chol - welsh

[Diane]

I don't know... the reference to the crusades is possible... perhaps its 'colonial' slang and the medieval equivalent of a Hobson-Jobson term.  Nor is Arabic the only language in the group - funny if it turned out to be a relic of Phoenician; we'd have to revisit the initially popular, now unpopular legend of Phoenicians mining tin, or Camelot being memory of a Phoenician outpost.  These theories were quite common during the nineteenth century, the 'tin-mines' one being taught as history into the 1970s as I recall.