Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/209

 COLLECTANEA.

Olympos.

So far as I am aware no one seems to have any clear notion of the language to which the place name Olympos belongs. Nor does any clue to its meaning seem to have been discovered. It is not Greek. Professor Murray, in The Rise of the Greek Epic, says, " Names like Larisa, Corinthos, Zakynthos, Hyakinthos, Olympos . . . are no more Greek than Connecticut and Poughkeepsie and Alabama are English." What, then, is the language to which it can be affiliated? A. Fick pronounces it to be Phrygian, which may be to contradict Professor Murray, though little is known of that ancient tongue. Some words belonging to it are to be found in Hesychius, and it apparently belonged to the same group as Greek. Plato says the Phrygian words for "dog" and "fire" were the same as Greek. From inscriptions it may be deduced that this was the case with " king " and " mother." On the other hand, it is said that ava^ is peculiarly Phrygian, not Greek at all. FavaKTii is found on the tomb of Midas. Probably Fick is wrong, and I hope to show reason for thinking so. Olympos has also been said to be Pelasgian. What is Pelasgian ? To say this is to say it was Pre-Hellenic and little more. Is there any element in the word and its relation to Greek and other religions and to Zeus worship which gives a hint as to its origin ? I venture to suggest tentatively that there is. May it not be Semitic, and, if so, does it not recall the god El, and the Elohim of the first verse of Genesis, i.e. " The High One " or " The High Ones " ? The usual theological contention that Elohim is a singular and equal to " God " is, of course, absurd. Nothing in late Hebrew usage as to its being employed as a honorific plural or " plural of

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