18.118 goibniu

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 118.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
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   [1] From: Mícheál Mac an Airchinnigh (5)
                 <mmaa_at_eircom.net> (by
         Subject: Re: 18.113 "goibniu"?

   [2] From: "Jim Marchand" <marchand_at_uiuc.edu> (4)
         Subject: Re: 18.113 "goibniu"?

   [3] From: robert delius royar <r.royar_at_morehead-st.edu> (36)
         Subject: Re: Goibniu (Govannon)

   [4] From: "Jim Marchand" <marchand_at_uiuc.edu> (9)
         Subject: goibniu

   [5] From: Norman Hinton <hinton_at_springnet1.com> (21)
         Subject: Re: Goibniu (Govannon)

--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 07:03:05 +0100
         From: Mícheál Mac an Airchinnigh <mmaa_at_eircom.net> (by
         Subject: Re: 18.113 "goibniu"?

The word looks "Irish" :))
google goibniu
and see.
:))

Mícheál

--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 07:02:07 +0100
         From: "Jim Marchand" <marchand_at_uiuc.edu>
         Subject: Re: 18.113 "goibniu"?

Goibniu, from goba `to smith', was the name of the Dedanann Smith god among
the ancient Irish. See the index in P. W. Joyce, A Social History of
Ancient Ireland. He was sort of their Weland, but not so celebrated in song
and story.

--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 07:05:14 +0100
         From: robert delius royar <r.royar_at_morehead-st.edu>
         Subject: Re: Goibniu (Govannon)

No, it makes little sense. Often a web search will so emerging trends, but
Google shows fewer than 700 entries for Goibniu, and only a few of those
appear scholarly (e.g.
http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T300011/header.html). Paprika shows over
1/2 million entries. Doesn't seem like there is evidence of Goibniu's
being more popularly spoken than is paprika.

Perhaps it is some artifact of the program's search or presentaion routine.
I tried a number of other Celtic and Welsh deities' names; Lugh shows up at
44160 and Dylan at 15869. The other dozen or so names I tried did not show
up. I will note that Celt is 59306 so that it is less used than is the
Irish Smith Deity's name. Since "lough," "loughs," and "Lugh" are in the
list, and in the online manuscript at ucc.ie, I suspect that the corpus may
have texts that were used because they were already in TEI format.

Also see the words NPFL, SWA, and OBLT. It does not appear to
differentiate stems, acronyms, or abbreviations.

Wed, 4 Aug 2004 (13:30 -0500 UTC) Norman Hinton wrote:

>Any thoughts on why this would appear so high up (mid-point) in the corpus
>in question ? is it a name on everyone's lips in G.B. at present, so that
>it would be slightly more common than paprika ?
>
>
>>In the Celtic mythology of Wales and Cornwall ('Insular Brythonic
>>mythology'),
>Govannon (Welsh) was the son of Danu and Beli or Brigid and Tuireann. He
>killed his nephew, Dylan, not knowing who he was. He was a smith god who
>created magical swords for the Tuatha de Danaan, along with Credne and
>Luchtainel. He was also a god of alcohol; his beer gave the drinker
>immortality.
>>Alternative: Govannan, Gofannon, Goibniu (Irish)
>
>
>
>

--
Dr. Robert Delius Royar <r.royar_at_morehead-st.edu>
Associate Professor of English, Morehead State University
--[4]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 07:02:33 +0100
         From: "Jim Marchand" <marchand_at_uiuc.edu>
         Subject: goibniu
Please let me apologize for the derivation of Goibniu from goba `to
smith'.  I was in a hurry and let my OIrish get away from me.  Goba
means `smith', Goibniu (pronounced gwivnew) also means smith.  For
more information, see Gerard Murphy, Duanaire Finn, part III. Early
Irish Text Society 63 (Dublin, 1953), lxxxii-lxxxiv, which will
lead you to Thurneysen, Pedersen et al.
       On the topic of smith-gods, see Mircea Eliade, The Forge and
the Crucible. Harper Torchbooks TB 1552 (NY: Harper and Row, 1971).
Note that he misses Goibniu and Weland.
--[5]------------------------------------------------------------------
         Date: Thu, 05 Aug 2004 07:04:30 +0100
         From: Norman Hinton <hinton_at_springnet1.com>
         Subject: Re: Goibniu (Govannon)
At least an explanation of the appearance of 'goibniu' -- among the texts
used for the British National Corpora is a fantasy novel, _Wolfking_, by
Bridget Wood.  It appeared in 1993.  There are 47 appearances of 'goibniu'
in the BNC -- one is from an archaelogical source, the other 46 are from
Wood's novel.
It's a good example of what can happen when assembling a corpus -- I used
to use on furnished by the American Heritage Dictionary, which was taken
from printed sources used in junior high schools.  There were several
articles on Hispanic culture and society in the collection, so Hispanic
words, especially proper names, turned up rather more often than one might
imagine in the corpus.
I think of this kind of thing as "the cost of doing business" --one can
hardly search the corpus ahead of time to get rid of words ! I imagine the
book was included as an example of popular fiction (it was one of a
tetralogy), and no one thought of the (hopefully small) bias towards Celtic
materials it might introduce.
Searching the corpus for "goibniu" and then asking for information about
its sources in t he corpus is something I recommend: the spread of sources
for "paprika" is quite different in scope!
Pardon me for running on like this -- when the Internet gods supply an
occasion for talking about one's discipline, such is the result....