Re. GRGR: dogs

[David &/or Jane]

"Once we know that the sacred king was ritually lamed in a way that obliged
him to swagger or luch on high heels, we understand at last two or three
hitherto mysterious ancient icons. Tantalus, suspecnded over the water with
a fruit-branch above his head and the water always slipping away is
evidently being lamed in the Llew Llaw fashion:  originally his hair is
tied to the branch, one foot is on the bank, the other rests on something
in the waster -- perhaps a large boat-shaped basin -- that slips away.
Tantalus is a perfect type of Dionysus:  he was married to Euryanassa
(another form of Eurynome) a Moon-goddess; he was thrown down from Mount
Sipylus, in Pasgian Lydia, where was afterwards buried and had a hero
shrine; he was Pelops's cannibalistic father; he helped to steal a Dog from
a Cretan cave; and from his name derive three other Greek words meaning,
like saleuin, from which saleuma is formed, 'to swagger or lurch in one's
gait': tantaloein, tantaleuein and, by a metathesis, talantoein."
- --Robert Graves, _The White Goddess_, p. 333 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux,
1948)

[snip]

"Aesculapius is represented in Greek art with a dog beside him and an staff
in his hand around which twine orcular snakes."  TWG, p. 52

[snip]

Maybe I'm just barking up the wrong
tree.
______________________

No,

I'd say you've hit a vein.

Good stuff!


David