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Re: CELT: Welsh Goblin seeks etymology



On Thu, 2 Apr 1998, Raymond A. Brown wrote:

> At 19:55 2/4/98, Andrew Smith wrote:
> >I have been working through Herman Miller's Zarkhand list, some words in
> >Brithenig that can be adapted to roleplaying would not go amiss, but
> >finding the right word for 'goblin' is causing to be tricky.  I think it
> >should be derived from bwca or bwgan (Gaelic bocan), but I can't find a
> >reliable etymology for the word to find the Brithenig form.  Does anyone
> >have access to a reliable source?
>
> No - but the word is "British" in the broadest sense.  Scots English has
> 'bogle' and 'boggard' (= goblin, spectre), and south of the border it is
> 'bogy', 'bogey', 'bog(e)yman' and this, I believe, has crossed the
> Atlantic.  In Middle English we had 'bugge' (= goblin) from which is
> derived modern English 'bug' which has not merely crossed the Atlantic but
> has now been spead by computer-geeks arounfd the globe!
>
> I think it's difficult to see some connexion also with 'puck' (= goblin,
> imp) <-- Old English "pu'ca", cf. Old Norse "pu'ki", Irish "puca", Welsh
> "pwca".

Wasn't Harvey, the big rabbit, in the stageplay now famous classic movie a
"pooka"?  There's a great scene in which they look the word up in the
dictionary and read off something similar to what Ray has written here,
only to also read, "And how do you do Mr. Anderson?" or whatever the
skeptic's name was.  Bogeyman has indeed crossed the Atlantic. He was
known to me as the boogey man, which at five I thought meant the booger
man.  I believed he was the park gardner, whose name was Mr. Booker, and I
was terrified of him.

Sally
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Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net

            Mr. Book:  "Shut it down!!"
                            _Dark City_

        niffodyr tweluanrem letteuim an
      "The gods have retractable claws"
                   The Gospel of Bastet
       (from "Ketamine," F&SF Mar 1995)
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