féowertynenihts and other long pillaging junkets

Fortnight
Fortnight is a contraction of the Old English féowertyneniht, literally fourteen nights. It dates to c. 1000.

This word, found on www.wordorigins.org, has long had me wondering. In grade school we always defined it as "two weeks." What I wonder is this -- what special ritual, or illness, or celebration, or voyage, or period of mourning, etc. lasted exactly 14 nights that such a word would become so enduring a part of the language?

Also on www.wordorigins.org, I found the word frog-march. This word has popped up everywhere -- from descriptions of humiliations of prisoners in the journals of the Seven Years War to the last Harry Potter installment, where the hero was frogmarched someplace by the Weasleys. Turns out the origins point to the carrying of all limbs by 4 soldiers, and thus the belly of the person scraping the ground like a frog. Perhaps because of my own historical bias, and the place I heard it first used (the journals of a British officer, describing the taking of a French one) I always figured it had something to do with the refernces to Frenchmen as "frogs."

This site seems pretty useful, although given my preference, I would always check it against something else more exhaustive, such as the OED.

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kjolly/field.htm

This site I found through http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/hel/, the History of the English Language page, or HEL. This linked site lists translations of Old English spells, this one for Field Remedies. it is fascinating in that it contains not only very pagan suggestions (the sprinkling of various products of animal and plant, similar to ancient Native American rituals) but the traditional sign of the cross and Our Father prayers as part of the ritual. This mixing of pagan and Christian was one of the things that ultimately helped English to survive its conquest by Rome (and later Normandy) -- that people did not forsake the old for the new, but incorporated it inasmuch as they could understand.

This site has lots of good stuff to peruse, and I think it will be useful as the course progresses; it will also someday provide myriad of anecdotes to dazzle and gross-out future students.