With all the coverage of Hurricane Rita, one thing I hadn’t heard of was how hurricanes had been so called. I was pretty sure that it came to us from the Spanish ‘huracan’ but I hadn’t realised that they in turn had taken it from the Taino people, Huracan being the god of wind, storms and fire of Mayan mythology blamed for the Great Flood so prevalent in mythologies worldwide.
By the way, the featured picture is ‘Deluge‘ by Gustave Doré which featured prominently in my maternal grandmother’s family bible and was the stuff of nightmares for a five-year-old Polly.
