“Our rare Pomonia, which the natives style
The Mainland.”
[306] To quote the Dean’s English, “it is part of a (Radical?) movement to help forward the obliteration of all trace of the derivation and history of words:” as such it may be highly recommended to the “Japs.” The Icelandic or pure Scandinavian form, simple and compound, is ey (gen. and plur. eyjar); each vowel being pronounced distinct, and not confounded, as some foreigners do, with the German ö or the French eu. Ey is the Keltic “hy,” as found in the classical Hy Brazile, the mysterious island west of Galway, and so called during centuries before the real Brazil was discovered. Again the form appears in “Ireland’s Eye,” which Cockneys pronounce Ireland’s H’eye; the pure Irish form is I (O’Brien’s Irish-English Dictionary, sub voce), or aoi, an island or region, which that learned writer derives (?) from the Hebrew “ai,” insula, regio, provincia. “The Norwegian öy, the Danish öe, the Swedish ö, the Anglo-Saxon êg (-land), and the German aue, are found in ey-ot and Leas-ow, Chels-ea and Batters-ea; and whilst the Orkneys corrupt it wofully, we retain it pure in Cherts-ey, Aldern-ey, and Orkn-ey” (Cleasby). Munch (Ant. du Nord) has corrected the error of Webster, who derives “island” from ea or ey, water (!), and land. It is simply ey-land, “terra insularis.”
[307] Properly Sand-eið, or Sand-aith, a sand-isthmus connecting two headlands.
[308] “Links,” from Lykkur, locked or closed fields.
[309] “Bismari” in Icelandic is a steelyard, and “bismara-pund” a kind of lb. The Norwegian Bismerpund is = 12 Skaalpunds (100:110 Eng. avoird.), and the Lispund is = 16 Skaalpunds. The Icelandic word is Lífspund, from Lifl, and = 18 lbs. Scots (Cleasby).
[310] Varangian, Icel. Væringi, from Várar, a pledge (al. Wehr, Vær, ware or active defence): the Væringjar of the Sagas, the Russian Varæger, the Βαράγγοι of Byzantine historians, and our Warings, popularly known through Gibbon and “Count Robert of Paris,” formed the Scandinavian bodyguard of the Eastern empire. These battle-axe men were at first Northmen from Kiew in A.D. 902, under the Emperor Alexis, and successively Danes, Norwegians, and Icelanders (Cleasby and Mallet: Mr Blackwall, note ‡, p. 193, attempts and fails to correct Gibbon). What possessed Mr A. Mounsey (Journal through the Caucasus and Persia) to derive “Feringi” (Frank) from Varangian?
[311] Popularly but erroneously derived from Kolbeinsey or Kaupmannsey, “Chapman’s Isle.”
[312] Mr Blackwall (p. 257) more modestly says the “first European.”
[313] “Peerie-folk” means the fairies, both words evidently congeners of the Persian Pari or Peri. Grimm, an excellent authority, derives the French Fée, the Provençal Fada, the Spanish Hada, and the Italian Fata, from the Latin Fatum—remarking that Fata and Fée have the same analogy as nata and née, amata and aimée. In connection with “Simmer” or “Sea,” “Peerie,” meaning little, is by some deduced from the French “petit;” in the Shetlands it is further emphasised to Peerie-weerie-winkie (of a foal, etc.).
[314] The ordinary runes, I need hardly say, have been shown by Rafn to be derived from archaic Greek; and probably from coins which found their way north during the first centuries of our era.