Posted by Peter Ceresole on March 03, 2004 at 20:22:57 from 193.195.0.101 user PeterC.
In Reply to: Re: widdershins? posted by Robert Hill on March 01, 2004 at 21:39:17:
It seems both words are Scots; widdershins comes ultimately from Germanic languages, and deasil from Gaelic.
I suppose that the 'widdershins' has at its root the German word 'wieder'- 'against' or 'back'. Apparently (I saw this in an Oxford Current English so it must be true) it relates not to any kind of counter-clockwise, but against the direction of motion of the sun.
It's quite a thought how strange these things must have appeared to early sailors who first crossed the equator and gradually found the motion of the sun across the sky reversing. I remember experiencing this for the first time filming in Africa. It was strangely unsettling, especially as while filming you're looking out all the time for the movement of light, to decide which of several maginally lit bits of the scene you're going to shoot first. I had to consciously think it through to allow for the sun moving widdershins...
Not half as strange as walking out under the stars on the first night. That was a heck of a shock- and I wasn't even conscious of knowing anything about the layout of stars as 'usually' seen from 51 North. Although a leisurely pace has its advantages and the old sailors had a long time to get used to the change, I can easily understand that they got jolly worried at the whole business.