This root AR[255] means to plough, to open the soil. From it we have the Latin ar-are, the Greek ar-oun, the Irish ar, the Lithuanian ar-ti, the Russian ora-ti, the Gothic ar-jan, the Anglo-Saxon er-jan, the modern English to ear. Shakespeare says (Richard II. iii. 2), “to ear the land that has some hope to grow.”
From this we have the name of the plough, or the instrument of earing: in Latin, ara-trum; in Greek, aro-tron; in Bohemian, oradto; in Lithuanian, arklas; in Cornish, aradar; in Welsh, arad;[256] in Old Norse, ardhr. In Old Norse, however, ardhr, meaning originally the plough, came to mean earnings or wealth; the plough being, in early times, the most essential possession of the peasant. In the same manner the Latin [pg 253] name for money, pecunia, was derived from pecus, cattle; the word fee, which is now restricted to the payment made to a doctor or lawyer, was in Old English feh, and in Anglo-Saxon feoh, meaning cattle and wealth; for feoh, and Gothic faihu, are really the same word as the Latin pecus, the modern German vieh.
The act of ploughing is called aratio in Latin; arosis in Greek: and I believe that arôma, in the sense of perfume, had the same origin; for what is sweeter or more aromatic than the smell of a ploughed field? In Genesis, xxviii. 27, Jacob says “the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed.”
A more primitive formation of the root ar seems to be the Greek era, earth, the Sanskrit irâ, the Old High-German ëro, the Gaelic ire, irionn. It meant originally the ploughed land, afterwards earth in general. Even the word earth, the Gothic airtha,[257] the Anglo-Saxon eorthe, must have been taken originally in the sense of ploughed or cultivated land. The derivative ar-mentum, formed like ju-mentum, would naturally have been applied to any animal fit for ploughing and other labor in the field, whether ox or horse.
As agriculture was the principal labor in that early state of society when we must suppose most of our Aryan words to have been formed and applied to their definite meanings, we may well understand how a word which originally meant this special kind of labor, was [pg 254] afterwards used to signify labor in general. The general tendency in the growth of words and their meanings is from the special to the more general: thus gubernare, which originally meant to steer a ship, took the general sense of governing. To equip, which originally was to furnish a ship (French équiper and esquif, from schifo, ship), came to mean furnishing in general. Now in modern German, arbeit means simply labor; arbeitsam means industrious. In Gothic, too, arbaiþs is only used to express labor and trouble in general. But in Old Norse, erfidhi means chiefly ploughing, and afterwards labor in general; and the same word in Anglo-Saxon, earfodh or earfedhe, is labor. Of course we might equally suppose that, as laborer, from meaning one who labors in general, came to take the special sense of an agricultural laborer, so arbeit, from meaning work in general, came to be applied, in Old Norse, to the work of ploughing. But as the root of erfidhi seems to be ar, our first explanation is the more plausible. Besides, the simple ar in Old Norse means ploughing and labor, and the Old High-German art has likewise the sense of ploughing.[258]
Ἄρουρα and arvum, a field, would certainly have to be referred to the root ar, to plough. And as ploughing was not only one of the earliest kinds of labor, but also one of the most primitive arts, I have no doubt that the Latin ars, artis, and our own word art, meant originally the art of all arts, first taught to mortals by [pg 255] the goddess of all wisdom, the art of cultivating the land. In Old High-German arunti, in Anglo-Saxon ærend, mean simply work; but they too must originally have meant the special work of agriculture; and in the English errand, and errand-boy, the same word is still in existence.
But ar did not only mean to plough, or to cut open the land; it was transferred at a very early time to the ploughing of the sea, or rowing. Thus Shakspeare says:—
“Make the sea serve them; which they ear and wound
With keels.”
In a similar manner, we find that Sanskrit derives from ar the substantive aritra, not in the sense of a plough, but in the sense of a rudder. In Anglo-Saxon we find the simple form âr, the English oar, as it were the plough-share of the water. The Greek also had used the root ar in the sense of rowing; for ἐρέτης[259] in Greek is a rower, and their word τρι-ήρ-ης, meant originally a ship with three oars, or with three rows of oars,[260] a trireme.