A long way from Lota

I recently blipped the gorsedd stone circle remaining from the national eisteddfod that took place in Fishguard in 1936. Here is the other one, left over from 1986 when the town hosted the event for the second time. This occasion was not graced, as far as I am aware, by any visit from inebriated notorieties and the location of the ceremonial circle is not so fine, although it has a nice view over the town to the coast beyond.

This is Lota Park, a couple of acres of open space that was gifted to the town by local lawyer and coroner, Walter Williams, in 1926. I'm always tempted to suspect that the park's name is another example of the paradoxical etymology I mentioned here, i.e. it's called Lota Park because there's 'not a lotta park'. However the truth is stranger. Walter's sea captain father settled with his wife in the Chilean mining town and port of Lota in 1863 and traded coal up and down the coast. Walter was born there and in time the family returned to Fishguard and traded with the Baltic instead (salted herrings for hemp and timber). This funded Walter's legal training and he joined a solicitor's firm in Fishguard (it still exists under his name) and became a local bigwig.

Lota in Chile gets its name from the Mapadungun (the language of the indigenous Mapuche people) for a small or insignificant settlement, much as Fishguard is now. Like Welsh, Mapadungan is a language under threat.* And, just as happened in the former industrial regions of Wales, Lota's productive coal mines were privatised then closed in the 1990s owing to the importation of cheaper coal from elsewhere, with substantial poverty resulting. Strange ironies in retrospect.

Just for the hell of it, I can't resist mentioning that Lota lota is the Latin name (via the French lotte) for the burbot, a curious fish now thought to be extinct in this country though prolific in Scandinavia and North America. The only fresh water member of the cod family it makes very good eating and has a highly nutritious liver. (Blue foxes bred for fur in Minnesota developed especially lustrous pelts after being fed on burbot livers.) The burbot is also known as 'the lawyer' apparently because it is 'a slimy big-mouthed bottom feeder ' with a tendancy to wrap itself tightly around the arm of whoever grasps it.

(No offence Mr Williams, we are grateful for your park.)

* In late 2006, Mapuche leaders threatened to sue Microsoft when the latter completed a translation of their Windows operating system into Mapudungun. They claimed that Microsoft needed permission to do so and had not sought it. The event can be seen in the light of the greater political struggle concerning which alphabet should become the standard since Mapudungun was originally only a spoken language, without a written form.