Gothic Lore

[anheropl0x]

According to Wikipedia, other (and Germanic for that matter) words for a bard are scop and skald. I'd start with these.

Scop is from Old English, and may be pronounced like "shop" or "skop." This is what Wikipedia says about its etymology:
"Old English scop and its cognate Old High German scoph, scopf, scof (glossing poeta and vates; also poema) may be related to the verb scapan "to create, form" (Old Norse skapa, Old High German scaffan; Modern English shape), from Proto-Germanic *skapiz "form, order" (from a PIE *(s)kep- "cut, hack"), perfectly parallel to the notion of craftsmanship expressed Greek poetÄ"s itself;[2] Köbler (1993, p. 220) suggests that the West Germanic word may indeed be a calque of Latin poeta."

As for skald:
"The West Germanic counterpart of the skald is the scop. Not unlike the scop, which is related to Modern English scoff, the name skald is continued in English scold, reflecting the central position of mocking taunts in Germanic poetry. The word is perhaps ultimately related to Proto-Germanic *skalliz "sound, voice, shout" (OHG skal "sound"). OHG has skalsang "song of praise, psalm". skellan means "ring, clang, resound". The OHG variant stem skeltan etymologically identical to the skald- stem (Proto-Germanic *skeldan) means "to scold, blame, accuse, insult". The person doing the insulting is a skelto or skeltāri. This bears striking similarities to the Dutch verb "schelden" which means "shouting abuse" or "calling names.""

The reason why I would not stick with bard is because bard is a Celtic word which didn't find its way into any Germanic languages other than English, and that was through Scottish English.

--- In gothic-l at yahoogroups.com, "Thomas" <the_lothian at ...> wrote:
>
> Hails,
> 
> Since the early Goths had no written language (until Vulfilas) and the only words modern scholars have are from the bible, I thought that for certain they must have had an oral tradition.
> 
> This is probably completely lost now.  However at the time of the telling of the lore there must have been story tellers.
> 
> I looked through an online [http://www.oe.eclipse.co.uk/nom/egdhome.html] but could find no word that would describe a bard.
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Tom
>


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