Comments on: Counting in Swaledale

By: Cymraeg

Cymraeg — Fri, 05 Mar 2004 12:18:12 +0000

The Welsh song people are talking about is Cyfri’r Geifr, or Counting the Goats. Lyrics available here. It’s not actually a counting song in the sense of having any numbers in it. The repeated words are colours. I think “Gava vindue, vindue, vindue” might be a mishearing of a mispronunciation (!) of “Gafr ddu, ddu, ddu, Ie fin ddu, fin ddu, fin ddu” (literally, “Goat black, black, black, with her black lip, black lip, black lip”. For information, Welsh numbers go un, dau, tri, pedwar, pump, chwech, saith, wyth, naw, deg (and goes regular after that – un deg un for eleven, etc). Pump is pronounced ‘pimp’, which cropped up in some of the rhymes mentioned.

By: Cumbrianborn

Cumbrianborn — Thu, 04 Mar 2004 07:51:25 +0000

I believe the Cumbrian counting-out system derives ultimately from Welsh which is Celtic in origin. My father taught me the numbers which were still used when I was a child (many moons ago). There’s no special significance in bumfit other than as a five-base. Nobody uses the system any more, sadly, but it’s preserved as a linguistic curiosity.

By: Walter Olson

Walter Olson — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 20:12:57 +0000

The Watersons, on their album Green Fields, have a song called The Lincolnshire Shepherd with a yan, tan, tethera chorus. A.L. Lloyd writes in the liner notes: “It’s doubtful if many shepherds employ it today for scoring their sheep, but example of it may still be heard in playgrounds, especially in Cumbria, where it is used for counting-out.”

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 10:39:38 +0000

Googling [language] + numbers, where [language] is Basque and Gaelic, yields the stupefying result that both are completely regular with respect to ten and twenty, more like Russian than anything else. Basque, according to the sole source consulted, counts entirely by scores. A bit like French.

By: PBen

PBen — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 10:10:11 +0000

From a Welsh e-friend: I do know of this as it goes. It’s not real Cymraig but a combination of Cornish (one of the other related Celtic languages, Breton is the other) and Welsh further bastardised by forgetfulness. You’re more likely to have heard it used in Cornwall than Wales and probably not there any more as the Cornish are recovering their (almost) lost language. IIRC I first saw this in ‘An ABC of Witchcraft’ by the dear, departed Doreen Valiente. Look here http://www.menai.ac.uk/clicclic/lesson8-1.htm for the numbers one to ten, along with some other bits and pieces from the Language of Angels. Hope this helps, Nick

By: phil

phil — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 16:28:05 +0000

Perhaps CT’s resident Welshman can comment on his own experience with sheep and bumfit.

By: harry

harry — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 15:50:22 +0000

Thanks John. It did remember. It goes Am, stram, gram, Pique et pique et colégram Bourre, bourre et ratatam Am, stram, gram. Thanks everyone else too. My youngest daughter (3) revels in the yan chan tether mether.. chant and will enjoy the others too. How do you people know these things? I can’t find the gava vindue phil jones refers to, but it looks norwegian, no? And it may be the one that I can’t really remember. More likely the one I can’t remember is one of the many variants in the links.

By: John Isbell

John Isbell — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 13:40:29 +0000

French has an eenie, meenie, minie, mo which begins am, stram, gram, then I forget but google won’t.

By: des

des — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 09:23:51 +0000

On origins: A sci.lang post (see the rest of the thread for more discussion) says its a Celtic remnant, possibly from the defunct Celtic language Cumbrian. Other variations: Regional variations thoroughly mapped; a scholarly article on the subject from the Lakeland Dialect Society (for it is they!). Gratuitous reminiscence: It was always "yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pimp" when recounted to me, although this was by no means by actual shepherds. It's a fossilised relic of Celtic which has subsequently refossilised as cute folklore, and why not?

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 07:21:06 +0000

You got it, Dave. In comparison, English and German have special words for eleven and twelve, but just tack on a signifier for ten thereafter. French and Italian are special up to 16; Spanish and Portuguese break over at 15. Russian is uniform: one + ten, etc. This doesn’t seem to affect the portability of “teen” culture, though.

By: Dennis G. Jerz

Dennis G. Jerz — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 06:20:08 +0000

This is extremely random, but in “The Music Man,” Mrs. Shin announces that she will “count to twenty in the Indian tongue,” and she says something like “ein teen tuther feather fip” before she is interrupted. The last time I saw the play, that politically incorrect passage was cut, so I’m relying mostly on my memory of having been in the play in highschool 20 years ago.

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 05:14:44 +0000

They’re just counting in base 5. 11-14 are irregular, as 11 and 12 are in English. As for the rest: 1 – yan 2 – chan 3 – tether 4 – mether … 20 – dik 21 – yanadik 22 – channadik 23 – thetheradik 24 – methradik 30 – bumfit 31 – yanabum 32 – chanabum 33 – thetherabum 34 – metherabum 40 – jiggit 41 – yanajiggit ?

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 04:41:05 +0000

Odd that the numbers above bumfit (15) are expressed incrementally: 16 = yanabum = yan + bum, and so on. One might wonder about the typical size of a herd when that came into use. (I thought French was odd for lacking separate words for seventy, eighty and ninety.)

By: LizardBreath

LizardBreath — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 03:36:51 +0000

I have no idea if it’s online anywhere, but there’s an essay by E.B. White in which he mentions a similar set of sheep-counting numerals, possibly the same one.

By: gthistle

gthistle — Tue, 02 Mar 2004 03:01:48 +0000

You may find searching the sci.lang archives more useful than straight Google. I’ve long since stopped browsing that newsgroup, but here is one piece of a relevant thread from a few years back.