Grass on Sand Dunes?

[Alcuin]

Roofing material around the world is traditionally grass or reed. In English, the word for this stuff and the verb for using it is thatch. (Anglo-Saxon þæc, same word pronounced approximately the same way for “roof” or “thatch,” and the verb þeccan, “to [put a] roof [on]” or “to thatch.” It’s related to the modern word deck, which still retains its old meaning “cover.” “To deck” someone is to put them on the floor by hitting them; the “deck” of a ship; “Deck the halls with boughs of holly,” &c.) Thatched roofing is excellent stuff, and a well-thatched roof with good-quality reed can last several decades. The stuff burns, of course, which is a drawback; but the main reason it is only used in more rural countries is that it is time-consuming and expensive to hire someone to thatch a roof: in the less-developed and more rural regions of the world, people’s time is less expensive. (That sounds terrible, but I suppose it must be true.) A well-thatched roof does not readily burn, however (most fires in thatched roofs start around the chimneys, where the embers get stuck and overheat the roofing material nearby); and thatch is warmer in the winter than asphalt or wooden shingling, and certainly warmer than tiles, metal or slate!

Not only were houses thatched, but so were barns, outbuildings, and so forth: it was by necessity the roofing material of choice in the medieval world. On some low-lying buildings, so the story goes, cats and dogs, which were not always welcomed into the house (particularly cats during the Middle Ages), would climb onto the roof because it was warmer there. (Heat rises, and it rose through the roof...) When it rained, however, the thatch would become slippery, and the animals would slide off – hence the turn of phrase.

I’ve seen other versions of the source of the phrase, and attempts to debunk this one. For now, I don’t know the truth of the matter; but I do know that the phrase was used in England in the 1300s, so I think there’s a better chance that this source of the saying is true rather than some of the other explanations offered. I know that some websites and internet pundits claim that this explanation is specious and of recent minting; however, one of my college English professors, himself a medievalist (with a masterful command of Anglo-Saxon), offered us that explanation one afternoon during an autumn downpour in 1978.

[Valandil]

Alcuin - You might have just missed the part from the Christmas song.

I thought it was more correctly " 'Dec' the halls..." - as in, short for "Decorate" - not at all a common usage, but some poetic license taken to allow for the proper metre in the song.

Unless it was an application of the word "deck" with the meaning "cover"

I wonder what the writer of the song originally intended.

Hmmm... come to think of it, I wonder now about the origin of the word, 'decorate'.

[Alcuin]

The word in the song really is “deck,” as in “cover,” although “dec” as a shortened form of “decorate” is hardly inappropriate. decorate is a word unrelated to “deck” (or “thatch”), from the Latin decoratus, past participle of decorare “to decorate,” from decus (genitive decoris) “an ornament,” from the Proto-Indo-European base *dek- “to receive, be suitable.” þeccan and deck are from the Proto-Indo-European base *(s)tog-/*(s)teg- “cover.”

[trolls' bane]

How do you figure all this stuff out!?

[Jon S.]

Raining cats and dogs should be pretty simple - it was because the feral ones who hid in the sewers had to flee them after rains, right? So when the people came back outside afterwards, lo and behold: lots of cats and dogs.

[trolls' bane]

Originally Posted by Jon S.

Raining cats and dogs should be pretty simple - it was because the feral ones who hid in the sewers had to flee them after rains, right? So when the people came back outside afterwards, lo and behold: lots of cats and dogs.

LOL! I would have never thought of that.

[Forkbeard]

Great bump, and a terrific post Alcuin! Let me just add a mundane detail....when the forebears of the Rohirrim would have known the forebears of the hobbits, it would have been before the Rohirrim ancestors moved north and while the hobylta lived yet in the "vales of the Anduin" below Gladden Fields where Gollum and his family lived in holes in or close to the banks of the river. From Tolkien's descriptions the river in the area isn't a fast moving body of water, slow enough to swim in and not worry too much about being swept away and slow enough for the ring to rest without moving for some time. And the "promitive" hobbit holes struck me as being in sandy banks of the river which of course would have wild grass growing on them.

As with much in Tolkien and in ancient and medieval stories he is imitating the boundary between myth and reality is a small one, so my reading here can fit very well with the excellent observations that Alcuin gives.

[Valandil]

Actually - placing things at their proper time, I wonder if it was actually Gollum's forebears who were known to the Rohirrim, rather than the forebears of the Shire hobbits.

According to "Cirion and Eorl" in UT, the ancestors of the Rohirrim went into the Vales of Anduin after a great defeat of Gondor by the Wainriders, in which King Narmacil II of Gondor was slain. According to LOTR Appendix A, Narmacil II died in 1836 of the Third Age. It was just over 140 years later, in 1977 - that the Eotheod moved north to the far upper Anduin, where they remained until Eorl led them down to Gondor's aid in 2510, and when they moved to the land of Rohan itself.

If they met any hobbit-like people while along the Anduin (and not in more ancient times - in Rhovanion or elsewhere) - it must have been between the years 1836 and 1977.

Now the Hobbits: It was way back in ~ 1050 to 1150 that the first Hobbits began to cross the Misty Mountains into Eriador. From there, in 1300 - some migrated west and settled in Bree (from where, in 1601 - some of them would set out to accept the land-grant of The Shire). Then - in 1356, some from the Angle moved back (east - over the Misty Mountains) into Wilderland (these are speculated to be the ancestors of Gollum's people).

So - by 1836, it was Gollum's branch of "hobbits" who lived in the area around Anduin, and the other known groups of hobbits were either in Bree or the Shire.

I guess it's humorous to think that as Merry and Theoden's people began to find things in common - thinking that their ancestors shared a mutual past... it was actually Gollum's ancestors who had that common past with the Rohirrim.

Wouldn't Merry have been surprised.

Of course - even those hobbits at the Anduin would have been much like those of Bree and The Shire at their time. Much more than they were like what Gollum became, once the Ring had taken control of him.

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by Valandil

Actually - placing things at their proper time, I wonder if it was actually Gollum's forebears who were known to the Rohirrim, rather than the forebears of the Shire hobbits.

According to "Cirion and Eorl" in UT, the ancestors of the Rohirrim went into the Vales of Anduin after a great defeat of Gondor by the Wainriders, in which King Narmacil II of Gondor was slain. According to LOTR Appendix A, Narmacil II died in 1836 of the Third Age. It was just over 140 years later, in 1977 - that the Eotheod moved north to the far upper Anduin, where they remained until Eorl led them down to Gondor's aid in 2510, and when they moved to the land of Rohan itself.

If they met any hobbit-like people while along the Anduin (and not in more ancient times - in Rhovanion or elsewhere) - it must have been between the years 1836 and 1977.

Now the Hobbits: It was way back in ~ 1050 to 1150 that the first Hobbits began to cross the Misty Mountains into Eriador. From there, in 1300 - some migrated west and settled in Bree (from where, in 1601 - some of them would set out to accept the land-grant of The Shire). Then - in 1356, some from the Angle moved back (east - over the Misty Mountains) into Wilderland (these are speculated to be the ancestors of Gollum's people).

So - by 1836, it was Gollum's branch of "hobbits" who lived in the area around Anduin, and the other known groups of hobbits were either in Bree or the Shire.

I guess it's humorous to think that as Merry and Theoden's people began to find things in common - thinking that their ancestors shared a mutual past... it was actually Gollum's ancestors who had that common past with the Rohirrim.

Wouldn't Merry have been surprised.

Of course - even those hobbits at the Anduin would have been much like those of Bree and The Shire at their time. Much more than they were like what Gollum became, once the Ring had taken control of him.

Excellent points!!!