Names

[rastarogue]

can someone post a copy of the Sullivan's John Ballad?

[todd]

If Sullivan's John does wind up becoming Kat's boyfriend, he's going to need a lot more fleshing out first, to be worthy of a partnership with one of the leading figures in the webcomic (next to Annie). So far just about all that we know about him is his name. (We know more about Paz than we do about Sullivan's John at present.)

[aidan]

todd said:

If Sullivan's John does wind up becoming Kat's boyfriend, he's going to need a lot more fleshing out first,

True, but that wouldn't be hard, considering the whole comic so far is in the first school year. Just think what we might know by two years down the road

Not that I'm particularly pushing this theory, just idle speculation.


Here's on version of the ballad:


Sullivan's John

Sullivan's John, to the road you've gone
far away from your native home.
You've gone with a tinker's daughter
far along the road to roam.
Sullivan's John, you won't stick it long
'til your belly will soon go slack,
and your traipsing the road
with a mighty load
and a toodle-box on your back. (tool-box)

I met Katie Caipin with her neat baby
behind on her back strapped on,
and in her hand an old ash-plant
for to beat the donkey on.
Inquiring at every poor farmer's door
as along the road they went -
oh, where could they find an old pot to mend?
And where could they swap an ass?

There's a hairy ass there in the County Clare
in a place they call Spancil Hill,
where my brother James got a rap of a hames
and poor Paddy they tried to kill.
They loaded him into an old ass and cart
while big Kate and Mary looked on.
Oh, bad cess to the day that I went away (bad luck)
to join with a tinker's band.

[neal]

I don't think it has been mentioned, but antimony's periodic table name, Sb, comes from a latin word meaning 'mark'. As Annie's possessions (Reynardine's doll form) bear her symbol, it seems significant. Sorta. Maybe?

[La Poire]

neal said:

I don't think it has been mentioned, but antimony's periodic table name, Sb, comes from a latin word meaning 'mark'. As Annie's possessions (Reynardine's doll form) bear her symbol, it seems significant. Sorta. Maybe?

Maybe.

Incidentally, which latin word would that be? Why isn't the periodic table symbol simply An or something?

[aidan]

lapoire said:

Incidentally, which latin word would that be? Why isn't the periodic table symbol simply An or something?

In most cases, that's because the English name differs from the Latin name. for example, "Au" for gold.

In the case of antimony, I'm not sure what the whole story is. The "Sb" comes from the name of the major ore antimony is found in, stibnite (stibium, in Latin). Pure antimony metal was not isolated until at least the Renaissance.

Okay, looking at Elementymology it tells me that Jakob Berzelius used the abbreviation Sb, referring to the Latin word for the ore, in his notes, which became the standard abbrevation, despite the fact that almost all languages use some version of Antimonium as the name.

However, some Slavic and Altaic languages, such as Russian, use the name Surma for this element instead.

Wikipedia says stibium is Latin for "mark", but I find no support for this. It may be, but even if it is, it's probably a homonym to the name of the ore, which is pretty well agreed to be derived from the Greek name for the ore stibbi (not on my own computer, so it would take too long to type it in greek).

The site I linked gives an etymology of anitmony tracing it back to stibium, but this seems to be less well agreed upon.

[Aspen d'Grey]

Thanks for finding that, Aidan. Maybe 'Surma' is Antimony's mother because that is an older form of the name?