Wolf feast

In some parts of Serbia, on Christmas Eve people used to take a table laid with food on the doorstep of the house and would then ask wolves to come to the feast. In other parts of Serbia they would invite the dead to the feast in the same way.

Doorstep is one of the most sacred places in Serbian houses because it is believed that the dead ancestors gather under the doorstep stone. There are indications that Serbs (some of them anyway) used to bury their dead under the doorstep, where they would "protect the entrance into the house" from evil spirits.

So why did Serbs invite wolves to the feast in the same way they invited the dead to the feast?

Serbs venerated their ancestors. They believed that all that is good and bad comes from happy or unhappy ancestors. So it was extremely important to keep them happy, which usually meant entertained, well fed and well watered. This is why no major Serbian celebration could pass without the ancestors being invited to join. And Christmas in particular, being the biggest celebration in Serbian calendar, had to be celebrated together with the ancestors.

Now Serbs believed in Father Sky (Sun) and Mother Earth. They believed that they actually descended from these "deities". They particularly considered Dabog (Sky, Sun god) to be their forefather.

At the same time wolf was the totem animal of the Serbs, their animal twin. The belief that wolf was Serbian animal twin was manifested in many folk customs. For instance when a child was born, the custom in Serbian villages was for the father to open the house door, stand on the doorstep, and announce the birth of a son by shouting: "Rodila vučica vuka!" (A she-wolf just gave birth to a wolf cub!). A mother would announce its wolf nature to her child by singing it a lullaby which started with "Nini sine, vuče i bauče, vučica te u gori rodila" (Sleep my son, my wolf, a she-wolf gave birth to you in a mountain). A newborn baby was pulled through a wolf jaw to protect it from evil, illness and demons...In that way Dabog, the supreme god of the Serbs, the archetypal ancestor of the Serbs, who was also called the Wolf Shepherd, was giving his blessing to his new descendant. Amulets made from various parts of wolf body were used to protect people from various dangers including devil himself. The name Vuk (Wolf) is a very common Serbian name and it is believed that it protects the person from evil.

It was even believed that Serbs turn to wolves when they die.

Vampire, a dead body which gets out of the grave attacks people and sucks their blood is by Serbs also called vukodlak (werewolf).

In Montenegro and Hercegovina, Serbs simply called vampire "wolf". Serbian Kuči tribe from Montenegro believed that every vampire after a while turns into a wolf. The reason why vampire is seen as a wolf is because Dabog, the Wolf Shepherd, is not just the Sun (Sky) god, but also the good of the underworld, the good of the dead. Which is why his animal, wolf, a chthonic animal itself, is seen as a natural metamorphosis for the dead. Werewolf (Vampire) is the link between the world of the living and the world of the dead, as he is both dead and alive...

So this is why the same ritual invitation to the feast was performed for both the ancestors and the wolves.

In some parts of Serbia, the Christmas feast for wolves was laid on a crossroads and wolves were called to come and "take theirs and leave mine". The man who brought the food for wolves had to run home without turning.

Crossroads are one of the favourite gathering places of the dead. The "not turning while going home" rule is also applied to the family coming back from the graveyard after burying someone. Here again we see the link between the wolves and the dead...

Crop devouring insect

A weevil is a type of beetle from the Curculionoidea superfamily. They are usually small, less than 6 mm (0.24 in), and herbivorous. Many weevils are considered pests because of their ability to damage and kill crops. One of the most dangerous species of weevil is the grain or wheat weevil (Sitophilus granarius) which damages stored grain. This Beatle can devastate granaries and destroy all the grain stored inside of them. 

Here is a picture of a wheat weevil on grains:

In Serbian the word for weevil is "žižak" dialectal "žižek". The same word is also found in Croatian and Slovenian and in Hungarian as a borrowing from South Slavic languages where the word is "zsizsik".

The word comes from the word for grain "žito". The word "žito" is said to come from Proto-Slavic "*žito" meaning "grain, corn".  And this word is cognate with the Slavic word "život" meaning life and comes from the same root which I postulated to be "ži" meaning "breath, breath of life, life force". I talked about this in my post "Breath".

At the same time in Sumerian language we find this word:

"zi" (ži?) - breathing, breath (of life), life, throat, soul...
zíd, zì - flour, meal (life + motion as in grinding).
zíz (žiž?) - emmer (wheat) (reduplicated zé or zi)
zìz (žiž?) - a crop devouring insect


Interesting right?

Wrach

In Cornish and Welsh the word "wrach" means old woman, hag, witch. Fraic as in the placename Leitir Fraic is said to be an old obsolete Irish word for a woman. In Serbian, the word "vrač" pronounced "vrach" means doctor, physician, shamanistic priest, witch doctor, magician, warlock. The verb "vračati" means to cast spells, to divinate, to perform any magical action. The word is found in all Slavic languages. 

In Serbian villages the role of "vrač" was usually performed by a woman who was then called "vračara", feminine form of "vrač". Vračara was the healer, midwife, amulet maker, spell caster, fortune teller, and basically keeper of "magical" and other ancient religious traditions and taboos. Some of the rituals preserved as part of this folk magic are remnants of ancient Vedic, Greek, Roman, Celtic, Old Slavic, Turkish... religious rituals which accumulated in Serbian culture...

Vračara was usually an old woman who received her "magical" knowledge from her mother who got it from her mother who got it from her mother...Vračara was quintessential witch...But witch which was part of the community. The good witch. The real ones never charged for their services. They did their what they did because it was their calling. 

Vračara was most likely to look something like this. Basically your typical Serbian baba (grandmother, old woman, hag, "wrach"):

The tradition of vračara was suppressed during Christianity, when vračara was seen as part of the old pagan belief system. It was also suppressed during Communism when vračara was at best seen as part of the backward peasant culture and at worst as fraudster who was danger to society. It is today also suppressed as stupid dangerous superstition of which we Serbs should be ashamed... 

Despite centuries of suppression, village vračara managed to survive until recently. However today the tradition is dying out because the Serbian villages are dying out and crumbling to dust. And soon the Celtic "wrach", Serbian "vrač", the old village "witch" will disappear into the legend for ever...

Trom

In Serbian and Croatian we have adjective "trom" which means:

moving with difficulty
sluggish
slow

It is implied that the slowness and sluggishness comes from heaviness. The word has an opposite meaning to words meaning springiness, lightness of movement, lightness.

In Makedonian we have word "tromav" which means cumbersome, clumsu. 

This word is, as far as i am aware, found only in these South Slavic languages.

And in Celtic languages.

Irish "trom"

of great weight, of high specific gravity, of heavy texture, stodgy, hard to digest, dense, thick, abundant, of great force or intensity, laborious, burdensome, grievous, severe, harsh, tyrannous
unsparing, sultry, oppressive, weighty, profound, important (heavy), dull, tedious, laboured, drowsy, deep, slumberous, oppressed, sad

Old Irish "trom"

heavy (weight), heavy, severe, grievous, difficult, sad, sorrowful, great, vast, powerful, mighty

Scottish Gaelic "trom"

heavy, hard, difficult, weighty, serious, depressed, melancholy, addicted (heavily into something), pregnant (with child)

Manx "trome"

heavy, substantial, dense, difficult, emphatic, intense, pregnant

Welsh "trwm"

literally and figuratively heavy

Apparently all these Celtic words come from Proto Celtic root "trummos" meaning heavy. 

Where does the Serbian word comes from then? 

I personally believe that it is a borrowing from Celtic languages. But how come we find this word only in Celtic languages and in Serbian (Croatian)? When was this word borrowed into Serbian (Croatian) and where? 

From your hands

In Serbian the word "ruka" means "hand, arm". This is Slavic only word, borrowed by Latvians and Lithuanians. The expression "iz ruke" means "from the hand". You take something that someone is giving you from his hand. The expression "iz ruku" means "from the hands". You take something that someone is giving you from his hands. To give something, you need to "let go of it", "let it out of your hand" which in Serbian is "iz ruke" = from the hand, "iz ruku" = from the hands, or if you are an "uneducated peasant" you would say "iz rukama" = from the hands

But today while browsing the Sumerian dictionary, as you would :) , I came across this: Sumerian: ISRUK = Gave (he gave) ISRUKAM = Gave (he gave to me)

I also found this word:

Sumeran:

NADANU = Give, Give (to pay)

In Serbian when an "uneducated peasant" wants to give you something, especially whey he has to give it to you grudgingly, like for instance when he has to give you money, he will often say to you "na!" meaning "here you go", "here it is", "take it". The word "na" also means "to, at, of" so in South of Serbia "uneducated peasants" would say "podaj to na njega" meaning "give this to him".

Once the thing is given, in Serbian it is "dan (M), dana (F), dano (N)" meaning "given".

Now the Slavic verb "dati" meaning "to give" comes from Indoeuropean root "deh₃-". But how many non Slavic languages have word "na" with the above meaning?

And what the hell are these words doing in Sumerian???

Any plausible explanation anyone?

Na

South Eastern dialect of Serbian has a peculiar grammatical construct. It uses "na" meaning "on" to express belonging, possession. This construct using the word "na" exists (as far as I know) also in neighboring Macedonian and some Bulgarian dialects, all centered around southern Carpathian or Balkan mountains.

South Serbian:

Q: Na koga je ovo kuče - on whom is this hound (whose hound is this)? 

A: To je kuče na Petar - this is the hound on Petar (of Peter)

Bulgarian:

A: Tova e kuče na Petar - this is the hound on Petar  (of Peter)

Macedonian:

A: Toa e kuče na Petar - this is the hound on Petar  (of Peter)

This construct defines possession through physical contact which is the oldest known form of possession. What belongs to me is on me, within my boundary, within what i can grab, hold, wear, carry, protect...

Fernand Cormon, Cain, Musée d’Orsay, Paris

What is interesting is that the Irish language has the same construct. On the page about Hiberno-English (English dialect spoken in Ireland which is hugely influenced by the Irish grammar and vocabulary) we read:

There are some language forms in Hiberno-English that stem from the fact that there is no verb "to have" in Irish. Instead, possession is indicated in Irish by using the preposition at, (in Irish, ag.). To be more precise, Irish uses a prepositional pronoun that combines ag "at" and mé "me" to create agam which basically means "at me, on me". This is then reflected in Hiberno-English, where the verb "to have" is used, interchangeably with phrases "with me" or "on me" that derive from "tá … agam". This gives rise to the frequent:

"Do you have the book?" – "I have it with me."
"Have you change for the bus on you?"
"He will not shut up if he has drink taken."

My favorite Irish Gaelic expression using this construct is "Tá áthas orm" meaning "I am happy, I have happiness" but literally meaning "There is happiness on me" :)

So what language did this construct originate in: Irish or these south Slavic dialects? Remember that the Irish language only has this constrict to express possession. And that this part of the Balkans was once "Celtic central" and is the area where we still find "Celtic" village crosses, like this one from Crna Trava:

And how old is this construct? Is it possible that this is a true linguistic fossil, which comes to us from the time before settled communities and static property? 

And does a similar construct exists in any other language? 

Well it seems that it does. In Finnish of all languages. Finnish doesn't have a separate verb for "to have". Instead it uses a different sentence construction, centered around the verb "olla", "to be". It's interesting to note that the "minulla on" literally means"on me there is". 

Very interesting, because it shows the age of this construct. 

Children playing

Irish: "Tá na páistí ag súgradh sa tsráid"
English: The children are playing in the street.

In the above Irish sentence the word "súgradh" (pronounced "sugra") means "(act of) playing, sporting; amusement, flirting, having fun. This is a verbal noun of a verb that has no finite or participial forms. The Irish "súgradh" comes from the Old Irish "súgrad" with the same meaning. The etymology of this word is unknown. This word has no cognates outside of Gaelic (that I know of)...

Now in Serbian we have the word "igra" meaning "play, game". The verb "igrat", "igrati" means "to play, to dance, to have fun". This word comes from the Proto-Slavic jьgra and has cognates in all Slavic languages: 

Belarusian: ігра ‎(ihra)
Russian: игра ‎(igra)
Ukrainian: гра ‎(hra)
Bulgarian: игра ‎(igra)
Macedonian: игра ‎(igra)
Serbo-Croatian: игра (igra)
Slovene: igra
Old Czech: jhra
Czech: hra
Polabian: jagréića
Old Polish: igra
Polish: gra
Slovak: hra, ihra
Slovincian: gra
Upper Sorbian: jhra, hra
Lower Sorbian: gra, igra

The etymology of this word is unknown. This word has no cognates outside of Slavic languages (that I know of)...

Now are these two words related? I think so because in some dialects of Serbian we have another version of the word "igra": "sigra". This word also means "play, game". And the verb derived from this word is "sigrat", "sigrati" meaning "to play, to dance, to have fun".

So we have:

Slavic wide: "igra", "igrat"
Serbian only: "sigra", "sigrat"
Irish: "súgradh"

All meaning 

"play, game" and "to play, to dance, to have fun"

What do you think? Coincidence?


According to the latest archaeological data, Balkans and particularly the territory of today’s Serbia was a mayor Celtic (Gaulic) stronghold between the 4th and the 1st century bc. I wrote about this in my post "Bran - Vran". The genetic data from the Balkans is showing that the descendants of these Celts are still living in the Balkans, Slavicised and mixed with many other people into Serbians. Maybe this is why it is in the Serbian language that we find words like "sigra" which is the link between the Irish "súgradh" and the Slavic "igra"...

Irij

"...the souls of our ancestors shine every morning from Iriy..." - "The book of Veles"

Ireland. Image courtesy Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC

"Éire",is Irish for "Ireland", the name of an island and a sovereign state. It evolved from the Old Irish word Ériu, which was the name of a Gaelic goddess. Ériu is generally believed to have been the matron goddess of Ireland, a goddess of sovereignty, or simply a goddess of the land.

There are two theories that try to explain the origin of this word.

The first one says that the name Ériu is derived from the name other people gave to the island of Ireland. The second one says that the name originated in Ireland and was the name by which the Irish called their own land. They both have their proponents.

Ireland, the western most land theory

The first theory, which was proposed in the 19th century, and for which we read that it "does not follow modern standards of etymology", derives the name from Scottish Gaelic. According to this etymology, the origin of "Ériu" comes from ì (island) + thairr (west) + fónn (land), which together give ì-iar-fhónn, or "western isle". This is similar in meaning to the Norse name for Irish people, "west men". If we look at the map of Northern Europe, we can see that indeed Ireland is the land lying directly westward, looking from Scotland and from the Baltic sea, from which both Northern Slavic, Baltic, Norse and Danish mariners would have come to Ireland.  So Western Isle and West Men makes a lot of sense, but as we are told it "does not follow modern standards of etymology"...

Ireland, the fat, full, abundant land theory

The second theory, which apparently "follows the modern standards of etymology" says that the origin of "Ériu" comes from Proto-Goidelic "Īweriū" or "Īveriū" which comes from Proto-Celtic "Φīwerjon", which comes from from Proto-Indo-European "piHwerjon", which is related to "piHwer", which is supposed to mean "fat, full, abundant". This would suggest that the meaning of the word Ériu is "abundant land". The whole root chain here is reconstructed, meaning that we think the words in the chain might have existed, and might have the meanings we propose, and might have been related to each other, but we actually have no idea if this is true or not. On top of this, we don't know if the meaning "fat, full, abounding" is correct. Ireland is certainly not especially abundant compared to England or the rest of Europe. The land in Ireland is not in any way fatter or more fertile and more suited for agriculture, crop growth. In fact the opposite is the case which you can see from this map of land use in Europe.

You can see the distribution of the arable farmland (yellow), forest (dark green), pasture (light green), and tundra or bogs in the north (dark yellow). It is plain to see that Ireland does not deserve to be the only place named "fat, full, abundant land". The description of the quality of the Irish soil is best summarized on the web page called "Soils in Ireland" where the first sentence is "The general consensus is that Irish soil quality is good overall". So good, not great, not amazing. One thing that I would like you to note on the above picture is that Ireland is mostly light green, which is the color of pasture. The data found on the "Crops and Livestock Survey" for 2015 is (in thousands of hectares):

Area farmed 4,429.5
Total crops, fruit and horticulture 359.7

Total cattle and sheep production related land over 4,000

This means that most of the Irish agricultural land is used as pasture land. The reason why this is so is because the combination of the Irish climate which is wet and cold and the Irish soil which is acidic, makes Ireland best suited for growing grass, not agricultural crops. And hence Ireland is basically one huge grass field full of grazing cattle and sheep with few cold climate crops fields, forests and bogs strewn around. 

Anyway :)

One of the proponents of this modern scientific "fat, full, abundant land" theory is John Koch. In his work "Celts, Britons, and Gaels—Names, Peoples, and Identities" he provides a detailed discussion on the subject, which is intended to prove the theory. Here is what he says:

"...The Irish as ‘them’ are first recorded as Latin derived from Greek Iernoi Īernī. Later, is recorded more correctly as Iouernoi Īuernī. The first occurrence of Īernī probably goes back to a Coastal Itinerary of Marseille of the sixth century BC. In both instances, the name of the people Īuernī is derived from the place-name found in classical sources as Īueriō. Īueriō is none other than the Primitive Irish forerunner of Old Irish Ériu, Modern Éire. The etymological sense of the word is ‘the Fat’ or ‘Fertile Country’. Ériu, genitive Érenn, corresponds to Welsh Iwerydd ‘Irish Sea, Atlantic’ and Iwerddon ‘Ireland’. The ancient Celtic forms behind these are the nstem nominative *Īweriū, genitive *Īwerionos. In the Antonine Itinerary, a Latin source of the early 3rd century AD, we find Insula Clota in Hiverione. Dative Īveriōne implies nominative Īveriō ‘Ireland’, thus directly reflecting the Primitive Irish nom. *Īweriū. Thus the Indo-European preform would have been  *piHwerjōn ‘The Fertile Land’. I proposed that the ethnonym Īuernī proves that Irish—or the Celtic language that was to become Irish was spoken in Ireland already at the time that the Greeks first heard of the place in the 6th century BC. More recently, Patrick Sims-Williams has doubted this conclusion. Instead, he argues that Īueriō and Īuernī could have been names in use by Celtic speaking peoples on the European mainland for an Ireland that was not yet itself Celtic speaking.  I do not think that this alternative is plausible, for the following reasons. Not only were Īueriō and Īuernī in use in what was Ireland’s Final Bronze Age or Dowris II and not only are they Celtic names, but they have also survived in the Irish language of literate, historical times. Īuernī, the name that the Greeks borrowed, survives as Old or Middle Irish Érainn, a name which not only exists in Irish, but exists in no other Celtic language except Irish. In medieval Irish literature Érainn is used for tribal and dynastic groups in Munster and elsewhere. The groups in question are marginal within historical times, but credited with having ruled the prestigious royal site of Tara in remote antiquity; so the name is stratified deeply within Irish-language Irish tradition itself and occurs nowhere else in the Celtic world. Furthermore, the place-name Ériu has, as a byform, a common noun Old Irish íriu, meaning ‘earth, land’. There is no corresponding word from Brittonic or Continental Celtic. In other words, Ériu is explicable has having arisen out of the semantics of Irish in particular, rather than Celtic in general. Furthermore, names derived from the same root as Ériu have survived prominently as submerged eponyms in the Irish origin legends of Lebar Gabála and related texts. These include the prominent Milesian invaders Iär and Íth. The latter’s name simply means ‘fat’. The connection of the name Iär to Éire and Érainn is not at all apparent within the literate period. But *Īueros, the pre-form of Iär, would have been an obvious eponym for Īueriō in the Primitive Irish of prehistoric times... Īueriō was known to mean the ‘Fat Land’, which was no longer so for the writers of Lebar Gabála...."

Convinced? Lets have a look at the highlighted parts. 

"...Ériu, genitive Érenn, corresponds to Welsh Iwerydd ‘Irish Sea, Atlantic’ and Iwerddon ‘Ireland’..."

If you are in Wales and you look directly westward, what you see on a clear day is: Ireland. So Ireland is the land in the west. And after Ireland, further west is the Atlantic ocean, the western sea. Or maybe the Irish sea and Atlantic got their name from Ireland.

"....Īueriō was known to mean the ‘Fat Land’, which was no longer so for the writers of Lebar Gabála.... "

Ok, this is strange. Īueriō is a word with an unknown meaning and so we proposed that it means "Fat Land" based on a completely derived etymology linking it to the derived PIE root "piHwer" which is supposed to mean "fat, full, abundant". Now it is " known to mean Fat Land"? The old Irish "íriu" which was supposed to have been derived from Īueriō, means "land, earth, soil; the earth, the world". Not "fat, full, abundant land". And if the meaning "fat, full, abundant land" was not known to the users of the word "íriu" in the Irish annals, maybe it is because this word never actually meant "fat, full, abundant land" but just "land, earth, soil; the earth, the world"....

But this part is the most interesting.

"...Érainn, a name which not only exists in Irish, but exists in no other Celtic language except Irish....Furthermore, the place-name Ériu has, as a byform, a common noun Old Irish íriu, meaning ‘earth, land’. There is no corresponding word from Brittonic or Continental Celtic. In other words, Ériu is explicable has having arisen out of the semantics of Irish in particular, rather than Celtic in general..."

Maybe the word "íriu" doesn't exist in other Celtic languages, but it exists in Slavic languages.

Iriy, Irij or Vyriy (Russian: ирий, ирей, вырий) is a mythical place in Slavic mythology where birds fly for the winter and souls go after death, sometimes identified with paradise. The term was first mentioned in the writings of Vladimir II Monomakh. During the Christianization of Kievan Rus', people were able to imagine heaven and hell based on the idea of Iriy. By the way Viriy is just v + iriy = in, into + iriy. Question: where do the souls of the dead people go? V Iriy = Into Iriy.

I know what you will say. This Slavic Iriy can be any place and surely the words similarity is a coincidence. But there is more. Slavic mythology tells us more about Iriy in the story about Jarilo: 

"Up until the 19th century in Russia, Belarus and Serbia, folk festivals called Jarilo were celebrated in late spring or early summer. Early researchers of Slavic mythology recognized in them relics of pagan ceremonies in honor of an eponymous spring deity. In Northern Croatia and Southern Slovenia, especially Bela krajina, similar spring festivals were called Jurjevo, nominally dedicated to St. George, and fairly similar to the Jarilo festivals of other Slavic nations.

All of these spring festivals were basically alike: processions of villagers would go around for a walk in the country or through villages on this day. Something or someone was identified to be Jarilo or Juraj: a doll made of straw, a man or a child adorned with green branches, or a girl dressed like a man, riding on a horse. Certain songs were sung which alluded to Juraj/Jarilo's return from a distant land across the sea, the return of spring into the world, blessings, fertility and abundance to come.

Jarilo was a son of the supreme Slavic god of thunder, Perun, his lost, missing, tenth son, born on the last night of February, the festival of Velja Noć (Great Night), the pagan Slavic celebration of the New Year. On the same night, however, Jarilo was stolen from his father and taken to the world of the dead, where he was adopted and raised by Veles, Perun's enemy, Slavic god of the underworld and cattle. The Slavs believed the underworld to be an ever-green world of eternal spring and wet, grassy plains, where Jarilo grew up guarding the cattle of his stepfather. In the mythical geography of ancient Slavs, the land of the dead was assumed to lie across the sea, where migrating birds would fly every winter. This land of the dead was by Slavs known as Iriy, Irij or Vyriy (Russian: ирий, ирей, вырий).

With the advent of spring, Jarilo returned from the underworld, that is, bringing spring and fertility to the land. Spring festivals of Jurjevo/Jarilo that survived in later folklore celebrated his return."

So...Wet, ever green land of eternal spring, full of cattle which lies across the sea and is called Iriy...

This is a typical picture from Ireland. What do you see on it? Ever green land of eternal spring, full of cattle, which lies across the sea. Is there better description of Éire, Ireland?

I have been living in Ireland for past 21 years. It snowed properly once. And we had one proper summer month. The rest of the time it was a perpetual wet spring. 

So is Īueriō, Iriu, Éire Slavic Iriy? I believe so, because believe or not there is actually no other place in Europe that fits the description. It is Ireland's unique position in the north of Europe and in the middle of the Golf stream that gives it unique climate ideal for growing grass and which makes it a paradise for cattle herders. 

And this is why the ancient Irish society was based around cattle. Cattle was wealth, cattle was currency, cattle was what people fought for. Even the main Irish heroic myth, "Táin Bó Cúailnge" is a description of a cattle raid...

Now interestingly the god that stole Jarilo, the young sun, and who took him to the land of the dead, Iriy, was called Veles, but who was also known as Volos. In Serbian, the word Vo, Vol means bull. So Volos would actually be "Cattle god". A very good name for a good that rules over Iriy, Īueriō, Iriu, Éire...Funnily enough in Irish the word for cattle is Bó which in Serbian means to stab, like with a horn. There is a whole cluster of words based on this root in Serbian and Irish. But not just the words for cattle are the same in Serbian and Irish. Serbians from Bosnia managed to preserve ancient bull fighting described in "Táin Bó Cúailnge". 

Bull fighting, Bosnia

I wrote about the common Irish and Serbian words and customs related to cattle in my post "Bó - Vo"

The obsession with cattle and viewing cattle as the main source of wealth was also the same in Serbian and Irish society. In Serbian language one of the old words for cattle was "blago" which literally means "treasure, wealth". So a green land, where grass never stops growing, ideal for growing cattle, must have looked like paradise for cattle herders. And guess what. The word for paradise in Slavic languages is "Raj" (pronounced ray), which is very very similar to the word for otherworld "Iriy". As a matter of fact we can get the word Iriy (which has no known etymology) from Je Raj (pronounced ye ray) meaning "is paradise". 

Slavic word "raj" meaning paradise comes from the Proto Slavic: "rajь" - paradise. This is an ancient word because the cognates include 

Avestan, Old Persian: ‎"rāy" - paradise, wealth and 
Sanskrit: रयि ‎(rayi) - rich, property, goods, possessions, treasure, wealth, house, stuff, materials

Proto-Italic: "reis" - thing, matter. Originally, the noun was a "regular" i-stem, and would have been *rēj- before vowels (genitive *rējes, dative *rējei etc.), and *rēi before consonants and word-finally (nominative *rēis, perhaps originally disyllabic). In the former, -j- was regularly lost, while in the latter the diphthong was shortened before another consonant, due to Osthoff's law.

Apparently these are the only descendants of the Proto-Indo-European *reh₁ís ‎meaning “wealth, goods”

If for our ancestors "raj" paradise was a place of wealth, and the greatest wealth was cattle, then the land of cattle was indeed a paradise "je raj" = "iriy". 

Was that paradise Īueriō, Iriu, Éire? Was the original meaning of the word "land rich in cattle" rather than "fat land"?

There are two worlds, the world of the living and the world of the dead. The sun spends the day in the world of the living and the night in the world of the dead.
And there are two gates that stand on the border between these two worlds: the eastern gate and the western gate. 
Every morning the eastern gate is opened by Danica, the day star, which is in the morning called Zornjača, the morning star, and the sun comes from the world of the dead into the world of the living. 
And every evening the sun goes from the world of the living into the world of the dead through the western gate, which is then closed behind him by Danica, the day star, which is in the evening called Večernjača, the evening star. 
The souls of the dead follow sun to the western gate, which is where the entrance into the land of the dead is. 
And there they enter Iriy, the ever green land of eternal spring, full of cattle, raj, paradise. And every morning, when the eastern gate of the world of the dead is opened, they smile on us...

End

I have been passing by this traffic sign every day for years. I think it deserves a post in my blog. 

The Irish word "críoch" means "end, boundary, limit, aim, purpose, confines, territory, district, land". The word comes from Old Irish "crích" with the same meaning (compare Scottish Gaelic crìoch). Apparently it has no cognates in other Indoeuropean languages.

However :)

In Serbian the word "kraj" means "end, border, edge, brink, brim, fringe, side, rim, land, country, bank, near (the end, edge), beside (by the end, edge), despite (after the end of all that)"....

The word comes from the Proto-Slavic "krajь" and is found in all the other Slavic languages with the same meaning:

East Slavic:

Old East Slavic: краи ‎(krai)
Belarusian: край ‎(kraj)
Russian: край ‎(kraj)
Ukrainian: край ‎(kraj)

South Slavic:

Old Church Slavonic: краи ‎(krai)
Bulgarian: край ‎(kraj)
Macedonian: крај ‎(kraj)
Serbo-Croatian: kraj
Slovene: kràj

West Slavic:

Czech: kraj
Kashubian: krôj
Polish: kraj
Slovak: kraj
Slovincian: krɵ̯̏·i̯, kråj
Lower Sorbian: kraj, kšaj
Upper Sorbian: kraj

The cognate of the word "kraj" meaning "end" in the Slavic languages is the word "kraj, kroj" meaning to cut, to create end, to create edge...

Apparently, according to the official etymologies, these two words (the Irish "críoch" and Slavik "kraj"), which both have the same meaning, are not in any way related...

Interesting don't you think...

Pride

I am watching the reports on the Irish elections. From constituency to another, the scene is always the same. The representative of the election comity reads the results announcing that someone was elected to the Dáil Éireann (House of Deputies, Parliament) . Then you hear cheering and then the camera swings towards the camp of the successful candidate. There you see a lot of happy people, shouting and laughing. And then two of them would lift the proud new member of the Parliament on their shoulders and carry him around.

What is the root of this custom? Well it is simple really. If you are proud of something, you flaunt it, carry it around, show it off by carrying it around on yourself, wearing it. A rare and expensive item of clothing or jewelry or a rare and expensive gadget thus become status symbols, which distinguish you from the crowd. This is the ultimate example of a something that you carry around to show off: an engagement ring. I got him, I won...

If you are a soldier, you proudly wear uniform of your army and insignia of your unit and the flag of your clan, tribe or country. You proudly carry a good and expensive sword which is not easy to get by and you carry the heads or scalps of the dead enemies that you have killed using that sword or a medal saying that you have killed many enemies (much more practical). And you get to be carried on your comrade's shoulders:

If you are a sportsman you carry a laurel wreath on your head that says you were victorious or a medal or a trophy in a shape of cup or plate. You proudly wrap yourself in the flag of your country and carry it around. And you get to be carried on your supporter's shoulders:

If you are proud of a person, you carry him around on your shoulder. This was a treatment which is reserved for heroes and champions. Having a hero or a champion as a member of your family, clan or tribe becomes a status symbol which makes the family, clan or tribe look good. And what do you do with a status symbol? You carry it around, show it off by carrying it around.

In Serbian and in other South Slavic languages, the word for "to carry, to wear" is "nos". The word "nositi" means "to carry, to wear", "prinos = pri + nos = towards, to us + brings" means yield, "odnos = od + nos = from + brings" means relationship and so on. There is a whole cluster of words built around the root "nos" meaning to carry. And believe or not one of those words is the word for pride: "ponos =  po + nos" which literally means "something you carry on yourself, something you flaunt, something you carry with you to show off"... 

So the people above lifted and carried their political candidate, champion, warrior on their shoulders (po nos), because they, by getting elected, winning championship, killing enemies, became something to be proud of and because of that, something that you can carry around with pride (ponos) because it makes you look good to because you are part of the winning team, army, family, clan, tribe....

Cool, don't you think?

Have a look at another Serbian word built using the root "nos" to carry.  The word "nošnja" means costume, traditional dress, something you carry on yourself to mark yourself as a member of a family, clan, tribe. The traditional dress conveys the customs, manners and style of the tribe. It says this is "us" and we are proud of who "we" are. The most visible part of the traditional dress was always the head dress. No wonder then that caps, hats, helmets, hairstyles, feather dress were often used as symbols of identity which were worn (nos) as sign of clan, tribe, national pride (ponos).

Here as some examples of what I am talking about:

Phrigian cap:

Turkish fes:

Serbian šajkača:

Six nations feather gear:

There are many more examples of traditional clothing items which were used as a distinguishing marks and were worn to show pride of being part of a group. This custom of wearing what you are proud of is very strong even today. 

Wearing a football jersey or scarf of the football team you support is just such an example of carrying (nos) of what you are proud of (ponos).

The same goes for the GAA (Gaelic athletic association). Here the link between belonging to the old tribal supporter group and the new sports team supporter group is clearly visible. The teams are actually linked to a village (clan) and county (tribe) and the players still play dressed in tribal colors wearing tribal crests while the old war flags of their tribes (counties) are waving in the wind. 

If you are a member of a church or a cult, you proudly wear the symbol of your church to show everyone that you are a believer:

If you are a member of a political party, you proudly wear the symbols of the party to show that you belong to it and that you share their ideas:

Even if you are a punk, and you think you are different from anyone else, you are basically proudly wearing punk symbols which show that you are a member of a punk subculture. You also wear badges and symbols of the Punk bands that you are most proud of...

So... 

We wear (carry on our self) what we are proud of. And this link is preserved in South Slavic languages through the words "nos" meaning "to carry, to wear" and "ponos" meaning "pride" but literally meaning "to carry, wear on yourself". 

Now what is interesting is that in Irish the word "nós", from old Irish "nós", means custom; manner, style, tradition, fame, renown...