The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Mark Forsyth (Dog Days) #104

Dog Days

The Dog Days, like the Halcyon ones, are a precisely defined part of the year, or at least they were once. The second brightest star in the sky (after the Sun) is Sirius, the Dog Star, so called because it’s the largest star in the Great Dog constellation, Canis Major. However, during the height of summer you can’t see the Dog Star because it rises and sets at the same time as the Sun. The ancient Greeks worked out that this happened from 24 July to 24 August, and they noticed that this was also the most unpleasantly hot time of the year. So they, quite logically, decided that it must be the combined rays of the Sun and the Dog Star that were causing the trouble. They also thought a lot about how to cool down. The ancient Greek writer Hesiod has this advice:

In the season of wearisome heat, then goats are plumpest and wine sweetest; women are most wanton, but men are feeblest, because Sirius parches head and knees and the skin is dry through heat. But at that time let me have a shady rock and wine of Biblis, a clot of curds and milk of drained goats with the flesh of an heifer fed in the woods, that has never calved, and of firstling kids; then also let me drink bright wine, sitting in the shade, when my heart is satisfied with food, and so, turning my head to face the fresh Zephyr, from the everflowing spring which pours down unfouled, thrice pour an offering of water, but make a fourth libation of wine.

It’s well worthwhile memorising that passage and reciting it to a waiter on the first of the Dog Days. However, you must be careful, as, owing to the precession of the equinoxes, the Dog Days have slowly shifted over the last two thousand years and now begin around 6 July, although it depends on your latitude.

None of this has anything whatsoever to do with the notion that every dog will have his day, which comes from Hamlet:

Let Hercules himself do what he may,

The cat will mew and dog will have his day.

We call it the Dog Star, the Romans called it Canicula (meaning dog)[27] and the Greeks called it Sirius, which meant scorching, because of the heat of the Dog Days. However, the Greeks also sometimes referred to it as Cyon (the Dog), and the star that rises just before Sirius is still called Procyon; and that same Greek word for dog – cyon – also gave the English language the word cynic.