Things I didn't know I didn't know

[shewhomust]

Until I read this, it had never occurred to me to wonder about the etymology of the French word septentrional, northern:

...the edges of every map are inscribed with the stations of the sun's daily journey rather than the points of the modern compass: Couchant (the setting sun, west); Orient (the rising sun, east); Midi (noon); and Septentrion (north, from the seven stars of the constellation Ursa Major).

Isn't that lovely? The north, the land of the seven stars...

The information comes from Simon Loftus's book Puligny Montrachet, and the maps he is describing are those contained in Le Terrier de la Seigneurie de Puligny, a detailed registry of land holdings in that village in Burgundy compiled in the 1740s. Two huge volumes of lists of who owns what, and a third of maps - very pretty maps, to judge by the portion reproduced on the endpapers, with the coloured strips of the vineyards dotted with the houses of the village, with crosses and ponds and other landmarks. I can't think why the internet doesn't know about it (or, if it knows, isn't telling).

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That is really lovely.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

It comes very early in the book: a hard standard to keep up!

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

The north, the land of the seven stars...

Sigh. That was in that unfinished story with the drowned blue-and-white...

Nine

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Unfinished is not lost...

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. We have a seven sisters story here for the Pleiades.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Oh, we have those too - they turn up in one of the Mary Poppins books, for example.

But these seven stars are the Plough, which I suppose you never see in Australia: there's a pub near here called the Seven Stars, with the Plough on its sign.

[gillpolack.livejournal.com]

They look similar (I doubted my memory so I checked) and some of the stories overlap a bit, which is why I mentioned it.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I didn't know about the overlap - though seven sisters is seven sisters, I suppose. Sometimes they're cliffs. (And in London the Seven Sisters were elm trees, according to Wikipedia - I didn't know that, either.)

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

The French so often have a word for it which is untranslatable, but you know exactly what they mean. :o)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I could so easily have wandered off from this post into a consideration of those lovely French noun/adjective pairs: eau/aqueux, nord/septentrional and my favourite suie/fuligineux... But I was strong, and didn't.

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

What does the stupid intranät know, indeed? Not much of any importance! I prefer ancient dictionnaries, myself. They know all the words.

Sad as I am about your having this restrictive mind, I couldn´t help but look up suie/fuligineux (my vocabulary is restricted due to too much contact with the "pub humour" of irish gals I used to meet here in the south-west of France).
& Oh!
Seven sisters or ladies in lordypants, I´m so happy to finally have found out about the epithet I am mostly confronted with, at least by those who try to read what I write: "the unsurpassable opacity of your comments" for instance, as stated by restingpedant whose style undoubtedly consists of club blazer blazing clarity only, tells me I may not be Joyce but can do obscure if only I put my Messy mind to it. But then, the epithet fits in so nicely with where I don´t but insist on living all the same: in this perpetual State of Couchant!

I wonder, whether the whole Dordogne (now owned by britons as Aquitaine used to be), where I just found proof of growing potty at fiftyone by finding my dream home, an aged and dignified house that has not been renovated to death, yet; counts as couchant?
It certainly is into sleeping beauty, as a place for that kind of rest.
It´s Donne poetry in stone and only costs what a small apartment would cost here in this pretty enough town yet provides acres of landscape with an oak wood (I never knew, I wanted one but now I do) full of several sources to fuel fairytales I may want to write, there. I´ll meet Mr. Hood and a gal in a red one and no surprise. Sigh. Now, what I need to do, is add a few zeroes to my meagre salary and go live a Grimm life!