Note 89 — Chapter IV · HOMERIC HORSES.

The word ‘silly’ thus applied is evidently cognate with the German Seile = Greek σειρὰ, a rope, from the root swar, to tie. So in the Ancient Mariner, the ‘silly buckets on the deck’ are the buckets attached to a rope. Similarly, the third horse was sometimes called by the Greeks σειραφόρος, ‘drawing by a rope.’