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Roots and Fruits

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by Alex Went

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3 episodes

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Podcast Overview

Come on a walk through the word-garden, and learn the fascinating stories behind the fruits and roots that grow there <a href="https://rootsandfruits.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">rootsandfruits.substack.com</a>

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1/16/2022

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Recent Episodes

February 25, 2022

Fruit of the burning bush

“Late August, given heavy rain and sunFor a full week, the blackberries would ripen.At first, just one, a glossy purple clotAmong others, red, green, hard as a knot.You ate that first one and its flesh was sweetLike thickened wine” Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Blackberry Picking’ is a powerful reminder of the adventure of childhood. Like famous Seamus, I grew up in the countryside, and like him went blackberrying, or ’brambling’, gathering fruit with the family on warm summer afternoons. But, perhaps because it is so ‘obvious’, I never questioned the origin of the fruit’s name. Today I’m setting out to correct that omission. Although blackberry has a clear enough lineage, from black and berry, the two words appear as a combination only a handful of times in Old English, and even then it’s not clear to which fruit they refer.For example, in one 10th century glossary, the Anglo-Saxon blaceberie is translated as Latin morus. Fair enough, as morus is also the origin of the name of blackberries in most Latin languages: Italian and Spanish mora, French mûre, and Portuguese amora (as usual showing a little Arabic influence). But although ultimately these all come from an Indo-European root meaning ‘black’, it seems that morus originally referred to a completely different fruit, the mulberry. Similarly, the 12th century Durham Plant-Name Glossary translates blaceberie as vacinia, which elsewhere is used to mean ‘bilberry’. In short, we can’t be certain that the Old English blaceberie was the same as the present-day English blackberry. The prick of conscienceThis makes sense when you realize that the more common Old English name was bræmbel or bræmel (= ‘a rough, prickly shrub’), the ancestor, of course, of our bramble. Its ancestor was the Proto-Germanic *bræmaz, which also gave us that other bushy plant, the broom. And the connection can be heard in the Germanic names for the blackberry: German Brombeere, Dutch braambes, Icelandic brómber and Danish brombær. To summarize, not all black berries are blackberries, but the ones that grow on prickly plants most definitely are, as Seamus Heaney found out only too painfully: “We trekked and picked until the cans were full,Until the tinkling bottom had been coveredWith green ones, and on top big dark blobs burnedLike a plate of eyes. Our hands were pepperedWith thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.”The first definite quotation linking the word blackberries with bramble bushes or briars comes in 1375: ‘Blake-beries þat on breres growen.’ And in the 1555 English translation of a celebrated history of the New World, we also find ‘Bramble busshes bearynge blacke berries or wylde raspes’. The prickliness of the blackberry bush is not confined to Germanic languages. Czech and Slovak ostružina is derived from ostruha = ‘a spur’. Albanian manaferrë (or ferrëmanzë) means ‘thorny mulberry’. And the Russian ежевика (yizhivika), Ukrainian ожина (ozhyna) and Polish jeżyna are all derived from from the same Slavic root ežь, meaning ‘a hedgehog’. Of hedgehogs, goats and bearsAs well as the extensive hedgehog group, a number of northern European languages associate the blackberry with animals. Finnish karhunvattuka means ‘bear-berry’, as do Swedish björnbär and Norwegian bjørnebær. The Latvian kazenes means ‘goat-berry’, while Lithuanian gervuogė originates in gérvė = ‘a crane’. Curiously that bird is also the original of English ‘cranberry’. I can’t finish without telling one of the most fascinating stories associated with blackberries. There is a Russian word for a prickly bramble bush, kupina (or купина in Cyrillic script). But this word is not used for any old bush. It refers specifically to the burning bush that miraculously spoke to Moses, as recorded in the book of Exodus. Tradition has it that the actual burning bush — in Hebrew סנה (seneh) — was Rubus fruticosus, the blackberry. And this undoubtedly explains why, with the exception of Albania and Slovenia, the Balkan countries of southern Europe all use words derived from kupina to refer to the blackberry. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://rootsandfruits.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">rootsandfruits.substack.com</a>

February 9, 2022

A tale of two seeds

A few weeks ago we looked at the <a target="_blank" href="https://rootsandfruits.substack.com/p/24-carrot-gold">history of the carrot</a>, and I mentioned that the name may have originated in Greek κέρας (‘keras’ = horn), alluding to the tapered shape of the root. An alternative theory connects the carrot with κᾰρωτόν (karoton). It’s not entirely clear which plant this was, but the word may be related to an earlier Greek word καρώ (karō), meaning ‘caraway’. Just a glance at their leaves is enough to show that carrot and caraway are indeed members of the same family, so it makes sense that their names might also be related. But what exactly is caraway? Best known as a culinary spice, Carum carvi is not dissimilar from its close relative, cumin. However, caraway’s aromatic scent is more like aniseed or fennel. Originating in the Middle East, for many thousands of years it has been a staple of mid-European cuisine, where it is found in rye-bread, soups, pickles such as sauerkraut and even liqueurs. Although the seeds are the most commonly consumed part of the caraway plant, the leaves are also used in traditional dishes such as Norwegian karvekålsuppe, a soup made of karve = caraway and kål = cabbage. Karve (along with Dutch karwij and English caraway) is derived from carvi, the spice’s name in mediaeval Latin as well as in modern French. And they are all ultimately derived from καρώ (karō) via the Arabic كراويا (karawiya). But in Spanish, thanks in part to that country’s strong trading links with Arabia, the word has formed differently, attracting the Arabic definite article ‘al’ and becoming alcaravea. What’s the difference?Things become a little more complicated with the arrival of cumin in the linguistic spice-rack. Cuminum cyminum has its origins in Hebrew כמון (‘kammon’), and is recorded as ku-mi-no in Linear B tablets dating from 1500 BC. Ancient Greek κύμινον (kuminon) became Latin cuminum, from which come Albanian qimnon, Turkish kimyon and ultimately English cumin.However, the similarity of the two plants and their seeds led to many languages adopting the same word to refer to both. In countries where the fennel-scented caraway was already the more traditional ingredient, cumin was identified by the addition of an epithet — often a place-name.For instance, a number of central and east European countries call cumin ‘Roman cumin’, since it travelled north from the Mediterranean. This is the case with Polish kmin rzymski (‘Roman cumin’), as well as Norwegian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Czech and Hungarian.Elsewhere, it is caraway that has to be distinguished. So in Italy, caraway is cumino tedesco (German cumin), and in Turkey, frenk kimyonu (Frankish cumin).A complete outlier is the Slovak word rasca for caraway. It’s unclear where it comes from, although Ľubor Králik, author of the Slovak etymological dictionary, traces it to an ancient diminutive *rastca/*rostca, meaning ‘something red’ or ‘red plant’. Currying flavourIf caraway is the seed of choice in Europe, the hotter and spicier cumin is a major ingredient of Indian dishes. Ask your local Indian restaurateur what’s in your curry and they will tell you jeera, from the Hindi जीरा (jira) meaning ‘cumin’. Ultimately derived from Sanskrit जीरक (jiraka), the same word comes via Persian into Kazakh and Russian as зира (zira). The story of caraway and cumin is a typical one, in which an imported plant closely resembles an indigenous or more familiar variant. Many speakers will depend on local context to define which particular spice they want, and end up calling them all a variant of the same word: ‘cumin’, ‘kmin’ or ‘kim’. Others, as explained above, will seek to differentiate them, for example by applying placenames.But there is a third, fascinating, possibility: the development of a new word through phonological change, driven by a need to differentiate. This has evidently happened in Ukrainian and Russian, where ‘kmin’ has mutated into ‘tmin’. This later form is generally used to mean ‘caraway’, while the original ‘kmin’ is reserved, like ‘zira’, to refer to cumin. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://rootsandfruits.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">rootsandfruits.substack.com</a>

January 16, 2022

Soul of the herb-garden

Along with <a target="_blank" href="https://rootsandfruits.substack.com/p/dew-of-the-sea">rosemary</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://rootsandfruits.substack.com/p/saving-grace">sage</a>, thyme is considered one of the ‘holy trinity’ of aromatic herbs, and like them it comes from the same family, Lamiaceae. It is found in abundance not only on the exposed rocky landscapes of the Mediterranean, but also in the literature of the classical world. In his handbook on agriculture, Georgics, the great Roman poet Virgil talks about bees producing ‘thymo fragrantia mella’, honey fragrant with thyme; and it seems that the herb was also a key ingredient of religious rituals. Thyme gives off a powerful fragrance when burnt, and the Greek word θυμός (thumós) meaning ‘soul’ or ‘breath’, can also mean smoke (Latin fumus is a direct descendant). The strong connection between these ideas has led some classicists to the conclusion that the word may even be related to θύω (thuo) the Greek word for to sacrifice or kill. Incidentally, the ‘thymus’ gland, which plays such a significant role in the development of a child’s immune system, is so-called either because it was once considered the seat of the soul, or because its shape was thought to resemble a bud of wild thyme. An early bloggerHad he been alive today, Saint Isidore of Seville might well have taken out a subscription to Roots and Fruits. Isidore was responsible for the greatest encylopedia of the natural world since the work of Pliny the Elder. What’s more, many of the entries in his 20-volume masterpiece concerned the origins of the names of plants.Not all of Isidore’s histories are reliable, but one which appears to be is a reference to an ancient name for thyme: ‘matris animula’ or ‘soul of the mother’. It seems that the leaves and flowers of the low-lying shrub were recommended for menstrual pain, and as a ‘comforter of the womb’. The name is preserved in Czech mateřídouška, Slovak materina dúška and Croatian majčina dušica — all of which combine a word for mother and the diminutive of the word for ‘soul’ — as well as Polish macierzanka and Bulgarian мащерка (mashcherka). Isidore tells us that this name is used for wild, or ‘creeping’ thyme Thymus serpillum, so-called because ‘its roots creep afar’ (‘radices… serpant longe’). A savoury from the EastIt should be noted that names of the mateřídouška type are commonly used to refer to a wide variety of ‘thymes’. For the thyme usually found in the kitchen, Thymus vulgaris, the languages above tend to use something more like English ‘thyme’: tymián in Czech and Slovak, tymianek in Polish, and so on. In Arabic-speaking countries, the word is زَعْتَر (za’atar). But in rather the same way, za’atar is pretty fluid; it can refer to thyme alone, or to a wider family of herbs, or else to a popular spice mixture of thyme with hyssop, sumac, and sesame.The name za’atar is the probable source of the Latin satureia, from which, via Old English sæþerie, we arrive at the present-day savoury. This herb, closely related to thyme, is used in a wide variety of culinary applications, from France (where it forms the basis of herbes de Provence) to the Balkans where it provides fragrance for sarma, or stuffed cabbage rolls, a kind of dolmades. Sober and grave? This concludes our midwinter trip to the herb garden. The four plants we’ve looked at — parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme — famously make up the chorus of the folk-song Scarborough Fair.Sometimes known as ‘The Elfin Knight’ or ‘The Cambric Shirt’, the song is structured around a sequence of paradoxical or impossible tasks which must be solved before the singer can call his loved one ‘true’. In one way it’s an admission of defeat before the courtship has even begun. Humans are frail, and even with all the time in the world can never hold on to what they have. The Simon and Garfunkel version, featured in The Graduate (1968) is the most familiar, but its history is very much older. Like all such songs, whose lyrics were not recorded but handed down by oral tradition, mistakes and variations could creep in. One version, for example, substitutes ‘savoury’ for ‘parsley’: ‘Savoury, sage, rosemary and thyme’. And another, intriguingly, suggests that the entire chorus of herbs may be a misinterpretation of a very different, and perhaps more optimistic message: ‘Are you going to Scarborough Fair?Sober and grave grows merry in time.’ This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://rootsandfruits.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1">rootsandfruits.substack.com</a>

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What is Roots and Fruits?: Come on a walk through the word-garden, and learn the fascinating stories behind the fruits and roots that grow there <a href="https://rootsandfruits.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast">rootsandfruits.substack.com</a>
How often does this podcast release new episodes?: This podcast updates daily.
Where can I listen to this podcast?: This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
Does this podcast accept guests?: No, this podcast does not typically feature guests.

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