jordanes then put in
the H everywhere, if there was no basis for it in speech?

>As I wrote, I used the H.P.Dewing-version of Procopius printed in 
>Greek and English (reprint Cambridge Mass 1971), but I asked for a 
>more original version. Procopius was from Caesarea, but he worked as 
>a secretary for the Byzantine general Bellisarius using both Herulian 
>officers and about 3000 soldiers in his army under the Gothic Wars. 
>Procopius also met Herulian officers later in Byzans, where he wrote 
>his book Gothic Wars - being fascinated of the Heruls.

I missed that reference. If you happen to look once again,
could you describe once again the accent in front of the epsilon?
was it just a raised comma, or was it a raised inverted comma?
Can you find any control words to compare it with?

>Maybe he did not speak Germanic, but the important fact is that he 
>must have heard them talk several times. Therefore his way of 
>spelling is more important than the Roman way, where the "H" was 
>silent (a.e. Jordanes).

Would it have helped to hear them talk, if he understood nothing?
But any way, here is a better argument, since you say the
Byzantines were very familiar with Heruls who were in the city at
that time  :

If the apostrophe is the non-H type, it just means that the
Greeks of Constantinople called them Eruls without H. That is all it
really means. He wrote to the Greek/Byzantine public. And he
wrote the name in the form in which the Greek public would 
most easily recognize it. Prokop wrote around the same time
as Jordanes.

Here are the important dates:
508 Heruls defeated by Langobards
526 Fall of Theodoric.
551 Jordanes writes the Getica 
552 3000 Heruls are reported near Singidunum in Pannonia
    (which shows they were still in the area as Jordanes was writing)

Jordanes was of Gothic family and remembered King Rodulf
and his defeat in 508. He also remembered Theodoric.
I assume he spoke Gothic and knew the pronounciation
of the Germanic names. In his Getica the Heruls are
mentioned many times and nearly all the extant Mss.
write it with H. (except in some random places where
H-es are missing. But these are very few)



>In the early Greek sources (mentioned by Andreas in February) there 
>is more doubt about the spelling and Dexippos originally described 
>both Goths and Heruls as Scythes - 

Yes, but Scyths are unimportant. 
Those are only attempts to "place" them within the
Greek horizon of known peoples. That Prokop believed they
might be Scythes has no bearing on the pronounciation of
Herul.

>and more important: Even if a 
>spelling with "H" was correct in the 3rd century it may have been 
>silent in the 6th century, where the migration (not necessarily 
>return) to Scandinavia took place.

"Even if"? Deuxippos even informs us concerning the etymology of
the name Herul. And relates it to a word that begins with H.


There is no reason to assume H to beome silent in 6th century Germanic.
There is no loss of initial H in the Germanic languages.
Jordanes, who knows Gothic and has contacts with Germanic 
peoples in Italy knows the Germanic pronounciation, and consistently
writes Herul with H.

The loss of H is only in the Greek language and in Italic.

>
>But one of my questions is, if there may have been a consonant all 
>the time starting as an "H" in Greece and ending as a faint breaking 
>sound in Scandinavia.

That the Heruls would have lost H? Then they must have been much more
influenced by Greek and Latin pronounciation than all the other Germanic
peoples, since initial H is typical for Germanic language.
(My ON dictionary had 60 pages for H, but only 14 for E!)

But the "Ek Erilar" inscriptions, what is their date?
Perhaps they are from before the time of the reemigration?

The Rosseland stone in Norway, ca. 450: ek wagigaR irilar agilamudon
Ethelhem fibula Gotland, ca. 450: mkmrlawrta (I the Iril wrote)
Bratsberg fibula Norway ca. 500: ekerilaR
Lindholm amulet Skåne ca. 500: ekerilaR sawilagaRhateka
Kragehul spear Denmark, ca. 500: ekerilaRasugisalas muhahaite gagaga ginuga...
Veblungsnes rock Norway, ca. 550: ek irilar wiwila
By runehelle Norway ca. 575: ek irilar hroRaR hroReR orte þat aRina ...

You see that two have been dated to before the reimmigration.
But the others are very close to the time of the reimmigration
and are yet scattered over a wide area. Furthermore, they show
dialectal variation, corresponding to West Norse i and East Norse e.

So I am not sure these inscriptions can be used as reliable sources
to tell us anything about the Heruls. One, however, makes us pause
and that is the Rosseland inscription (in Hardanger W Norway),
because it mentions the name "Agilamundo" which happens to be the name
of a Langobard king who may have died around 400(?), killed by Huns 
or Bulgars. That the same Personal Names occur ca. simultaneously
in distant places, does of course not signify the same person.
But it does indicate some kind of connection.  In fact, if Heruls
according to written sources travelled back and forth between
Scandianavia and the Balkan ca. 550, then why couldn't the same
thing have occurred anno 400 with other groups? The Langobards
had quite a few names on Agil-.

>Regarding the Herul Fara mentioned by Dirk he died in 535 before the 
>Heruls disappeared, and his descendants were probably assimilated 
>among the Bavarians just like groups of Heruls together with 
>Ostrogoths were assimilated among the Lombards in Italy or among the 
>Gepides in "Dacia". After 565 we do not hear about them anymore - but 
>their language may of course have survived for decades.  
>
>For a much later writer like Paulus the Heruls were probably a 
>historical people described in old books - and therefore his spelling 
>is useless.

useless..
It is true that he may have gotten the spelling from Jordanes,
because it was said earlier on the list, that Paulus knew the Getica well.
But I also think dramatic events like that will have lived
on in peoples memories, and especially if the Bavarian princes
had Heruls as great great grandfathers, I assumed that they
would have mentioned the Heruls in their stories from  time
to time. Stories told in Bairisch, where there was no loss of
initial H. Especially if the stories were told at both 
Bavarian and Langobard courts by professional storytellers,
as I assume they may have been. Then the pronounciation must
have become habitual. Just like we all know the hero's name
is Hoppalong Cassidy. We would never change that into 
"Oppalong Cassidy", even if we grew very very old, and hadn't
seen the movies since our youth. Because such names, as are
part of storytelling, do stick very well in memory. Neither would
we suddenly speak about "Ans og Grethe".


But aside from that, we do not need Paulus' testimony.
After all we have the Getica! And it too quite consistently
carries through the initial H in Herul.

Here is some language statistics.
Wilhelm Streitberg's Gothic "Wörterbuch" lists only 3 (three)
original Gothic words that begin with e. They are
"ei", "eisarn" , "eiþan". (all with diphtong "ei").
But there are very many words that begin with "h".
(they take a while to count, because I have to skip
over biblical names and various doubles, the same word
with different prefixes and things like that)
But suffice it to say that the words beginning with
H are maybe 50? (H covers almost 10 pages of Streitberg's
Wörterbuch). It is therefore quite clear that words beginning
with H are very common in Gothic. But words beginning with
E are rare. (and are not nouns) 

Best regards
Keth


PS For a Gothic analogue to iril/eril, I think we'd have 
to look for a word on ai-. That is because "earth" in
Gotic is "airþa". So maybe the iril/eril, if he spoke
Gothic, would have been an "Airil".



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