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584
5 August 14, half a year after February 14, ought to be the place when the war god of spring would be defeated. ... In north Asia the common mode of reckoning is in half-year, which are not to be regarded as such but form each one separately the highest unit of time: our informants term them 'winter year' and 'summer year'. Among the Tunguses the former comprises 6½ months, the latter 5, but the year is said to have 13 months; in Kamchatka each contains six months, the winter year beginning in November, the summer year in May; the Gilyaks on the other hand give five months to summer and seven to winter. The Yeneseisk Ostiaks reckon and name only the seven winter months, and not the summer months. This mode of reckoning seems to be a peculiarity of the far north: the Icelanders reckoned in misseri, half-years, not in whole years, and the rune-staves divide the year into a summer and a winter half, beginning on April 14 and October 14 respectively. But in Germany too, when it was desired to denote the whole year, the combined phrase 'winter and summer' was employed, or else equivalent concrete expressions such as 'in bareness and in leaf', 'in straw and in grass' ... October 14 means day number 14 ín the 8th (octo) month and in day 14 in the 8th month counted from January 1, viz. in August 14, the Son of Simson fought in vain in the watery marshes of Poland. ... December 13 is evidently a date in harmony with the date of August 13, when according to the Mayas our present world had been created. In contrast to August 14 when Samsonov (the Son of Samson) struggled to survive in the marshes of Poland. Life (light) implies death (darkness) ... The idea of 'the son of' seems to mean he was the same person returning again ('I will be back'), recycled and fresh as new: ... And when he dies, people get frightened by his bones. After that, his son is like his saliva, his spittle, in his being, whether it be the son of a lord or the son of a craftsman, an orator. The father does not disappear, but goes on being fulfilled. Neither dimmed nor destroyed is the face of a lord, a warrior, craftsman, an orator. Rather, he will leave his daughters and sons. For instance should Mysingr, the Son of the Mouse, be the same person as the Mouse. ... Snorri Sterluson explains why 'Frodi's grist' is a kenning for gold. Frodi ruled during a peaceful and productive period, contemporaneous with Augustus's Pax Romana and the birth of Christ; hence the kenning. There were neither thieves nor robbers during this period, 'so that a gold ring lay long on Jalang's heath'. Snorri continues his account with the legend of the mill beyond what is told in the song: The girls' grinding produced an army hostile to Frodi. On the very day of the girls' predictions, the sea-king, Musing (Son of the Mouse), landed o the Danish shore, killed Frodi, and took away Grotti and the women on his ship. The girls were bidden to grind out salt on the mill. At midnight they asked for further instructions. 'Keep grinding', he told them. Then they ground with such vigor that the ship sank. Water poured into the eye of the mill, creating the maelstroem of the sea. Therefore the sea was salt. Incidentally, the mill was given a kenning, Serpent's Couch ...
This pattern, with alternating rulers, has been described in The White Goddess, e.g.: ... Gronw Pebyr, who figures as the lord of Penllyn - 'Lord of the Lake' - which was also the title of Tegid Voel, Cerridwen's husband, is really Llew's twin and tanist ... Gronw reigns during the second half of the year, after Llew's sacrificial murder; and the weary stag whom he kills and flays outside Llew's castle stands for Llew himself (a 'stag of seven fights'). This constant shift in symbolic values makes the allegory difficult for the prose-minded reader to follow, but to the poet who remembers the fate of the pastoral Hercules the sense is clear: after despatching Llew with the dart hurled at him from Bryn Kyvergyr, Gronw flays him, cuts him to pieces and distributes the pieces among his merry-men. The clue is given in the phrase 'baiting his dogs'. Math had similarly made a stag of his rival Gilvaethwy, earlier in the story. It seems likely that Llew's mediaeval successor, Red Robin Hood, was also once worshipped as a stag. His presence at the Abbot's Bromley Horn Dance would be difficult to account for otherwise, and stag's horn moss is sometimes called Robin Hood's Hatband. In May, the stag puts on his red summer coat. Llew visits the Castle of Arianrhod in a coracle of weed and sedge. The coracle is the same old harvest basket in which nearly every antique Sun-god makes his New Year voyage; and the virgin princess, his mother, is always waiting to greet him on the bank ...
Ideally the Sun was perfect and his path should therefore in principle be a circle, yet the perceived path of the Earth around the Sun was apparently not perfect:
Unless the problem was looked at once again. For instance: 8 * (250 - 227) = 184 = 4 * 46.
We could say that it was influenced by the brightest nightside star Sirius, rising heliacally in day 181 and half a year away from December 31 (365 = 181 + 184). ... The Sothic cycle was based on what is referred to in technical jargon as 'the periodic return of the heliacal rising of Sirius', which is the first appearance of this star after a seasonal absence, rising at dawn just ahead of the sun in the eastern portion of the sky. In the case of Sirius the interval between one such rising and the next amounts to exactly 365.25 days - a mathematically harmonious figure, uncomplicated by further decimal points, which is just twelve minutes longer than the duration of the solar year ...
In contrast the stars clearly described another type of cycle. We can count 135 nights from December 31 to May 15 (365 + 135 = 500). From the Nest of the Kingfisher to Tau-ono in the day before Alcyone:
135 - 181 = 46 = 184 / 4. ... Allen has documented all his star culminations at 21h, which could be due to an effort of keeping the culminations at their proper places according to the ancients, 24h (spring equinox) - 21h = 3h = 24h / 8 = 45º. 3h corresponds to 366 / 8 = 45.75 of my right ascension days and *366 - *46 = *320 (Dramasa, σ Octantis) ... 4 * 135 = 2 * 270 (→ 227 → π) = 540 = 9 * 60 (→ 6 * 60 + 180):
And there were 2 ways to find the positions of the stars, viz. to go by way of the north pole (*26) or to look for the meridian transit of the Breast of Cassiopeia (*8).
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