Welcome to the Endnotes, where I put all the fun facts I can't fit into the main videos!
Today, some extra bits of information from my video about the word Ghost — and if you
haven't seen those yet, click on the card.
In the main video we identify the ultimate etymon of ghost as the Proto-Indo-European
root *gheis- used to refer to the emotions of fear or amazement.
We should be careful not to confuse this root with Proto-Indo-European *ghosti meaning "guest
and host".
You might think it odd to have the same root meaning both host and guest, but it in fact
reflects an ancient cultural value, the importance of the reciprocal relationship between guest
and host, almost a quasi-family tie, a concept which in Ancient Greek is expressed with the
word xenia, one of the key themes of Homer's Odyssey.
In Anglo-England texts often punned on these similar sounding roots.
When Old English gast was used to refer to a disembodied spirit, it was often in a pun
with the word gyst meaning "visitor, stranger", from which we get the word guest.
Another similar string of letters that we should be careful not to confuse here is g-h-o-t-i.
In this case it's not an Indo-European root, but a demonstration that English needed spelling
reform, because this string of letters could be said to spell the word fish.
The "gh" makes an "f" sound in tough, the "o" makes an "i" in women, and
the "ti" makes an "sh" sound in "nation".
Silly English!
This demonstration of spelling irregularity has often been attributed to George Bernard
Shaw, who was certainly an outspoken supporter of spelling reform, but it doesn't actually
seem to appear in any of his writings.
Speaking of Shaw, in addition to his early ghostwriting, he continued his music criticism
work in his own name after his literary fame grew, and also made witty use of Hamlet in
a satire of the more academic style of his fellow music critics by describing the famous
"To be or not to be" speech thusly: "Shakespeare, dispensing with the customary exordium, announces
his subject at once in the infinitive, in which mood it is presently repeated after
a short connecting passage in which, brief as it is, we recognize the alternative and
negative forms on which so much of the significance of repetition depends.
Here we reach a colon; and a pointed pository phrase, in which the accent falls decisively
on the relative pronoun, brings us to the first full stop."
Well, that is indeed the question.
I think.
And this brings us back to Hamlet.
Not only does this same basic plot of son pretending to be insane while avenging his
father on his murderous uncle who married his mother and took over the kingdom appear
in the Latin Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus, but there are also other Old Norse versions
of the story, including a close parallel in Hrólfs saga kraka or the Saga of King Hrolf
Kraki.
In this analogue of the story, the role of the Hamlet character is actually divided between
two brothers named Helgi and Hroar, who by the way appear as Halga and Hroðgar in the
Old English poem Beowulf.
The basic storyline of Helgi and Hroar follows that familiar plot in Hamlet: avenge the father
on the uncle who married the mother while pretending to be mad.
In another part of the saga is the story of a monster who attacks the hall, much like
Grendel in Beowulf, but it's specified that the attacks always come at Yule, in other
words Christmas.
And the Yule time visit is a common pattern in many sagas and indeed ghost stories (think
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens).
You might think that Halloween would be the time of year when reports of ghost sightings
was highest, but in fact this isn't necessarily so.
In the Norse sagas we also find a parallel for zombies, the aptrgangr literally "again-walker"
or draugr, a word which can be traced back to a root which means "to harm or deceive"
and is thereby cognate with English dream.
The stuff of nightmares I suppose!
The draugar often appear in Norse stories, such as Grettis Saga, which also by the way,
like Hrólfs saga kraka, contains a close parallel to the Beowulf story.
The more general European tradition that this falls under is the revenant from Latin reveniens
literally "returning or coming back", referring to the dead come back to life in
physical form to haunt the living.
Usually the revenants were wrongdoers in life, and were thought to spread disease.
The only way to stop them would be to exhume the body during the day when they rested and
either decapitate them or remove and burn the heart.
And perhaps most famously there's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in which the living dead is
reanimated not through necromancy but through science.
Well, even the living dead have to keep up with the times!
And speaking of the word reanimated, it comes from Latin anima meaning "spirit or ghost"
or "breath or air", which can be traced back to a root meaning "to breathe".
So literally Victor Frankenstein gives his monster the breath of life…that's some
creepy CPR!
As always, you can hear even more etymology and history, as well as interviews with a
wide range of fascinating people, on the Endless Knot Podcast, available on all the major podcast
platforms as well as our other YouTube channel.
Thanks for watching!
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