Fig. 13
The Etruscans or Tyrrhenians represented Hercules the Great Merchant in a kilt, and this seemingly was a tartan or French tiretaine. Speaking of certain figures unearthed at Tarchon, Dennis remarks: “The drapery of the couches is particularly worthy of notice, being marked with stripes of different colours crossing each other as in the Highland plaid; and those who are learned in tartanology might possibly pronounce which of the Macs has the strongest claim to an Etruscan origin”.[118]
Fig. 13 reproduced from Mrs. Murray Aynsley’s Symbolism of the East and West, is taken from a fragment of pottery found in what is believed to be a pre-Etruscan cemetery at Bologna in Italy. It might be a portrait of Hendry or Sander bonneted in his glengarry, armed with a target, and trekking off with two terriers. Terre, or terra firma, the earth, is the same as true, meaning firm or constant. According to Skeat the present form of the verb tarry is due to tarien, terien, “to irritate, provoke, worry, vex; hence to hinder, delay”. Having “tarried” an order there was, it may be, still further “tarrying” on presentation of the tariff, and it may be assumed that the author of The Odyssey had been personally “tarried” for he refers feelingly to—
A shrewd Phœnician, in all fraud adept,
Hungry, and who had num’rous harm’d before,
By whom I also was cajoled, and lured
T’ attend him to Phœnicia, where his house
And his possessions lay; there I abode
A year complete his inmate; but (the days
And months accomplish’d of the rolling year