One of my favorite resource books on medieval meals is Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony, by Madeleine Pelner Cosman. There are many books containing medieval recipes, and others that describe medieval table manners, but you won’t find a better, all-in-one resource book that includes all of the above, and much, much more.
Fabulous Feasts makes researching easy, thanks to the many helpful subtitles within each chapter. Without reading the book straight through from cover to cover (although of course, that can be fun, too), a mere random flipping through the pages will quickly alight one’s eyes on such topics as: “Wines” (from which I discovered the perfect wine to use in my upcoming sequel to Loyalty’s Web); “Food Painting”, describing how such things as sauces, soups, pastries, breads, and even batter-encrusted meats were dyed various, fanciful colors with such flowers and herbs as parsley (green), sandalwood (red); saffron (yellow and orange), and even a concoction of egg yolk mixed with ginger powder and saffron to imitate an illusion of gold (FF, p. 61-63); and “Marvelous Entertainment”, which in addition to mentioning jugglers, acrobats, jesters, etc to entertain the diners, also includes this delightful example of “illusion food”: “At one banquet, a sculptured castle with beasts—deer, boar, goats, and hares—was borne into the hall by squires. It had a fountain in whose center a tower spouted wine in five directions, each wine of a different quality.” (FF, p. 33)
There are sections on “Bread and Baked Goods”; “Sauces at Table”; “Cooking Processes”; and even “Salt”. One can learn about “Food and Social Class”: (“When a lady royally born married a lowly knight, or a poor lady married a lord of noble blood, the lady of royal station kept her state as before her marriage; and the lady of low blood took with her husband his high seat at table.” (FF, p. 107) Descriptions of a medieval kitchen can be found under the section on “Various Kitchen Utensils” (FF, pp. 56-59).
The section on “Table Manners” tells us that, although spoons and knives were used when dining, most of the food was “picked, balanced, and conveyed by those most portable, manipulable, graceful terminals of the hands. Certain fingers were extended while eating specific foods to allow grease-free fingers available for the next dish, as well as for dipping fingers into condiments and spices.” (FF, p. 17) An example of incorporating this “finger food” into a fictional medieval scene can be read in an excerpt from Loyatly’s Web on my website at www.joyce-dipastena.com.
Fabulous Feasts ends with a chapter on “Medieval Feasts for the Modern Table”, with suggestions for how to reproduce a medieval feast in the 20th (and now 21st) Century, followed by an extensive list of recipes with instructions for producing medieval dishes for your guests. A mere sampling: Floteres, i.e. salmon and current dumplings; Oreoles, i.e. elderberry funnel cakes; Porpoise Pudding, i.e. oat-stuffed pike; Nekkesan, i.e., swan-neck pudding or capon or turkey-neck pudding; Garbage Pie, i.e. giblet custard pie; Flore Frittours, i.e. fried squash flowers; Joutes, i.e. herbed beets; Figeye, i.e. a tricolored fig confection; Faun Tempere, i.e. gilli flower pudding; and even such “Spectacles” or “Illusion Foods” as Hasle, i.e. mock entails. Yum!
Fabulous Feasts is abundantly filled with beautiful and useful illustrations and color plates to help you visualize the text. The only drawbacks to this exquisitely useful book is the lack of an index (always regrettable, in my opinion, with research books—I find indexes indispensable for “quick research” purposes); and the failure to list page numbers for the subtitles listed in the table of contents. For example, while typing the section on “Food Painting” above, a distraction caused me to lose my place and required me to go hunting through the text once more to re-find that section. Either an index or page number for the “Food Painting” subtitle in the table on context would have whizzed me back to my misplaced section. The moral? When using Fabulous Feasts, keep lots of small bookmarks handy to stick in the sections you’re studying, in case “real life” or other interruptions call you away.
These are, however, small quibbles for such a valuable book. Fabulous Feasts, by Madeleine Pelner Cosman, is available on Amazon.com (see my "So you'd like to...Write Medieval Fiction" link, under "Links" on the right side of this screen for details). Since the book is still in print, it is undoubtedly available at most other online books sellers, or can be ordered through brick and motar bookstores, as well.
FINAL REMINDER: This is your last week to send me your name and address, if you want to enter for a chance to win a FREE copy of Medieval Wordbook. Deadline is March 14. Go to Research Book Drawing for details.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Medieval Gardens, Part II: medieval healing
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.
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.
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.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Research Book Drawing
Most writers who build up extensive personal research libraries of their own, will eventually find themselves with accidental duplicates of valued research books. This was exactly the dilemma I found myself in recently when going through a disordered pile of books in my house. Somewhere along the way, I inadvertently purchased a second copy of Medieval Wordbook, by Madeleine Pelner Cosman. My first thought was to donate my second copy to a library, but since our own very small public library is unlikely to make room for so specialized a research book on their shelves, I came up with another idea.
I presume that most of you who read this blog, do so because (1) you are interested in writing, and (2) you are interested in the Middle Ages. And since I maintain this blog out of a desire to assist others who fall into the above two categories, therefore, I have decided to hold my first medieval research with joyce book drawing, in the hopes that my extra Medieval Wordbook will fall into the hands of someone who will actually use and appreciate it.
First, let me offer you a brief description of the book, by quoting from the back of the book jacket:
“Terms and expressions that have worked their way into our everyday speech are at the heart of Medieval Wordbook, a perfect reference for word lovers… Generously illustrated with elegant period drawings, the book explains all aspects of medieval life and language. Included in this work are such words as : bezoar [any Harry Potter fans out there?], blackmail, coroner, patter, hodge podge, and folio. Fully cross-referenced, [this book] is a boon companion to all of medieval culture, including expressions drawn from art and architecture, sex and science, costume and cookery, literature and magic, liturgy and astrology, warfare and ceremony. Medieval Wordbook is an ideal guide for anyone interested in the full panoply of medieval history.”
The entires are arranged alphabetically, in easy to read print, the exception being the index. If you and your eyes are over 40, you might want to be sure you have your reading glasses on hand.
You can read more about Medieval Wordbook on Amazon.com (type in “Medieval Wordbook Cosman”, and you’ll go right to it), but the book no longer appears to be in print, so I’m offering one of you a good deal here. All you have to do to enter my drawing for a FREE copy of Medieval Wordbook is to send an email to:
jdipastena@yahoo.com
Type: “Medieval Wordbook drawing” in the subject line, and include your name and mailing address. Since I don’t know how many people actually read my blog, I’m going to set a deadline of March 14, with the winner to be drawn and announced on March 15 here on this very blogsite! If I haven’t heard from at least one of you by then, my local library will be receiving a donation for their next book sale.
P.S. Not only am I offering you a free copy of this book, I’m going to let you have my hardback version, which aside from a slightly rumpled-around-the-edges book jacket, is still in excellent condition!
I presume that most of you who read this blog, do so because (1) you are interested in writing, and (2) you are interested in the Middle Ages. And since I maintain this blog out of a desire to assist others who fall into the above two categories, therefore, I have decided to hold my first medieval research with joyce book drawing, in the hopes that my extra Medieval Wordbook will fall into the hands of someone who will actually use and appreciate it.
First, let me offer you a brief description of the book, by quoting from the back of the book jacket:
“Terms and expressions that have worked their way into our everyday speech are at the heart of Medieval Wordbook, a perfect reference for word lovers… Generously illustrated with elegant period drawings, the book explains all aspects of medieval life and language. Included in this work are such words as : bezoar [any Harry Potter fans out there?], blackmail, coroner, patter, hodge podge, and folio. Fully cross-referenced, [this book] is a boon companion to all of medieval culture, including expressions drawn from art and architecture, sex and science, costume and cookery, literature and magic, liturgy and astrology, warfare and ceremony. Medieval Wordbook is an ideal guide for anyone interested in the full panoply of medieval history.”
The entires are arranged alphabetically, in easy to read print, the exception being the index. If you and your eyes are over 40, you might want to be sure you have your reading glasses on hand.
You can read more about Medieval Wordbook on Amazon.com (type in “Medieval Wordbook Cosman”, and you’ll go right to it), but the book no longer appears to be in print, so I’m offering one of you a good deal here. All you have to do to enter my drawing for a FREE copy of Medieval Wordbook is to send an email to:
jdipastena@yahoo.com
Type: “Medieval Wordbook drawing” in the subject line, and include your name and mailing address. Since I don’t know how many people actually read my blog, I’m going to set a deadline of March 14, with the winner to be drawn and announced on March 15 here on this very blogsite! If I haven’t heard from at least one of you by then, my local library will be receiving a donation for their next book sale.
P.S. Not only am I offering you a free copy of this book, I’m going to let you have my hardback version, which aside from a slightly rumpled-around-the-edges book jacket, is still in excellent condition!
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
In the News: Loyalty's Web
Loyalty's Web is a finalist in the Whitney Awards Competition!
For more information, click on the banner below.
Sometimes What You Need Is a Little Serendipity
I promised in my last post that I would share my “backup source” for my choice of water hemlock as the poison I used in my novel, Loyalty’s Web. Sometimes backup sources (or any sources, for that matter) come about by simple “luck”…serendipity, if you will. Prior to my discovery of Deadly Doses (see January 5, 2008 post), I focused my search for an appropriate medieval poison on various books about herbs, especially since I wanted to incorporate some “healing” techniques in my story, as well. While useful for the latter, what I quickly discovered is that most generalized books about herbs are not very interested in helping you poison someone, even if that someone is a fictional character. Consequently, the herb books I bought mostly proved to be a bust for my poison angle…with one exception. The Herb Book, by John Lust.
The sequence of events went like this: I bought a book entitled Medieval English Gardens (the subject of my next post). In this book, one of the herbs that attracted my attention was a plant called “angelica”, which among other things, was used to ward off plague, made into cordials and perfumes, and eaten as after-dinner sweets. Intrigued by this plant, I turned to my copy of The Herb Book to see what it had to say about angelica. Lo and behold, to my utter surprise, what did I find written under “Cautions” for the herb but this statement: “Wild angelica can be confused with European water hemlock, which is poisonous.”
This was the “Aha! moment” when I knew for a certainty that water hemlock, aka cowbane, would without doubt be the poison of choice for my story. After all, if the would-be poisoner were challenged, he or she could always claim “accidental confusion” between the noxious (cowbane) and the benign (angelica).
My first draft of Loyalty’s Web was written some years before the internet became nearly as common as air in our lives, hence my dependence at the time on printed sources, such as The Herb Book. Nowadays, I could go to the internet to find more information on water hemlock. (Be sure to Google for “European water hemlock”, otherwise you’ll go straight to the American version.) You can even find photographs of the plant (see http://www.all-creatures.org/picb/wfshl-waterhemlock.html), whereas all I originally had was a word description and my imagination.
Even so, I’m not sure that modern technology would have led me to the angelica/water hemlock link any more directly than my fortuitous reading of my little paperback Herb Book. After all, it never would have occurred to me to search for a link until I had accidentally stumbled across it in the first place!
So whichever route your research takes…the old-fashioned printed word or the internet…sometimes nothing trumps pure and simple “luck” in discovering some critical detail to click a plot-point into place.
Note: The Herb Book, by John Lust, remains widely available. Arranged alphabetically with drawings, each herb listing includes: Common Names; Medicinal Parts; Description; Properties and Uses, including CAUTIONS (helpful for an author with a character interested in misusing a plant); and Preparation and Dosage.
The sequence of events went like this: I bought a book entitled Medieval English Gardens (the subject of my next post). In this book, one of the herbs that attracted my attention was a plant called “angelica”, which among other things, was used to ward off plague, made into cordials and perfumes, and eaten as after-dinner sweets. Intrigued by this plant, I turned to my copy of The Herb Book to see what it had to say about angelica. Lo and behold, to my utter surprise, what did I find written under “Cautions” for the herb but this statement: “Wild angelica can be confused with European water hemlock, which is poisonous.”
This was the “Aha! moment” when I knew for a certainty that water hemlock, aka cowbane, would without doubt be the poison of choice for my story. After all, if the would-be poisoner were challenged, he or she could always claim “accidental confusion” between the noxious (cowbane) and the benign (angelica).
My first draft of Loyalty’s Web was written some years before the internet became nearly as common as air in our lives, hence my dependence at the time on printed sources, such as The Herb Book. Nowadays, I could go to the internet to find more information on water hemlock. (Be sure to Google for “European water hemlock”, otherwise you’ll go straight to the American version.) You can even find photographs of the plant (see http://www.all-creatures.org/picb/wfshl-waterhemlock.html), whereas all I originally had was a word description and my imagination.
Even so, I’m not sure that modern technology would have led me to the angelica/water hemlock link any more directly than my fortuitous reading of my little paperback Herb Book. After all, it never would have occurred to me to search for a link until I had accidentally stumbled across it in the first place!
So whichever route your research takes…the old-fashioned printed word or the internet…sometimes nothing trumps pure and simple “luck” in discovering some critical detail to click a plot-point into place.
Note: The Herb Book, by John Lust, remains widely available. Arranged alphabetically with drawings, each herb listing includes: Common Names; Medicinal Parts; Description; Properties and Uses, including CAUTIONS (helpful for an author with a character interested in misusing a plant); and Preparation and Dosage.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Adding a Touch of Suspense by Slipping Some Poison in the Cup
Want to up the suspense of your medieval novel or short story? There’s nothing like a drop or two of poison in a character’s wine to make a reader sit up and take notice.
But where do we go to find information about medieval poisons?
An excellent starting point is Deadly Doses: A Writer’s Guide to Poisons, by Serita Deborah Stevens with Anne Klarner. Deadly Doses is part of the Howdunit Series published by Writers Digest Books.
Now, this book is not strictly about “medieval” poisons, so you must do a little searching to find an appropriate poison for your time period. But of the eleven chapters, several can be quickly eliminated from your search: “Houshold Poisons”, “Medical Poisons”, “Pesticides”, “Industrial Poisons”, and “Street Drugs” all belong to a more modern age, so there’s no need to waste precious research time on those sections.
That leaves “Poisonous Plants”, “Fragile Fungi”, and “Snakes, Spiders, and Other Living Things” as topics to explore.
For my novel, Loyalty’s Web, I found myself leaning towards some use of a poisonous plant. After a short chapter introduction, the chapter breaks down into the following poison subsections: “Quickly Fatal”; “Mistaken for Edible or Eaten by Mistake”; “Edible in Small Quantities, Certain Parts Edible, or Edible Certain Times of the Year”; “Flowering Plants”; and “Miscellaneous Plant Poisons”.
Each of these subsections is further broken down in the following super-sub categories:
“Name”, “Toxicity”, “Location”, “Deadly Parts”, “Effects and Symptoms”, “Reaction Time”, “Antidotes and Treatments”, and “Notes”.
The first thing I did was take a red pencil and mark the name of each plant under the “Location” category, that was listed as “native to Europe, Britain or England” or that may have been brought there by the Romans. The important thing is to be sure that whatever poison you choose was actually available to the people of the Middle Ages in the area of Europe that you are writing about. (I’ll talk about backup sources in my next post.)
Once you’ve whittled the possibilities down with a red pencil or other highlighter, you can focus your research on the additional information for each of the poisons you’ve marked, and gradually come to a decision about which poison will best serve the plot of your story.
Since I wanted to keep my readers guessing a bit about the poison angle at the beginning, I decided to go with a plant that could be “Mistaken for Edible or Eaten by Mistake”. I eventually settled on water hemlock, also known as cowbane. Although the “Location” information seemed to place water hemlock mostly in North America, a note in the first chapter to Deadly Doses, “A Short History of the Dreaded Art”, informed me that : “Water hemlock, foxglove, henbane, and the prussic acid of the almond tree were all found in the Parisian woods and meadows.” (Deadly Doses, p 6) This told me that the plant I wanted also grew in France (the location of Loyalty’s Web). It also taught me that it can be well worth your while to read “generalized” chapters about the background of your subject, before moving on to seemingly more pertinent “specialized” chapters. Valuable tips and facts are often “hidden” in Introductions and the like.
Once I’d settled on water hemlock, which I referred to by its nickname, cowbane, throughout my novel, I went on to glean the following information from its entry:
It had a toxicity level of 6, placing it in the “supertoxic” category, meaning that only a very, very small amount of the poison would cause death. I also learned that younger plants, growing in the springtime, are more poisonous, which again fit with the springtime setting of my novel.
Under “Deadly Parts”, I learned that although the entire plant is poisonous, most of the poison is contained in the roots and rootstock. So when I finally had a character uncover the “source” of the poison, I had her discover a portion of cowbane root that someone in the castle had been hiding. (Don’t want to give too much away here by telling you who!) The poison was also dissoluble in alcohol, which made it perfect for adding a few drops to a cup of wine.
Although it never went that far in my novel, if my hero had actually drunk his tainted cup of wine, this would have been the effect: “Restlessness and feelings of anxiety, pain in the stomach, nausea, violent vomiting, diarrhea, dilated pupils, labored breathing, sometimes frothing at the mouth, weak and rapid pulse, and violent convulsions terminated by death. Respiratory failure is the cause of death.” (Deadly Doses, p 61)
Death would occur between 20 minutes to an hour. (Given the process leading up to death, I think I’d rather go fast, than slow!)
There are antidotes and treatments, but most of them belong to a more modern age, and if the source of the poison had been concealed in something like wine, one would not have known what sort of antidote to try in the first place. Besides which, given the potentially fast-acting nature of the poison, a character would have to be very self-possessed, knoweldgable, and/or experienced to gather one’s wits quickly enough to act in time to save the victim.
This is just a single example of the kinds of valuable, detailed information available in Deadly Doses. As a starting point for authors of mystery, suspense, or who just like to throw in a bit of “surprise” to keep their readers guessing, I highly recommend Deadly Doses, by Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner.
This post has run on long enough, so I’ll stop here. Next time, I’ll share with you my “backup sources” and more on medieval plants.
Note: Deadly Doses is widely available in Used Books on Amazon.com. Writer’s Digest Books lists the title Howdunit: Book Of Poisons, by Serita Stevens and Anne Louise Bannon, which may well be the same as Deadly Doses with a new name, but not having a copy of my own, I can’t vouch for that. The description sounds very similar, and since my copy of Deadly Doses is 298 pages, and Book of Poisons lists at 368 pages, I’m guessing that Book of Poisons may merely be an updated version of Deadly Doses, with a new title. If so, this is definitely a book you will want to consider including in your library!
But where do we go to find information about medieval poisons?
An excellent starting point is Deadly Doses: A Writer’s Guide to Poisons, by Serita Deborah Stevens with Anne Klarner. Deadly Doses is part of the Howdunit Series published by Writers Digest Books.
Now, this book is not strictly about “medieval” poisons, so you must do a little searching to find an appropriate poison for your time period. But of the eleven chapters, several can be quickly eliminated from your search: “Houshold Poisons”, “Medical Poisons”, “Pesticides”, “Industrial Poisons”, and “Street Drugs” all belong to a more modern age, so there’s no need to waste precious research time on those sections.
That leaves “Poisonous Plants”, “Fragile Fungi”, and “Snakes, Spiders, and Other Living Things” as topics to explore.
For my novel, Loyalty’s Web, I found myself leaning towards some use of a poisonous plant. After a short chapter introduction, the chapter breaks down into the following poison subsections: “Quickly Fatal”; “Mistaken for Edible or Eaten by Mistake”; “Edible in Small Quantities, Certain Parts Edible, or Edible Certain Times of the Year”; “Flowering Plants”; and “Miscellaneous Plant Poisons”.
Each of these subsections is further broken down in the following super-sub categories:
“Name”, “Toxicity”, “Location”, “Deadly Parts”, “Effects and Symptoms”, “Reaction Time”, “Antidotes and Treatments”, and “Notes”.
The first thing I did was take a red pencil and mark the name of each plant under the “Location” category, that was listed as “native to Europe, Britain or England” or that may have been brought there by the Romans. The important thing is to be sure that whatever poison you choose was actually available to the people of the Middle Ages in the area of Europe that you are writing about. (I’ll talk about backup sources in my next post.)
Once you’ve whittled the possibilities down with a red pencil or other highlighter, you can focus your research on the additional information for each of the poisons you’ve marked, and gradually come to a decision about which poison will best serve the plot of your story.
Since I wanted to keep my readers guessing a bit about the poison angle at the beginning, I decided to go with a plant that could be “Mistaken for Edible or Eaten by Mistake”. I eventually settled on water hemlock, also known as cowbane. Although the “Location” information seemed to place water hemlock mostly in North America, a note in the first chapter to Deadly Doses, “A Short History of the Dreaded Art”, informed me that : “Water hemlock, foxglove, henbane, and the prussic acid of the almond tree were all found in the Parisian woods and meadows.” (Deadly Doses, p 6) This told me that the plant I wanted also grew in France (the location of Loyalty’s Web). It also taught me that it can be well worth your while to read “generalized” chapters about the background of your subject, before moving on to seemingly more pertinent “specialized” chapters. Valuable tips and facts are often “hidden” in Introductions and the like.
Once I’d settled on water hemlock, which I referred to by its nickname, cowbane, throughout my novel, I went on to glean the following information from its entry:
It had a toxicity level of 6, placing it in the “supertoxic” category, meaning that only a very, very small amount of the poison would cause death. I also learned that younger plants, growing in the springtime, are more poisonous, which again fit with the springtime setting of my novel.
Under “Deadly Parts”, I learned that although the entire plant is poisonous, most of the poison is contained in the roots and rootstock. So when I finally had a character uncover the “source” of the poison, I had her discover a portion of cowbane root that someone in the castle had been hiding. (Don’t want to give too much away here by telling you who!) The poison was also dissoluble in alcohol, which made it perfect for adding a few drops to a cup of wine.
Although it never went that far in my novel, if my hero had actually drunk his tainted cup of wine, this would have been the effect: “Restlessness and feelings of anxiety, pain in the stomach, nausea, violent vomiting, diarrhea, dilated pupils, labored breathing, sometimes frothing at the mouth, weak and rapid pulse, and violent convulsions terminated by death. Respiratory failure is the cause of death.” (Deadly Doses, p 61)
Death would occur between 20 minutes to an hour. (Given the process leading up to death, I think I’d rather go fast, than slow!)
There are antidotes and treatments, but most of them belong to a more modern age, and if the source of the poison had been concealed in something like wine, one would not have known what sort of antidote to try in the first place. Besides which, given the potentially fast-acting nature of the poison, a character would have to be very self-possessed, knoweldgable, and/or experienced to gather one’s wits quickly enough to act in time to save the victim.
This is just a single example of the kinds of valuable, detailed information available in Deadly Doses. As a starting point for authors of mystery, suspense, or who just like to throw in a bit of “surprise” to keep their readers guessing, I highly recommend Deadly Doses, by Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner.
This post has run on long enough, so I’ll stop here. Next time, I’ll share with you my “backup sources” and more on medieval plants.
Note: Deadly Doses is widely available in Used Books on Amazon.com. Writer’s Digest Books lists the title Howdunit: Book Of Poisons, by Serita Stevens and Anne Louise Bannon, which may well be the same as Deadly Doses with a new name, but not having a copy of my own, I can’t vouch for that. The description sounds very similar, and since my copy of Deadly Doses is 298 pages, and Book of Poisons lists at 368 pages, I’m guessing that Book of Poisons may merely be an updated version of Deadly Doses, with a new title. If so, this is definitely a book you will want to consider including in your library!
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Posting delay...
Due to a scheduling conflict, my next medieval research blog will be posted on Saturday, January 5th. Please be sure to check back then, and thank you for your patience!
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Christmas in the Middle Ages
I just finished creating a new blog, entitled Medieval Vignettes. My intention in this post is not to try to “promote” my new blog here (if you’re interested, you can check it out at medievalvignettes.blogspot.com), but to share with you a few lessons I learned while writing my first post for that site.
My goal was to write a sort of “flashback scene” of an earlier Christmas with some of the characters from my medieval novel, Loyalty’s Web. I thought it would be a fairly easy process to present a “typical” medieval Christmas celebration via this scene, but to my surprise, it turned out to be the very opposite!
Why? The two major roadblocks I ran into were: (1) most medieval Christmas information I found was about Christmas traditions in England, while my novel is set in an area of France called Poitou; and (2) what broader information I could find that included France, was mostly representative of the later Middle Ages, as opposed to the late 1100’s where my novel is set.
Let me share an example.
I bought a wonderful book entitled, Medieval Celebrations, by Daniel Diehl and Mark Donnelly, filled with fun and fascinating facts about various medieval celebrations and how to recreate them. One of the celebrations discussed is, of course, Christmas. There is a whole chapter on Christmas Celebrations. I thought all my questions would be solved by the purchase of this book, but this was the problem I ran into: when writing about the Middle Ages, one must always keep in mind that we are talking about 1000-year stretch of history. So what might have been “traditional” at a Christmas celebration in the 1400s, may well not have been a “tradition” in the 1100s.
Let’s take Christmas carols as a specific example. While reading about the popularity of carols in Medieval Celebrations, I of course thought that including carols in my “flashback scene” would be a splendid “touch” to add! However, keeping to my rule of always double-checking a fact with a second or third source, I decided to do a little internet Googling on the subject of Christmas carols. What I discovered was the following:
Citing from About.Com: Music Education: History of Christmas Carols, I learned:
“Word Origin: The word carol or carole is a medieval word of French and Anglo-Norman origin, believed to mean a dance song or a circle dance accompanied by singing.”
Ah, so far, so good! My setting is medieval France, so the origin location is perfect! But…
“History of Christmas Carols: It is unclear when the first carol was written but it is believed that circa 1350 to 1550 is the golden age of carols…During the 14th century carols became a popular religious song form…. By the 15th century the carol was also considered as art music.” (http://musiced.about.com/od/christmasnewyeararticles/a/carols.htm)
1350-1550 was way too early for my setting! Even good old Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_carols, backed up by many other websites if you Google “History of Christmas Carols”), which traces the beginning the Christmas carol tradition back as far as the 13th Century (1200s), confirmed that there should be no carol singing in my “flashback”.
How, then, to set a Christmas setting for my scene? Aside from describing a massive feast/banquet (which, in the end, I decided not to do, by retreating back a day to Christmas Eve, instead of Christmas Day, for my setting), what sort of “authentic” touches could I add to my story?
Christmas trees didn’t become a Christmas tradition until the 16th century. (http://www.theholidayspot.com/christmas/history/xmas_tree.htm)
Carols and Christmas trees were off the list. What about such evergreen decorations as mistletoe, holly, and ivy?
Our modern tradition of kissing under the mistletoe didn’t begin until the 18th Century. (Alas, no kissing in my scene.) (http://www.theholidayspot.com/christmas/history/mistletoe.htm)
Although holly, like mistletoe, originally carried with it pagan connotations connected to the Druids, Christians were beginning to adopt it as a Christian symbol as early as the Roman era. (http://www.christmascarnivals.com/christmas-history/christmas-holly-history.html) Ivy had a similar history.
From this information, I admit, I did some “extrapolation” for my scene, weaving in these evergreens as “decorations”, without exactly referring to their modern connotations at Christmas.
To be honest, I did far more extrapolation for my “flashback” than I would ever have allowed myself to do for a full-fledged novel. I hope I did not go too far adrift in doing so. But the exercise did teach me some valuable lessons, the most important one being (yes, repeating myself here, but a point that must be strongly stressed):
The Middle Ages covered a period of 1000 years. Once you have chosen the exact time setting of your medieval novel or story, it is vital that you double-check “generalized medieval facts” to be sure that they coincide with the specific sub-period that you have chosen.
For stories set in the later Middle Ages, Medieval Celebrations, by Daniel Diehl and Mark Donnelly is a highly accessible place to start.
As for myself, my goal for this coming year is to hunt for medieval Christmas sources that apply more specifically to my chosen time setting in the late 1100s. Look for me to share my new discoveries with you in 2008!
My goal was to write a sort of “flashback scene” of an earlier Christmas with some of the characters from my medieval novel, Loyalty’s Web. I thought it would be a fairly easy process to present a “typical” medieval Christmas celebration via this scene, but to my surprise, it turned out to be the very opposite!
Why? The two major roadblocks I ran into were: (1) most medieval Christmas information I found was about Christmas traditions in England, while my novel is set in an area of France called Poitou; and (2) what broader information I could find that included France, was mostly representative of the later Middle Ages, as opposed to the late 1100’s where my novel is set.
Let me share an example.
I bought a wonderful book entitled, Medieval Celebrations, by Daniel Diehl and Mark Donnelly, filled with fun and fascinating facts about various medieval celebrations and how to recreate them. One of the celebrations discussed is, of course, Christmas. There is a whole chapter on Christmas Celebrations. I thought all my questions would be solved by the purchase of this book, but this was the problem I ran into: when writing about the Middle Ages, one must always keep in mind that we are talking about 1000-year stretch of history. So what might have been “traditional” at a Christmas celebration in the 1400s, may well not have been a “tradition” in the 1100s.
Let’s take Christmas carols as a specific example. While reading about the popularity of carols in Medieval Celebrations, I of course thought that including carols in my “flashback scene” would be a splendid “touch” to add! However, keeping to my rule of always double-checking a fact with a second or third source, I decided to do a little internet Googling on the subject of Christmas carols. What I discovered was the following:
Citing from About.Com: Music Education: History of Christmas Carols, I learned:
“Word Origin: The word carol or carole is a medieval word of French and Anglo-Norman origin, believed to mean a dance song or a circle dance accompanied by singing.”
Ah, so far, so good! My setting is medieval France, so the origin location is perfect! But…
“History of Christmas Carols: It is unclear when the first carol was written but it is believed that circa 1350 to 1550 is the golden age of carols…During the 14th century carols became a popular religious song form…. By the 15th century the carol was also considered as art music.” (http://musiced.about.com/od/christmasnewyeararticles/a/carols.htm)
1350-1550 was way too early for my setting! Even good old Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_carols, backed up by many other websites if you Google “History of Christmas Carols”), which traces the beginning the Christmas carol tradition back as far as the 13th Century (1200s), confirmed that there should be no carol singing in my “flashback”.
How, then, to set a Christmas setting for my scene? Aside from describing a massive feast/banquet (which, in the end, I decided not to do, by retreating back a day to Christmas Eve, instead of Christmas Day, for my setting), what sort of “authentic” touches could I add to my story?
Christmas trees didn’t become a Christmas tradition until the 16th century. (http://www.theholidayspot.com/christmas/history/xmas_tree.htm)
Carols and Christmas trees were off the list. What about such evergreen decorations as mistletoe, holly, and ivy?
Our modern tradition of kissing under the mistletoe didn’t begin until the 18th Century. (Alas, no kissing in my scene.) (http://www.theholidayspot.com/christmas/history/mistletoe.htm)
Although holly, like mistletoe, originally carried with it pagan connotations connected to the Druids, Christians were beginning to adopt it as a Christian symbol as early as the Roman era. (http://www.christmascarnivals.com/christmas-history/christmas-holly-history.html) Ivy had a similar history.
From this information, I admit, I did some “extrapolation” for my scene, weaving in these evergreens as “decorations”, without exactly referring to their modern connotations at Christmas.
To be honest, I did far more extrapolation for my “flashback” than I would ever have allowed myself to do for a full-fledged novel. I hope I did not go too far adrift in doing so. But the exercise did teach me some valuable lessons, the most important one being (yes, repeating myself here, but a point that must be strongly stressed):
The Middle Ages covered a period of 1000 years. Once you have chosen the exact time setting of your medieval novel or story, it is vital that you double-check “generalized medieval facts” to be sure that they coincide with the specific sub-period that you have chosen.
For stories set in the later Middle Ages, Medieval Celebrations, by Daniel Diehl and Mark Donnelly is a highly accessible place to start.
As for myself, my goal for this coming year is to hunt for medieval Christmas sources that apply more specifically to my chosen time setting in the late 1100s. Look for me to share my new discoveries with you in 2008!
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
The Castle Explorer’s Guide, Part II
In my last post, I shared but a single example of how I used The Castle Explorer’s Guide, by Frank Bottomley, to create a scene in my medieval novel, Loyalty’s Web.
I simply cannot express strongly enough how valuable I have found The Castle Explorer’s Guide (hereafter referred to as TCEG) to my writing of “things medieval”. Not only will this book describe (frequently with accompanying drawings) the physical “outer” aspects of castles such as: the barbican, the gatehouse, the portcullis and drawbridge, the curtain wall, the bailey, the stables, etc, as well as “inner” aspects such as the great hall, the kitchens, the chapel, the bower, even fireplaces and chimneys, but you will also find entries for nearly every aspect of castle life you have ever wondered about, as well as those you have never thought to wonder about before you discovered this book!
I had wondered about the castle garrison. I knew basically what a garrison was (the defenders of a castle), but how exactly were they set up and how many men commonly made up a garrison? I had always thought of a garrison as being made up only of knights, but thanks to TCEG, I now know that these knights were supported by “men-at-arms” (men who fight with lance, sword and shield, but who have not obtained the rank of knight), crossbowmen and archers. How many men made up a “typical” garrison? According to TCEG: “Rochester held out against King John in 1215 with some 100 knights and ‘many men-at-arms’, while in the same war Odiham held out for a fortnight with only three knights and ten men-at-arms….. At Burton in Lonsdale the garrison was a knight, ten sergeants, a watchman and a porter…. Walton had a peacetime strength of four men and two servants.” (“Garrison”, TCEG, p 71)
I’d always envisioned much larger forces whenever I’d read the term “castle garrison”. Prior to discovering this entry, I’d had no idea how small, yet effective, medieval garrisons might be.
Other items of interest in TCEG:
How much were garrison members paid? Look under the entries for “wages” and “income”.
How did castle occupants amuse themselves? Look under the entry for “entertainment”.
There are entries on “Knightly Career”, Ladies Favour”, “Heraldry”, “Robber Barons”, “Furnishings”, even “Salt”.
Of course, most of these subjects are addressed in other research books, and as I said last time, I always advise a writer to seek out a secondary source to confirm any information you decide to use from TCEG. Also, you should be aware that despite the plethora of information contained in TCEG, the size of the volume necessarily limits the degree of detail each entry can address. But for a single, “starting source”, whether for small “touches of authenticity” or to point you towards deeper research on a given castle subject, The Castle Explorer’s Guide by Frank Bottomley can’t be beat!
(Note: I must remind you that The Castle Explorer’s Guide is currently out of print. Amazon offers used versions, but the ones I’ve seen listed there come at a steep price. However, if you Google “frank bottomley castle explorers guide”, you can find used copies for as low as $4.12. In fact, looking further down my “google” list, I just discovered several copies selling for $1.99 at Alibris! (See http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/0517421720) If you’re serious about medieval research, once you get a copy in your hands, I’d suggest you never let it go!)
I simply cannot express strongly enough how valuable I have found The Castle Explorer’s Guide (hereafter referred to as TCEG) to my writing of “things medieval”. Not only will this book describe (frequently with accompanying drawings) the physical “outer” aspects of castles such as: the barbican, the gatehouse, the portcullis and drawbridge, the curtain wall, the bailey, the stables, etc, as well as “inner” aspects such as the great hall, the kitchens, the chapel, the bower, even fireplaces and chimneys, but you will also find entries for nearly every aspect of castle life you have ever wondered about, as well as those you have never thought to wonder about before you discovered this book!
I had wondered about the castle garrison. I knew basically what a garrison was (the defenders of a castle), but how exactly were they set up and how many men commonly made up a garrison? I had always thought of a garrison as being made up only of knights, but thanks to TCEG, I now know that these knights were supported by “men-at-arms” (men who fight with lance, sword and shield, but who have not obtained the rank of knight), crossbowmen and archers. How many men made up a “typical” garrison? According to TCEG: “Rochester held out against King John in 1215 with some 100 knights and ‘many men-at-arms’, while in the same war Odiham held out for a fortnight with only three knights and ten men-at-arms….. At Burton in Lonsdale the garrison was a knight, ten sergeants, a watchman and a porter…. Walton had a peacetime strength of four men and two servants.” (“Garrison”, TCEG, p 71)
I’d always envisioned much larger forces whenever I’d read the term “castle garrison”. Prior to discovering this entry, I’d had no idea how small, yet effective, medieval garrisons might be.
Other items of interest in TCEG:
How much were garrison members paid? Look under the entries for “wages” and “income”.
How did castle occupants amuse themselves? Look under the entry for “entertainment”.
There are entries on “Knightly Career”, Ladies Favour”, “Heraldry”, “Robber Barons”, “Furnishings”, even “Salt”.
Of course, most of these subjects are addressed in other research books, and as I said last time, I always advise a writer to seek out a secondary source to confirm any information you decide to use from TCEG. Also, you should be aware that despite the plethora of information contained in TCEG, the size of the volume necessarily limits the degree of detail each entry can address. But for a single, “starting source”, whether for small “touches of authenticity” or to point you towards deeper research on a given castle subject, The Castle Explorer’s Guide by Frank Bottomley can’t be beat!
(Note: I must remind you that The Castle Explorer’s Guide is currently out of print. Amazon offers used versions, but the ones I’ve seen listed there come at a steep price. However, if you Google “frank bottomley castle explorers guide”, you can find used copies for as low as $4.12. In fact, looking further down my “google” list, I just discovered several copies selling for $1.99 at Alibris! (See http://www.alibris.com/search/books/isbn/0517421720) If you’re serious about medieval research, once you get a copy in your hands, I’d suggest you never let it go!)
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, November 7, 2007
New Poll
I have some friends who say they never read a book twice, and others who keep and re-read books as “old friends”. Which do you do? Scroll down the right side of this page and vote in my new reading poll!
Castles
I once attended a writing class where the instructor, a successful writer of medieval romances who was sharing her medieval research methods with us, ended the class by informing us all that she would soon be returning to England to research her next novel, because she “finds it difficult to write about things she hasn’t actually seen for herself”…such as castles.
There I sat, thinking to myself, “Hmm, does that mean I can’t write about the Middle Ages unless I go to England and ‘see for myself’?” A thought immediately followed by the dour recognition that a trip to England was in no way compatible with my current budget, or likely to become compatible anytime in the near future. (Much though I still dream of visiting England and its castles “someday”.)
As I have said previously, I, too, am a very visually oriented person. It’s difficult for me to describe something I haven’t actually seen, hence my fondness for “picture books”, such as the books on medieval clothing I referred to in my last post. Once I have seen a picture or image, I can then store that in my imagination to use as a point of reference when studying more detailed, less visual texts.
For those of us who write about castle-dwelling characters, but who have never had the opportunity (and no immediate prospect) of seeing even so much as the ruins of a medieval castle in “real life”, how do we begin to imagine, much less transport our readers, back to this far-distant environment?
Modern technology is…well…marvelous. And thanks to a History Channel DVD called Modern Marvels: Castles & Dungeons, those of us with limited budgets can now enjoy a striking tour of medieval castles from the comfort of our own homes.
I remember reading for years about the “motte and bailey” model on which the earliest castles in England were built. And I remember straining for years and years to try to imagine exactly what these books were talking about. I didn’t want to “guess” at what a motte and bailey castle looked like. I wanted to know. Castles & Dungeons took away all my guesswork by showing me exactly how closely my imagination had and hadn’t matched “the facts”.
In addition to learning how castles were built, first of wood and later of stone, this DVD gives the viewer an up close and personal look at such castle features as: crennelation, glass windows, loop holes and arrow slits, the portcullis, murder holes, the oubliette, the great hall, and castle kitchens. The visuals and narration are so well done, that one comes away feeling reassured that an actual trip to England isn’t an absolute requirement for writing medieval fiction with some degree of authenticity and confidence.
Modern Marvels: Castles & Dungeons is currently only available from the History Channel, but you can get a copy by clicking on this link: http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=72080
The drawback to DVDs, of course, is that they’re difficult to reference while sitting at a computer, tapping out one’s story. In my next post, I will tell you about my all-time favorite quick reference book to castles. So be sure to check back here in two weeks!
There I sat, thinking to myself, “Hmm, does that mean I can’t write about the Middle Ages unless I go to England and ‘see for myself’?” A thought immediately followed by the dour recognition that a trip to England was in no way compatible with my current budget, or likely to become compatible anytime in the near future. (Much though I still dream of visiting England and its castles “someday”.)
As I have said previously, I, too, am a very visually oriented person. It’s difficult for me to describe something I haven’t actually seen, hence my fondness for “picture books”, such as the books on medieval clothing I referred to in my last post. Once I have seen a picture or image, I can then store that in my imagination to use as a point of reference when studying more detailed, less visual texts.
For those of us who write about castle-dwelling characters, but who have never had the opportunity (and no immediate prospect) of seeing even so much as the ruins of a medieval castle in “real life”, how do we begin to imagine, much less transport our readers, back to this far-distant environment?
Modern technology is…well…marvelous. And thanks to a History Channel DVD called Modern Marvels: Castles & Dungeons, those of us with limited budgets can now enjoy a striking tour of medieval castles from the comfort of our own homes.
I remember reading for years about the “motte and bailey” model on which the earliest castles in England were built. And I remember straining for years and years to try to imagine exactly what these books were talking about. I didn’t want to “guess” at what a motte and bailey castle looked like. I wanted to know. Castles & Dungeons took away all my guesswork by showing me exactly how closely my imagination had and hadn’t matched “the facts”.
In addition to learning how castles were built, first of wood and later of stone, this DVD gives the viewer an up close and personal look at such castle features as: crennelation, glass windows, loop holes and arrow slits, the portcullis, murder holes, the oubliette, the great hall, and castle kitchens. The visuals and narration are so well done, that one comes away feeling reassured that an actual trip to England isn’t an absolute requirement for writing medieval fiction with some degree of authenticity and confidence.
Modern Marvels: Castles & Dungeons is currently only available from the History Channel, but you can get a copy by clicking on this link: http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=72080
The drawback to DVDs, of course, is that they’re difficult to reference while sitting at a computer, tapping out one’s story. In my next post, I will tell you about my all-time favorite quick reference book to castles. So be sure to check back here in two weeks!
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.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
More on names...
Here is a quick and easy tip for both supplementing your collection of names drawn from The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, and for identifying how frequently certain names were, in fact, used during the Middle Ages.
Walk into any library or bookstore and grab a medieval biography off a shelf. In this example, I am using William Rufus, by Frank Barlow. I admit my disappointment in the dry and plodding text of this biography (I’d hoped for a more colorful and lively treatment of this particular king of England). However, I did find it useful in the following manner, a trick which you can use with pretty much any medieval biography.
Flip to the index at the end of the book, and simply run down the list of names referred to in the text. While in the case of William Rufus, you will run across a few new and unusual names such as Achard (an abbot), Amieria (wife of a man named Warin), Boso (name of both a monk and a knight), Gisulf (a royal scribe), and Jarento (a bishop), you will also be able to quickly identify a list of “most popular names in use” during the time period.
For example, citing from the index:
Alan appears 5 times for different men
Baldwin appears 6 times
Geoffrey appears no less than 25 times
Gerald/Gerold appears 5 times
Gilbert, 12 times
Guy, 6 times
Henry, 10 times
Herbert, 4 times
Hugh, 31 times!
Humphrey, 4 times
John, 8 times
Nigel, 4 times
Odo, 6 times
Osbern/Osbert, 7 times
Peter, 6 times
Ralf, 22 times
Ranulf, 7 times
Richard, 19 times
Robert, 44 times!
Roger, 23 times
Simon, 5 times
Stephan/Steven, 5 times
Thomas, 4 times
Thurstin, 7 times
Walter, 15 times
William, 61 times!!! (beating out Robert, hands down)
Because men played a more frequently documented role in medieval times than women, it is harder to draw conclusions about the frequency of individual female names from such biographical indexes. However, from William Rufus we can collect the following information on women:
A form of Adela or Adelaide/Adelais appears 5 times for different women
Judith appears 3 times
Matilda appears 6 times
But it isn’t always necessary to know what the most popular names were in order to arrive at names for our characters…only that certain names were in use at all during the Middle Ages.
Drawing from the index of Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, by Marion Meade, we can compile the following list of female names in use, at least during the 12th Century:
Aelith
Aenor (the mother of Eleanor of Aquitaine)
Agens
Alais/Alice
Alix
Bertha
Blanche
Constance (appears 4 times)
Eleanor
Emma
Ermengarde
Joanna
Matilda
Melisende
While a quick glance through the index of William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire 1147-1219, by David Crouch, will add such female names as:
Adelina
Aline
Eve
Heloise
Isabel
Joan
Margaret
Nicola
Rohese
Sybil
As you can see, within a very short space of time, you can assemble an excellent starting list of medieval Christian names, merely by running through various indexes in biographies of medieval personages. All for the price of a few minutes’ browsing at a bookstore or your local library!
Never underestimate the value of a good index. In future posts, I will point out additional ways that this book feature can speed along research that will assist in setting a vivid and accurate setting for our medieval fiction.
Next post: I have a name. Now what am I going to wear?
Walk into any library or bookstore and grab a medieval biography off a shelf. In this example, I am using William Rufus, by Frank Barlow. I admit my disappointment in the dry and plodding text of this biography (I’d hoped for a more colorful and lively treatment of this particular king of England). However, I did find it useful in the following manner, a trick which you can use with pretty much any medieval biography.
Flip to the index at the end of the book, and simply run down the list of names referred to in the text. While in the case of William Rufus, you will run across a few new and unusual names such as Achard (an abbot), Amieria (wife of a man named Warin), Boso (name of both a monk and a knight), Gisulf (a royal scribe), and Jarento (a bishop), you will also be able to quickly identify a list of “most popular names in use” during the time period.
For example, citing from the index:
Alan appears 5 times for different men
Baldwin appears 6 times
Geoffrey appears no less than 25 times
Gerald/Gerold appears 5 times
Gilbert, 12 times
Guy, 6 times
Henry, 10 times
Herbert, 4 times
Hugh, 31 times!
Humphrey, 4 times
John, 8 times
Nigel, 4 times
Odo, 6 times
Osbern/Osbert, 7 times
Peter, 6 times
Ralf, 22 times
Ranulf, 7 times
Richard, 19 times
Robert, 44 times!
Roger, 23 times
Simon, 5 times
Stephan/Steven, 5 times
Thomas, 4 times
Thurstin, 7 times
Walter, 15 times
William, 61 times!!! (beating out Robert, hands down)
Because men played a more frequently documented role in medieval times than women, it is harder to draw conclusions about the frequency of individual female names from such biographical indexes. However, from William Rufus we can collect the following information on women:
A form of Adela or Adelaide/Adelais appears 5 times for different women
Judith appears 3 times
Matilda appears 6 times
But it isn’t always necessary to know what the most popular names were in order to arrive at names for our characters…only that certain names were in use at all during the Middle Ages.
Drawing from the index of Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography, by Marion Meade, we can compile the following list of female names in use, at least during the 12th Century:
Aelith
Aenor (the mother of Eleanor of Aquitaine)
Agens
Alais/Alice
Alix
Bertha
Blanche
Constance (appears 4 times)
Eleanor
Emma
Ermengarde
Joanna
Matilda
Melisende
While a quick glance through the index of William Marshal: Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire 1147-1219, by David Crouch, will add such female names as:
Adelina
Aline
Eve
Heloise
Isabel
Joan
Margaret
Nicola
Rohese
Sybil
As you can see, within a very short space of time, you can assemble an excellent starting list of medieval Christian names, merely by running through various indexes in biographies of medieval personages. All for the price of a few minutes’ browsing at a bookstore or your local library!
Never underestimate the value of a good index. In future posts, I will point out additional ways that this book feature can speed along research that will assist in setting a vivid and accurate setting for our medieval fiction.
Next post: I have a name. Now what am I going to wear?
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)