> JAG de Whag soon by depol to be Penn Gwynne.
>
> Heads off (like that one Peter? ( :^D>>> ) singing in Welsh.
> I wonder if a Penguin ever graced the shores that of truly "Once upon
> a time" beautiful place .... Wales? JAG starts clock to time the
> response time.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, JAG, once upon a time there was a flightless sea bird on the
shores of Wales, called the Penn Gwyn ('white head' in Welsh). It was of
course the now-extinct Great Auk, and it looked pretty much like what we
now call Penguins. When Francis Drake and other Elizabethan sailors got
down to Cape Horn, they found birds resembling the auks back home, so
the Welsh name got re-attached to new species. The crews had a lot of
west-country men, and some would have spoken Welsh or Cornish and maybe
there were a few Bretons as well.
If you think this is far-fetched, read a good dictionary's comments on
how the albatross got its name from Spanish gannets (alcatraz), in turn
from Arabic 'al-qaduz'=water-carrier, applied to Pelicans!
Best wishes,
Anthea in Ivanhoe
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