Rings

I am now on my second reading of 'Mon Ami Maigret', a yarn built on its location in L’île de Porquerolles, off Hyères in the south of France (see reference 1), with the various human flotsam that used to wind up in places of that sort (rather as it does in our own south coast seaside resorts), and on Maigret being shadowed by a visiting policeman from Scotland Yard. A policeman who went to a fancy university, speaks impeccable French and has impeccable manners, but whose presence Maigret mostly finds trying. He has lost his freedom to hang out, perhaps in bars, seemingly doing nothing much to pursue his enquiries. Instead he has to put on a show, a performance for his visiting colleague.

But my concern today is with the English word 'ring', with its two rather different meanings. First the sort of ring you might wear or draw on a piece of paper, second what you might do to bells.

OED devotes around nine three column pages to the word and its relatives, the first three to the first of the two meanings mentioned above, the next two to the second and the remainder to various relatives and compounds. The first meaning goes back to all kinds of old Norse and the 10th century while the second only goes back to the 16th century, with provenance unknown.

Petit Larousse gives about three column inches to 'anneau', all the first meaning, nothing about ringing bells, but presumably the source of the English ring flavoured word 'annulus'. Much the same story in the micro Robert. And in petit Littré. And in Collins-Robert - a rather perfunctory entry despite this work's much larger size.

While Simenon has a whole book called  'Les Anneaux de Bicêtre', where the rings in question are definitely the rings, the peals of the bells of the famous hospital of that name. See reference 3.

And now, on page 133 of the present story, a whole page is given to the ringing of church bells, with the anneau word, on a Sunday morning. A reverie I can relate to, retaining a strong memory from childhood of the bells ringing on Sunday evenings at Hemingford Grey. See reference 2.

All very puzzling, how we appear to have two words and the French one, with the honourable exception of Simenon. But then, he was a Belgian, rather than real French.

PS: the back of my copy of 'Les Anneaux de Bicêtre' has a picture of Simenon stuffing his pipe from a tin of the very English tobacco from Dunhill. Once proud and independent of St. James, now just a brand, one of many, owned by British American Tobacco.

Reference 1: http://www.porquerolles.com/accueil/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/memory-lane.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Double+Georges.