In my last post, I demonstrated how you can build a medieval garden for your characters with the help of the book, Medieval English Gardens, by Teresa McLean. Today, I’d like to share another useful function of this book.
In addition to wanting a garden for my heroine to enjoy in Loyalty’s Web, I also wanted her to have some healing skills. Not the “mystical” kind, but the “practical” kind. And for that, I needed to know something about the healing abilities of plants that were available in the Middle Ages.
Medieval English Gardens proved a treasure trove of such information for me. The two most pertinent sections for my research on this subject were chapters 5 & 6: “Many a Fresh and Sundry Flower”, and “The Herb Garden”. Each chapter contains sub-chapters, as follows:
Within: “Many a Fresh and Sundry Flower” are the sub-chapters: “Useful Flowers”; “Useful and Pretty Flowers”; “Beautiful, Flower Garden Flowers, and Flower Gardens”; and “Medieval Roses and Rose Gardens”. The last two sub-chapters are more useful for assistance in garden descriptions (as per my previous post) than for information on the healing properties of medieval plants, but the first two sub-chapters were extremely useful for my “healing heroine".
Within: “The Herb Garden” are the sub-chapters: “Infirmary Garden Herbs”; “Herb Garden Herbs”; “Kitchen Garden Herbs”; and “Backyard Herbs.”
Let me share with you a few examples of the kinds of information contained within each sub-chapter, and the method I used to transform these chapters into a permanent “quick research” resource for me.
This was where a red pencil or highlighter, and a pencil or pen came in extremely handy. The paragraphs are pretty much broken down by flower or herb, which makes it easy to mark each flower or herb individually.
For example, beginning on p 140, under “Useful Flowers”, I red-lined the flower “southernwood”, along with its description and uses. Then, in pen, I wrote the word “southernwood” in the margin, underlined it, and underneath that wrote: “uses”, under which I wrote the words “fever; wounds; pot-pourris”.
The next paragraph (on p 141) dealt with the wormwood plant. So I redlined “wormwood”, together with some pertinent information about it within the paragraph, then in the margin, I penned “wormwood” (underlined), and underneath again wrote: “uses”, then listed “flea repellant; expel poisons; constipation; stomachache.”
I followed this pattern with the following paragraphs on “mugwort”; “tansy”; “marigold”; and so on, throughout the above mentioned chapters (“Many a Fresh and Sundry Flower” and “The Herb Garden”).
Yes, this process can be somewhat time consuming, but it also the kind of task that can be done a little at a time…during commercials when watching TV, while waiting in a doctor’s office, while waiting to pick up a child from an activity…a few minutes here, and few minutes there, and before you know it, you have the quick research guide I referred to above.
Now that I had these chapters thus marked, when I found my hero with a knife wound in his arm and my heroine with a need to help heal it, all I had to do was flip through the margins of the chapters for plants that were used for healing wounds. I was very quickly able to whittle down my list to: southernwood; milfoil/yarrow; primrose; plantain/waybread; comfrey; burnet and orpine; and tutsan.
In the paragraphs I’d marked with red pencil, I could then look from the word in the margin to a more full description (in parentheses below) of how the flower or herb was used to heal wounds:
Southernwood (soothes wounds)
Milfoil/Yarrow: (staunched bleeding)
Primrose (leaves rubbed into wounds to relieve soreness)
Plantain/Waybread (ingredients in ointments to cure wounds)
Comfrey (power to heal wounds and stop bleeding)
Burnet and Orpine (wound soothers)
Tutsan (antiseptic for open flesh wounds)
My heroine ultimately settled on the following:
She gathered up a handful of fresh green leaves from a bowl and turned to lay them on the Earl's arm, squeezing them first so that the juice ran into his wound. The wine had dulled the fiery pain to a bearable throb, but even that discomfort began to subside, as the flesh around the wound grew numb…. [Some dialogue ensues…]
She removed the leaves she had spread on his arm and replaced them with a different kind, gathered from another bowl. "Plantain," she explained, crushing them between her fingers as she had done before. "It will slow the bleeding, and then we will spread on the comfrey poultice to help in healing."
She followed through with this prescription and finished by binding up his arm with several strips of linen, which Flora handed her from the tray.
"There. Your arm should remain numb for several hours. The pain may return after that, but you may send to the kitchen for more leaves if it becomes too uncomfortable. Mind they be of the tutsan plant and fresh enough to squeeze as you saw me do. If the bleeding resumes, it is plantain you must ask for. The bandages should be changed frequently for the next day or two, each time reapplying the poultice. I will see that some be kept in readiness for you."
I am certain there are other equally useful books for learning about medieval flowers and herbs, but I am confining myself in these blogs only to books and resources that I have actually used myself, and Medieval English Gardens, by Teresa McLean, was my major resource in the writing of my novel, Loyalty’s Web, as well as in writing its sequel, which I hope to publish sometime in 2008. However useful other books may be, Medieval English Gardens is a true treasure, and is well worth the search for a copy of your own.
(See previous post for suggestions for locating copies of Medieval English Gardens.)
Reminder: My drawing for a FREE copy of Medieval Wordbook is still open. For details, see post on Research Book Drawing.
Showing posts with label excerpts-Loyalty's Web. Show all posts
Showing posts with label excerpts-Loyalty's Web. Show all posts
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Medieval Gardens
When plotting out my novel, Loyalty’s Web, there came a time when I wanted an exchange between my hero and heroine to take place in a castle garden. I had just recently purchased a book entitled Medieval English Gardens, by Teresa McLean, and although my novel was set in a portion of France called Poitou, I worked on the assumption that, as far as medieval gardens went, castles gardens in medieval France were unlikely to be significantly different from castle gardens in medieval England.
Medieval English Gardens is chock full of information on gardens in the Middle Ages…their history, their variety (monastic vs. city vs. castle/manor gardens), and descriptions you can draw on to create your very own, imaginary medieval garden for your novel or short story.
As I’ve stated before, my purpose with this bog is not to review research books in detail, but to share with you how I used a particular book for my particular needs in writing Loyalty’s Web. For the purposes of my scene, I knew I did not need information on monastic or city/town gardens, so I turned immediately to “Castle, Palace and Manor Gardens” (Medieval English Gardens, beginning on p. 89). Within this chapter, I limited my research to those sections which dealt with gardens from “the period of the Conquest to the late fourteenth century”, since that was the time range in which my novel was set. (In other words, why read the chapter on “Late Medieval Pleasure Gardens”, until I decide to set a novel in that particular time period? I may read more just for “fun”, but for research purposes, I prefer to focus on information that pertains most immediately to the time and setting my novels are placed in.)
Here are some of the things I learned from the above chapter and sections, which I was then able to weave into my scene (and I do recommend using a red pencil or high lighter, to make quick reference easier when rechecking one’s facts—and regardless of what your mother told you about writing in books, don’t be afraid to make notes in the margins! They’ll be worth their weight in gold to you later.):
“The fact that they used turf lawns [in gardens] does not mean that they were bare of flowers. They may have been planted with small flowers—violets, daisies and periwinkles, to make the ‘flowery meads’ so beloved in the Middle Ages.” (Medieval English Gardens, p 94)
“Apart from the orchards and vineyards which were outside the walls of many castles, it was usual for there to be either no gardens at all in a castle or else just pleasure gardens.” (Medieval English Gardens, p. 96)
One castle built “a dove-house at the corner of the herb garden….its purpose was to enhance the herb garden’s pleasant appeal, for the cooing of doves was a popular medieval delight full of symbolic importance for romantic and religious love.” (Medieval English Gardens, p. 105)
“Gardens were walled, fenced, hedged and palisaded…so there was a good deal of stonework, carpentry, hedge-making, locksmithing and painting to be done in the making of them, and more of the same in the making of their mounds, fountains, benches, railings, paths and raised beds. (Medieval English Gardens, p. 106)
This information, combined with information on rose gardens in the section on” Medieval Roses and Rose Gardens” (pp. 164-171) under the chapter, “Many a Fresh and Sundry Flower”, culminated in the following two paragraphs in Loyalty’s Web (p. 146)
A shaft of sunshine broke through the hovering clouds and the roses danced their tangled heads against the breeze in what remained of the Lady Gwenllian's pleasure garden. Though spared devastation from the siege by its remoteness from the curtain walls, it had nevertheless been much neglected these eighteen months while rebuilding had gone forward in the outer bailey. The stables, the barracks, the forge, all had had to be raised again almost from scratch, so thorough a job had Gunthar's fiery missiles done. The orchard and herb garden had been maintained for their usefulness to the castle's occupants, but save for mending the dovecot, damaged by a winter storm, Laurant had insisted the roses would have to wait.
The bushes had grown shaggy and tall, climbing over the low, enclosing walls, and would have choked off the gate had Heléne not kept a path well pruned. She loved it here in the wild bower it had become, where no one ever seemed to venture but she. She did not mind that the benches were peeling, that the flowery mead had become a confusion of disordered weeds, or that the fountain had gone dry. The trill of the nearby doves usually soothed her nerves while she plied her needlework or immersed herself in one of the rare books she cajoled her father into buying. But on this grey, dismal morning both lay neglected, the former on the dusty plank beside her, the latter in her lap.
With the treasure trove of information on medieval gardens contained in Medieval English Gardens, by Teresa McLean, you, too can create a perfect (or even, as in Loyalty’s Web’s case, an imperfect) garden for your medieval characters to enjoy!
Sadly, as is the case with many of my favorite research books, Medieval English Gardens no longer appears to be in print. It can be worth the search for a used copy, though. I have found copies listed on the following sites (a little Googling will lead you to further options):
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?wauth=teresa+mclean&wtit=medieval+english+gardens
http://www.textbookx.com/product_detail.php?upc=9780670464821&type=book&affiliate=froogle
http://www.bookshopinc.com/cgi-bin/bsp455/220953.html?id=mLzH44U6
http://www.antiqbook.co.uk/boox/cour/1571.shtml (United Kingdom)
http://www.biblio.com/details.php?dcx=54245062&aid=frg (United Kingdom)
Next time: Medieval English Gardens, by Teresa McLean, Part II. I’ve only scratched the surface of the usefulness of this book, so be sure to return to medieval research with joyce in two weeks!
Note: Speaking of which, due to a scheduling conflict, beginning in two weeks I will be posting new blogs on this site on the first and third Thursdays, instead of Wednesdays, of each month. My next post will appear February 21st.
Medieval English Gardens is chock full of information on gardens in the Middle Ages…their history, their variety (monastic vs. city vs. castle/manor gardens), and descriptions you can draw on to create your very own, imaginary medieval garden for your novel or short story.
As I’ve stated before, my purpose with this bog is not to review research books in detail, but to share with you how I used a particular book for my particular needs in writing Loyalty’s Web. For the purposes of my scene, I knew I did not need information on monastic or city/town gardens, so I turned immediately to “Castle, Palace and Manor Gardens” (Medieval English Gardens, beginning on p. 89). Within this chapter, I limited my research to those sections which dealt with gardens from “the period of the Conquest to the late fourteenth century”, since that was the time range in which my novel was set. (In other words, why read the chapter on “Late Medieval Pleasure Gardens”, until I decide to set a novel in that particular time period? I may read more just for “fun”, but for research purposes, I prefer to focus on information that pertains most immediately to the time and setting my novels are placed in.)
Here are some of the things I learned from the above chapter and sections, which I was then able to weave into my scene (and I do recommend using a red pencil or high lighter, to make quick reference easier when rechecking one’s facts—and regardless of what your mother told you about writing in books, don’t be afraid to make notes in the margins! They’ll be worth their weight in gold to you later.):
“The fact that they used turf lawns [in gardens] does not mean that they were bare of flowers. They may have been planted with small flowers—violets, daisies and periwinkles, to make the ‘flowery meads’ so beloved in the Middle Ages.” (Medieval English Gardens, p 94)
“Apart from the orchards and vineyards which were outside the walls of many castles, it was usual for there to be either no gardens at all in a castle or else just pleasure gardens.” (Medieval English Gardens, p. 96)
One castle built “a dove-house at the corner of the herb garden….its purpose was to enhance the herb garden’s pleasant appeal, for the cooing of doves was a popular medieval delight full of symbolic importance for romantic and religious love.” (Medieval English Gardens, p. 105)
“Gardens were walled, fenced, hedged and palisaded…so there was a good deal of stonework, carpentry, hedge-making, locksmithing and painting to be done in the making of them, and more of the same in the making of their mounds, fountains, benches, railings, paths and raised beds. (Medieval English Gardens, p. 106)
This information, combined with information on rose gardens in the section on” Medieval Roses and Rose Gardens” (pp. 164-171) under the chapter, “Many a Fresh and Sundry Flower”, culminated in the following two paragraphs in Loyalty’s Web (p. 146)
A shaft of sunshine broke through the hovering clouds and the roses danced their tangled heads against the breeze in what remained of the Lady Gwenllian's pleasure garden. Though spared devastation from the siege by its remoteness from the curtain walls, it had nevertheless been much neglected these eighteen months while rebuilding had gone forward in the outer bailey. The stables, the barracks, the forge, all had had to be raised again almost from scratch, so thorough a job had Gunthar's fiery missiles done. The orchard and herb garden had been maintained for their usefulness to the castle's occupants, but save for mending the dovecot, damaged by a winter storm, Laurant had insisted the roses would have to wait.
The bushes had grown shaggy and tall, climbing over the low, enclosing walls, and would have choked off the gate had Heléne not kept a path well pruned. She loved it here in the wild bower it had become, where no one ever seemed to venture but she. She did not mind that the benches were peeling, that the flowery mead had become a confusion of disordered weeds, or that the fountain had gone dry. The trill of the nearby doves usually soothed her nerves while she plied her needlework or immersed herself in one of the rare books she cajoled her father into buying. But on this grey, dismal morning both lay neglected, the former on the dusty plank beside her, the latter in her lap.
With the treasure trove of information on medieval gardens contained in Medieval English Gardens, by Teresa McLean, you, too can create a perfect (or even, as in Loyalty’s Web’s case, an imperfect) garden for your medieval characters to enjoy!
Sadly, as is the case with many of my favorite research books, Medieval English Gardens no longer appears to be in print. It can be worth the search for a used copy, though. I have found copies listed on the following sites (a little Googling will lead you to further options):
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?wauth=teresa+mclean&wtit=medieval+english+gardens
http://www.textbookx.com/product_detail.php?upc=9780670464821&type=book&affiliate=froogle
http://www.bookshopinc.com/cgi-bin/bsp455/220953.html?id=mLzH44U6
http://www.antiqbook.co.uk/boox/cour/1571.shtml (United Kingdom)
http://www.biblio.com/details.php?dcx=54245062&aid=frg (United Kingdom)
Next time: Medieval English Gardens, by Teresa McLean, Part II. I’ve only scratched the surface of the usefulness of this book, so be sure to return to medieval research with joyce in two weeks!
Note: Speaking of which, due to a scheduling conflict, beginning in two weeks I will be posting new blogs on this site on the first and third Thursdays, instead of Wednesdays, of each month. My next post will appear February 21st.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
The Castle Explorer’s Guide
Her brother had left the longbow behind when he had been sent away to his uncle’s. And his parents would have been furious had they known how frequently over the past few months their younger daughter had borrowed it and carried it down to the field to practice there like a common bowman.
But Heléne was determined to master this weapon. The crossbow was too cumbersome for her, while her shorter hunting bow lacked both power and range. Carved of yew, with its string of long-fibered hemp, the longbow, despite its proportionate height, was much lighter than the crossbow, and more flexible in her hand.
Then she should have been able to hit her mark square in the center of its eye. She drew another arrow from her quiver and took careful aim. Her eyes were clear, her hand steady... she drew back the string, slowly, slowly...
The string snapped as she released the shaft--and the arrow landed with a thwack a shade to the left of its twin.
“Not bad, my lady. In truth, a most respectable hit.”
Heléne whirled at the voice. No one ever ventured down to the butts at this hour--and why on earth did it have to be him?
The Earl of Gunthar, casually dressed in a sturdy green tunic, leaned with one foot propped on a nearby bale of hay, his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, watching her with evident amusement. His cool grey eyes swept over her attire [note: she is wearing her brother’s clothes] before one heavy brow cocked quizzically. To her disgust, she felt a wave of color sweeping into her cheeks.
“I was not expecting an audience, my lord.”
“Is that your way of telling me you wish I would go away? But I am a most discreet gentleman. I assure you, no one will learn of your--er--rather novel attire from me.” His gaze ran over her again. “Quite convincing, really. I daresay I should not have guessed the truth from a distance--save that this rather gives you away.” He crossed the space between them to playfully tweak her braid.
She had cast off her brother’s cloak to permit herself greater freedom of movement, thus freeing her hair, as well. She jerked her braid out of his hand now and turned stiffly back towards the butts.
“I can’t seem to get it right,” she murmured. “I practice and practice, but... Perhaps Papa is right. ’Tis a weapon fit only for barbarians like the Welsh.”
She heard Gunthar laugh.
“I doubt your mother would agree with that. And I have seen it used to great effectiveness in battle, piercing a mailed knight through both breast and back with a shot loosed more than a furlong away.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That is a wretched commendation.”
“Aye, but an accurate one.”
“My father and brother both prefer the crossbow.”
“A formidable weapon,” he agreed, “but slow. A longbow-man can discharge five to six arrows in the time it takes a crossbow-man to release a single bolt. No small advantage when the enemy is thundering down upon one. And if the longbow-man is sufficiently skilled in his aim-- But I have already made that point.”
“So you have.”
This scene from my novel, Loyalty’s Web, found its inspiration in my all-time favorite quick research book on castles…The Castle Explorer’s Guide, by Frank Bottomley. The Castle Explorer’s Guide reads like a one-volume encyclopedia of nearly anything and everything having to do with medieval castles. Arranged alphabetically, the entries are amazingly detailed considering their brevity, but a treasure trove of helpful sketches enables the reader to easily envision the verbal descriptions that accompany them.
While merely browsing through The Castle Explorer’s Guide, I happened across this entry:
Bow, Long: Appears first among the South Welsh in the mid C12 who (according to Gerald de Barri) were able to penetrate an oak door four fingers thick. By mid C13 it had become the national English weapon…. The weapon was practiced by all freemen at communal butts. The trained archer of the Hundred Years’ War was able to beat the crossbow-men in range and penetrating power with a vast superiority in rate of fire. At a furlong range he could pierce a mailed knight through breast and back or nail both thighs to his horse with one shot…. It was made of yew…The length was proportionate to the user: a full-sized bow seems to have been 5 ft 8 ins but there is some evidence of 6 ft bows…. The strings were made of long-fibred hemp…. At 50 or 60 yds, it was extremely accurate and bowmen could fire six aimed shots a minute. (The Castle Explorer's Guide, p 18)
By turning back a page to the entry for Bow, we find a comparison between the merits of the crossbow vs the longbow.
There is much indecisive controversy about the relative effectiveness of the longbow and the crossbow. From the C12 to the end of the C15 the crossbow was the favoured weapon except among the English…. The crossbow seems to have had more penetrating power but no greater range…. The longbow was light and comfortable while the crossbow was heavy, cumbersome and had more moving parts. The longbow-man could fire five or six arrows while the crossbow-man discharged a single bolt. He could also keep his eye on the foe while re-loading while the crossbowman could not. (The Castle Explorer's Guide, p 17)
From these two entries, I was able to construct the scene above, keeping in mind that because my story takes place in the mid-12th century, the longbow had not yet become the predominate archers’ weapon in England that it would become a century later. However, since my heroine’s mother was Welsh, I considered it plausible that her family might have sent a gift of a longbow to her husband (subsequently passed down to their son), and that considering the European preference for the crossbow, the Welsh gift might have been scorned and well-nigh ignored by both father and son.
I always consider it wise, however authentic a research source sounds, to try to confirm information I would like to use in a story through a minimum of at least one other source. And so I turned to Longbow, by Robert Hardy, to obtain a second opinion before constructing my scene. Longbow is considerably more scholarly in nature, and less easily “browsable” for information (a more detailed index would be helpful) than The Castle Explorer’s Guide, but from it we can still glean the following:
“There is reliable evidence of Welsh archery 11 years before Hastings (1066) in the account of Ralph, Earl of Hereford, and an expedition he led into Wales…. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle explains that in England at that time archery was used for the killing of game, but was not much practiced in battle.” (Longbow, p 31)
Gerald de Barri [referred to above], also known as Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald the Welshman, is one of the primary sources on the longbow in the Middle Ages.
“The most important thing about [Gerald’s] description of those old Welsh bows is the way in which he makes it clear that by the second half of the 12th Century [the setting for Loyalty’s Web] composite bows were well known in Britain if not much used (‘horn and ivory’), that yew was appreciated as the finest bow timber…and that here in Wales were tough bows and the bowmen to shoot them. There were all the ingredients of a new breed of bow…and from the mixture came the great yew longbow.” (Longbow, p 58)
Longbow also confirms that “the importance of the [crossbow] in 12th century Europe bid fair to oust the simple bow altogether. That it did not has been thought largely due to Welshmen lying between the upper waters of the Wye and the Bristol Channel.” (p 35)
Longbow, with its detailed history of the bow and its use in battle tactics, would be an indispensable book, had I been including a large scale military scene in my novel (and hence, it continues to hold a place in my personal library, as one never knows when one might need to create just such a battle scene). Since, in this particular case, the bow plays only a small, though important, role in my story, I did not feel the need to study the text of Longbow at length. However, although the confirmatory information to the entries in The Castle Explorer’s Guide is much harder to dig out from the text of Longbow, I reiterate that I consider it worth the effort in establishing a secondary source before using a so-called “historical fact” as a springboard for constructing a scene in historical fiction.
Next time: More about The Castle Explorer’s Guide
But Heléne was determined to master this weapon. The crossbow was too cumbersome for her, while her shorter hunting bow lacked both power and range. Carved of yew, with its string of long-fibered hemp, the longbow, despite its proportionate height, was much lighter than the crossbow, and more flexible in her hand.
Then she should have been able to hit her mark square in the center of its eye. She drew another arrow from her quiver and took careful aim. Her eyes were clear, her hand steady... she drew back the string, slowly, slowly...
The string snapped as she released the shaft--and the arrow landed with a thwack a shade to the left of its twin.
“Not bad, my lady. In truth, a most respectable hit.”
Heléne whirled at the voice. No one ever ventured down to the butts at this hour--and why on earth did it have to be him?
The Earl of Gunthar, casually dressed in a sturdy green tunic, leaned with one foot propped on a nearby bale of hay, his elbow on his knee and his chin in his hand, watching her with evident amusement. His cool grey eyes swept over her attire [note: she is wearing her brother’s clothes] before one heavy brow cocked quizzically. To her disgust, she felt a wave of color sweeping into her cheeks.
“I was not expecting an audience, my lord.”
“Is that your way of telling me you wish I would go away? But I am a most discreet gentleman. I assure you, no one will learn of your--er--rather novel attire from me.” His gaze ran over her again. “Quite convincing, really. I daresay I should not have guessed the truth from a distance--save that this rather gives you away.” He crossed the space between them to playfully tweak her braid.
She had cast off her brother’s cloak to permit herself greater freedom of movement, thus freeing her hair, as well. She jerked her braid out of his hand now and turned stiffly back towards the butts.
“I can’t seem to get it right,” she murmured. “I practice and practice, but... Perhaps Papa is right. ’Tis a weapon fit only for barbarians like the Welsh.”
She heard Gunthar laugh.
“I doubt your mother would agree with that. And I have seen it used to great effectiveness in battle, piercing a mailed knight through both breast and back with a shot loosed more than a furlong away.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That is a wretched commendation.”
“Aye, but an accurate one.”
“My father and brother both prefer the crossbow.”
“A formidable weapon,” he agreed, “but slow. A longbow-man can discharge five to six arrows in the time it takes a crossbow-man to release a single bolt. No small advantage when the enemy is thundering down upon one. And if the longbow-man is sufficiently skilled in his aim-- But I have already made that point.”
“So you have.”
This scene from my novel, Loyalty’s Web, found its inspiration in my all-time favorite quick research book on castles…The Castle Explorer’s Guide, by Frank Bottomley. The Castle Explorer’s Guide reads like a one-volume encyclopedia of nearly anything and everything having to do with medieval castles. Arranged alphabetically, the entries are amazingly detailed considering their brevity, but a treasure trove of helpful sketches enables the reader to easily envision the verbal descriptions that accompany them.
While merely browsing through The Castle Explorer’s Guide, I happened across this entry:
Bow, Long: Appears first among the South Welsh in the mid C12 who (according to Gerald de Barri) were able to penetrate an oak door four fingers thick. By mid C13 it had become the national English weapon…. The weapon was practiced by all freemen at communal butts. The trained archer of the Hundred Years’ War was able to beat the crossbow-men in range and penetrating power with a vast superiority in rate of fire. At a furlong range he could pierce a mailed knight through breast and back or nail both thighs to his horse with one shot…. It was made of yew…The length was proportionate to the user: a full-sized bow seems to have been 5 ft 8 ins but there is some evidence of 6 ft bows…. The strings were made of long-fibred hemp…. At 50 or 60 yds, it was extremely accurate and bowmen could fire six aimed shots a minute. (The Castle Explorer's Guide, p 18)
By turning back a page to the entry for Bow, we find a comparison between the merits of the crossbow vs the longbow.
There is much indecisive controversy about the relative effectiveness of the longbow and the crossbow. From the C12 to the end of the C15 the crossbow was the favoured weapon except among the English…. The crossbow seems to have had more penetrating power but no greater range…. The longbow was light and comfortable while the crossbow was heavy, cumbersome and had more moving parts. The longbow-man could fire five or six arrows while the crossbow-man discharged a single bolt. He could also keep his eye on the foe while re-loading while the crossbowman could not. (The Castle Explorer's Guide, p 17)
From these two entries, I was able to construct the scene above, keeping in mind that because my story takes place in the mid-12th century, the longbow had not yet become the predominate archers’ weapon in England that it would become a century later. However, since my heroine’s mother was Welsh, I considered it plausible that her family might have sent a gift of a longbow to her husband (subsequently passed down to their son), and that considering the European preference for the crossbow, the Welsh gift might have been scorned and well-nigh ignored by both father and son.
I always consider it wise, however authentic a research source sounds, to try to confirm information I would like to use in a story through a minimum of at least one other source. And so I turned to Longbow, by Robert Hardy, to obtain a second opinion before constructing my scene. Longbow is considerably more scholarly in nature, and less easily “browsable” for information (a more detailed index would be helpful) than The Castle Explorer’s Guide, but from it we can still glean the following:
“There is reliable evidence of Welsh archery 11 years before Hastings (1066) in the account of Ralph, Earl of Hereford, and an expedition he led into Wales…. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle explains that in England at that time archery was used for the killing of game, but was not much practiced in battle.” (Longbow, p 31)
Gerald de Barri [referred to above], also known as Giraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald the Welshman, is one of the primary sources on the longbow in the Middle Ages.
“The most important thing about [Gerald’s] description of those old Welsh bows is the way in which he makes it clear that by the second half of the 12th Century [the setting for Loyalty’s Web] composite bows were well known in Britain if not much used (‘horn and ivory’), that yew was appreciated as the finest bow timber…and that here in Wales were tough bows and the bowmen to shoot them. There were all the ingredients of a new breed of bow…and from the mixture came the great yew longbow.” (Longbow, p 58)
Longbow also confirms that “the importance of the [crossbow] in 12th century Europe bid fair to oust the simple bow altogether. That it did not has been thought largely due to Welshmen lying between the upper waters of the Wye and the Bristol Channel.” (p 35)
Longbow, with its detailed history of the bow and its use in battle tactics, would be an indispensable book, had I been including a large scale military scene in my novel (and hence, it continues to hold a place in my personal library, as one never knows when one might need to create just such a battle scene). Since, in this particular case, the bow plays only a small, though important, role in my story, I did not feel the need to study the text of Longbow at length. However, although the confirmatory information to the entries in The Castle Explorer’s Guide is much harder to dig out from the text of Longbow, I reiterate that I consider it worth the effort in establishing a secondary source before using a so-called “historical fact” as a springboard for constructing a scene in historical fiction.
Next time: More about The Castle Explorer’s Guide
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Dressing your characters
The Earl of Gunthar stood while his squire, Julian Parr, turned back the cuffs of his dull yellow tunic to expose the ornamental embroidery worked along the narrow wrists. Gunthar had selected the undergarment for the roomy cut of its sleeve, to relieve his bandaged arm of unnecessary discomfort.
When Julian finished, two younger servants pulled forward a heavy, elaborately carved chair from the corner. Gunthar sank onto its crimson cushion and extended a well-turned foot towards a kneeling pageboy. It was unlikely that anyone would have a chance to admire his pale green hose, destined as they were all evening to be concealed beneath the ankle-length folds of his costly silk tunic. But, he mused, an appreciative audience might be found for his handsome red shoes, cunningly embellished with row upon row of tiny gold rings.
The above is an excerpt from my medieval novel, Loyalty’s Web, describing the hero as he prepares to attend a banquet in his honor given by the heroine’s father.
What sources did I use to help create the excerpt above? What sources can you turn to, to create an “authentic” costume for the characters of your medieval fiction?
There are a great many source books available on the subject of historical dress and costumes, but most seem to fall into two general categories: those that “show” and those that “tell”. Those that “tell” are heavy on verbal description, with some accompanying pictures from medieval manuscripts, etc. Those that “show” rely more heavily on “reproductions” via drawings, with accompanying description directing your attention to specific elements of those drawings.
Since I am a highly visual person myself, I prefer “showing” to “telling”, especially when I’d rather be using my limited time to create a written image of my own (as above), rather than spending hours and hours researching through text-heavy, image-light costume books. (Especially those devoted to telling me how to cut and sew my own medieval costume, when I can barely even thread a needle!)
First, allow me to share a cautionary tale about research. Always, ALways, ALWAYS write down, at minimum, the title and author of any books you copy or photocopy information from in libraries, bookstores, or other sources only temporarily in your possession. You’d think that advice would be obvious, but to some of us, it wasn’t. During my inexperienced years of writing “on the side” while studying at the University of Arizona, I found a treasure-trove of medieval information in the U of A main library. (This was well before the advent of the internet, remember.) Being inexperienced, as I said, in research methods, I photocopied pages of the most wonderful historical costume sketches (with accompanying descriptions) from a book I found in the library, but I never made a note of the source. I photocopied information for the 12th and 13th centuries, but when I found myself in later years longing for similar information on the 11th century, all I could do is kick myself for the negligence that made refinding the original book all but impossible. That was in the late 1970s. It was not until the early 2000s that, to my utter amazement and eternal gratitude, I stumbled across the very same book (this time for sale), in the gift store of the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, UT. (Thank goodness I have a sister who lives in Salt Lake City, who decided to take me to the festival one summer during a visit!) Needless to say, I bought the book right up. But there remain other pages from other books that I photocopied and still refer to, but can never refer them anyone else, because to this day, I still don’t have the titles or authors to pass on.
So, with that hard-learned lesson out of the way, let me now share with you three of my favorite source books for “dressing” my medieval characters.
(1) English Costume: from the Early Middle Ages Through the Sixteenth Century, by Iris Brooke. This is the book I “lost” when I graduated from the U of A, and rediscovered in Cedar City only a few years ago. This book is divided into sections on “English Costume of the Early Middle Ages (10th-13th centuries)”; “English Costume of the Later Middle Ages (14th-15th centuries)”; and “English Costume of the Age of Elizabeth (16th century)”.
Each section is further divided into individual centuries. For the 1100-1200s (the time setting for Loyalty’s Web) I found the following description:
“The length of the sleeves on the supertunic [i.e., outer tunic] might be merely a few inches in length and finished with a broad band of embroidery, with the contrasting and tightly-fitting sleeve of the tunic beneath reaching to the wrist, or they might be quite full but fitting to the wrist with a cuff of some contrasting material or embroidery.”
From this information came the following description in my novel:
The Earl of Gunthar stood while his squire, Julian Parr, turned back the cuffs of his dull yellow tunic to expose the ornamental embroidery worked along the narrow wrists. Gunthar had selected the undergarment for the roomy cut of its sleeve, to relieve his bandaged arm of unnecessary discomfort.
Across from each descriptive page, is a facing page of drawings of medieval people wearing the clothing or hair styles mentioned on the preceding page.
Furthermore, there are descriptive pages and sketches devoted to footwear, headwear, and as I said, even hairstyles. Here is a description of footwear from the 12th century:
“The extensive use of rings as a means of fastening garments at this time even extended to the footwear… The shoe itself was not often embroidered and separate bands of embroidery were sewn on. Another means of ornamentation was to sew small rings of gold and silver, sometimes even on to the toe and heel of the shoe…”
This became the inspiration for:
But, he mused, an appreciative audience might be found for his handsome red shoes, cunningly embellished with row upon row of tiny gold rings
(2) 900 Years of English Costume, by Nancy Bradfield. Actually, this title is no longer available, except as a very expensive used book. However, the exact same book is available for a reasonable price under a new title: Historical Costumes of England 1066-1968.
This book is divided by the reigns of the kings and queens of England, and further divided by “Men’s Fashions” and “Women’s Fashions”. Again, on one page are sketches of people dressed in medieval clothing. In this instance, the figures are each assigned a number. On the facing page, again there are descriptions, this time coordinating the “figure number” with the opposite sketches. An additional advantage of this book is that there are marginal notations to speed you along to that portion of clothing you may be particularly interested in reading about. For example, under Henry II-Richard I (1154-99), the following marginal notes appear: tunic, sleeves, scarlet cloth, hose, shoes, cloaks, hoods and hats, hair, gloves and purse, colours.
Under tunics, I find the following: “The skirts were long to the ankle.” Under hose, it reads: “The hose remained the same as in the previous reign, fitting the leg to above the knee and fastened to the girdle of the breeches (Figure 5)”…which directs my attention to a sample sketch labeled "5" on the preceding page. Since the sentence on “hose” directs me to the “previous reign”, I flip back a few pages, where I read: “From 1150 the hose were made long, fitting the leg well, to above the knee.” Returning to my original page, I read under “colours”, “Colours are on p. 17; no new ones are mentioned,” so again I flip backwards, to page 17, where under “colours”, I find, “Light blue, red, and greens were fashionable; black, yellow, red-browns, and grey were also worn.”
Hence, from all this information, I am able to write:
It was unlikely that anyone would have a chance to admire his pale green hose, destined as they were all evening to be concealed beneath the ankle-length folds of his costly silk tunic.
(3) Medieval Fashions, by Tom Tierney (A Dover Coloring Book). Never underestimate the value of a good, historical coloring book! They are excellent for further illustrations of historical clothing and how people wore them. Among other examples, this title includes several pages filled with sketches of common head-dresses worn by both men and women in various centuries of the Middle Ages, along, of course, with the accompanying hair styles.
These titles are simply three of my favorites, because of their “quick reference” nature.
Please be aware that there are many, many other excellent books on historical costume available, many of which include additional information not available in the above resources. One such example is Medieval Costume and Fashion, by Herbert Norris, which among other things, will provide you with a wonderful chart of “Names of Colors in Use During the Middle Ages” (aurnola = orange; jaune = bright yellow; pers = dark blue; verdulet = bright green, bluish in color; etc), but books such as this will make you work harder to uncover the treasures of knowledge within.
For purchasing information at Amazon.com regarding books cited in these blogs, click on "So you'd like to...Write Medieval Fiction" under LINKS to the right.
When Julian finished, two younger servants pulled forward a heavy, elaborately carved chair from the corner. Gunthar sank onto its crimson cushion and extended a well-turned foot towards a kneeling pageboy. It was unlikely that anyone would have a chance to admire his pale green hose, destined as they were all evening to be concealed beneath the ankle-length folds of his costly silk tunic. But, he mused, an appreciative audience might be found for his handsome red shoes, cunningly embellished with row upon row of tiny gold rings.
The above is an excerpt from my medieval novel, Loyalty’s Web, describing the hero as he prepares to attend a banquet in his honor given by the heroine’s father.
What sources did I use to help create the excerpt above? What sources can you turn to, to create an “authentic” costume for the characters of your medieval fiction?
There are a great many source books available on the subject of historical dress and costumes, but most seem to fall into two general categories: those that “show” and those that “tell”. Those that “tell” are heavy on verbal description, with some accompanying pictures from medieval manuscripts, etc. Those that “show” rely more heavily on “reproductions” via drawings, with accompanying description directing your attention to specific elements of those drawings.
Since I am a highly visual person myself, I prefer “showing” to “telling”, especially when I’d rather be using my limited time to create a written image of my own (as above), rather than spending hours and hours researching through text-heavy, image-light costume books. (Especially those devoted to telling me how to cut and sew my own medieval costume, when I can barely even thread a needle!)
First, allow me to share a cautionary tale about research. Always, ALways, ALWAYS write down, at minimum, the title and author of any books you copy or photocopy information from in libraries, bookstores, or other sources only temporarily in your possession. You’d think that advice would be obvious, but to some of us, it wasn’t. During my inexperienced years of writing “on the side” while studying at the University of Arizona, I found a treasure-trove of medieval information in the U of A main library. (This was well before the advent of the internet, remember.) Being inexperienced, as I said, in research methods, I photocopied pages of the most wonderful historical costume sketches (with accompanying descriptions) from a book I found in the library, but I never made a note of the source. I photocopied information for the 12th and 13th centuries, but when I found myself in later years longing for similar information on the 11th century, all I could do is kick myself for the negligence that made refinding the original book all but impossible. That was in the late 1970s. It was not until the early 2000s that, to my utter amazement and eternal gratitude, I stumbled across the very same book (this time for sale), in the gift store of the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, UT. (Thank goodness I have a sister who lives in Salt Lake City, who decided to take me to the festival one summer during a visit!) Needless to say, I bought the book right up. But there remain other pages from other books that I photocopied and still refer to, but can never refer them anyone else, because to this day, I still don’t have the titles or authors to pass on.
So, with that hard-learned lesson out of the way, let me now share with you three of my favorite source books for “dressing” my medieval characters.
(1) English Costume: from the Early Middle Ages Through the Sixteenth Century, by Iris Brooke. This is the book I “lost” when I graduated from the U of A, and rediscovered in Cedar City only a few years ago. This book is divided into sections on “English Costume of the Early Middle Ages (10th-13th centuries)”; “English Costume of the Later Middle Ages (14th-15th centuries)”; and “English Costume of the Age of Elizabeth (16th century)”.
Each section is further divided into individual centuries. For the 1100-1200s (the time setting for Loyalty’s Web) I found the following description:
“The length of the sleeves on the supertunic [i.e., outer tunic] might be merely a few inches in length and finished with a broad band of embroidery, with the contrasting and tightly-fitting sleeve of the tunic beneath reaching to the wrist, or they might be quite full but fitting to the wrist with a cuff of some contrasting material or embroidery.”
From this information came the following description in my novel:
The Earl of Gunthar stood while his squire, Julian Parr, turned back the cuffs of his dull yellow tunic to expose the ornamental embroidery worked along the narrow wrists. Gunthar had selected the undergarment for the roomy cut of its sleeve, to relieve his bandaged arm of unnecessary discomfort.
Across from each descriptive page, is a facing page of drawings of medieval people wearing the clothing or hair styles mentioned on the preceding page.
Furthermore, there are descriptive pages and sketches devoted to footwear, headwear, and as I said, even hairstyles. Here is a description of footwear from the 12th century:
“The extensive use of rings as a means of fastening garments at this time even extended to the footwear… The shoe itself was not often embroidered and separate bands of embroidery were sewn on. Another means of ornamentation was to sew small rings of gold and silver, sometimes even on to the toe and heel of the shoe…”
This became the inspiration for:
But, he mused, an appreciative audience might be found for his handsome red shoes, cunningly embellished with row upon row of tiny gold rings
(2) 900 Years of English Costume, by Nancy Bradfield. Actually, this title is no longer available, except as a very expensive used book. However, the exact same book is available for a reasonable price under a new title: Historical Costumes of England 1066-1968.
This book is divided by the reigns of the kings and queens of England, and further divided by “Men’s Fashions” and “Women’s Fashions”. Again, on one page are sketches of people dressed in medieval clothing. In this instance, the figures are each assigned a number. On the facing page, again there are descriptions, this time coordinating the “figure number” with the opposite sketches. An additional advantage of this book is that there are marginal notations to speed you along to that portion of clothing you may be particularly interested in reading about. For example, under Henry II-Richard I (1154-99), the following marginal notes appear: tunic, sleeves, scarlet cloth, hose, shoes, cloaks, hoods and hats, hair, gloves and purse, colours.
Under tunics, I find the following: “The skirts were long to the ankle.” Under hose, it reads: “The hose remained the same as in the previous reign, fitting the leg to above the knee and fastened to the girdle of the breeches (Figure 5)”…which directs my attention to a sample sketch labeled "5" on the preceding page. Since the sentence on “hose” directs me to the “previous reign”, I flip back a few pages, where I read: “From 1150 the hose were made long, fitting the leg well, to above the knee.” Returning to my original page, I read under “colours”, “Colours are on p. 17; no new ones are mentioned,” so again I flip backwards, to page 17, where under “colours”, I find, “Light blue, red, and greens were fashionable; black, yellow, red-browns, and grey were also worn.”
Hence, from all this information, I am able to write:
It was unlikely that anyone would have a chance to admire his pale green hose, destined as they were all evening to be concealed beneath the ankle-length folds of his costly silk tunic.
(3) Medieval Fashions, by Tom Tierney (A Dover Coloring Book). Never underestimate the value of a good, historical coloring book! They are excellent for further illustrations of historical clothing and how people wore them. Among other examples, this title includes several pages filled with sketches of common head-dresses worn by both men and women in various centuries of the Middle Ages, along, of course, with the accompanying hair styles.
These titles are simply three of my favorites, because of their “quick reference” nature.
Please be aware that there are many, many other excellent books on historical costume available, many of which include additional information not available in the above resources. One such example is Medieval Costume and Fashion, by Herbert Norris, which among other things, will provide you with a wonderful chart of “Names of Colors in Use During the Middle Ages” (aurnola = orange; jaune = bright yellow; pers = dark blue; verdulet = bright green, bluish in color; etc), but books such as this will make you work harder to uncover the treasures of knowledge within.
For purchasing information at Amazon.com regarding books cited in these blogs, click on "So you'd like to...Write Medieval Fiction" under LINKS to the right.
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