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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Rolls or breads with holes go back to ancient Egypt and are found among modern Egyptians, Syrians (Syro-Palestinians), Finns (reikäleipä -- rye-whole-bread), and Eastern European ethnic Ashkenazim.
[This blog entry contains top, bottom, side, and sectional views of reikäleipä.]
One of the great mailing-list enigmas is the etymology of the name bagel.
The Menachem Mendel blog has posted a short discussion of the history as well as of the Jewish religious or legal issues relating to the bagel. The blog entry contains the following quote.
Polish-born and half-Jewish, Balinska, who works at the BBC in London, tells us that the boiled and baked bagel as we know it comes from her homeland. She tells the story of the Krakow bagel, which was a product of the 1683 Battle of Vienna. Although the story is completely speculative and perhaps even fictitious, it is a piece of gastronomic lore that has endured throughout the ages. As the story goes, 17th-century Poland was the breadbasket of Europe, and King Jan Sobieski was the first king not to confirm the decree of 1496 limiting the production of white bread and obwarzanek (bagellike rolls whose name derives from a word meaning “to parboil”) to the Krakow bakers guild. This meant that Jews could finally bake bread within the confines of the city walls. Furthermore, when Sobieski saved Austria from the Turkish invaders, a baker made a roll in the shape of the king’s stirrup and called it a beugel [sic -- should be Bügel or Buegel in an older orthography] (the Austrian word for stirrup). As Balinska says, “Whatever its origin, the story of the bagel being created in honor of Jan Sobieski and his victory in Vienna has endured.”[Note that I have previously discussed Sobieski in Reinterpreting History to Serve Islamophobia.]
The connection of Bügel or Buegel to bagel is improbable on linguistic grounds. A link with Pegel is more probable. This word has two different meanings in current High and Low German, but both might have some connection to bagels.
Here are current High German words (in red) possibly connected with the word bagel:
pilot bread
n : very hard unsalted biscuit or bread; a former ship's staple [syn: hardtack, pilot biscuit, sea biscuit, ship biscuit]
Pilot \Pi"lot\, n. [F. pilote, prob. from D. peillood plummet, sounding lead; peilen, pegelen, to sound, measure (fr. D. & G. peil, pegel, a sort of measure, water mark) + lood lead, akin to E. lead. The pilot, then, is the lead man, i. e., he who throws the lead. See Pail, and Lead a metal.]
The possible Low German origin for bagel is Pegel meaning peg with an associated verb. This meaning of Pegel does not exist in current High German even though in the past its use was attested in the Danzigerdeutsch dialect. The word is a 
good possible source for the word bagel if bagels were ever sold or stored on a peg or pole as reikäleipä is to this day.BTW, I dedicate this posting to Heikki Hurri, who taught us Finnish at Pingry and once told me that bagels reminded him of home. Sphere: Related Content
3 comments:
Finns also make a ring-shaped bread from potato flour that is boiled in water before being baked. I want to call it rinkileipa, but there is probably no such thing. Whatever it is called, it's really just a bagel. I asked if it was borrowed from Russia, and was told that is a traditional Finnish bread.
I was interested to read your discussion of the word pegel and its possible connection to bagels. In my discussions with Yiddish scholars the general concensus was that the word is most probably dervied from the Yiddish verb beigen, to bend. As I write in my book, the Vienna/Sobieski connection is a myth - what was of interest to me was that it is a myth which has endured.
best wishes
Maria Balinska
I have not found out the name of Todd's Finnish bread, but bagels do not use potato flour in any variety that I know.
I am not particularly disturbed that Yiddish scholars might have overlooked Pegel. As I found when I was in Jewish studies at Harvard, there is so much politics in the field that a lot of the common wisdom is simply unreliable.
[Wisse Kokht Kugl mit Khazershmaltz! discusses a complete misunderstanding of the usage of the word mentsh(!) in Yiddish by Harvard Jewish Studies Professor Ruth Wisse. You might also find it interesting to check out the blog entries Introduction to "Kvetch" and More Information on Kvetch (Kvetsh).]
Tel Aviv University Professor Paul Wexler, who is probably the most careful modern scholar of the development of Yiddish vocabulary, has looked at beygn quite carefully on pp. 220-221 of Two-tiered Relexification in Yiddish and does not connect the word to (der) Beygl although (das) Beygl meaning arc, small curve is clearly a derivative of beygn the verb meaning bend.
While Yiddish often tends to logical instead of grammatical gender, there would have been no reason for Beygl to develop masculine gender in the former usage if der and das Beygl are both derivatives of beygn via a diminutive of the nound Beyg. (If Beygl the bread really were connected with Beygl the small curve, I would have expected the bagel to be shaped more like a croissant.)
Thus, der Beygl seems far closer to der Pegel either in the Low or High German usage.
The switch between voiceless and voiced consonant is not a problem. Such changes are common in Yiddish (as well as in German dialects). The archetypal example transforms Trèves to Dreyfus.
I have to note that the online etymological dictionary makes the connection between bagel and German Beige, beugen, and biegen somewhat more plausible with the following proposal:
bagel 1919, from Yiddish beygl, from M.H.G. boug- "ring, bracelet," from O.H.G. boug, related to biogan "to bend" and O.E. beag "ring" (in poetry, an Anglo-Saxon lord was beaggifa "ring-giver"). The variety of bagel with onion flakes sprinkled on it is a bialy, short for Bialystok, city in Poland.
The above etymology has the problem that it is hard to get from the diphthong in MHG boug meaning ring to the diphthong in beygl even with the usual vowel transformations associated with appending a diminutive ending without going through the related MHG word beige (pronounced with a German ee sound and not with a German ai sound) meaning haystack (something arc shaped). At so me point the transformations in meaning and phonemic shape simply become too improbable. [As far as I know, a bialy is not parboiled, has an indentation instead of a whole, and was not considered to be a bagel by Yiddish speakers.]
As for the link to Sobieski and the salvation of Vienna, it would be interesting if the myth could be traced to Austrian Poland. It might have served in some sort of conscious or unconscious integration process for the Austrian Polish Yiddish population into the Austrian Empire.
The teshuvot (Rabbinical responsa) dealing with bagels seem to move south and southwest from Lithuania from Russian Poland into German (Prussian) and Austrian Poland.
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