Indo-European Poetry and Myth

1 Poet and Poesy Axiom: all peoples at all times have had poetry and song. It follows that the Indo-Europeans must have had them ...

THE POET In traditional Indo-European societies poetry was not a diversion to be taken up by anyone who happened to be visited b ...

Lithuanian gìrti‘praise’. The second element is the very common verbal root meaning ‘set in place, create’, as in Greek τθημι. ...

A similar linkage of ideas, with different vocabulary, can be found in Graeco-Aryan tradition.^9 The hymns of the Rigveda were t ...

Ireland the highest grade of fili, the ollam, had a standing in law equivalent to that of a king or bishop. Patron and poet had ...

complains of not having received the reward he has been promised, ten mares with stallion and a camel, and there is a famous Iri ...

corresponds exactly in form to the Indic vácas-, which in the Rigveda can mean ‘word, speech’ but mostly refers to the pronounce ...

Another word-set shared by Italic, Celtic, and Germanic is that represented by Latin laudo‘praise, mention (honourably)’; Old Ir ...

2; 5. 81. 1; 9. 100. 3, al.). The song or formula is a mánman- or a mántra- (Avestan ma ̨θra-). It can also be referred to as a ...

In Slavonic tradition too poetry is concerned with the renewal of memory. In the Lay of Igor (4) we read how the great poet Boya ...

This latter root also appears in Middle Irish creth‘poetry’ (< *kwrto-) and Welsh prydydd‘poet’. It can have associations wit ...

In Avestan the verb vaf, by origin ‘weave’, has come to mean ‘sing of, hymn’. Thus Zarathushtra sings yə ̄ vå Asˇ ̇ a ̄ ufya ̄nı ...

In Welsh gweu‘weave’ was often used of poetic composition.^37 The Old English poet Cynewulf writes in the epilogue to his Elene ...

The expression at 7. 7. 6 mántram ̇ yé... átaks ̇ an, ‘who fashioned the song’ (cf. 1. 67. 4; 2. 35. 2), has its Avestan counter ...

of poetry’.^44 That carpentry is the particular craft in view appears in two passages from the tenth-century poet Egill Skallagr ...

Rishi says to Indra, ‘I come to you with prayer, as to the ship of eloquence in the (poetic) contest’ (2. 16. 7). And another: ‘ ...

asma ̄ id u stómam ́ ̇ sám ̇ hinomi rátham ̇ ná tás ̇ t ̇ eva tátsina ̄ya. For him I deliver the praise-song as a joiner does a ...

passage. Bacchylides (5. 176 f.) calls on her to halt ‘the well-made car’ when he wants to make a transition. Pindar sees himsel ...

or as ‘returning’ to an earlier one. But in the poets, both Indian and Greek, we find more graphic images. According to RV 9. 10 ...

formula #πεα πτερεντα, ‘winged words’, and the Eπτερο μυ  θο, the utterance that fails to fly. Lyric poets describe their so ...