LL-L "Traditions" 2007.06.06 (01) [E]

Wed Jun 6 14:14:58 UTC 2007

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L O W L A N D S - L  -  06 June 2007 - Volume 01

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From: "heatherrendall at tiscali.co.uk"
Subject: LL-L "Traditions" 2007.06.05 (04) [E]

Marcel wrote " A family that owns  a lot of cattle is rich (hence the
twofold meaning of Latin 'pecunia'  and Old English 'feoh' = cattle, money).

The word 'Cattle' itself has an interesting history: it comes from
'capitalis' a kind of poll tax , then became the money/price that an
individual was asked for and then the chattels or cattle he owned in order
to pay.

re slang use of 'cattle' rather than an original meaning: it was /is /can be
used to describe horses - usually derogatorily "What kind of cattle are you
keeping nowadays" " I don't like those cattle you're driving"

best wishes

Heather
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From: Marcel Bas <roepstem at hotmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Traditions" 2007.06.05 (06) [E]

Hello, John. Thanks for your reply.

I wrote:

 "..but "wildebees" is named for its wild jumps, and since it is a buck (a
bovine) the link with an ox (bees) is easily made. I don't think that the
Boer culture was still in touch with common Indic ..""

And then you replied:

"Cows and oxen are not buck /boch, and do not jump."

Did I say that? I merely said that buck are bovines, not that cows and oxen
are buck. The Bovidae family comprises buck, oxen, sheep and goats. And I
didn't say that cows and oxen jump. I said that the wildebees was called
'wilde bees' for its jumping. And a wildebees is neither a cow nor an ox. It
is a large buck (of the Connochaetes genus). The largest buck is the eland
(Taurotragus), by the way.

Cape Buffalo are "wilde bees", but antelope are not bovine / bees.

The Cape buffalo is not the wildebees; it is... well, a buffalo. "Buffel" in
Afrikaans (Syncerus). The wildebees is a large antelope, also known as the
gnu. But both antelopes and buffalos are bovine (Bovidae). As are sheep and
goats. The larger an antelope species seems, the more these animals will
have reminded early colonists of cows and oxen. Hence the name 'wildebees',
eg. 'wild cow/wild oxen', but it is not a cow. It is a common thing among
colonial ethnic groups: the Boers saw the largest buck and they named it
after the elk (eland) and when they saw a Clerodendron tree, they named it
after the chestnut from Europe (kastaiing). The same happened to the wild ox
-- wildebees -- which was not an ox but an antelope.

The inherent connotation of deer /mountain goats / antelope is of attractive
animals of the wild, the normal hunted animal.

And that is why I don't it is likely that the Boers even thought of the
Brahman ox, since that ox is a domesticated animal and the wildebees is
game.

So Bavarian "trachtenhuten" meaning a hunting costume (I think - the word is
too old for Germans to understand), has the chamois gamsbart on the hat as a
symbol of good hunting, today.
There are numerous modern religious rituals from ancient civilisations. We
are so used to them that these are invisible to us. When we speak, we are
"replying" to our IE ancestors with their words and semantics.
chimera

I fully agree with that. That is so interesting. The thing with rituals is
that they often lose their spiritual or religious identity. Pagan Easter
fires in Friesland, growing houseleek on your roof and -- in many circles
 -- even Christmas have turned into traditions devoid of the religious
component. But it's still nice to see these customs and words being used for
hundreds of generations.

 Best regards,

Marcel.

•

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