Myridon -

Mount-Desert Island not Mount Desert-Island.

Oops, sorry, silly me ...

No doubt if I ended up stranded on a desert isle, folks’d the name came from the fact that it is a “suitable reward or punishment”.

As I’m very fond of the programme Desert Island Discs, I’d like to mention that it’s eight records, not ten. And I think several people have asked for inflatable dolls, as I remember reading that someone whose name I’ve forgotten (though it wasn’t Reed) was the only one with the presence of mind to ask for a puncture repair kit to go with it.

I’m surprised that nobody, at least when I’ve been listening, has asked for a solar-ppowered computer. Of course it couldn’t be connected to the internet, as that would break the rules, but one with a chess or other games program would be allowed, presumably. And if it had a word processing program, it would be more reliable for composition than the writing paper quite a few people request.

I’m not sure what wag it was who, when asked what three things he’d take to a desert island, replied, ”The Sun, a newspaper, and something to read.”

I kept meaning to say that the Irish place name element “desert” ("díseart" in Irish), comes from “desertum” and indicates a hermitage, as in Desertegny, Donegal, “Díseart Eigne”, Egnagh’s hermitage, and Desertmartin, Derry, “Díseart Mhártain”, St Martin’s hermitage. According to Adrian Room’s Dictionary of Irish place-names, “díseart” “usually implies a secluded monastery, especially one with a strict rule”.

I have seen a suggestion - but can’t now find the reference - that the Irish took the “desert” element from St Anthony the Great and the other “Desert Fathers”, the earliest monks, who settled in the Egyptian deserts away from civilisation, but I believe this has been comprehensively rubbished, and the Irish used the name “desertum” simply because the areas they set up their hermitages/monasteries were just that, “deserted”, rather than as an homage to Anthony and the rest.

Irish used the name “desertum” simply because the areas they set up their hermitages/monasteries were just that, “deserted”

Interesting that hermit comes from the Greek (via Latin, I guess) word that is used for wilderness (AV) or lonely, deserted places in the Greek Scriptures.