Obama, Olympics, Marijuana, Search engines

Please forgive me. I have decided to start giving my posts more exciting titles.
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Speaking of lych and lychgates.

I was re-reading a book I found when I was cleaning out my back room, about the American Civil War, Battle of Gettysburg. It was written by one of the caretakers of the battlefield, or park rangers or whatever you call them, and it is filled with facts and old pictures.

One of the pictures shows the entrance to the cemetery part of the battle ground - the old Gettysburg cemetery where much of the heavy fighting took place - called Cemetery Ridge, I think - and I note a large structure in the picture that was at the entrance to that town cemetery. The picture was taken after the battle, so the building is messed up. Remember, this was in the summer of 1863. Anyway, they refer to it as the "gatehouse" and the cemetery caretaker/sexton lived there with his family. Here is the picture (click to enlarge):Now, I can't imagine anyone using this entrance to prepare a corpse for burial, and the cemetery isn't a churchyard, but I think this might still qualify as a lychgate. My meaning is that some of these old traditions might have been carried on from England in this country too. Maybe. Although Gettysburg was "Pennsylvania Dutch" (Germans).

What do you think? A stretch?

Clarity: an attempt to return to the premise of this blog

With apologies to the Travelling Spouse for butting into her business, but because I know most of you have been wondering about the word "Lychgate"...

The picture at the top of this post is a lychgate. This particular one is in Wales. A lychgate (not Lynchgate - that's a whole 'nother post, I'll bet) is a covered gate which enters into a graveyard, specifically into a church graveyard. Literally, "corpse gate".

Since several of you have asked, the word "lych" is from the Old English (actually Saxon; several of our really good words have survived from the Saxon. Ahem) and means "corpse". It is meant to be an adjective/prefix for things having to do with a corpse. Our friend Wally Wikipedia gives such examples as lych bell (a hand-held bell rung in front of a corpse during a funeral procession); lych way (the path down which a corpse is carried to its resting place); and lych-'Donald's (a place where people eat dead meat.) Perhaps this last was not on Wikipedia. I forget.

I want to quickly explain that this word only refers to the entrance to a BRITISH churchyard. In the U.S., we refer to cemetery gates as "gates"; Paths as "paths"; and hamburger places as "junk food joints". But you knew that. To my knowledge, we don't ring bells in front of corpses, being considerably more civilized than your average barbarian Brit who does that and even worse...

I'll not burden you with the Welsh translation of the Saxon-cum-English word (since it sounds filthy) though I am tempted to honor Sage by trying to come up with the Cornish equivilent. It is probably on a sign somewhere in Cornwall already, though. In Irish (yes, I know this is not British) it is called marbhan geata. (Who knew there were so many languages in the UK? And I haven't scratched the surface. Nor will I try.)

Now, wasn't that more interesting than me being unmetricated?

Next: "Different to vs. different than." Holy Huckabee.
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Photo of the day: Dean Vernon Wormer: