: Not really. In MWA, the Smiths didn't 'build' Muirthemne
: (or Llancarfan), they just had a shop there. I can't
: remember off-hand where the name [Muirthemne] comes
: from.
: Zandervix
Well, in short, though this doesn't precisely tell us what Muirthemne was, perhaps it would help to see precisely where the writers of Myth got the name "Muirthemne."
I looked it up on the net, recently, and I found a site that contains an account of some Celtic Myths, seeming to center mostly around Cuchulain, and other diverse people alive at the same time as him. And, would you believe it? Looky here.
"Then he fought with the waves three days and three nights, till he fell from hunger and weakness, so that some men said he got his death there. But it was not there he got his death, but on the plain of Muirthemne."
I must, say, that certainly got my attention. That and the fact that the very next section of the story was entitled "The Great Gathering at Muirthemne."
So, we can tell that Muirthemne must be a Celtic/Gaelic name.
That seems odd to me, though. I mean, if you look at the dwarves names (the one's not directly based on Tolkien's dwarvish names) you find things like "Jvalin".
Jvalin?? If you ask me, that sounds more Scandinavian than anything else, and certainly not Gaelic/Celtic.
And look at the dwarvish cities' names. Stoneheim and Myrgard. My, if those don't sound Scandinavian, I don't know what does.
So why would a people who essentially spoke a language similar to, say, Norse, suddenly name someplace with a Celtic/Gaelic-type name? It has to mean that the Smiths of Muirthemne were dwarves living in someplace already founded by men (most of the names of the men of the Cath Bruig empire, and many of the cities of men have Celtic/Gaelic-type names), and then moved to Llancarfen in a sudden urge to make things.
But wait a minute - dwarves of that time didn't live in the cities of men very often - did they? I mean, they weren't even actually allies until the time of Connacht!
So what's going on here?
We know that:
(a)the Smiths of Muirthemne are dwarves.
(b)the original place called Muirthemne is not a city (or anything else) of dwarves.
(c)it is not a city (or anything else) of the Trow (they had latin-type names, and their cities all have apostraphes)
(d)it is not a city (you get the picture) of the fir'Bolg (they have very few cities, all in the Ermine, and all with apostraphes)
(e)it is not a city of the Forest Giants (no cities)
(f)it is not a city of any of the Undead, or of any other bad guys (any Dwarves that could possibly get along with them enough to live in one of their cities [which they have very little of in the first place], wouldn’t get along too well with Connacht [before he becomes the leveller, of course])
(g)it is not a city of Men (why on earth would Connacht decide that humans needed two Muirthemnes?)
(h)it could be a city of the Oghres, or any of the other extinct races, that the Dwarves had fixed up and moved into, except for the fact that the Dwarves wouldn’t have known the original name of the place (and even if they found it carved into a stone sign, or something, they would probably have renamed it)
(i)it is not a city of the spiders or wolves (animals don’t build cities very often)
(j)it most certainly couldn’t have been a city of the Myrkridia (have you seen what a Myrkridia will do to a dwarf?!)
(k)it is not a city of the Berserks (Berserks live about as far away from the Dwarves as possible while still living on the same continent)
Anyway, I know I haven’t exactly told anyone exactly where the Smiths of Muirthemne are originally from, but I’ve certainly eliminated a lot of possibilities.
doom
