Newsgroups: sci.lang,sci.classics
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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Mystery Phrase... can you help?
In-Reply-To: amherst@pavilion.co.uk's message of 4 Sep 1996 08:39:07 GMT
Message-ID: <ALDERSON.96Sep4111759@netcom16.netcom.com>
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References: <50jf7b$k87@s02-brighton.pavilion.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 1996 18:17:58 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.lang:61048 sci.classics:13928

In article <50jf7b$k87@s02-brighton.pavilion.co.uk> amherst@pavilion.co.uk
(amherst) writes:

>The meaning of an beautiful inscription on the exterior beams of my
>grandfathers old house near Caernarfon, North Wales, has never been solved....

>"ORIENS MORIOR            MORIENS ORIOR" 

>It looks like a play on words... possibly in Latin. 
>Can anyone help to solve this mystery! 
>I look forward to your posts..... keep them clean! 

>Thanks, 
>Helen Moorfield 
>UK 

You should invite more public-school boys to your grandfather's house.

This means

	Rising, I die;  dying, I arise.

I shouldn't be at all surprised to learn that this is a riddling reference to
someone involved in the building of the house.  (Your grandfather's name, for
example, if he had the house built.)

I've added sci.classics to the newsgroups, as someone there may have more ideas
on esoteric meanings I've missed.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
