#136804 - 01/04/05 07:06 AM
Re: Word Conveying Reflection
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veteran
Registered: 10/10/01
Posts: 1385
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the magic of the moonbow
You have penetrated my heart with it, themilum.
You have shot me to the quick.
Such a bowman. Such a bow.
Thanks. :)
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#136805 - 01/04/05 08:38 AM
Re: Word Conveying Reflection
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veteran
Registered: 05/25/02
Posts: 1529
Loc: Aladamnbama the most watered s...
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Uh...plutarch...I am embarrassed I...uh...copied the poetic phrase from an advertising flyer for Cumberland Falls. But next time I'll do better, I promise. 
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#136806 - 01/04/05 08:57 AM
Re: Word Conveying Reflection
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veteran
Registered: 10/10/01
Posts: 1385
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I...uh...copied the poetic phrase from an advertising flyer for Cumberland Falls.
Yes, but an arrow only flies where it is aimed, themilum. And, it was aimed at us. :)
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#136807 - 01/04/05 09:38 AM
Re: Word Conveying Reflection
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enthusiast
Registered: 10/21/03
Posts: 389
Loc: Rhode Island, USA
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Thanks drallie for starting this. Moonglade - wow Jackie! Moonbow (great idea for a screen name), perhaps we'll meet in my dreams. Thanks themillum. BTW my brother went to DBNF and said it was lovely too, but he went in daytime and mist the moonbow. http://www.mfa.org/artemis/fullrecord.asp?oid=34049
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#136810 - 01/04/05 09:49 AM
Re: Word Conveying Reflection
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veteran
Registered: 10/10/01
Posts: 1385
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misting the moonbow
That is what gives fancy flight, Owlbow.
Nice one. Fittingly, unquivered, and sent to us by Owlbow.
re "i can't say i have read anything but some edited excerpts of the canterbury tales"
Chaucer never lived to write the sequel, Of Troy.
In any case, we are all pilgrims in every parable. :)
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#136811 - 01/04/05 02:59 PM
Re: Word Conveying Reflection
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 03/15/00
Posts: 11613
Loc: Louisville, Kentucky
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This is the same tale of the Moonspinners that is in Mary Stewart's book of the same name:
...the story of the Three Fates--the moonspinners. One story about them says that the thread they use to determine each person's lifespan is created from moonlight.
Every month on the full moon, they gather a moonbeam from the surface of the ocean and spin it into their magical thread. As they create the thread, the moon dwindles in size until no moon remains except for the empty spindle.
On that darkest night, they return the unused thread to the water, and the moon begins to grow again as the moonlight is gathered back onto the moon's spindle. http://marilynnbyerly.com/marilynnbyerly/whatsnew.htmlThe book's setting is Greece. I don't know if this is a legend of that particular country or not.
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#136812 - 01/04/05 04:22 PM
is kumatage the same phenomenon as moonglade?
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 04/03/00
Posts: 10538
Loc: this too shall pass
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when I featured moonglade, it was with this quote:
"Then there are the Twin Sailors. They don't live anywhere, they sail all the time, but they often come ashore to talk to me. They are a pair of jolly tars and they have seen everything in the world. . .and more than what is in the world. Do you know what happened to the youngest Twin Sailor once? He was sailing and he sailed right into a moonglade. A moonglade is the track the full moon makes on the water when it is rising from the sea, you know, teacher. Well, the youngest Twin Sailor sailed along the moonglade till he came right up to the moon, and there was a little golden door in the moon and he opened it and sailed right through. He had some wonderful adventures in the moon but it would make this letter too long to tell them." - L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea
I mention this only because it suggests a narrower view of the word; i.e., a full moon rising from the sea.
anyway, I'd had the word kumatage in my notes, but didn't mention it because I'd found it only in an online reference to the 1854 edition of The American Practical Navigator, by Nathaniel Bowditch(!). The book itself is available online, but in a newer edition, which doesn't contain kumatage.
Now, in response to moonglade, I got this reply:
"A poeticism for sure. The more scientific term for moon light shining on water: kumatage."
Well, now I had to do something. I tracked down the 1854 edition of The American Practical Navigator, and sure enough kumatage was in the glossary (but seemingly unused in the text), defined thusly: a bright appearance in the horizon, under the sun or moon, arising from the reflected light of those bodies from the small rippling waves on the surface of the water -- slightly broader here; i.e., including reflection of sun.
I wish I'd found some etymology for kumatage... but the story doesn't end here:
the worthless word for the day is: cumatic
(from Gr. kumat, wave; after L. cumatilis)
[obs.] sea-colored, blue
at last, a clue to the etymology of kumatage!
For the literalists who don't get the 'glade' in moonglade, I think this is helpful, from AHD: Middle English, perhaps from glad, bright and shining.
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#136813 - 01/04/05 04:40 PM
Re: is kumatage the same phenomenon as moonglade?
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Carpal Tunnel
Registered: 09/15/00
Posts: 4757
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Thanks for your further reflections, tsuwm - most enlightening.
But why, I wonder, given that likely derivation, does kumatage seem to say nothing about the moon or light or reflections ~ only about waves?
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