Brewer's: Riphean

or Rhipaean Rocks. Any cold mountains in a north country. The fabled Rhiphaean mountains were in Scythia.

“Cold Riphean rocks, which the wild Russ Believes the stony girdle of the world.” Thomson: Autumn.

The poet here speaks of the Weliki Camnypoys (great stone girdle) supposed by the early Russians to have girded the whole earth.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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