I
just wanted to share a bit of fun research I did. Maya and I were researching eponymous nymphs
with heroic husbands that became their community’s found father. To that end I I checked all the placenames in
the catalogue of ships and the names of all the Oceanides. I came up with a list of 15 such pairings,
thanks to http://www.theoi.com See
list at http://www.shortstories-bill.blogspot.com/2015/01/eponymous-nymphs-and-heroic-husbands.html
The
whole time I am looking up name after name, I keep thinking about the story of
the shepherd Rhoecus who rescued and wed a hamadryad. The earliest reference I
could find for the story was a poem by James Russell Lowell (1873) under the
name "Rhoecus" . It finally
occurred to me to use N-gram; https://books.google.com/ngrams/ Years ago, Google scanned millions of
books; you can track word usage over time
in their collections by using the website.
N-gram made it clear that Lowell was the source of the stories fame, but
also included evidence that the story was around and the name of Rhoecus long
before.
So
then I googled “Rhoecus” with various dates previous to 1873 until I stumbled
upon “Bell’s Neo Pantheon” (1790) which offered the alternative spelling of “Rhaecus”. The name was written in that old style with
the “a” and “e” stuck together, which Sarah told me is called an “ash”.) Anyway, Bell’s reference for the story is the Scholiast of Apollonius Rhodius II 471,
quoting Charon of Lampsacus.
I
just thought all this sleuthing was cool, so I had to share!
