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Reland gives a variety of derivations, quoted from Pliny, Jamblichus, Epiphanius, and Origen; all of which are much more satisfactory as they regard the position of a certain town in the Land of Gilead, than as they convey any precise ideas as to its etymological import.
The cynocephali whom the Egyptians venerated were more properly baboons: so that their dog heaven, one might say, was only such on its face. Language is the amber which preserves the thought of man. We need not dig far into the etymological strata to be impressed by the unenviable place which the dog has made for himself in the tradition and experience of our race.
But this analysing of groups of words for the detecting of the bond of relationship between them, and their common root, may require more etymological knowledge than you possess, and more helps from books than you can always command. There is another process, and one which may prove no less useful to yourselves and to others, which will lie more certainly within your reach.
It may be true that in the region of attempts, as elsewhere, the law began with cases of actual intent, as those cases are the most obvious ones. But it cannot stop with them, unless it attaches more importance to the etymological meaning of the word attempt than to the general principles of punishment.
"Well," said I, after we had chuckled gravely and quietly, with the care of our digestion before us, for a few minutes "well, however good the invention was, the idea is not entirely new, for the Greeks esteemed eating and drinking plentifully, a sort of offering to the gods; and Aristotle explains the very word, THoinai, or feasts, by an etymological exposition, 'that it was thought a duty to the gods to be drunk; no bad idea of our classical patterns of antiquity.
The earliest mediaeval notice of mineral coal I have met with is in a passage cited by Ducange from a document of the year 1198, and it is an etymological observation of some interest, that carbones ferrei, as sea-coal is called in the document, are said by Ducange to have been known in France by the popular name of hulla, a word evidently identical with the modern French houille and the Cornish Huel, which in the form wheal is an element in the name of many mining localities.
Neither progress in the languages nor knowledge of mathematics can compensate for the want of a thorough etymological discipline. This training should be primary in point of time, as well as elementary in character; and a classical education is no adequate compensation. Elements are all-important to the teacher and the student.
It is sufficient, in etymological inquiries, if the senses of kindred words be found such as may easily pass into each other, or such as may both be referred to one general idea. The etymology, so far as it is yet known, was easily found in the volumes, where it is particularly and professedly delivered, and, by proper attention to the rules of derivation, the orthography was soon adjusted.
Of these two schools, the former has always appealed to the mythologies of savage nations, as showing that gods and heroes were originally human beings, worshipped after their death as ancestors and as gods, while the latter has confined itself chiefly to an etymological analysis of mythological names in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, and other languages, such as had been sufficiently studied to admit of a scientific, grammatical, and etymological treatment.
Fortunately, however, we have the clearest possible proof that Hrof never existed, and that he was a pure creation of Bæda's own simple etymological guesswork. King Alfred clearly knew better, for he omitted this wild derivation from his English translation. Hence it is pretty certain that it must have had two alternative names, of which the other was Durobrivæ.
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