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Critique and Semiotics
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Article

Name: Croch ~ cros ‘cross’: Latin Borrowings and Christian Traditional Metaphors in Early Ireland

Authors: T. A. Mikhailova

Institute of Linguistics RAS, Russian Federation; Moscow State University, Russian Federation

Issue 1, 2019Pages 125-139
UDK: 81DOI: 10.25205/2307-1737-2019-1-125-139

Abstract: OI croch represents a ‘pre-lenition’ early Latin borrowing (cf. MW crog) widely attested in Old Irish glosses with the meaning ‘the Cross’, ‘the Crusification’. The Latin word crux was adopted in its oblique form crucem into both Goidelic and British with o-vocalism of the root. In original pre-Christian Latin the word covered a semantic field ‘torture, hanging, execution, death penalty’. The Latin term represents a supposed Mediterranean wondering word adopted in Rome after Punic wars together with the practice of crucifixion. In Early glosses the word (as well as its weak verb crochaid) remains closely connected with Christianity, but later develops extra meanings departing from different sides of the semantic complex ‘Crucifixion’: ‘to torture, to execute’ in general and especially –‘to hang’, later – ‘to hang an object’. In early Law tracts croch means one of the penalty practices: ‘hanging’ and presumably loss its semantic connection with New Testament tradition. This semantic shift could be interpreted by existence of the later Latin doublet loanword: cros ‘a cross’ a form of the cross’, later ‘a defense, a coverage’. In the “Language of the Glosses” (VII–VIII c.) the later loanword cross (from Lat. crux) means 1. a cross as a geometrical figure 2. so called ‘high crosses’ of Irish monasteries 3. Crosfigil a special kind of prayer standing in a position of body with arms outstretched in imitation of the Cross. In later Lives the word cros is used as the name of a specific ‘magic’ gesture. In folk tradition as well as in modern Irish phraseology cros represents a symbol the saint’s and Christ’s protection. The same meaning also can be found in traditional folk charms.

Keywords: Ireland, Britania, Romanization, Latin loanwords, Christianization, cross, law tracts, folk tradition, folk Christianity, phraseology, semantic derivation

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