So, yesterday I scored tickets to the May 2 Bjork concert at Radio City. I'm totally psyched a) because it's Bjork, b) because I got amazing seats and c) Radio City is supposedly a great venue. Although I've been living in NYC for about 8 years not once in that time have I been to Radio City. In fact, even though I grew up on the geographically propinquant Long Island I've only been to Radio City once in my entire life and that was in 1985 to see Disney's The Black Cauldron.

The word cauldron is from the Latin calidus meaning "warm, hot" and from this root we also get the term caldera which refers to the cavity on the summit of a volcano.

The Black Cauldron was based on Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles which themselves are said to be loosely based on the collection of medieval Welsh prose stories known as the Mabinogion. Professor Eric Hamp has suggested that mabinogi derives from the name of the Celtic god Maponos who was equated with Apollo in Roman times; this is a shame because this hump would have been far more interesting if everything circulated back to Vulcan, the Roman volcano god. Some humps just don't work out.

The Black Cauldron [IMDB]
caldera [Online Etymology Dictionary]
Maponos [Wikipedia]
Mabinogion [Wikipedia]

Labels: Latin, The Daily Hump