> Thanks for your trust (if spiced with a pinch of sarcasm). Here two lines
> from an attempted transscription
>
> …ALVOA ARBORSINET
> CARCLONEPR ES (SAKI) ASONRES E I BEL
>
> Arborsinet evokes Latin arbor 'tree' and English arboretum, so this might
> be a reference to a former garden, orchard or a little wood above the rocks.
> Forests played an all-important role in the mythology of Brittany. (Saki)
> evokes Latin saxum 'rock, stone' saxetum 'rocky area. The inscription may
> then concern a garden, orchard or wood above the rocks along the shore.
>
> Just a hunch, might be completely wrong.
>
> For your entertainment a Magdalenian perspective. English arbor names a hut
> made of branches. Branch as Italian braccio 'arm' derive from BRA meaning
> right arm, a branch seen as 'arm' of a tree. Saki is more problematic.
> Reminds of Latin saxum 'rock, stone' saxetum 'rocky area' Old High German
> Sahs 'rock'. A village in the Swiss Pre-Alps is called Sachseln. Saas,
> also written Saxa, reminds of saxum. Saxony German Sachsen is the land on
> the northern slope of the Ore Mountains between Germany and Czechia. From
> Saas Fee you can lokk down SA to Saas Gr(o)und in the Saas Valley, and from
> Saas Gr(o)und you can look up AS to the high mountains above Saas Fee. From
> any mountain you can look down SA into the valley below, and from the valley
> up AS to the mountain, together SA AS that might have accounted for Latin
> saxum 'rock, stone' and saxetum 'rocky area'. The inscription might then
> refer to a former rock garden, orchard, aboretum, or little forest.
>
> As I said, just a hunch.
Plougastel rock inscription (second part, can be read on its own)
Let me go on with a story.
BRI meaning fertile named Britain Brittanny, also Breton and Brest. If I read
my maps correctly, Brest has a rather mild climate. Also, the Bretons love
their forests. A quote from an elegiac tale of Celtic origin, The Drowned City
of Ys, translated by Iain Zaczek
Guénolé, meanwhile, invited the druid to return with him and live out
his remaining days in the shelter of Landévennec.
However, the druid refused, saying to Guénolé: 'For me, the woodland
paths are better. Who knows, perhaps they lead to the same great center
of existence that you also seek.' With that, he turned away from the monk
and walked back into his beloved forest.
A rich, pious, and somewhat excentric Breton was dreaming of uniting the
beliefs of the Christian monk and Celtic druid. So he asked the prior of
the monastery of the Sacred Heart, Sacré Coeur, to plan a botanical garden
with trees from various parts of the world brought in by sailors. He will
pay the costs. Well, the monks agreed, and planted a large botanical garden,
an arboretum, in 1786/87, and engraved the names of the trees on a rock by
the sea, in the middle of the inscription a small cross and heart, emblem
of their faith and monastery.
Sailors of various nations had gathered young trees in different regions of
the world. But there was a problem. Trees and bushes and flowers are named
by a lot of synonyms - in Switzerland we have several dozen words for the
single flower dendelion -, moreover the sailors were analphabets, so it
happened that the trees they brought home were called with hardly under-
standable terms.
We have to make sense of them. The first line of the inscription as appearing
in a photograph reads
GROCARB
This might be an abbreviation
G ROC ARB Grande Roche Arbre Great Rock Tree
maybe Quercus ilex, holm oak, French rouvre, German Stein-Eiche, literally
Stone-Oak.
Swiss Dähle is a synonym for a fir tree, Pinus sylvestris, and so DALTOGREC
might be a Greek fir (Dähle DALTO).
Sarbaum is a Swiss word for the ordinary poplar tree, Populus nigra nigra,
and might explain SARMIS - UT (Sar- SAR-).
Various trees and bushes, known under different names, found in several
regions of the world, transported to Brest by illiterate sailors, planted
in the botanical garden of the monastery by monks who made the best of the
botched-up names and engraved them on a rock of the shoreline ...
The sponsor of the arboretum was very pleased, and felt something of the
"great center of existence" when he went for a prayer or meditation into
the monastery garden.
Built in the 1780s, it lasted more than one century. However, it was
neglected during the first world war, and abandoned in 1920, whereupon
someone incised this year on the same rock.
And if my story wins the prize of 2,000 Euros announced by the mayor of Brest,
the money shall be used for planting a couple of trees in the area.
Franz Gnaedinger, Zurich, May 2019