The origins of the term are unknown. Attempts have been made to connect the phrase
teribus an teriodin with the names of the
Scandinavian and
Norse gods,
Tyr and
Odin from the
Old English Tȳr hæbbe ūs, ġe Tȳr ġe Ōðinn "Tyr keep us, both Tyr and Odin", an unlikely explanation since the gods' names are given in their Old Norse forms, not the Old English
Tīw and
Wōden and the normal phonological development would not result in the modern pronunciation, apart from that, the survival of a supposed Old English sentence in its near original form for more than 700 years is barely conceivable. The
linguist Anatoly Liberman states, however, that Mackay's goal was to discover the Gaelic origin of all words and that he thought that most English words are traceable to Gaelic, which is certainly not true. Liberman also described MacKay's 1877 dictionary as "full of the most fanciful conjectures", noting that MacKay "was hauled over the coals by his contemporaries and never taken seriously".
Suggestions It has also been suggested that the phrase is a series of
vocables imitating the sound of a march played on drums and bagpipes. Alistair Moffat suggests in
Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms (1999) that the phrase was originally the Welsh "Tir y Bas y Tir y Odin," meaning "The Land of Death, the Land of Odin", although Odin wasn't noted for his popularity amongst the Welsh. However, he also postulates that the phrase could mean "Land of Death, Land of the Gododdin" (The initial G is often elided), the Gododdin being the local Britonnic tribe of the area. References to the "war cry"
teribus an teriodin do not appear much before the early 19th century. ==Border ballad==