Thurso II (Donald Thomson): Week 2 – 12 February

I was listening to the radio the other day – a classical music station from somewhere in the world is playing at various times of the day – and I heard a word I’ve wondered about for quite a long time.  Since I was in university in fact.  The word is ‘branle’, which refers to a line or circle dance common in Renaissance Europe, or the music written for it.  In English, it is commonly pronounced ‘brawl’.  Which has always set me to wondering – is it actually related to the English word ‘brawl’?

A bit of digging on the internet has revealed some clues.  The original word – branle – comes from the French verb branler, to shake or brandish.  In English, as a verb it came to mean ‘To agitate, toss about, bandy’ but wasn’t frequently used.  It was more often used as a noun, referring to the dance.  There are instances of the noun also being used to mean ‘Wavering, agitation, (?) confusion’.

A Walk in the Snow

How does this relate to ‘brawl’, which would seem to have no connection to a dance from the courts of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries?  The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that one meaning of the word is possibly from the French ‘branler’, to move from side to side., and indeed one of the definitions of ‘brawl’ is ‘a particular pace or movement in dancing’.  This shows that from the late 16th to mid 19th centuries ‘brawl’ and ‘branle’ can mean the same thing.

Yet if you dig a bit further, the earliest uses of ‘brawl’ in English appear in the 1400s, with pretty much the same meaning it has today, of ‘to quarrel noisily’ or ‘to make a disturbance’.  The word has an uncertain origin.  

So, during a certain period of the English language, ‘brawl’ and ‘branle’ were synonymous, but at the same time ‘brawl’ could also have its other meaning of quarrel or disturbance.  But it isn’t farfetched to surmise  that the meanings mingled somewhere in the mists of time, as ‘to make a disturbance’ and ‘to agitate’ are not too distant in meaning.

As keen observers will see, the gansey has reached that awkward toddler stage of tottering on its feet, unsure of how long it will be able to stand upright before falling down plump on its backside.  The branle of the ribbing is complete, wavering back and forth on the ribbing, knit two steps forward then purl two steps back.  The colour revealing its beauty now there is a good chunk of it – a deep soft hue of pinky-red that is neither girlishly pink nor brashly red.  

Two Ravens

The weather, too, has been leading us a merry dance.  Here in Wick, we had a coating of an inch; further north in Thurso there was more, and Orkney had up to eight inches.  On the days without snow, there were gale force winds.  But the aconites and snowdrops are now blooming with abandon, and other plants are peeking through the soil.  Caithness is so ready for spring.