Part 23 (2/2)

In other cases, such as the Ar Men Rocks out beyond Sena (modern Sein Island), I have chosen the modern Breton name, which sounds appropriate, whether its Celtic ring descends from the early Continental Celts or the much later ”Briton” immigrants.

More or less

The Proto-Indo-European syllablemor had two meanings in Celtic languages. One meant roughly, ”great,” and the other ”sea.” Thus Morgana (mor + ganna, seeress) might mean either ”great seeress” or ”sea witch.” Bishop Morgan (mor + geni, ”sea-born”), Saint Augustine's opponent, latinized his name asPelagius, while remaining mor + gan, ”Great Seer” among his own Celtic adherents. The Celts were masters of double entendre.

The noun ”merlin,” which is a pigeon hawk, was given to Welsh Myrddin in the French-language versions of the Arthurian tales because ”Myrddin” sounded too much like Frenchmerde . The old shaman and sorcerer might not have minded being called ”s.h.i.+t,” but a n.o.ble lady of the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine wouldn't have gotten the joke, that compost, like Merlin, is indeed the product of sun G.o.d father and earth mother. After all, theMorte d'Arthurwas Plantagenet propaganda, written to legitimize that Johnny-come-lately family's pretensions. Myrddin may derive from ”Moridunnon” (mor + dunnum), which can mean sea-fortress, great fortress, or great strength, and his name is thus not unrelated to Bishop Pelagius as well.

The Tarasque

Pierrette's Christian tale about the monster of Tarascon is the local tradition. The pagan tale is my synthesis of a known element-that the Rhone River (Rhoda.n.u.s Flumen) contains the name of the G.o.ddess Danu (as do the Danube, Dnieper, Dniester, Don, Erida.n.u.s, and a score of other rivers), and my speculation that the similarity of ”Taranis,” a Gaulish G.o.d, and ”Tarasque” is no coincidence. The Ligurian or Celtic word ending ”asco” (alsoasca ,asci , etc.) means roughly ”of,” thus Taran-asco, Tarasque. The final tale comes courtesy of my friend Alain Bonifaci, an architect from Aix-en-Provence.

Taking Liberties

The cylinder seal Minho gives Pierrette is stylistically Minoan, but the superposition of a star chart, a calendar, and a map of the Breton Coast is, of course, fantasy-though the idea that the Minoans may have been better navigators and mapmakers than anyone else up to the nineteenth century is hardly new.

Needless to say, Pierrette's ability to determine lat.i.tude from the North Star requires a bit of magic as well as good eyes.

For the convenience of my readers I have used our modern convention of placing north at the top of maps. Map makers of earlier ages more oftenoriented their charts, that is, read them with east at the upper edge. The same motive led me to presume a ”year” beginning at the winter solstice, roughly our New Year, so the ”tenth moon” on the seal would fall in October.

The settlement of Iceland is conventionally dated to the latter part of the ninth century, its conversion to Christianity considerably later, but there are hints (Diciul's a.d. 825 tract, for one) of an earlier Irish hermetic or monastic presence. My ”Thule” is not Iceland, not exactly, nor is it the first Thule recounted by Pytheas of Ma.s.silia in the fifth century b.c., but it partakes of the spirit of such remote places, wherestrange bedfellows might make common cause against a hostile land and an inimicable sea.

I combined several historic shrines (at Gennes, Behuard, and Pil de Mars) on the Loire (Liger) into one place, for the story's sake, and may have nudged some villages, streams, and islands a few miles from where they might turn up on a current map. But of course Pierrette's world is not ours, not exactly, and who's to say?

Maps

THE END.

Baen Books by L. Warren Douglas Simply Human The Sacred Pool The Veil of Years The Isle Beyond Time

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