list it will be observed that the cat is more frequently spoken of by different names than anything else. Always regarded as more particularly “unlucky” than any other animal, the fisherman had a special horror of it; but it does not appear why he should have been at such pains to name it in so many various ways.
That these terms, and others used by the Shetland fishermen at the present day, are of very great antiquity can be easily shown. As an illustration, let us take two or three of the most ordinary words, and trace them back at least one thousand years.
I. Humlabund, i.e., the thong—sometimes of hide, sometimes of rope (in old times always of hide)—which secures the oar of the Shetland boat near the wooden “kabe” against which it is pulled. This thong is rove through a hole in the gunwale, and forms a bight in which the oar is thrust, and so retained in its place. The present modern Norse word in use in the north of Norway is hamulan or humelan. In Freeman’s “History of the Norman Conquest,” vol. i. 570, the following occurs:—“We now learn incidentally that the standing navy of England, both under Cnut and under Harold, had consisted of 16 ships, and 8 marks were paid seemingly yearly, either to each rower singly or to some group of rowers.” To this is appended the note:—
“Chron. Petrib., 1040.—‘On his [Harold's] dagum man geald xvi. scipan œt œlcere hamulan [hamelan in Chron. Ab.] viii. marcan.’ On the word hamulan, Mr Earle (p. 343) remarks, ‘This being a dative feminine, the nom. must be hamule, hamele—at first, perhaps, signifying a rowlock strap, and so symbolising some division of the crew. There is not money enough to give eight marks to every rower. The hamule, then, would be analogous to the “lance” in mediæval armies. But Florence clearly took it to mean a single rower, ‘octo marcas unicuique suæ classis remigi.’”
II. In the “Hymisquiđha,” one of the lays of the Elder Edda, and evidently one of the oldest of the cycle, is an account of Thor going a-fishing with the giant Hymir. Stanza 21 may be translated thus:—
“Which in the sternThen on his line The strong Hymir
Which in the sternDrew two whales Out of the sea,
Which in the stern Odin’s son,
Which in the sternVeorr, craftily With rope secured.”
