Nightingale Milk - Original Painting
Nightingale Milk
Watercolour and Charcoal
Rima Staines 2023
This painting came from a dream I had where I was standing in the driveway of my old house breastfeeding a nightingale (!) It was such a strong image that stayed with me long afterwards. Nightingales have so many symbolic associations - with romantic love, with their beautiful song, with poetry, it is even the national bird of both Ukraine and Iran. But something interests me particularly in the etymology of the name, as this is often the place where I find inspiration (yet here I'm finding a connection after the dream and after the painting is done). "Nightingale" comes from the old English verb *galan* - to sing (also to cry out, to enchant, to cast spells) which makes my linguistic ferret of a brain immediately connect to *gala* the Greek for milk - the origin of words like galaxy (milky way) and linked via the Indo European root *g(a)lag- to words like lactate, lait (=french for milk) and many many more. So my question is - though the old English word for "to sing/cast spells" is on a different linguistic branch but grows from a common Indo European root, is there some deep shared magic hidden in our languages about the milk we receive from our mothers, and from the stars and the songs we are given to sing - whether we are human or nightingale?
Nightingale Milk
Watercolour and Charcoal
Rima Staines 2023
This painting came from a dream I had where I was standing in the driveway of my old house breastfeeding a nightingale (!) It was such a strong image that stayed with me long afterwards. Nightingales have so many symbolic associations - with romantic love, with their beautiful song, with poetry, it is even the national bird of both Ukraine and Iran. But something interests me particularly in the etymology of the name, as this is often the place where I find inspiration (yet here I'm finding a connection after the dream and after the painting is done). "Nightingale" comes from the old English verb *galan* - to sing (also to cry out, to enchant, to cast spells) which makes my linguistic ferret of a brain immediately connect to *gala* the Greek for milk - the origin of words like galaxy (milky way) and linked via the Indo European root *g(a)lag- to words like lactate, lait (=french for milk) and many many more. So my question is - though the old English word for "to sing/cast spells" is on a different linguistic branch but grows from a common Indo European root, is there some deep shared magic hidden in our languages about the milk we receive from our mothers, and from the stars and the songs we are given to sing - whether we are human or nightingale?
Nightingale Milk
Watercolour and Charcoal
Rima Staines 2023
This painting came from a dream I had where I was standing in the driveway of my old house breastfeeding a nightingale (!) It was such a strong image that stayed with me long afterwards. Nightingales have so many symbolic associations - with romantic love, with their beautiful song, with poetry, it is even the national bird of both Ukraine and Iran. But something interests me particularly in the etymology of the name, as this is often the place where I find inspiration (yet here I'm finding a connection after the dream and after the painting is done). "Nightingale" comes from the old English verb *galan* - to sing (also to cry out, to enchant, to cast spells) which makes my linguistic ferret of a brain immediately connect to *gala* the Greek for milk - the origin of words like galaxy (milky way) and linked via the Indo European root *g(a)lag- to words like lactate, lait (=french for milk) and many many more. So my question is - though the old English word for "to sing/cast spells" is on a different linguistic branch but grows from a common Indo European root, is there some deep shared magic hidden in our languages about the milk we receive from our mothers, and from the stars and the songs we are given to sing - whether we are human or nightingale?
40cm x 25cm on watercolour paper.
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