andera 'woman' Celtic ?

[roslyn frank]

Part 1.
On Tue, 6 Apr 1999, roslyn frank wrote:

[on Spanish <chandro>]
[RF]
> My assumption is that the expression
> <chandro> is derived from Euskera, as are many other odd expressions
> that pop up in these codes which are written in Spanish. To my
> knowledge, there is no alternate derivation for the term.

[LT]
The word is unknown to me, and is not listed in Corominas, which last is
a little surprising.

[RF]
As I said in my previous message, when one works with such law codes
one discovers many words that people like Corominas missed. I don't
find it surprising since many of the codes and archival documents from
Euskal Herria have only recently been transcribed and many more are
still waiting to be copied from the leather-parchment that they were
written on. A major project is underway in the Tolosa archives. Yet,
to my knowledge there is still no complete glossary of these
expressions. Some of them are very interesting and should be examined
by linguists for a variety of reasons. For example, as is well known,
legal terms are frequently more conservative (or less innovative) than
the rest of the lexicon. I think Steve Long or perhaps someone else on
the list recently mentioned that the standardizing influence of law
and religion. Similarly, in a situation of orality, such as the one
that we would be speaking about for the Basque case, the formulaic
nature of the legal terms in question would have aided in their
retention. Keep in mind we were talking about the Middle Ages.

Furthermore, when the law codes were finally put into written form,
the language chosen was not Euskera, but in the language of the rulers
or at least those who didn't know Euskera. At least some of those who
were assigned the onerous task of faithfully rendering the
pre-existing formulas into a Romance language, had to have been
bilingual, although some might have been more dominant in Euskera and
others in Navarrese, for example. In any case, the bleed-through of
Euskera into the codes takes on several forms: 1) grammatical calques;
2) odd-sounding translations of the original formula or expression; 3)
direct rendering of pre-existing expressions as if there were
Navarrese, although they were originally in Euskera and had already
passed into the legal lexicon of the speakers at some earlier point
and, therefore, were considered by the translators to be acceptable in
Navarrese; 4). expressions that are nothing more than Euskera, whose
shape was slightly modified by those attempting to write them down as
they heard them --which didn't necessarily reflect the way that the
Basque speakers were saying them nor the actual composition of the
words, i.e., their component parts.

We assume that these folks were not trained phoneticians and hence
were not necessarily capable of or willing to disambiguate what they
heard, dividing it neatly into the distinct morphological elements
making up the expressions, rather they attempted to render them in
written form, reproducing "faithfully" in this way they heard or, if
you wish, in this situation (for those living almost exclusively
according to the norms of orality, priority seems to have been given
to oral representation.

Nonetheless, for a linguist, a careful examination of these
expressions ought to provide insights into the structure and phonology
of Euskera in the Middle Ages, a point in time for which there is a
dearth of evidence. My understanding is that a significant amount of
work has been done on place names and some proper names, but there are
only a few studies, to my knowledge, that systematically attempt to
deal with the archival records existing at the more popular level,
e.g., land transfers, donations to churches, etc., rather than the _
Fuero general de Navarra _, for instance.

[RF]
> Moreover, the phonological reduction of <echekoandra> "the lady of the
> house" to *<chandra> with the resulting form being "masculinized" by
> replacement of the <-a> definite pronoun ending with the masculine
> ending <-o> from Romance seems fairly straight forward to me. However, I
> might be missing something.

[LT]
Perhaps not so straightforward.  The medieval form of the word for `lady
of the house' will have been <etxekoanderea>, or at best <etxekoandrea>,
not *<etxekoandra>.

[RF]
I'm not so certain that in all speech events in which this phrase
occurred there was no reduction of <etxekokanderea> to
<etxekoand)e)r(e)a>. Perhaps I've been spending too much time with
those illiterate Basque shepherds and farmers up in the hills, but I
don't get the impression that they would have spoken much "plainer" or
clearly enunciated each and everyone of all those letters way back
when much better than they do so today. But that is just my impression
after having done dozens of taped interviews with them. I must be
hanging out with the wrong crowd. I would emphasize that some of the
richest and most complex Euskera is spoken by precisely these
individuals, many of whom still are illiterate in Euskera, mainly
because their schooling was done in Spanish under Franco when the use
of Euskera was banned from the classroom (as well as other settings).

[LT]
And it is not so easy to see how this could yield the observed <chandro>,
especially since the Basque word is so blatantly and expressly female.

[RF]
Yes, Larry, that is exactly the point I was trying to make. Something
else had to be going on.

[LT]
 Why on earth choose the female term, instead of
the male counterpart <etxekojauna> `master of the house', especially
when most of the voting heads of household were male?

[RF]
In the period that we are talking about and long afterwards, the vote
was a "house" vote, it was not one cast by an individual. Or stated
differently, the "house" was a legal entity and had political status
as such, including a "seat" or <yarleku> in the Church or local
hermitage. The vote was cast on behalf of the <etxe> or <su> "fire".
The "house vote" was transmitted publicly usually at an outdoor site,
e.g., around a tree, often an oak, but not always. These trees are
also encountered in Spanish as the "arboles juraderos" that in turn
are associated with or gave rise to the "hermitas juraderas" nearby
such as the one near Burgos where El Mio Cid swore his allegiance to
his king, as I recall.

Let me explain more explicitly. We are talking about what might be
understood as a place equivalent to the English or New England
"commons" and to the equivalent of "town meetings" where the
"householders" cast their votes. In the Basque case, however, that
vote represented the consensus of all the householders in question. As
you may have pointed out on this list previously, in the late Middle
Ages (as well as later) we would be talking the Basque farmsteads
called <baserri> a compound of <baso> "forest" and <(h)erri> which
Azkue translates, and I think correctly, as "pueblo" or "lugar
habitado". It is the same element found in Euskal Herria, often
translated simply as the "Basque Country"

Hence, the translation of the term gives some idea of the number of
people, often times unrelated, that lived and worked in these
operations. We would be talking about twenty or more people per
"house", with a significant number of them being adults, the inheritor
(often the daughter), her husband, her parents, their children,
ummarried aunts and uncles from the woman's parent's generation, the
brothers and sisters of the inheritor, as well as various helping
hands who sometimes spent their entire lives with the same family. I
would note that the family's name derived from the house's name. Even
into recent times this has continued to be true. The house carried the
name, not the individual. The individual derived his/her name from the
house. Later this pattern was replaced by the one we know today, but
the older system seems to have been quite widespread until the Council
of Trent instituted the "sacrament of matrimony" replacing what
earlier had been a civil contract drawn up by the two families of the
individuals involved. The early naming process was further complicated
by the fact that the Crown wanted knowledge of their subjects, birth
records began to be kept and, in the process, the authorities could
identify and keep track of those young males who were obligated to
serve in the ruler's armies.

Hence, at the town meeting, the male householder -for it was the male
who publicly carried the vote, at least in more recent times- was able
to do so because he had previously consulted with the members of the
household, including his wife and mother-in-law. One needs to keep
clearly in mind that with the Pyrenean system of primogeniture, not
only were daughters not barred from inheriting, there were definite
advantages that accrued to the house-lineage when they did, but that
is a long involved story that requires going into the law codes
themselves (there is plenty of bibliography on all this).

Hence, the husband's should not be portrayed as if he were some sort
of patriarchal dictator, but rather an individual who actually carried
out his duties as "administrator" with the legal proviso that he would
do so properly. If he did not he could be legally separate from his
"husbandry" duties. This was done after a group of his peers ("good
men and good women" representing the <auzo> "community") were
consulted and the grievances laid out. In the law codes, however,
there was considerable debate, even into the 16th century, whether the
inheritor was obligated to feed and clothe him once he had been
removed from his office as administrator. The "witnesses" sometimes
were drawn into this aspect of the legal contract since they were the
ones that vouched for any losses caused to the household by the
"husband-administrator" in case his own parents were unable to cover
them. The "witnesses" were the co-signatories of the contract, along
with the parents.

In order to insure the capabilities of the individual chosen, the
later was frequently contracted as a "hired hand" for a period of
"seven years and a day" by the first generation parents and during
that period he would reside in the <baserri>. In all of this the main
character is the <etxe-ondo> itself (the "stammhaus>) and it was the
<etxe-ondo>'s continuity and health that was being guaranteed by what
was an intricate set of checks and balances.In no sense did the female
or male) inheritor exercise these rights as an individual. The rights,
responsibilities and duties, were entirely "positional" not
"personal." It is, nonetheless, a system that appears to have had a
strong matrifocal component, perhaps because the lineage of the
woman's offspring was always known and not one that required elaborate
sexual taboos to be imposed on either party. All offspring were
legitimate.

It was the <etxe-ondo> that participated in the <auzoa>, usually
composed of some eight to twenty <baserri> scattered across the
country-side, i.e., non-nucleated. The relationship of the parts to
the social whole was one of mutual dependence and/or interdependence,
if you wish. The survival of the <baserri> depended on its ability to
participate in the <auzoa> and in turn the health, and stability of
the <auzoa> depended on its ability to depend on the <auzolan>
"community-work/labor" provided by its members (cleaning the brush
from the woodlands commons, repairing roads and paths, rebuilding
commonal storehouses, etc.). In rural zones of Gipuzkoa these
<auzolan> projects take place throughout the year, although at times a
household will pay others to do their "share."

In return for their The members of the <auzoa> in turn gained access,
through their participation in a <baserri> that was a "voting member",
to the common lands, the highland pastures for their animals, the
communal orchard, the right to enter and harvest what are called in
Spanish legalese of the time "las frutas de la tierra" of the communal
forest (hunting, fishing, nutting and fire-wood collection rights).
These "rights" were fundamental since, particularly, in Iparralde into
recent times, the lands legally "belonging" to the <baserri> ended at
the drip line of the house's eaves. Even in the twentieth century,
many a <baserri> had only a few acres of land associated with it, and
these were often distant from the house itself. The separation of
these small plots from the house is explained by the fact that
previously the cultivation of the communal lands rotated through the
household comprising the <auzo>, sometimes by means of a simple
lottery system. Later, the "right" to cultivate a given plot ended up
falling to a given family/<etxe-ondo year after year. Over time, these
plots became viewed as extensions of the <baserri>'s own holdings.
Nonetheless, it is not unusual even today the <baserritar> or farmer
to have to take his animals to a different location, i.e., distant
from the barn, and/or harvest hay from plots that are not adjacent to
the <baserri>.

In addition, there is some indication that the opinion of the eldest
female was considered particularly important -this is reflected by her
prominent role at the <yarleku> site in the church as well as her
function as mistress-of-ceremonies both in the church and at home (cf.
Barandiaran's many writings on the subject). This might respond to the
fact she was the eldest in the household lineage, the mother of the
inheritor. Indeed she herself could have inherited the house (and
hence, the political rights and responsibilities belonging to the
house) from her own mother.

Moreover, the importance of the position of the elder female in the
household is underlined by the fact that when her daughter (or son)
inherited, that inheritance represented only a partial transfer of the
estate and related goods. The other half stayed in the name of the
parents. That procedure was built into the codes so as to insure that
the children (of the second generation) would take good care of their
aging parents (of the first generation). The codes are quite pragmatic
in their complexity showing a keen awareness of human nature. In
conclusion, one needs to keep in mind that we are not talking about
modern nuclear families and the voting rights associated with the
individuals forming them in contemporary nation-states.

Indeed, many books have been written on Pyrenean "regime", the unique
laws of primogeniture that prevailed in the Pyrenean region. These not
only permitted but favored the inheritance of the <baserri> by the
first-born daughter (although it was not always the first-born if she
was found in some way to be incompetent). It is that regime that would
have given rise to the status and power of the <etxekoandere> a.k.a
<etxekandr(e)a> and the possibility that the expression's referential
"gender" was altered, perhaps quite unwittingly by those who were no
longer fluent in Euskara.

Today we have the opposite phenomenon going on all around us: words
that previously had exclusively male referents are being used to refer
to females. And, if over time some of these professions were to become
female ghettos, it's possible that what was a masculine term could end
up with an exclusively female referent. There is also the rather
notorious example of "guys", an expression that in the US is now used
by girls/women to refer to groups of other girls/women (of course, the
guys still use it to talk about guys, too). The case I've mentioned is
somewhat different, but not all that unusual, especially given that
cultural backing for such an interpretation of the data is found in
the socio-political history of Euskal Herria.

For those interested in multi-pronged investigations of cultural and
linguistic norms, I would recommend the classic article by the
well-known French geneticists Jean Bernard and Jacques Ruffie,
Hematologie et Culture: Le Peuplement de l'Europe de l'Ouest" in _
Annales, Economies, Societes, Civlizations_ (1976) vol. 31, num. 31
(July-Dec.): 661-675. In it they show maps with the isoglosses of this
regime overlaid on maps with the isoglosses of Euskeric-Aquitanian
linguistic features (e.g., morphological elements found in the
toponyms of the region) as well as genetic data. In general one sees
that the regime's domain shrank over time and that the shrinkage or
"retreat" in question can be traced by the retreat of the
Basque/Aquitanian language in the zone from the earliest recorded
period forward. Equally fascinating in its implications is the work of
Jacques Poumarede (1972), _ Les successions dans le Sud-Ouest de
France au Moyen Age _ (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France).
Poumarede was one of the investigators involved in conducting the very
original and highly detailed spade work required for the mapping by
studying law codes, inheritance records, and hundreds of other related
documents, etc. This was done in order to map the retreat of the
regime of inheritance in question. In my opinion, his study is one of
the best and most complete on this particular topic.

And, on another note, certainly today many of those kids in Bilbao who
speak only Spanish but find it "hip" to talk about going home to
"hacer las lanas" have little or no idea what the word really means in
Euskara, for them its their "homework", a perfectly valid Spanish
word, a feminine noun regularly used in the plural. In Euskera, the
word is obviously not masculine or feminine (Euskera has no gender
marking in nouns), nor is <lan> used only in the plural to refer
exclusively to "homework."

Agur t'erdi,
Roz Frank
April 11, 1999
e-mail: roz-frank at uiowa.edu
[currently on leave in Panama]

[ Moderator's note:
  We seem to have drifted far beyond the topic of Indo-European studies in
  this thread.  Given the high traffic volumes on this list, I have to ask
  that the interested parties move to another forum for further discussion.
  I'm inclined to be more flexible on the Nostratic list, if no other more
  appropriate list exists.  (Is there a Basque-L?)
  --rma ]