Hardy on "dumbledores" and "hag-rid" (was Re: Name meanin...

[Milz]

No: HPFGUIDX 44267

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., eloiseherisson at a... wrote:
> 
> Thanks. I wasn't doubting it was there in Hardy, just noting that I 
couldn't 
> find it in the Wessex Dialect Glossary!
> 

I posted it because it's an intersting passage from an unusual 
source. (And it might continue to dispell that "information" about a 
Greek mythology connection. I recently read one website and learned 
that Rubeus Hagrid was the greek god of jewelry---Don't ask me HOW 
they managed to get that! It seems like they're combining several 
mythological figures together!)

> But now I think about it, even in that passage, I think that the 
meaning may 
> be 'hagridden', rather than 'indigestion' per se, in 
that 'hagridden'  
> denotes having nightmares, something that is also associated in 
some people's 
> minds with digestive upset: eg the result of eating cheese late in 
the 
> evening. In fact it's in _A Christmas Carol_  isn't it, when 
Scrooge tells 
> Marley's ghost,
> 
> "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb 
of cheese, 
> a fragment of an underdone potato. "
> 
> *If* I'm right, she was still showing her sophistication by 
acknowledging 
> that her nightmares were the result ot digestive upset (a 
scientific 
> explanation), rather than a country girl's quaint and superstitious 
idea that 
> nightmares were caused by some evil spirit (the 'mare' bit of 
nightmare comes 
> from the Old English for incubus, an idea reflected in Pullman's 
use of the 
> word, 'nightghast'.)
> 'Walked together' isn't dialect either.
> 
> I'm no expert on Wessex dialect. But I'm not *convinced* 
that 'hagrid' is a 
> dialect word, though it may well mean just as you say.
> 
> Eloise
> Trying desperately not to sound argumentative, but just intrigued.
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Well, we'd have to figure out what "indigestion" meant in Hardy's 
time. ;-) Having suffered a few indisgestive nights myself, it's not 
fun, lol. 

The Mayor of Casterbridge is about a guy who in a drunken stupor 
sells his wife and child one evening at a country fair. When he 
sobers up the next day and learns what he did, he looks for them. 
Alas, they are gone and he vows never to touch a drop of alcohol 
again. Fast forward 20 or so years, he's now mayor of a town. Wife 
and daughter reappear, after having lived in the wilds of Canada and 
other parts of England. He and wife "re-marry" (though they 
technically never divorced). Daughter has no idea that step-dad is 
real dad. Uh-oh, wife falls ill. Before dying, she writes a letter to 
hubby and daughter. Hubby's letter reveals that this daughter isn't 
the same daughter whom he sold years ago, but the daughter of the 
fellow to whom she was sold. Though he keeps her parentage and how he 
was duped a secret, he feels a resentment toward her. The quoted 
passage is from that period of resentment, when he begins chastizing 
her speech and behavior (not befitting of a "lady" or the daughter of 
a Mayor).

So, with that contextual background in mind, "hag-rid" was an 
expression considered to be 'de classe' by the in-crowd of 
Casterbridge. It probably isn't a dialect word; however, it's meaning 
might be dialectic, similar to "biscuit", which in one region means 
one thing and in another something else.

Whether it means "indigestion" or a "nightmare", it seems to connote 
something distressingly uncomfortable (and NOT a figure in Greek 
mythology;-)!)

Milz