June is upon us—the perfect month to scamander along trails and streets...
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... And if you lived in Victorian times (or happen to have access to a copy of A Dictionary of Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, by A London Antiquary, from 1860) you would know that, back then, to scamander meant "to wander about without a settled purpose." Horologicon by Mark Forsyth adds that scamander is the sister word to meander, with both words having their origin in waterways:
The river Maeander winds, by a preposterously curly-whirly route, through Izmir in Turkey. The ancient Greeks were very taken with the twisting of the Maeander... If you feel that the Maeander isn't the river for you, you may pick the Scamander, another Turkish watercourse now known as the Karamenderes.
Wikipedia notes that Scamander was a river god in Greek mythology and that the Scamander River, named after this god, was the river surrounding Troy. The river deity fought on the side of the Trojans during the Trojan War, and tried to drown Achilles three times. I have long forgotten the details of The Iliad by Homer, so tracked down the section where Achilles squares off with the river god. I must admit that after reading about how Scamander remarks to the warrior that the river is choked with corpses and couldn't Achilles please just do all his hewing and hacking on land, and Achilles pretty much responds, "No way, I'm a killing machine and there's no stopping me!" that I side with Scamander on all this.
Having done a fair job of scamander-ing through this post, I'll stop here.
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| Have fun as you scamander around this summer, whether in wilderness or city. Wilderness image by JayMantri from Pixabay ; City image by RD Law from Pixabay |
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