From: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Pagan Rock Artists...
Date: 8 Oct 92 13:57:21 GMT
Reply-To: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (Jack Campin)
Organization: COMANDOS Project, Glesga Yoonie

ksm@abb-sc.abb-sc.com (Ashley Sebastian Kaos) wrote:
>> only one Pictish word has been identified: "pit", 
> Methinks I may be wrong. The native language of the Scottish highlands and
> the Orkneys is...? I'd been told it was pictish. 

Pictish was spoken there until some time in the Dark Ages.  It was replaced
by Gaelic, and in the Orkneys was replaced by Norse shortly afterwards.

>>> [Dead Can Dance's lead singer] is bi-tonal and her voice is goddess given!
>> Um, I know what bitonal means in a musical context, but how it can apply to
>> a singer I really can't imagine... like saying your dog is in B flat.
> I thought bi-tonal meant being able to hit TWO notes at once. I read an 
> article on a group of monks who tried to attain enlightenment by perfection 
> of their voices and many of them where described as "bi-tonal".  The 
> description of this state was that they could simultaneously hit two notes
> at once.

The word you mean is "multiphonic"; "bitonal" means being in two keys at
once (like the opening of the second movement of Ravel's sonata for violin
and cello, if you want a specific example).  There are several cultures in
Central Asia that do this; BBC Radio 3's "Mixing It" programme broadcast
some samples of one from a Turkic Central Asian republic a few weeks ago,
where the performers claim it is such a strain it will seriously shorten
your lifespan.  Having tried it, I can believe it.  The old Nonesuch
recording of the Tibetan monks singing the Mahakala Tantra is what gave me
the idea; Karlheinz Stockhausen's "Stimmung" uses the same idea in a much
gentler way.

Chris Lilley asks:

> how does it follow that Pit is pictish wheras (to take an example) Bal
> (Ballingry, Balmalcolm, Baldinnie) is not. I would be interested in how
> they worked this out.

According to a friend of mine who's doing a Ph. D. studying the origins of
placenames in Fife, "pit" meant "cunt" in old Gaelic, so it didn't usually
survive in placenames in the Gaelic area - it's commonest in areas where
Pictish was replaced pretty quickly by Scots.  (Another friend of mine
looked at what coalminers in Fife used to call their pits last century: the
unofficial names for two of them were "Hell's Arse" and "The Cunt"... one
of the odder linguistic coincidences on the Scottish map).  I'd guess that
Derick Thomson's "Companion to Gaelic Scotland" has the details.  "Bal-" in
various forms occurs in all the Celtic languages: "Baile" in modern Irish,
and (I think) "Pwl-" in Welsh and "Pol-" in Cornish.  If Pictish was Celtic
(which some people think) it was very different from any existing Celtic
language.


>> Incidentally, if anyone is curious about Pictish culture, go to see the
>> cave drawings near East Wemyss on the coast of Fife and do it quick.  The
>> sea is encroaching and they won't be there in a few years.  It would cost
>> millions to save them and no organization responsible seems to have that
>> sort of cash.
> Could you post a bit more about these?  Are they dated to the same period as
> the symbol stones?  Do they have the same style and  contentas the symbol
> stones?  Also, are they easy to get to or do you need caving gear?

The style is identical and they are presumably from the same period.  You
just walk into them from the beach, no gear needed except a torch in the
deeper bits.  The carving is quite shallow and they're not easy to see.  It
won't take much direct wave erosion to wipe them out.

-- 
--  Jack Campin    room G092, Computing Science Department, Glasgow University,
17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8RZ, Scotland   TEL: 041 339 8855 x6854 (work)
INTERNET: jack@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk or via nsfnet-relay.ac.uk    FAX: 041 330 4913
BANG!net: via mcsun and uknet     BITNET: via UKACRL    UUCP: jack@glasgow.uucp
Newsgroups: alt.pagan,alt.sex,alt.sex.bondage