Talk:Merrow

Druith

Hi, coleagues.

I have a question to all celtic-savvy historians and linguists. Some author I've been translating now from English uses a word 'druith' (sounds similar to a 'druid'?) as a 'jester'. English dictionaries at hand offer no help, even the http://www.dsl.ac.uk/ -- online vesrion of the 12-volume Dic. of the Scots language doesn't have an entry for this. Wikipedia, on the other hand, returns an article on 'merrows' with a 'cohuleen druith' as their magic submarine hat without properly translatinb the term itself. Everybody who has the right idea of what 'druith' is or where to read about that (online is preferrable), please help! Zahar Fialkovsky, translator; St.Petersburg, Russia;

• A druith is indeed a type of jester or bard. This article from a branch of the Society for Creative Anachronism may clarify a bit: http://www.tirbriste.org/dmir/BardicArts/0302/0302.html Cohuleen druith seems to mean simply a charmed cap. IrisWings 07:40, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Illustration

I've put back the tattoo illustration. The comment was that the tattoo artist owns the copyright -- this actually is not established and is a question up for debate in many quarters. See for example here Who owns your ink? and a more in-depth discussion here Can you copyright a tattoo?) but the question has not yet been decided. In this case I happen to know that the inker did not copyright it :)

As to whether a tattoo is an "appropriate" illustration for an article -- well sure, why not? --Bookgrrl ^holler/lookee here 15:47, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I'll have to disagree with you about this. I've reverted your restoration of the image. Here's my rationale for this:

Although I can see that Image:MerrowTat.png is a lovely piece of tattoo art, I can't see the encyclopedic relevance here. Applying an reductio ad absurdum argument: if this argument was to be applied consistently across Wikipedia, any article could have a tattoo art photo to illustrate anything, with absurd results: a tattoo of a skull to illustrate the skull article, a tattoo of a blackbird to illustrate the blackbird article, and so on. If consistent application of something leads to absurd results, it's generally a good assumption that it's a bad idea. The other alternative is that there's something special about this article in particular that makes it a special case suitable for illustration by tattoo images. I can't see any rationale for this.

Secondly, the copyright issue is as far as I can see (please note: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice) also pretty clear-cut: if you don't actually know that you have the right to submit an artwork under the GFDL, you should either mark the image as fair use, which in turn would require that the fair use criteria should be met, or that it shouldn't be on Wikipedia at all. "The [copyright] question is up for debate" is an argument to remove the image, not to keep it.

Although you say that the "inker did not copyright it" -- unfortunately, my understanding of U.S. copyright law (again, IANAL, TINLA) is that copyright in a visual work is automatically generated at the point of origin, whether the author thinks it did or not. If, as the image caption says, it's "based on" someone else's earlier work, the situation gets even worse, as the tattoo design itself might be regarded as a derivative work of the original design. Without an explicit copyright grant, the only safe assumption is that the originial artist[s] may well still own the copyright in the two-dimensional image, and hence also have rights regarding photographs that consist substantially of only that image. -- The Anome (talk) 22:37, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

I think your reasoning is pretty flimsy here. The "reductio ad absurdum" argument is unconvincing, since just about anything carried to an extreme becomes absurd -- e.g., is it wrong for a couple to decide not to have children since if we all did that the human race would die out?. "What if everyone did that?" isn't a very strong logical position, even the reductio ad absurdum article says so. Second, the use of original artwork to illustrate an article is not prohibited, especially if you can't get a photo of the real thing (clearly not possible here); that's what this is, so I don't see the problem. Also, if you read the articles I cited, you'll see that the issue of copyright and tattoos is far from clear-cut. However, since you feel so strongly about it I'll not bother contesting it further. --Bookgrrl ^holler/lookee here 02:07, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Cothulín Druith

"Cothulín Druith" is found Peter Berresford Ellis's Dictionary of Irish Mythology, according to old notes of mine.
Can't seem to confirm this, since this refrence does not permit previewing.
Defined as "a magical cap" that allowed undersea survival by its wearer, but no reference to merfolk.

Search using "Cothulin" turns up some hits, including Rodney Mackay,(copyright; sans date) Fachlaireachdd nan Druidheachd, a Glossary of Gaelic Magic (scribd upload), with an entry under "COCHULLANN, COICHANN DRUIDHEACHD, Ir. cochuleen, coathulin or cothulin druith." --Kiyoweap (talk) 21:05, 28 June 2016 (UTC)

A whore

In my town merrow means either a prostitute or a promiscuous woman, due to the myth of ugly merrow-men.

Scottish mermaids

The current article about the Irish merrow and mermaid has attained the 30-50 kB range given in WP:SIZESPLIT, so I think a separate page on maighdean na tuinne (the Scottish maid-of-the-wave) should be created to house the Scottish lore. Here are some old sources for the time being.[1][2] --Kiyoweap (talk) 12:02, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Is should add that maighdean na tuinne would be Scottish Celtic lore (although this distinction might not be always be discernable), at any rate, selkie and finfolk of Orkney and Shetland already have separate pages.--Kiyoweap (talk) 12:07, 22 May 2018 (UTC)