it's september...

and the Beard was wondering about the illogicality of our months, days and possibly our hours.... as we all know, food is Saxon in the field, but french on the table... but how many of us have realised the fundamentalish dichotomy that has left our days english and our months roman.....??? to illustrate, we have a day of the sun, a dat of the moon, a day each for Tiw, Woden, Thunor and Frey, where our months are named for a roman dictator and his imperial nephew, a god of fever and someone two-faced... and some are rather unimaginatively the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months..... now, i here some of you saying, one of our days is Roman too... is Saturday not named after Saturn..... well, sorry to disillusion you classical buffs out there... its named after Saetere, who was possibly Loki.... who deserve kudos for teaching us how to grow grain.... admittedly, that was so that we could turn it into beer, but still..... nd I digress.... even the Germans, notoriously non adept at using latin, have stoopped to latin months.... despite the empire of Rome not actually conquering them... but then i lay the blame for tht squarely at the feet of the Church..... but my wondering was along the lines of not why did we change the months, but why did we not end up with latin days... the french got them after all..... Mars and Mercuri rule the days there.... personally i'm glad that we kept our good saxon days, and I must admit to hankering after our old months too.... and wondering why our Classical forebears, who we have been told ad nauseam were far more intelligent and cultured that our Saxon ancestors, seemed to run out of ideas when it came to naming months.... now, the Beard would far rather be celebrating his birthday at the beginning of Winterfylth, the time of felling trees for winter, rather than in the confusingly named Eighth Month (which of course is the tenth.....) at least the saxon names still have relevance to the time of year to which they apply.... Hot Month.... Easter Month.... Wolf Month.... Blood Month..... and they quite sensibly went from new moon to new moon, which is what a month should do..... and where the romans solved the problem of their 12 months not quite fitting the solar year by making their months unevn, the saxons and vikings simply had 13 of them every year, and kept the months and years eveer so slightly separate.... which to the Beard's eyes seems to suggest that they were ever so slightly cleverer.... but there we go.... suffice it to say, the Beard is not the only one that wishes for proper english months again..... and is also mulling over the idea of using paragraphs, a suggestion made to him by several aavid readers.... the problem being that such a stream of consciousness.... well.... brook of semi consciousness anyway.. doess not seem to lend itself to paragraphisation... although I did dabble with the idea of simply inserting a few line breaks in an attempt to imitate paragraphs..... but thought better of it.... but it does beg the question as to whether paragraphs would improve or disprove the beardiness.... and now, all that remains to be said is that Beard junior has started his gcses, a certain young lady is now filming in Dorset and Somerset, and the CYL's eldest will be soon off to the land of the Reconquista..... which leaves the Beard pondering on distance.... but of that, more later... the road is calling, and it just remains to be said that until all our months are as long as we would wish, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!