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daibhidcHighland Council. What are they like?
Many years ago, before I was born, the building at the corner of Inverness High Street and Castle Street, had a nook on the second storey, containing a statue of the Three Graces. At some point, the statue disappeared, and when I was a kid MacDonalds bought the building, and turned the corner into a glass tower.
As part of the "revitalisation of the Old Town" (which seems to largely consist of digging up the streets so people can't get to it, while leaving the buildings to fall to bits) Highland Council has brough back the Three Graces. Only now, instead of a statue, we've got three ramp-like structures on Church Street, each one with an elm tree from a different continent and the name of the Grace it represents in English, Gaelic and Norse. So far, so typical, it's the sort of thing the Council's been constructing ever since we became a city. What really gets me is the name of the Graces.
They are Insight, Perseverence and Open-Heartedness.
What mythology book did *that* come from?
The Three Graces, or Charites, were, in "standardised" Greek myth, Aglaea ("Beauty"), Euphrosyne ("Mirth"), and Thalia ("Good Cheer"). Some Greek societies claimed the third was Cleta ("Fame") and others only had two Graces who were Auxo ("Plant Growth") and Hegemone ("Mastery") or Cleta (again) and Phaenna ("Shining").
Many people today, myself included until I researched this, get them confused with Christianity's Cardinal Virtues which, according to the King James Version are "Faith, Hope and Charity", and according to more recent versions are "Faith, Hope and Love". If you squint, this could *almost* pass for "Insight, Perseverence and Open-Heartedness", but if that's the intention I'd *really* like to see the city planners' translation of the Bible. I suspect it's what my Dad would have called a "happy-clappy" version.
I don't know why I'm ranting about something so trivial. It just seems to me that if the Council are going to spend money on this sort of thing, the least they could do is get it right.
Many years ago, before I was born, the building at the corner of Inverness High Street and Castle Street, had a nook on the second storey, containing a statue of the Three Graces. At some point, the statue disappeared, and when I was a kid MacDonalds bought the building, and turned the corner into a glass tower.
As part of the "revitalisation of the Old Town" (which seems to largely consist of digging up the streets so people can't get to it, while leaving the buildings to fall to bits) Highland Council has brough back the Three Graces. Only now, instead of a statue, we've got three ramp-like structures on Church Street, each one with an elm tree from a different continent and the name of the Grace it represents in English, Gaelic and Norse. So far, so typical, it's the sort of thing the Council's been constructing ever since we became a city. What really gets me is the name of the Graces.
They are Insight, Perseverence and Open-Heartedness.
What mythology book did *that* come from?
The Three Graces, or Charites, were, in "standardised" Greek myth, Aglaea ("Beauty"), Euphrosyne ("Mirth"), and Thalia ("Good Cheer"). Some Greek societies claimed the third was Cleta ("Fame") and others only had two Graces who were Auxo ("Plant Growth") and Hegemone ("Mastery") or Cleta (again) and Phaenna ("Shining").
Many people today, myself included until I researched this, get them confused with Christianity's Cardinal Virtues which, according to the King James Version are "Faith, Hope and Charity", and according to more recent versions are "Faith, Hope and Love". If you squint, this could *almost* pass for "Insight, Perseverence and Open-Heartedness", but if that's the intention I'd *really* like to see the city planners' translation of the Bible. I suspect it's what my Dad would have called a "happy-clappy" version.
I don't know why I'm ranting about something so trivial. It just seems to me that if the Council are going to spend money on this sort of thing, the least they could do is get it right.
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Date: 2008-04-08 01:22 pm (UTC)BTW, is the Gaelic version the same as the English? And what are the Norse names (and is it old or modern Norse)?
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Date: 2008-04-08 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 11:39 pm (UTC)1) The statue was apparently of the Three Virtues, not the Three Graces. I'm sure that's not what "Old Inverness In Pictures" says, but I can't find my copy.
2)The virtues represented by the birch (not elm) trees are completely new ones apparently chosen by the locals (although no-one I know seemed to know about this)[1]. The traditional virtues are to be represented by the original statue, which is on its way back.
*Some* of what I said still stands; they still dug up the street to do it, and "revitalising the Old Town" still doesn't seem to mean doing anything about the dilapidated buildings on Academy Street (unless the plan is to get everyone accepting these birches, and then claim those buildings are *supposed* to have trees growing out of their roofs). And while Open-Heartedness and Love/Charity/Agape aren't completely synonymous, they're close enough that I'm not sure it's a "new" Virtue.
Anyway, to answer your question, it's Old Norse, and they're Pra-leiker, Stor-lyndi and Rett-syni[2]. I assume they're the same in all three languages, but since I don't speak Gaelic I don't know. Googling for "Leanaltas" ("Perseverence"), I found a message board for Gaelic-speaking Tae-Kwon-Do practitioners (yes, really) which listed the Five Tenets of Tae-Kwon-Do in Gaelic and English, and it was indeed Perseverence.
[1]If I were in any way religious, I'd wonder about this. I know the Pope's produced a new list of Seven Deadly Sins, but can a wee town really claim to have decided on new Virtues which, at least round here, are on a par with the ones Paul thought of?
[2] It's 00:40 am, which is far to late to start working out how to do accents. Sorry.