Thursday 11 March 2010

Corfe Castle and Corfu






I'm trying to work out whether there's an etymological link between Corfe (as in Corfe Castle, Dorset) and Corfu.

Although the roots are apparently quite different,"Corf(e)" being Anglo-Saxon for "gap", "pass" or "cutting", eg between two hills- from Old English ceorfan, 'to cut' -or 'carve'(?), and "Corfu" being linked to Greek "korefi"/"coryfai", "summit" or "crest"), the locations of Corfe Castle and Corfu's Old Frourio (with its twin peaks, on either side of a gap), suggest a link, perhaps to some common but much older Indo-European word?

Ideas, please.

And who was Miss Wood, who published two poems about Corfe Castle in 1820?

"Thou ancient pile! a long and last adieu,
No more thy ivy'd tow'r shall meet my view...
Yet mem'ry oft shall trace thy scenes sublime,
Thy turrets moulder'd by the hand of time..."

(Adieu to Corfe Castle)

"Hail, venerable pile! all hail to thee!
Oft o'er thy grass-grown courts my feet shall stray..."

(Written on first seeing the ruins of Corfe Castle).

I wonder what people would say if one stood at the entrance to the Old Frourio and addressed it "Hail, venerable pile!" For the time being I have bid it "adieu".

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