Carla Nayland Historical Fiction

King of Kings, by Harry Sidebottom. Book review

2012-02-04T15:35:00.003Z

Penguin, 2010, ISBN 978-0-141-03230-6. 469 pages.

Second in the Warrior of Rome series, King of Kings follows on from Fire in the East (reviewed here earlier). Emperor Valerian, the Imperial officials Macrianus the Lame and his two sons, and the Persian ruler Shapur are historical figures. Ballista, the central character, is based on a historical figure about whom little is known. Other major characters are fictional. King of Kings is set in 256–260 AD, in the Eastern Mediterranean and what is now Syria.

Marcus Clodius Ballista, originally a noble hostage from the northern tribe of the Angles and now a senior Roman army officer, was one of the few survivors of the siege of Arete (recounted in Fire in the East). Bringing disastrous news to the Imperial court at Antioch, Ballista falls foul of the sinister official Macrianus the Lame and his slimy son Quietus, as well as the arrogant patrician Acilius Glabrio who blames Ballista for his brother’s death at Arete. The Empire is beset with difficulties, many of which are blamed on the cult of Christianity, and in the east the powerful Persian king Shapur is threatening war. But the greatest threat comes from within Rome itself...

King of Kings picks up at the moment where Fire in the East left off, with Ballista and his companions fleeing for their lives from the sack of Arete. The opening sequence gives a good idea of what to expect; there is no shortage of military adventure and gruesome battle scenes in King of Kings, from pirate raids to full-scale campaigns against the Persians. Political intrigue plays a larger role in King of Kings than in the earlier novel, as Ballista has to deal with fanatical Christians in Ephesus and the back-stabbing (literally as well as metaphorically) machinations of the Imperial court. A few quiet periods between assignments, when Ballista is out of Imperial favour, provide glimpses of Ballista’s home life, with his intelligent and politically astute upper-class Roman wife Julia and their two adored children.

Ballista’s position as an outsider to Imperial Rome comes over strongly in King of Kings. As well as the impenetrable etiquette and protocol of the court itself, he also finds Roman domestic customs alien and sometimes disturbing. Many among the Imperial court look down on Ballista as a barbarian, and even Julia insults him as such during a marital row. The closest members of Ballista’s household are also foreigners – Calgacus, the old Caledonian slave from Ballista’s northern homeland; Demetrius, the intellectual Greek secretary with a weakness for the occult; and Maximus, or Muirtagh of the Long Road, the tough Irish ex-gladiator bodyguard. For all that Ballista holds a senior position within Roman society as a high-ranking military officer, he is not part of it. As an outsider, he (and therefore the reader) is well placed to observe the flaws in the Imperial system, with power concentrated in the person of the increasingly infirm Valerian – a sympathetic, if rather pathetic, figure – and consequently vulnerable to misuse by corrupt officials who manipulate the Emperor for their own ends. Indeed, the main villain is so obviously evil that he is almost a cartoon caricature, cackling over the hero’s powerlessness while explaining the next step in his nefarious plan, which is all very well in a Bond film but I found it a bit disappointing here. If the portrayal bears any resemblance to reality, no wonder Rome managed to get itself into the mess of the ‘Third-Century Crisis’.

As with Fire in the East, King of Kings doesn’t so much reach an end as take a brief pause for breath before Ballista’s adventures continue in the next instalment. I am finding the series faintly reminiscent of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels, partly because of Ballista’s position as an outsider, partly because of the frequent and dramatic battle scenes, and partly something about the style (it’s a toss-up at present whether the no-nonsense Irish bodyguard Maximus reminds me more of Russell Crowe in Gladiator or Sergeant Patrick Harper). On reaching the Historical Afterword at the back, it turns out that one of the Sharpe echoes was intentional.

The narrative is told in third person, mainly by Ballista but also by other characters as occasion dictates, so the reader sometimes knows things that Ballista doesn’t know. The style is mostly straightforward modern prose, liberally sprinkled with archaic terms (explained in a glossary at the back, although I found most of them could be worked out from context), and with a fair helping of modern four-letter words. I found the pace rather uneven, speeding along during the fight sequences and then seeming to drag during the episode of persecuting Christians in Ephesus. This may be intentional, as Ballista himself is much more at home with military command than with a civilian governor’s job. I wonder if the Ephesus episode was covered at such length because it has some wider significance, perhaps setting up for something in a later book?

The Historical Afterword at the back outlines some of the history underlying the novel, and a map at the front is useful for following Ballista’s journeys. A list of characters at the back may also be helpful for keeping track of who is who, although I never needed to refer to it.

Military adventure, gruesome battles and political intrigue as the third-century Roman Empire clashes with the mighty Persian Empire in the Near and Middle East.

Late- and post-Roman Binchester

2012-01-24T22:47:00.005Z

I recently posted about the headquarters building in Late and/or post-Roman York, and by happy coincidence the current edition (February 2012) of Current Archaeology magazine has an interesting article on late and post-Roman Binchester. Post-Roman activity at Binchester was recognised in archaeological excavations in the 1970s and 1980s, and a new excavation programme has added new evidence.

Location

The Roman fort of Vinovia, modern name Binchester, is located slightly north of Bishop Auckland, where the main Roman road to the north, Dere Street, crosses the River Wear.

Map link: Binchester

So Binchester is north of the legionary base at York, and south of the frontier forts along Hadrian’s Wall.

Brief description

The first fort on the Vinovia site was a large fort built in timber in around AD 70-80, which would coincide roughly with Agricola’s campaign in Caledonia (roughly, what is now Scotland north of the Firths of Forth and Clyde). It was replaced by a smaller fort built in stone in the second century, and it is the remains of this smaller and later fort that are visible today.

The stone fort has the characteristic ‘playing card’ shape of a rectangle with rounded corners. Dere Street ran through the middle of the fort, and the praetorium (commanding officer’s house) has been identified in archaeological excavations. A large vicus (civilian settlement) developed outside the fort and has been identified east of the fort and along the line of Dere Street to the north-west and south-east.

The commanding officer’s house and baths suite

The baths suite attached to the commanding officer’s house was one of the first structures on the site to be discovered, when part of the hypocaust collapsed under the weight of a farm cart in the early nineteenth century. The commanding officer’s house and baths suite were excavated in the 1970s and 1980s. This excavation found that the house had undergone a startling change of use in the early fifth century; it went from being a palatial residence complete with expensive decorated wall plaster to industrial use. Furnaces were built in the west wing, and evidently used for ironworking since they were surrounded by iron slag. In the south wing, a flat platform with a drain along one side was built using stone recycled from demolished structures, and a large associated dump contained large amounts of cattle bones showing butchery marks, including cattle skulls with poleaxe holes in the forehead. The south wing of the commander’s house was presumably now being used an abattoir. Radiocarbon dates place this phase in the early fifth century.

The industrial use of the commander’s house clearly continued for some time, as another stone platform was later built on top of this abattoir deposit. Parts of Roman walls were incorporated into the later platform, and post-holes may have supported a timber structure, consistent with the original building having become partly or entirely ruinous by this time and being replaced by a timber structure. This second platform was associated with more animal bone, and fragments of worked antler, bone, jet and shale, implying a sizeable craft industry.

The dating of this phase of industrial use is uncertain. However, a burial in the debris from the collapse of the roof of the associated baths suite was radiocarbon dated to about AD 550. The burial was of an adult woman, and she had been buried with grave goods including a string of beads, a pottery bowl and a copper-alloy brooch in the shape of a reversed ‘S’ with birds’ heads for the terminals, a type normally assigned to the early English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) period of the late fifth to early sixth century - so the stylistic date from the brooch is broadly consistent with the radiocarbon date. This indicates that the baths suite had gone out of use and collapsed at some time before the burial was made in approximately the middle of the sixth century. Radiocarbon dating of samples from other burials without grave goods on the fort site gave dates between AD 600 and AD 1000, suggesting an early medieval cemetery on the site.

Much of the stone used to build the early English church at nearby Escomb was re-used Roman stone. Escomb is only a mile or so south-west of Binchester (see map links), and Binchester Roman fort and/or its vicus may have been the source for much of the stone (Escomb Church official site). Escomb church was probably built in the late seventh century, suggesting that at least some of the buildings at Binchester were regarded by then as a convenient quarry.

It is interesting that burials were made at Binchester in the period after the church at Escomb was built. One might have expected that after the conversion to Christianity the people of the area would be buried in the churchyard at Escomb, which is not far away. Perhaps the Binchester fort site also had a church or chapel with an associated cemetery. Or perhaps the female burial in the remains of the bath suite was that of an important individual, whose grave then became the focus for a cemetery for a local or family group that continued in use as a traditional burial place in parallel with the church at Escomb.

Recent excavations

For information on the recent excavation programme, see the project website, and the excavation blog (updated regularly in season).

Excavation in the east corner of the fort identified a possible barrack or stable block, with patches of paved floor associated with pits lined with stones or clay. Some of the pits had associated gullies, and one was connected to a pit in the rampart of the fort that could have acted as a water storage reservoir. As with the commander’s house, the pits were associated with many fragments of animal bone.

Excavation in the vicus east of the fort identified a substantial building that may have been a bath-house. Like the barrack/stable block inside the fort, this building also contained large stone-lined pits (one was 6m, approximately 20 feet, across and occupied almost an entire room), together with fragments of animal bone, jet and shale.

The Binchester Blog says that a radiocarbon date from a pit in the fort had a 50% probability of being later than AD 400, whereas a sample from a pit in the vicus area had a 2% probability of being later than AD 400 (see Day 33, 2011).

Exactly what industrial activity the pits represent is not yet certain. However, the pits and the large volume of associated animal bone would be consistent with a substantial leather-producing industry. Tanning requires a lot of soaking of animal skins in water and various other chemicals to soften the hide, remove the hair and convert the skin into leather.

The pits in the vicus and barrack/stable block are currently interpreted as tanning or possibly flax-retting pits, suggesting a substantial industry busily processing large numbers of animals into leather goods and worked bone and/or antler objects. Industrial and craft activity on a substantial scale implies in turn either that there was a large population in the vicinity, or that the fort was supplying a wider area than its immediate region.

Interpretation

The radiocarbon date from the vicus sample, with only a 2% chance of being later than AD 400, fits easily with a substantial leather- and bone-processing industry serving a market well beyond its immediate area, for which the most obvious candidate is the Late Roman Army. It is easy to imagine that Binchester fort could have been converted to a production and supply base, taking in large numbers of animals on the hoof from a considerable area and processing them into dried meat, leather, glue, bone tools and so on to supply army units. If the building in the vicus was indeed a bath-house, it might be a convenient candidate for conversion to leather processing, since bath-houses by definition have water supplies and drains that can be adapted to industrial use for processes requiring large volumes of water.

If more radiocarbon dates confirm the initial result of a later date for the pits inside the fort, it may indicate that industrial activity continued after the end of formal Roman administration, but possibly moved to a location within the fort rather than in the vicus. If industrial activity did continue on a large scale into the post-Roman period, this is potentially interesting, as on first sight it may appear inconsistent with the mud-huts ‘Dark Age’ stereotype of post-Roman Britain. Perhaps it could indicate a powerful local ruler, controlling the livestock resources of a wide area and perhaps with a large (very large?) warband getting through a lot of beef and leather for their own use. Perhaps it could indicate that there was still a commercial economy of sorts, so that an industrial centre could obtain raw materials and sell finished products as part of a wider market. Perhaps it could indicate a regional or even province-wide government, able to operate on the same sort of scale as the previous Roman administration. The school of thought that sees Vortigern as a ruler over all or most of the former Roman province, able to oversee large-scale population movements from one end of the province to the other, would have no difficulty in accommodating centrally-organised large-scale supply chains. Depending on the exact dates, it might even fit with Ken Dark’s theory of a revival of the post of Dux Britanniarum in the late fifth / early sixth century, with authority spanning most or all of the ex-Roman military sites between York and Hadrian’s Wall (Dark 2002).

If Binchester fort was the seat of a local ruler, or the centre of a substantial industrial operation, one might perhaps have expected whoever was the boss there to move in to the commander’s luxury house as a symbol of status, rather than convert it to industrial use. Perhaps there was no boss as such, and the activity represents a sort of giant co-operative of semi-independent craftsmen and traders, or perhaps the local boss was a relatively low-status overseer for an external owner, not considered important enough to be assigned a luxury residence. Or perhaps a new residence for the boss was built elsewhere in the fort and has not yet been identified, like the ‘chieftain’s hall’ built on the site of the granary at Birdoswald.

One thing that strikes me about the post-Roman activity at Binchester, Wroxeter, Birdoswald and in the principia at York is the apparent ease with which formerly impressive high-status buildings were converted to humdrum industrial uses or demolished. The baths basilica at Wroxeter became a builders’ yard and bakery, the principia at York acquired non-ferrous metalworking hearths and a lot of animal bone in the cross-hall, a barrack-building at Birdoswald had re-used an inscribed stone from the commander’s house, and at Binchester the commander’s house was turned into an iron-working site and an abattoir. Looking at Roman remains from a twenty-first-century viewpoint, it seems slightly surprising that such impressive structures were apparently not preserved as symbols of past glory. Perhaps this reflects a straightforward pragmatism on the part of late- and post-Roman decision-makers, who looked at the structures they inherited with an unsentimental eye and put them to whatever use seemed most practical and/or profitable in current circumstances. I wonder if it could also reflect a conscious rejection of aspects of Roman Imperial identity and hierarchy, perhaps as a symbol of a break with the past and the establishment of a new social order. It reminds me a little of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, an episode when a change in political power structures resulted in many formerly important high-status buildings (abbeys, priories, associated churches) being demolished and the materials sold off, leaving evocative ruins for later ages to marvel at and mourn.

References
Binchester Blog
Binchester excavation project site
Dark K. Britain and the end of the Roman empire. Tempus, 2002. ISBN 0-7524-2532-3.
Escomb Church official site

Map links
York
Binchester
Escomb Scroll north-east from Escomb using the arrows on the map to see Escomb church and Vinovia/Binchester Roman Fort on the same screen.

January recipe: Sticky toffee pudding

2012-01-22T13:13:00.003Z

Sticky toffee pudding is rich, sweet and filling, very satisfying to eat on a cold winter day. There are many variations on the basic theme of a baked date sponge covered in a toffee or fudge sauce. My recipe uses black treacle*, which gives a dark colour to the sponge and sauce, and a slight bitterness to take the edge off the sweetness. You can keep the baked sponge for several days in an airtight tin, and then you only have to cut a slice and make the sauce for an instant pudding.

Sticky toffee pudding

Sponge (cuts into 10-12 slices)
4 oz (approx 100 g) dried dates, chopped
0.5 pint (approx 280 ml) water
2 Tablespoons (2 x 15 ml spoons) black treacle
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 oz (approx 50 g) butter
4 oz (approx 100 g) dark brown soft sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) vanilla essence
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) baking powder
8 oz (approx 250 g) plain flour

Sauce (serves 6)
1 oz (approx 25 g) butter
3 oz (approx 75 g) dark brown soft sugar
0.25 pint (approx 140 ml) single cream
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) black treacle

To make the sponge:
Grease and line a loaf tin.

Put the dates, water and treacle into a saucepan, and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat.

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy.

Beat in the egg and vanilla essence.

Add the flour and baking powder, and mix well.

Sprinkle the bicarbonate of soda onto the date and treacle mixture, then stir into the cake mixture and mix well. It should form a thick batter.

Pour the batter into the greased and lined loaf tin and level the top.

Bake in a moderate oven, about 170 - 180 C, for about an hour, until the top is crisp and golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack. Cut into slices, and serve with toffee sauce (see below).

To make the toffee sauce:
Put the butter, sugar and cream into a small saucepan. Heat gently until the butter melts, and stir until the sugar dissolves. Stir in the treacle.

Pour over slices of the baked sponge (see above). Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream if liked.

The baked sponge will keep in an airtight tin for several days, and can be frozen. The sauce will keep for a couple of days in the fridge.

*Similar to molasses.

Thorn, by Michael Dean. Book review

2012-01-14T13:59:00.001Z

Bluemoose Books 2011. ISBN 978-0-9566876-4-7. 252 pages.

Set in Amsterdam in 1656, Thorn centres on the (fictional) friendship between the philosopher Spinoza and the painter Rembrandt. All the major characters are historical figures, although in many cases their personalities as portrayed in the novel are imaginary.

Benedict, or Baruch, Spinoza is twenty-four, a Jew of Portuguese descent living in Amsterdam, where the Jews are accepted because of their trading skills. In theory, Spinoza is the majority shareholder in his deceased father’s trading company, but his passion is for philosophy (and for his nubile Latin teacher, Clara Maria van den Enden). A chance meeting introduces him to the great painter Rembrandt van Rijn, and despite their disparate backgrounds the two men strike up an unlikely friendship. Each is a giant in his own field, Rembrandt already acknowledged as a genius, Spinoza just at the start of his career. Each places the demands of his calling higher than any other consideration – including the need to fit in with the rest of the world. Their refusal to compromise brings them into conflict with just about everybody who matters in mid-seventeenth-century Amsterdam – the Jews, the Calvinists and the city authorities.

Thorn is a witty, intelligent black comedy, funny and sharp by turns. It is narrated throughout in first-person by Spinoza, in a racy and humorous style that makes it seem as though he is talking directly to the reader. I could almost hear his voice. The name Spinoza means ‘thorn’ (hence the book title), and it suits the character down to the ground. Witty, sarcastic and intellectually brilliant, Spinoza is also utterly clueless on a social level. He is sufficiently self-aware to recognise this in himself – he says to his sister, “The universe is so much simpler to me than any person in it” – but he can’t seem to stop himself causing trouble and even pain for other people. He never means to hurt anyone, but his breathtaking insensitivity made me both laugh and cringe. Watching Spinoza clomp his way through delicate situations – a tricky business negotiation, family relationships, courtship and a proposal of marriage – blissfully oblivious to the trail of disaster in his wake, is both funny and poignant. Spinoza as created here is an engaging character, but cannot have been easy to live with!

The other characters are also vividly drawn. Rembrandt is the character we see most of, after Spinoza (who naturally dominates the novel). Rough, honest and warm-hearted, Rembrandt places his art above all other considerations and, like Spinoza, is impatient with those who don’t share his opinions. The secondary characters are a colourful collection of eccentrics. Seen entirely through Spinoza’s eyes, their human foibles are magnified – demanding relatives, arrogant physicians, pompous burghers, thuggish businessmen. Rembrandt’s kind mistress Hendrickje and competent son Titus are the most sensible and well-balanced people in the book; just as well for Rembrandt and Spinoza, for whom things would have been much harder without their support.

In their different ways, both Rembrandt and Spinoza reject the hypocrisy and religious intolerance of contemporary society (though, to be fair, both of them can exhibit a fair degree of intolerance themselves to people they disagree with). Spinoza pursues his philosophy even though it marks him as a heretic and threatens his brother’s business. Rembrandt refuses to paint flattering portraits of self-important burghers. Both men stick to their honesty and integrity even though this earns them powerful enemies, who can – and do – make their lives very difficult indeed. Yet both are also flawed characters who bring many of their difficulties on themselves, Rembrandt through his financial recklessness, Spinoza through his social ineptitude and capacity to alienate people.

As well as its characterisation and humour, Thorn also has a lot of convincing background detail about life in seventeenth-century Amsterdam, from the political situation of the Jews to details of domestic life to a memorable description of a public dissection. I’m not familiar with the period, so almost all of this was new to me; hence I can’t comment on the accuracy, but I can say that it felt authentic.

A helpful Author’s Note at the end outlines the underlying history and the fictional interpolations that make up the story, and provides a list of further reading for those who would like to explore the period in more detail.

Witty, intelligent black comedy exploring religious and social intolerance, centred on the (fictional) friendship between Rembrandt and Spinoza in Amsterdam at the height of the Dutch Golden Age.

Post-Roman York: the headquarters building

2012-01-08T20:13:00.004Z

York was an important military, ecclesiastical and political centre in Late Roman Britain. In the early seventh century it was under royal control of the English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) kings of Deira, and later in the seventh century it developed into a major ecclesiastical centre and the seat of an archbishopric, a status it holds to this day. In between, the historical record is a blank; definite references to York between the fourth century and the seventh century number precisely zero, although there are one or two snippets whose meaning is less than clear (see earlier post on Post-Roman York: the documentary evidence for a summary of the documentary records). Evidence from archaeology provides some clues that may help to fill in the gap.

Minster excavations

Roman York was a legionary base from the date of its founding, and remained so throughout Roman rule in Britain. The legionary headquarters building (principia) was the most important building in a legionary fortress, always placed in the centre facing the main gate. It housed administrative offices, a great aisled cross-hall where the commander could address his assembled troops, a strong room for the legion’s pay chest and the soldiers’ savings, and the legionary shrine where the standards were kept. The principia at York was the centre of Roman military power in what is now north and north-east England.

The present York Minster is sited partly on top of the Roman principia (see my earlier post on the possible location of the seventh-century church in York for a sketch of the relative position of the two). When the Minster required urgent structural underpinning in the late 1960s to save the central tower from collapse, the engineering work provided a rare – possibly unique – opportunity for archaeological excavation on the site. One can only admire the archaeologists who carried out the excavation, which must have been the archaeological equivalent of keyhole surgery, conducted under difficult conditions in the middle of a major building project frantically trying to shore up a collapsing cathedral.

Clear, if sparse, evidence emerged of activity in the cross-hall in the late and/or post-Roman period. The Roman flagstone floor had been removed (at an unknown date), and replaced by multiple layers of trodden sand and charcoal. In some places these layers also contained fragments of ‘York ware’ pottery, which was in use in the eighth or ninth century (Rahtz; Carver 1994). In other places the layers contained large quantities of animal bone. Unusually, the animal bone contained a high proportion of pig (over one-third) and sheep (about one-third), instead of being dominated by cattle, and still more unusually, many of the bones were from juvenile animals less than a year old (Carver 1994). A sample of the bone was radiocarbon-dated to 343-416 AD (Rahtz). These layers were overlain by the collapsed roof of the cross-hall.

Interpretation

Date
So, it seems that at some time after the removal of the Roman flagstone floor and before the collapse of its roof, the cross-hall of the principia had seen some activity that resulted in the accumulation of multiple layers of sand, a lot of juvenile animal bones and a few sherds of pottery. As so often, the dating of this activity is the subject of much debate. The earliest possible date of the roof collapse is constrained by the latest date of objects sealed beneath the collapse layer (provided the objects have not found their way under the collapse layer at a later date, see below). There are two groups of datable artefacts in the layers under the collapsed roof, the animal bone radiocarbon-dated to the late fourth-early fifth century, and the York ware pottery fragments dated to the eighth-ninth century.

If you take the deposition of the York ware pottery fragments as the last event before the roof collapsed, this suggests the cross-hall was standing until at least the late eighth or ninth century.

If you take the deposition of the radiocarbon-dated animal bone as the last event, this suggests the cross-hall was standing until at least the early fifth century.

In either case, the cross-hall could have been standing much later – it must have collapsed after the latest object underneath was deposited, but how long after is a different question.

The original excavator, Derek Phillips, interpreted the findings as showing accumulation of material, and therefore some sort of activity in the principia, up to the ninth century, whereas Martin Carver interpreted them as fifth-century activity (Rahtz). When two respected practitioners disagree by 400 years, it probably tells you that there is not a definitive answer. It seems to me to depend on whether you think the York ware fragments were lying on the floor underneath the roof when it collapsed, or whether you think they were intruded underneath the collapsed roof at some later date, perhaps when the remains of the Roman principia was being used as a giant stone quarry for Anglo-Scandinavian and medieval York. I prefer the idea that the the cross-hall stayed standing until around the ninth century, but you can take your choice.

Animal bone
What might the animal bone represent? There is a lot of it, so someone slaughtered a lot of juvenile sheep and pigs in the vicinity. If the bones accumulated over a period of years or decades, which is quite possible even if the same radiocarbon date range applies to them all as radiocarbon dating is approximate, this might help to explain the quantity. I don’t know if it is possible to estimate the number of animals represented by the bones, which could help to assess how long they would have taken to accumulate. If, for example, there are more year-old animals than could be produced by the surrounding agricultural area in a year, that might indicate that the bones accumulated over several years (or were brought in from a distance, although transporting large numbers of juvenile animals over long distances would require considerable transport resources). The exact relationship of the sand layers to the bone might also be able to distinguish between a single event or a succession of events.

The proportion of juvenile animals is unusually high, quite different from the findings from the Roman town, the later Anglian settlement at Fishergate or the Anglo-Scandinavian town (Carver 1994). So it seems to me unlikely that the animal bone represents the routine debris of a subsistence farming community. Subsistence farming needing to maximise the amount of food from each animal would be more likely to let animals grow to full size, and probably get some useful work out of them (cattle) or some wool clips (sheep) into the bargain before eating them. The high proportion of juvenile animals suggests to me the consumption of expensive luxury food. Sucking pig in particular was a favourite Roman delicacy, if the recipes for cooking sucking pig in Apicius’ late Roman cookbook are anything to go by. Taken with the radiocarbon date, this would be consistent with the animal bones representing high-status feasting in or shortly after the Roman period, by people who had Roman tastes in food and/or wished to proclaim some sort of Roman identity and status.

As the bones are still there on the floor of the cross-hall, evidently no-one swept up the debris in antiquity and threw it out on a rubbish heap. This sits rather uneasily with the feast being held in the cross-hall itself. It seems unlikely (though not impossible) that an expensive Roman-style luxury feast would be served and consumed amongst a pile of smelly discarded bones. Possibly the cross-hall was being used as a butchery and/or kitchen, with the feast being consumed somewhere else in the vicinity, either in a different part of the headquarters complex or in another nearby Roman building. The commander’s house, baths complex and granaries would all have been nearby, and it is possible that one of these had become the focus of activity (as happened at Birdoswald, where the granaries seem to have been successively adapted for use as living halls, see earlier article on Birdoswald), with the headquarters building relegated to more workaday uses. This would be consistent with the evidence of metalworking hearths found in a room behind the cross-hall (Ottaway 2004, p. 146), which may suggest that the building was being used as a sort of industrial unit. This may seem a bit of a come-down for such a grand building, but something similar happened at the baths basilica in Wroxeter, which was used as a builders’ yard and bakery for a while in the late fifth century before demolition (see earlier article on Wroxeter). Another possibility may be that the cross-hall had gone out of use so completely that it was being used as a rubbish tip, although if this was the case one might have expected a thicker layer of debris, more like the ‘dark earth’ deposits elsewhere in York that are thought to result from dumping of domestic rubbish.

If the cross-hall was being used as a kitchen or butchery, it may still raise the question of why the bone debris was not cleared away. Possibly the cross-hall was used only intermittently, and the debris from the previous feast had ceased to be noisome by the time the next one came round and could be ignored. Perhaps the layers of trodden sand associated with the bones were scattered over the bones specifically to form a new floor surface from time to time, perhaps each time the cross-hall was used. One might imagine a ruling group progressing round various strongholds and consuming the local resources at each in turn, like a medieval king. Or if all the bone was deposited in a single event (as mentioned above, I don’t know if the quantity or layer structure is consistent with this), perhaps the debris was simply abandoned afterwards. One might imagine a scenario of one of the various usurper Emperors of the late fourth and early fifth century throwing a grand feast of Imperial style and scale for his troops and followers before marching off to try grabbing the top job, leaving the clearing up to look after itself.

If the animal bone is all late fourth-early fifth century (I am not sure how much of the bone was sampled for radiocarbon dating), and the cross-hall stayed standing until after the York ware fragments were dropped on its floor in the late eighth to ninth century, this raises the question of what happened in between. (Needless to say, if the roof collapsed in the fifth century and the pottery is a later intrusion, this question does not arise).

If there was activity in the cross-hall in the sixth-seventh-eighth centuries, it left no trace that was detectable by the Minster excavations (unless some of the bone is later than the radiocarbon date range). This may indicate that the cross-hall was disused or used only infrequently or intermittently, even if it was still standing and more or less intact. The York ware fragments are consistent with activity in the eighth or ninth century (or later), although the cross-hall may have been abandoned previously and then re-used for some reason. The Life of Wilfred says that the seventh-century stone church in York (location unknown, although it may have been in or near the principia, as discussed earlier), built in the 630s, was so neglected by the time Wilfred took it over in about 670 that the roof leaked and birds were nesting in it (Tweddle 1999, p. 126). If the church in York fell into temporary disuse for a time perhaps the principia cross-hall did too, either because its function was no longer needed at all or because it had been replaced by a different building.

Alternatively, the lack of finds could merely indicate that later users were tidier than their early fifth-century predecessors and either did not drop much debris or cleared away on a regular basis. If the animal bone was covered with trodden sand, it would have ceased being unpleasant after a while and could have consolidated with the layers of sand to form a relatively innocuous surface. If the cross-hall was later brought back into use, perhaps as a statement or as a replacement for another building nearby that had gone out of use, this surface could have formed a floor that was regularly swept, or possibly covered by a later floor that has left no detectable trace. The Minster excavations were confined to the areas where structural work was being carried out and did not cover anything like the full floor area of the cross-hall, so it is possible that isolated or slight traces could have been missed. I need hardly say that this is speculative.

Conclusion

For what it is worth, my interpretation of the post-Roman fate of the principia at York is broadly as follows. First, in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, a period of use as a political centre for a ruler or series of rulers who were either the direct successors of Roman authority or liked to claim they were, who had sufficient power and resources to consume Roman luxury foods like sucking pig in or near the cross-hall. Whether the cross-hall was itself a site of feasting or whether it was used as a preparation area for feasts that were consumed nearby is open to question. I would tend to favour the latter. The presence of large quantities of young animals also implies the presence of an agricultural economy and associated population, in or at no great distance from the city. This phase would be represented by the animal bone and trodden sand layers. How long it lasted is uncertain; it might have been only a few years, or it might have been decades or more if the bone accumulated over time.

Following this phase, a period of tidier or infrequent use, perhaps punctuated by periods of disuse if the focus of activity shifted between different locations, until the cross-hall roof came down some time in or after the ninth century (either by itself, or as a result of the Norse invasions of the later ninth century, or by deliberate demolition to clear the site for the Anglo-Norman cathedral).*

References

Apicius, De re coquinaria, translation available online
Carver MOH. Environment and commodity in Anglo-Saxon England. In: Rackham J (ed). Environment and economy in Anglo-Saxon England. Council for British Archaeology Research Report 89, 1994. ISBN 1-872414-33-8.
Ottaway P. Roman York. Tempus, 2004. ISBN 0-7524-2916-7.
Rahtz P. Review of Phillips D, Heywood B. Excavations at York Minster I. Medieval Archaeology, available online
Tweddle D, Moulden J, Logan E. Anglian York: a survey of the evidence. Council for British Archaeology/York Archaeological Trust, 1999. ISBN 1-902771-06-0.

Map links

York

*In Paths of Exile, I have imagined the cross-hall of the principia in use as a royal hall during the later sixth and early seventh centuries, by the Brittonic kings of Eboracum until Peredur’s death in battle in 580 and then by the Anglian king Aelle of Deira. Then a period of disuse or occasional use during the rule of the Bernician king Aethelferth, who controlled Deira and Eboracum but whose heartlands were further north.

Alexandria, by Lindsey Davis. Book review

2011-12-31T13:25:00.002Z

Arrow, 2010. ISBN 978-0-099-51562-3. 355 pages.

Set in Alexandria in Egypt in 77 AD, Alexandria is the nineteenth Marcus Didius Falco historical mystery. Heron of Alexandria, inventor of ingenious machines, is a historical figure with a cameo role. All the main characters are fictional.

Marcus Didius Falco, Roman informer and investigator, is on holiday in Alexandria with his wife Helena Justina, their two small children and adopted teenage daughter, intending to see two of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Pyramids at Giza and the Pharos (lighthouse) at Alexandria. When the head of the Great Library is found dead in a room locked from the outside, the day after being a dinner guest of Falco’s family, Falco is called on to investigate. Soon Falco finds himself dealing with academic rivalries, fraud, arson and a man-eating crocodile – not quite the relaxing holiday he had in mind.

I’m a long-standing fan of the Falco series (for a review of the first Falco novel, The Silver Pigs, see earlier post). Alexandria seemed to me to fall somewhat short of the standard set by the earlier books. Historical background comes in chunks like excerpts from a travel guide or historical textbook inserted into the text. In a way this is appropriate, since Falco and his family really are tourists in Alexandria and might be expected to read bits out of a tourist guide to the city, and sometimes it has a comic effect, as with Helena’s impromptu lecture on the hydraulic fire pump. However, I mostly found it clumsy. The central mystery is resolved, but I found the solution an anticlimax.

On the plus side, it’s an enjoyable romp through the Great Library and Museion of Alexandria, one of the great centres of learning of the world, in the company of Falco’s eccentric family and a cast of colourful misfits. Falco himself still has the world-weary, cynical humour that was such a feature of the earlier novels, and seeing him as a family man with Helena and their two small daughters shows up his soft side. Helena is a cool, steadying presence, though she has relatively little to do here. She and Falco are plainly as much in love as ever, which is saying something after 19 books’ worth of adventures. Falco’s disreputable father turns up on his usual quest for a dodgy deal, this time in collusion with an equally disreputable uncle, the uncle’s live-in boyfriend and Thalia, the tough snake-charming exotic dancer and businesswoman who first appeared in Venus in Copper.

The secondary characters are at least as much fun. Among the academic staff of the Museion we meet the handsome Zoo Keeper, convinced of his irresistible attractiveness to women, the over-promoted Director who makes the lives of his staff a misery, the taciturn astronomer, the blustering law professor and the soapy Head of Philosophy intent on smarming his way up the greasy pole. All of them are after the now-vacant Librarian’s job, and to complicate matters further, two of them are also after the same woman.

The historical mathematician and inventor Heron of Alexandria, inventor of an early steam engine and the first known vending machine, has a charming cameo role, and a reclusive scholar at the Library turns out to be compiling a book that looks remarkably like a forerunner of the medieval bestiaries. Some splendid set-piece action sequences make full use of the setting, including a man-eating crocodile at the Zoo and a chase up the tower of the Pharos. (In a mystery/adventure novel set in a city with the highest lighthouse in the known world, it would be surprising if the characters didn’t get to the top of it in some dramatic fashion...)

A street plan at the front of the book – conjectural, since earthquakes and coastline change have obliterated most of first-century Alexandria – is helpful for following the action through the streets. A character list at the front, with the trademark irreverent asides, may help readers keep track of the cast. There is no author’s note, which I thought rather a shame as I would have liked to know if there were other historical cameos besides Heron and his experimental steam engine.

Entertaining historical mystery featuring the cynical Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco, set against the exotic backdrop of first-century Alexandria. An enjoyable and amusing read, if not quite up to the earlier Falco novels.

Locations: Mam Tor or Shivering Mountain, Derbyshire

2011-12-23T21:05:00.003Z

Mam Tor is a prominent hill in the Derbyshire Peak District, part of the ridge forming the southern rim of the Edale valley (see earlier post on Edale).

Map link: Mam Tor

Mam Tor is a distinctive dome-shaped hill, standing 517 metres (over 1600 feet) above sea level and about 350 metres (about 1000 feet) above the valley floor, and with an impressively steep south-eastern face (marked with crag symbols on the map, and visible on the right of the picture below).

Mam Tor from the south

Mam Tor is also known locally as ‘Shivering Mountain’, because of the frequent landslips on its unstable south-eastern face. A huge landslide occurred on this slope several thousand years ago, forming the steep scarp just below the summit.

Mam Tor from the east, showing the steep upper part of the south-eastern face

Lower down the slope, the debris from this ancient landslide hasn’t stabilised yet. Several attempts have been made to build a Sheffield to Manchester through-road across the lower slope, and the hill has shrugged off every one of them. In 1979 the highway authority gave up and closed the road permanently. You can see the hairpin line of the road in the photo below, running below the steep section of the face.

Mam Tor from the east, showing the line of the defunct A625 road

The British Geological Survey has a brief description of the landslip and some impressive photographs (click on the links to Figures 2-5) of the wrecked A625 road.

The summit of Mam Tor forms a nearly flat plateau, and was the location of what must have been an impressively-sited early Iron Age hill fort. A double line of ramparts encircled the top of the hill (marked as earthworks on the map linked above), still clearly visible today.

Hill fort ramparts on Mam Tor, visible as two near-horizontal parallel lines near the top

‘Mam’ is of course instantly recognisable as a variant of ‘Mum’, Mom’, ‘Mama’, all forms of early infant sounds used to signify ‘mother’. In Scottish Gaelic place names ‘Mam’ also appears as a place name element referring to rounded hills (e.g. the west Highland mountain range called the Mamores); it is sometimes translated as ‘breast-shaped hill’, which has obvious connections with the ‘mother’ meaning.

‘Tor’ means a rocky peak, a steep hill, a prominent rock or a pile of rocks. ‘Tor’ occurs commonly in place names in the south-west of England (Glastonbury Tor being a famous example), predominantly in Devon and Cornwall, and in the Derbyshire Peak District. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it appears in Old English in a charter from 847 and may be one of the few borrowings from Brittonic (ancestor of modern Welsh) into Old English. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests it is cognate with modern Welsh ‘twr’, Old Welsh ‘twrr’, meaning ‘heap, pile’, and with Gaelic ‘torr’, meaning a steep or conical hill or a mound. I wonder if it is also related to the Latin ‘turris’, origin of ‘tower’.

So the name ‘Mam Tor’ means something like ‘Hill of the Mother’ (if you take the ‘Mam’ element to mean ‘mother’), or ‘rounded hill’ (if you take the ‘Mam’ element to refer to the shape of the hill), or a bit of both. If the name meant ‘mother’, it is possible to speculate that it may indicate some cultural significance. Possibly the hill was regarded as a central place for the people living in the surrounding areas, perhaps considered to be the ‘mother’ of their lands or fortunes. It may have had connections with a female supernatural force (a sort of ‘Mother Nature’?) or a female deity (a ‘mother goddess’). Kathleen Herbert imagined a Mother Goddess cult centred on the Mam Tor area in the mid-seventh century, in her novel Ghost in the Sunlight. The Iron Age hill fort is consistent with the hill having been regarded as an important place in prehistory.

By the time of Paths of Exile, set in the early seventh century, the Iron Age hill fort on Mam Tor would have long since gone out of use. However, the ramparts may well still have been recognisable, and the hill may still have had some local significance. Although I have not gone as far as Kathleen Herbert’s interpretation of it as a major pagan cult centre, it features in Paths of Exile as the traditional site of a feast held to mark the onset of winter.

Both elements of the name Mam Tor have cognates in Celtic languages*. There are several more ‘Tor’ place names in the Derbyshire Peak District; I can think of Higger Tor near Hathersage, Upper Tor and Nether Tor on Kinder Scout, Dovestone Tor, Back Tor and White Tor on Derwent Edge, and Back Tor on the ridge east of Mam Tor, and that’s not an exhaustive list. The occurrence of ‘Tor’ place names is one of the reasons why I imagined the language spoken in the area in the early seventh century to have been a Brittonic language (an ancestor of modern Welsh and Breton).

*Celtic languages are generally divided into two groups; Q-Celtic (Scottish and Irish Gaelic) and P-Celtic (Welsh, Cornish, Breton).

December recipe: Venison in red wine

2011-12-20T20:39:00.002Z

A robust, richly flavoured casserole is comforting in the dark, cold days of mid-winter. This casserole can be made with venison or beef, according to preference.

Serves 4.

Venison in red wine

12 oz (approx 350 g) stewing venison
4 oz (approx 100 g) smoked streaky bacon
Half an onion
1 garlic clove
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) plain flour
Approx 4 fl. oz. (approx 100 ml) red wine
0.25 pint (approx 150 ml) water
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) redcurrant jelly
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) dried rosemary

Dumplings

4 oz (approx 100 g) self-raising flour
2 oz (approx 50 g) suet
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) sage, or other herbs of choice

Cut the venison into cubes about half an inch (approx 1.5 cm) in size. Chop the bacon.
Peel and chop the onion.
Fry the venison and bacon in cooking oil in a heatproof casserole over a medium to high heat until browned.
Add the onion and crushed garlic and fry another minute or two until the onion starts to colour.
Stir in the flour and mix well to coat the meat.
Pour in the wine and water. Bring to the boil, stirring all the time.
Stir in the redcurrant jelly and dried rosemary. Season with salt and pepper.
Cover the casserole and cook in a moderate oven about 170 C for about one hour while you make the dumplings.

To make the dumplings, mix the self-raising flour, suet and sage in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper.
Gradually add sufficient cold water to mix to a soft dough. If the mix is floury, add a little more water; if sticky, you have added too much water, so add a bit more flour.
Divide the dough into 8 pieces and roll into balls.
Add the dumplings to the casserole.
Return the casserole to the oven for a further half an hour (one and a half hours in total), by which time the dumplings will have swelled up and cooked through.
Serve with jacket potatoes and vegetables of choice.

The casserole can be frozen without the dumplings

Winterbirth, by Brian Ruckley. Book review

2011-12-10T17:50:00.003Z

Orbit, 2006, ISBN 978-1-84149-423-4. 537 pages.

Winterbirth is the first of a fantasy trilogy set in the invented ‘Godless World’, an imaginary location on the north-western edge of a continent. It is inhabited by two main races each subdivided into separate, often warring, clans, tribes and kingdoms. The Kyrinin live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle in forests and mountains, and their two main clans in Winterbirth, Fox and White Owl, are implacable hereditary enemies. The Huanin, humans with approximately medieval technology, are divided into Bloods (clans) grouped on religious lines into two broad alliances, the Black Road in the north and Haig in the south. Kyrinin and Huanin can interbreed to produce na’kyrim, who cannot have children but who can access a supernatural power called the Shared.

Orisian, nephew of the Thane of Lannis-Haig, is just entering adulthood. Inexperienced and with no great talent as a warrior, he is still mourning the deaths of his mother and elder brother and is anxious for his father who suffers periodic severe depression. All these concerns are swept aside when the Lannis lands are attacked and overrun by the Horin-Gyre Blood of the Black Road, bent on exacting revenge for their defeat and exile many years earlier, and acting in alliance with the White Owl Kyrinin. Orisian is wounded in the attack and is saved only by his faithful shieldman Rothe and the unexpected help of two Kyrinin from the Fox clan. With his lands in ruins, most of his family dead and the Horin-Gyre warriors determined to slaughter every last member of the Lannis ruling family, Orisian faces a desperate journey south to the precarious safety of the allied Kilkry Blood. But as well as the pursuing Horin-Gyre warriors and the sinister Inkallim, a more deadly power is at large – the na’kyrim Aeglyss who wields a terrible and destructive power in the Shared that may plunge the whole world into war and darkness.

Winterbirth is a dark tale focused on destruction, despair, battle and blood. The tagline on the front cover says “The greatest tales are written in blood...”, which gives the reader a fair idea of what to expect. I found the first 90 pages rather slow, as the rival political factions and the existing order are introduced and the back-story of the enmity between Haig and Black Road is filled in. Although it may seem slow, the build-up is necessary to establish the various factions and characters, because when events do start to move, they move fast as Orisian has to run for his life. I found the list of characters at the back and the two maps at the front invaluable for keeping my bearings.

Although a fantasy novel, Winterbirth does not involve a great deal of explicit magic (a plus point for me). The Kyrinin are not human – a sort of cross between elves and aboriginal hunter-gatherers – and have skills that humans do not have, such as keener senses and greater healing abilities, but this could be read as technology rather than magic as such. The major supernatural element is the ‘Shared’, which seems to permit such things as telepathy and a form of mind control. I suspect from the ending of Winterbirth that the Shared is going to play a much greater role in the rest of the trilogy, as Aeglyss’ sinister powers become more developed.

Much of the plot in Winterbirth itself is driven by political rivalries, both between the major human groupings (Black Road versus Haig) and within them. The various kingdoms have a complex and well-realised history of political and religious conflicts, and for me this was a strong point of the novel. The Black Road clans believe in predestination and were exiled for their creed a century or so before the events of Winterbirth. They want revenge on the Haig clans who defeated and exiled them, they want their old lands back, and they want to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of the world. Cutting across this major conflict, there are many internal conflicts within both Haig and Black Road, and the internal politicking between rival factions seems as significant as the main struggle.

Another feature I liked very much was the landscape, particularly the mountain and moorland descriptions. The topography is reminiscent of the western Highlands of Scotland, with long mountain ridges dividing glens and sea lochs, and the rugged Car Criagar with its crags, biting winds and treeless uplands reminded me of the Cairngorm plateau (minus the ruined city, of course!).

Winterbirth is a hefty book at over 500 pages, yet it reads more as the first part of a larger story than as the first book in a sequence. The ‘end’ is more of a temporary pause with most of the plot threads still open, and is clearly setting up for Books 2 and 3. For readers who like a story to reach a definite end, it may be a good idea to have the remaining two books lined up. This ‘setting up’ function may account for why Orisian, the central character, seems to be rather a passive figure for much of the novel, being chased from place to place by his enemies and with little opportunity to influence events, let alone to take control and take the fight to the opposition. There is a coming-of-age element to the narrative as Orisian has to grow into the new role so unexpectedly and unwillingly thrust upon him, so I hope he may take on a more active role in the later books. If I’m correct that Aeglyss’ sinister supernatural powers will come more to the fore, it will be interesting to see how Orisian’s role plays out.

First book in a dark fantasy trilogy set in a well-realised imaginary world, with political, religious and clan conflicts and a sinister undercurrent of magic.

Roman York to Anglian York: documentary sources

2011-11-27T17:16:00.003Z

In Late Roman Britain, York (Eboracum) was the base of the Sixth Legion and the civilian part of the city had the status of colonia, the highest rank of Roman city. It was clearly an important centre of Roman civil and military power. What happened to it after the end of Roman imperial administration in Britain?

Documentary sources refer to York in the fourth century and the early seventh, with a possible snippet or two in between. Archaeology also provides some possible clues. I’ll discuss the documentary sources in this post.

Evidence

Death of Emperor Constantius and elevation of Emperor Constantine, 306 AD

"Constantius died at Eboracum in Britain in the thirteenth year of his reign, and was deified. ..."
"On the Death of Constantius, Constantine, his son by a somewhat undistinguished marriage, was made emperor in Britain, and succeeded to his father's position as a very popular ruler. ..."

--Eutropius, Breviarium, Book X Ch. 1 and 2, available online

These events occurred in July 306 AD.

Bishop of York attends Council of Arles, 314 AD

Eborius episcopus de civitate Eboracensi provincia Britanniae
Restitutus episcopus de civitate Londiniensi provincia suprascripta
Adelphius episcopus de civitate Colonia Londiniensium
Exinde Sacerdos presbyter Arminius diaconus

--Signatories to the acts of the Council of Arles, 314. Text quoted in Painter 1971, first page (with the relevant quote) available online.

The Council of Arles was held in 314 AD. The text translates roughly as follows:

Eborius bishop of the city of Eboracum in the province of the Britains
Restitutus bishop of the city of Londinium in the above province
Adelphius bishop of the city of Colonia Londiniensum
[?] Sacerdos the priest [and] Arminius the deacon

--My translation, very approximate.

I don’t know what ‘exinde’ means on the fourth line (if anyone would like to enlighten me, please feel free to comment), but it doesn’t matter for the purposes of this post. The two cities clearly identified are Eboracum (York) and Londinium (London). ‘Colonia Londiniensum’ is unclear. It might be a repeat of London, although two bishops from the same city seems a little extravagant, or a spelling mistake for Colonia Lindensium (Lincoln). Clearly, York had at least one bishop in 314 of sufficient standing to attend an important church council. Whether his name really was Eborius, or whether this was a mistake or a guess by a harassed scribe, or a title used instead of a name, is open to interpretation.

Bede

The next unequivocal mention of York in a documentary source is from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, written in 731, which quotes a letter from Pope Gregory to St Augustine written in 601:

We wish you also to send a bishop of your own choice to the city of York, and if that city with the adjoining territory accepts the word of God, this bishop is to consecrate twelve other bishops and hold the dignity of Metropolitan. If we live to see this, we intend to grant him the pallium, but he is to remain subject to your authority. After your death, however, he is to preside over the bishops whom he has consecrated and to be wholly independent of the Bishop in London. Thenceforward, seniority of consecration is to determine whether the Bishop of London or of York takes precedence, but they are to consult one another and take united action...

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History Book I Ch. 29

Pope Gregory clearly envisaged two senior bishoprics at York and London with approximately equal status. It may be significant that these are also the two bishoprics clearly identifiable in the Council of Arles, with which Pope Gregory must surely have been familiar. Perhaps he looked up the records when deciding how he would like his new branch of the church to be organised. Or possibly he had heard of a bishopric at York in his own day or in the recent past.

In 627, York was the site of the baptism of King Edwin (Eadwine) of Northumbria and was established as a bishopric:

...King Edwin, with all the nobility of the kingdom and a large number of humbler folk, accepted the Faith [...] in the year of our Lord 627 [...] The king’s baptism took place at York on Easter Day, the 12th of April, in the church of St Peter the Apostle which he had hastily built of timber [...] and in this city he established the see of his teacher and bishop Paulinus.

-- Bede, Ecclesiastical History Book II Ch. 14

For a discussion on the possible location of the early church mentioned by Bede, see my earlier article ‘Location of the seventh-century church in York’.

It was another century before York formally acquired archbishopric status and Pope Gregory’s wish was fulfilled. (However, at least it was fulfilled eventually. Augustine’s southern archbishopric ended up being based in Canterbury rather than in London as Pope Gregory intended, a situation that persists to this day.)

Notitia Dignitatum

XL.
Dux Britanniarum.
Sub dispositione viri spectabilis ducis Britanniarum:
Praefectus legionis sextae.

--Notitia Dignitatum, Latin text, available online

This translates approximately as “Under the command of the honourable Duke of the Britains, Prefect of the Sixth Legion”. The base of the Sixth Legion is not named in the Notitia, but the Sixth was known to be based at York in earlier centuries and several inscriptions relating to the Sixth Legion are known from Roman York. Assuming that the Sixth hadn’t relocated, this would suggest that York was still a legionary base when the Notitia Dignitatum was compiled, which is usually placed in the early fifth century.

Where the Dux Britanniarum himself was based is not specified in the Notitia. York would seem a likely candidate, but somewhere closer to the frontier at Hadrian’s Wall might also be possible, or the Dux may have had several bases and moved between them as occasion demanded.

Annales Cambriae

501 Bishop Ebur rests in Christ, he was 350 years old.

--Annales Cambriae, available online

The similarity of the name ‘Ebur’ to the Roman name for York, Eboracum or Eburacum, and to the name of the bishop of York who attended the Council of Arles in 314, Bishop Eborius, is consistent with this ‘Bishop Ebur’ also being a bishop of York. If this is correct, it might indicate a long-running practice of referring to the bishop by the title of his see*. If this inference is correct, it implies that there was still a Christian bishop based in York in 501 or thereabouts. If so, this could also suggest a context for Pope Gregory’s desire to establish a bishopric at York; if he thought there had been one there in the comparatively recent past, he might have wished to revive it.

The rather enigmatic reference to the bishop’s age ‘he was 350 years old’ is a bit of a puzzle. The number could be a straightforward scribal error, and this is perhaps the simplest explanation. Another possibility may be that it referred to the office, rather than to the incumbent, i.e. that the bishopric of York was 350 years old. The Council of Arles shows that it was established by 314. Three hundred and fifty years before 501 takes us back to about 150 AD, which would be early but perhaps not impossibly so. York was a major army base and major city, and had a cosmopolitan population. Tombstones have been found in York commemorating people from Italy, Gaul, Sardinia, Bavaria and possibly Egypt, and eastern religions such as Isis and Mithras were present in the city (Ottaway 2004). Perhaps Christianity might have arrived in the city and established a church as early as 150 AD, which could have been remembered as the origin of the bishopric. Or possibly whoever compiled Annales Cambriae was familiar with the legend recounted by Bede of a British king requesting Christian conversion in 156 AD (Bede Book I Ch. 4), ascribed that (with or without cause) as the origin of the York bishopric and did the calculation.

If the entry refers to the bishopric, it could be interpreted to mean that the bishopric of York, i.e. the office, came to an end in 501 AD. Or it could refer to the death of the current bishop at the time, conflated with a separate record about the antiquity of his office.

Interpretation

York was clearly an important ecclesiastical centre in 314, as well as a military base and colonia. The military base may have persisted into the fifth century if the Sixth Legion mentioned in Notitia Dignitatum had not changed its location.

When York next appears clearly in the historical record, in the early seventh century, it is again as an ecclesiastical centre (intended in 601, realised in 627). Whether it also had political and/or military importance is not known. As the southern bishopric established by St Augustine ended up in the royal centre of the kingdom of Kent at Canterbury (rather than in London as specified by Pope Gregory), this may indicate that bishoprics tended to gravitate to royal centres, and this in turn may suggest that the northern bishopric was also established in a royal centre. If so, this suggests that York may also have been a royal and political centre for the kingdom of Deira/Northumbria by 627.

What happened in between? Apart from the enigmatic reference in Annales Cambriae, which is consistent with (but does not prove) York having retained some ecclesiastical significance up to (at least) 500 AD, the documentary sources are silent on the fifth and sixth centuries at York. Further clues to the post-Roman development of York may come from archaeology. I’ll discuss these in later posts.

References

Annales Cambriae, available online

Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.

Council of Arles, 314. Text quoted in Painter 1971, first page (with the relevant quote) available online.

Eutropius, Breviarium, Book X Ch. 1 and 2, available online

Notitia Dignitatum, Latin text, available online

Ottaway P. Roman York. Tempus, 2004. ISBN 0-7524-2916-7.

Painter KS. Villas and Christianity in Roman Britain. British Museum Quarterly 1971;35:156-175. First page available online

*The Archbishop of York still signs documents as ‘Ebor’, so this may be a very long-running tradition indeed.

Map links
York

November recipe: Apple cake

2011-11-25T20:00:00.003Z

I adapted this recipe from one for carrot cake, because I grow more cooking apples than carrots. I daresay it could also be made with eating apples, although you would probably need to reduce the amount of sugar. It’s a delicious cake, rich without being heavy. It’s also very easy to make, especially if someone will help you grate the apples.

Apple cake

For the cake
8 oz (approx 250 g) wholemeal flour
6 oz (approx 150 g) dark brown soft sugar
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) baking powder
0.5 teaspoon (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground cinnamon
2 eggs
5 fl. oz. (approx 140 ml) cooking oil
Approx 1 lb (approx 450 g) cooking apples, after peeling and coring

For the cream cheese icing
1.5 oz (approx 40 g) butter
3 oz (approx 80 g) icing sugar
1.5 oz (approx 40 g) cream cheese

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon in a large bowl.

Make a well in the centre, pour in the beaten eggs and the oil. Mix well.

Peel and core the apples. Grate the apples using a coarse grater. Add to the cake mixture and mix well. It should be the consistency of thick batter.

Grease and line a 6 inch (approx 15 cm) deep cake tin, or a loaf tin about 6 inches x 4 inches x 3 inches (approx 15 cm x 11 cm x 7 cm). Pour in the cake batter and level the top.

Bake in a moderately hot oven, approx 170 C, for about 1.25 – 1.5 hours until the cake is risen, set and golden brown and a skewer comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack.

To make the icing:
Sieve the icing sugar. (It is quicker to sieve the icing sugar first, rather than try to beat out the lumps later. Trust me on this).

Beat the butter into the sieved icing sugar until smooth.

Beat in the cream cheese.

Cut the cooled cake in half horizontally, and sandwich the two halves back together with the cream cheese icing. If you prefer, you can spread the icing on the top of the cake instead and decorate with walnut halves.

Serve cut in slices.

I expect to get 12-14 slices out of this (but that will depend how big a slice you like). It keeps for about a week in an airtight tin. The cake can be frozen without the icing.

The Wolf Sea, by Robert Low. Book review

2011-11-18T20:19:00.003Z

Harper, 2008. ISBN 978-0-00-721533-1. 336 pages.

Sequel to The Whale Road, reviewed here earlier, The Wolf Sea is the second in the series about the Oathsworn, a verjazi band of Norse mercenaries hired for pay, on their quest for a rune-spelled sword and a hoard of cursed silver. This instalment is set in Byzantium, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East in 965/966. Historical figures such as the Byzantine generals Leo Balantes and John Tzimisces (John Red Boots) appear as secondary characters. All the main characters are fictional.

Having escaped with their lives and not much else after their quest to find the treasure-tomb of Attila the Hun, young Orm Ruriksson and the remnant of the Oathsworn, now sworn to Orm as their jarl (leader), find themselves in Byzantium with no ship, no money and no plan. Beyond survival, Orm has two concerns; retrieving the precious rune-sword stolen from him by an old enemy, and finding the remainder of the Oathsworn who were left behind in Novgorod when Orm and the others went in search of Attila’s tomb. Going into partnership with Radoslav, a Slav-Norse trader who has a ship but no crew, gives Orm and the Oathsworn an opportunity to start the first task, and so begins a chase through the islands of the Mediterranean and the deserts of the Holy Land. Amid the wars between the Byzantines and the Arabs, the Oathsworn relentlessly pursue their stolen sword – and finally discover the fate of their lost comrades.

Like its predecessor, The Wolf Sea is an action-packed tale of violence and intrigue, full of gory battle scenes, gruesome deaths and black magic. If anything, the tone is even darker than The Whale Road. Orm is finding the responsibility of leadership a heavy burden, and is haunted by dark dreams of betrayal and loss. Black humour leavens the grim events, from the warrior losing an arm in battle and saying, “See if you can find the hand. I had a ring I liked”, to the Norseman told that Islam will allow him four wives but no alcohol and trying to work out if this is an acceptable deal. Narrated in first person by Orm, the laconic prose style is reminiscent of the Norse sagas, terse but sprinkled with vivid images recalling Norse kennings, e.g. bad news arrives “like a mouse tumbling from rafter into ale horn”, a beefy warrior is described as “he had muscles on his eyelids.” The characters display the openness to new lands and customs that seems to have been a characteristic of the historical Norse travellers. They may refer disparagingly to foreigners as “goat-botherers” (and more, ahem, colourful variations; there is no shortage of modern expletives), but they quickly develop a liking for exotic spices and learn to cook Arab food.

Some of the characters are familiar from The Whale Road. Orm himself, intelligent as ever and now older than his years; mystical Sighvat with his store of folklore and two tame ravens; brawny Finn Horsehead. New characters are introduced (the attrition rate in the Oathsworn requires it), of whom the most memorable for me were the Goat Boy, a young Greek boy with a name the Norse can’t pronounce who acts as guide and translator, and the lively Irish monk Brother John. As might be expected for a tale about a hard-bitten warrior band far from home, the cast is almost exclusively male. Apart from dark witchcraft, women are peripheral.

The end is more of a pause in the action, as the Oathsworn still have their search for Attila’s treasure to resolve. Indeed, the plot is almost circular; for all their adventures, Orm and the Oathsworn end in much the same position as they began, no further from returning to Attila’s hoard but not noticeably nearer to it either. It will be interesting to see if the quest for Attila’s hoard is resolved in Book Three (and if so, how).

A historical note summarises the historical background and the major events invented by the author, and a map at the front is invaluable for tracing the route of the Oathsworn’s epic journey.

Violent, action-packed military adventure following the grim fortunes of a Norse mercenary band in tenth-century Byzantium and the Middle East.

Cousins at war: Ecgfrith of Northumbria and Bridei son of Beli

2011-11-10T18:03:00.006Z

In 685, Ecgfrith of Northumbria and Bridei son of Beli, King of the Picts, fought a decisive battle which resulted in Ecgfrith’s defeat and death and an end to Northumbrian ambitions in Pictland. Historia Brittonum adds the intriguing detail that Ecgfrith and Bridei were cousins. How might that be so?

Evidence

Historia Brittonum

Egfrid is he who made war against his cousin Brudei, king of the Picts, and he fell therein with all the strength of his army and the Picts with their king gained the victory; and the Saxons never again reduced the Picts so as to exact tribute from them. Since the time of this war it is called Gueithlin Garan

--Historia Brittonum ch. 57, available online

Brudei, Brude, Bruide, Bride, Bridei are all alternative spellings; Egfrid is an alternative spelling of Ecgfrith.

The Latin text is:

echfrid ipse est qui fecit bellum contra fratruelem suum, qui erat rex pictorum nomine birdei et ibi corruit cum omni robore exercitus sui et picti cum rege suo uictores extiterunt et numquam addiderunt saxones ambronum ut a pictis uectigal exigerunt. a tempore istius belli uocatur gueith lin garan.

--Historia Brittonum ch. 57, Latin text available online

In the original Latin, the term translated into English as ‘cousin’ is ‘fratruelem’. Wikipedia says that this is a specific term meaning ‘maternal first cousin’, i.e. indicating that Ecgfrith and Bridei were the sons of two sisters. I have also seen definitions saying that it can mean that they were the sons of two brothers; it’s unclear to me whether the term can also extend to sons of two siblings, i.e. sons of a sister and a brother.

Pictish Chronicle

Bride filius File .xx. annis regnauit.
[...]
Tolorcan filius Enfret .iiii. annis regnauit.

--Pictish Chronicle, available online

File is an alternative spelling of Beli or Bile. Enfret is an alternative spelling of Eanferth.

Annals of Ulster

642 Afterwards Domnall Brec was slain at the end of the year, in December, in the battle of Srath Caruin, by Hoan, king of the Britons

686. The battle of Dún Nechtain was fought on Saturday, May 20th, and Egfrid son of Oswy, king of the Saxons, who had completed the 15th year of his reign, was slain therein with a great body of his soldiers
722 Mael Corgais from Druim Ing, and Bile son of Eilphín, king of Ail Cluaithe, die.
693. Bruide son of Bile, king of Foirtriu, dies

--Annals of Ulster available online

Strathclyde genealogy

Run map arthgal map Dumnagual map Riderch map Eugein map Dumnagual map Teudebur map Beli map Elfin map Eugein map Beli map Neithon map Guipno map Dumngual hen map Cinuit map Ceritic guletic …

--Harleian genealogies, available online

In an Irish Life of St Adamnan, Bridei is described as “son of the king of Dumbarton” (according to Tim Clarkson’s website Senchus). Dumbarton, also known as Alt Clud (“Rock of Clyde”), was an important centre for the kingdom of Strathclyde.

There are two Belis to choose from in the Strathclyde genealogy. Beli map Neithon appears in the middle of the list. His son Eugein (a variant spelling of Owain) may be the ‘Hoan King of the Britons’ recorded as having won the battle of Strath Carron in 642 in the Annals of Ulster. This date is consistent with Beli having lived in the early-to-mid seventh century (since he had an adult son in 642). If correct, it is in turn possible that Beli could also have fathered a son who was adult in 685.

Another Beli, Beli map Elfin, appears three generations later, but he died in 722 according to the Annals of Ulster and so cannot be the Beli who was the father of Bridei.

Bede

For in the following year [685], King Egfrid [...] rashly led an army to ravage the province of the Picts. The enemy pretended to retreat and lured the king into narrow mountain passes, where he was killed with the greater part of his forces on the twentieth of May in his fortieth year and the fifteenth of his reign.

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book IV Ch.26

Bede does not say who Ecgfrith’s mother was. As Ecgfrith was around 40 in 685, he was born in around 645. His father Oswy married Eanflaed, daughter of Eadwine of Deira/Northumbria some time before 651, because Bede recounts a story about a miracle performed by Bishop Aidan (who died in August 651) about Eanflaed’s voyage to Northumbria (Bede, Ecclesiastical History Book III ch. 15). It seems likely (although not certain) that Ecgfrith was the son of Oswy and Eanflaed, since Ecgfrith appears to have succeeded Oswy without opposition, and a son of Oswy (of the royal house of Bernicia) and Eanflaed (of the royal house of Deira) would have had a strong claim.

If Ecgfrith was the son of Oswy of Bernicia and Eanflaed of Deira, how could he have been a cousin to Bridei, son of Beli of Strathclyde and king of the Picts?

Scenario (a): through an unrecorded daughter of Eadwine

Click to enlarge

This scenario postulates that Eadwine had another daughter, unrecorded, who married Beli ap Neithon of Strathclyde and became the mother of Bridei. This hypothetical daughter would be the sister or half-sister of Eanflaed, making Bridei and Ecgfrith the sons of two sisters or maternal first cousins. In its favour, this scenario fits the use of the term ‘fratruelem’.

It has several disadvantages. First, if Bridei had two non-Pictish parents (father king of Strathclyde, mother a Northumbrian princess), where did his claim to be king of the Picts come from? One possible resolution to this problem is to suggest that Beli of Strathclyde may have had Pictish ancestry and that this was the source of Bridei’s claim. Another is to suggest that Bridei’s mother had Pictish ancestry and Bridei’s claim came through her. A maternal claim would fit with the hypothesis that the Pictish royal succession had at least some matrilineal component (discussed in an earlier post). If one postulates that Eadwine married or had a liaison with a lady of the Pictish female royal line (‘X’ in hypothetical family tree (a) above), then matrilineal succession would mean that the sons of this union were eligible for the Pictish kingship via their mother. What about the daughters? If the daughters were eligible to be mothers of future kings of the Picts, then a daughter of Eadwine and X would be able to pass a claim to the Pictish kingship to her son (the grandson of X through the female line). By this mechanism, a daughter of Eadwine and a Pictish royal lady could bear a son (Bridei) who would be eligible to be considered as king of the Picts. This relies on matriliny operating over two generations, so that as well as the sons of a Pictish royal lady being eligible for the Pictish kingship, the sons of her daughters were also eligible. This doesn’t sound implausible, but as far as I know there is absolutely no evidence for it.

A second disadvantage is that as far as I know there is no evidence to suggest that Eadwine had any dealings with the Picts, either friendly or hostile.

Scenario (b): through a marriage between Oswald and an unrecorded sister of Beli

Click to enlarge

This scenario postulates that Oswy’s brother Oswald married an unrecorded sister of Beli of Strathclyde. In its favour, it introduces no difficulty with Bridei’s claim to the Pictish kingship, as it makes no assumptions about Bridei’s mother and therefore she could have been a lady of the Pictish royal line whose sons were eligible for the Pictish kingship. Oswald was in exile among the Scots of Dal Riada (roughly modern Argyll) from 617 to 633 or 634. A marriage with the neighbouring kingdom of Strathclyde during this period of exile would make reasonable sense, either as an alliance between Oswald’s hosts in Dal Riada and their neighbours across the Clyde, or as an alliance between Oswald in his own right and an ally who he may have seen as a potential source of support for his own claims to Northumbria, or a bit of both.

Against it, this scenario makes Ecgfrith and Bridei cousins only by marriage, with Ecgfrith’s uncle Oswald marrying Bridei’s (hypothetical) aunt. This may not have counted as ‘fratruelem’, depending on how the author of Historia Brittonum used the term.

Scenario (c): through an unrecorded sister of Oswy

Click to enlarge

This scenario postulates that Oswy had an unrecorded sister or half-sister, daughter of Aetheferth of Bernicia and his wife Bebba (or another lady), and that this unrecorded sister married Beli of Strathclyde and gave birth to Bridei.

In its favour, this scenario would make Ecgfrith and Bridei the sons of a brother and a sister (or half-sister), which would make them first cousins and could be consistent with the term ‘fratruelem’ if it extended to include children of siblings of either sex. Eanflaed and Oswy’s (hypothetical) unrecorded sister would have been sisters-in-law. Depending on how in-laws were viewed, the writer of Historia Brittonum may have considered them sisters and thus their sons as ‘fratruelem’ even if the term was meant specifically to mean sons of two sisters.

It has the same disadvantage as the first one mentioned for scenario (a) above: the source of Bridei’s claim to the Pictish kingship if he had two non-Pictish parents. As above, a possible resolution to this problem is to postulate that Bebba was a lady of the Pictish royal family, and that Pictish matriliny extended for two generations so that the sons of her daughter were eligible for the Pictish kingship. There is a slight straw of evidence that might support this, as Bede says that one of Aethelferth’s sons, Eanferth, lived in exile among the Picts. This would be consistent with a connection between Eanferth and the Pictish royal family, which would fit with Eanferth being the son of a Pictish lady.

Scenario (d): through Eanferth’s Pictish marriage

Click to enlarge

Aethelferth’s son Eanferth, brother or half-brother of Oswy and Oswald, appears in the Pictish king-list as the father of a Pictish king, Talorcan. If the Picts followed a form of matrilineal succession to the kingship, the logical implication is that Eanferth married a lady of the Pictish royal family while he was in exile among the Picts. This scenario postulates that Eanferth and his Pictish wife also had an unnamed daughter, sister of the Pictish king Talorcan, and that she married Beli of Strathclyde and was the mother of Bridei.

In its favour, this hypothesis fits easily with Bridei’s claim to be king of the Picts. In this scenario, Bridei would be the maternal nephew of a previous king of the Picts, Talorcan, a likely candidate for the kingship.

Against it, under this scenario Bridei and Ecgfrith would be second cousins a generation apart, which may not have counted as ‘fratruelem’, depending on how the author of Historia Brittonum used the term.

Interpretation

Any of these scenarios is possible, and they all have advantages and disadvantages. No doubt there are other possibilities as well.

Scenario (a) relies on Eadwine having married into the Pictish female royal line, on an unrecorded daughter from such a marriage who then married Beli of Strathclyde, and Pictish matriliny extending for two generations. It is possible that Eadwine’s wanderings in exile “through all the kingdoms of Britain” extended to the Pictish lands and a romantic entanglement and/or dynastic marriage. However, despite the obvious romantic appeal of such a notion, there is nothing in Bede or Historia Brittonum to support any involvement of Eadwine in Pictish affairs. One might imagine that if Eadwine had had ties with Pictish royalty close enough to involve marriage and/or children, he would have had dealings with the Picts and at least some would have been recorded (though the sources are so patchy that this does not necessarily follow).

Scenario (b) relies on a distant connection by marriage being sufficient for the writer of Historia Brittonum to consider Ecgfrith and Bridei cousins. This is possible, if the relationships had become obscured by then (Historia Brittonum was written well over a century after the events, although it may have drawn on earlier sources), or if the writer was using the term ‘fratruelem’ loosely. However, the writer presumably chose the term for a reason, and could equally well have chosen a term for a distant relationship if that was what was meant.

I prefer (c) or (d), as these two scenarios both rely on connections between the Pictish and Northumbrian royal families for which there is some evidence. Bede is clear that Eanferth lived in exile among the Picts and the Pictish king-list is clear that he was the father of a Pictish king. Scenario (d) relies on Eanferth’s Pictish marriage having also produced an unrecorded daughter who then married Beli of Strathclyde, and on the writer of Historia Brittonum using the term ‘fratruelem’ loosely to include second cousins; (c) relies on Eanferth’s mother having been a Pictish royal female, on an unrecorded daughter (sister of Eanferth) who married Beli of Strathclyde, and Pictish matriliny extending for two female generations. Of the two I have a slight preference for (c), because it makes Ecgfrith and Bridei first rather than second cousins, and because if Eanferth had Pictish ancestry it provides a context for his Pictish exile (if he already had family connections there through his mother) and his Pictish marriage.

References

Annals of Ulster available online

Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price, Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X

Harleian genealogies, available online

--Historia Brittonum ch. 57, translation available online; Latin text available online

Pictish Chronicle, available online

In Winter’s Shadow, by Gillian Bradshaw. Book review

2011-10-30T19:27:00.003Z

First published 1981. Edition reviewed, Sourcebooks 2011, ISBN 978-1-4022-4074-4. 410 pages. Uncorrected advance review copy supplied by publisher.

In Winter’s Shadow completes Gillian Bradshaw’s Arthurian trilogy, begun in Hawk of May (reviewed here earlier) and continued in Kingdom of Summer (reviewed here earlier). The central characters are Gwynhwyfar, her husband King Arthur, and Arthur’s chief commander Bedwyr. Other important characters are familiar from the legends, including Arthur’s illegitimate son Medraut and the warriors Gwalchmai (later Sir Gawain) and Cei. Fictional characters from the earlier books, including Gwalchmai’s servant Rhys and his wife Eivlin and Medraut’s companion Rhuawn, also reappear here.

After many years of struggle, Britain is approximately at peace. King Arthur and Queen Gwynhwyfar are beginning to restore some measure of prosperity and stability after the destructive upheavals of war. But although Arthur’s malevolent half-sister Morgawse is dead, the evil she set in train lives after her in the person of her son Medraut. Consumed by hatred, Medraut lives only to bring about the destruction of Arthur. Medraut’s first weapon is the shameful secret of his own birth. But it is the human frailties of Gwynhwyfar, Arthur and Bedwyr that give Medraut his second and most deadly weapon – one which may bring down not only Arthur but everything he has tried to achieve.

Although In Winter’s Shadow is billed as the third in a trilogy, it could be read as a stand-alone. Readers who have read the previous two will recognise events and people from them, and will pick up references to earlier incidents, but the main elements of the back story are filled in as necessary. Arthurian trilogies sometimes seem to fade by Book 3 or to sag under the accumulated weight of legend, but not in this case. I thought In Winter’s Shadow was the strongest of the three novels by quite a margin.

For me, the most compelling aspect of In Winter’s Shadow was the character of Gwynhwyfar, who narrates the novel in first person throughout. Gwynhwyfar as portrayed here is a fully three-dimensional character, with her share of human failings and her share of admirable qualities. She is intelligent and well educated, and sufficiently interested in the past to understand and share Arthur’s dream of recreating the best aspects of the lost Roman Empire, including impartial justice and respect for law. While Arthur is fighting battles, Gwynhwyfar is managing logistics and supply with a quiet fortitude that brings out the best in people and gets things done. Supply may be less than glamorous, but it is as essential as dashing tactics; as the old (apocryphal?) military saw has it, ‘Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics’. Arthur relies on her as much as on any of his warriors, and working together as partners in a shared task allows them to develop a deep and loving marriage. But the relentless immensity of the task inevitably puts a strain on their relationship, intensified by Medraut’s sly scheming.

The love triangle between Gwynhwyfar, Arthur and Bedwyr is completely convincing. No individual is entirely at fault, none is entirely blameless. They are three fundamentally good people who care deeply for one another, yet the conflicting demands of other loyalties, together with Medraut’s malice, conspire to twist their love into a destructive force. Gwynhwyfar is, naturally, at the heart of it, and her dilemmas, her choices, the consequences of those choices and the further dilemmas that follow from those consequences make for compelling reading.

The plot has few surprises for anyone familiar with the Arthurian legends. If anything, the well-worn tale makes the novel more poignant, as events rush to their inevitable conclusion and all the characters’ struggles to escape their fate merely serve to entangle them further. As well as the story of Gwynhwyfar, Arthur and Bedwyr, the tale of Gwalchmai and the boy Gwyn, begun in Kingdom of Summer, reaches its conclusion in In Winter’s Shadow. I noticed some deft references to other legends, for example the relatively minor character of Sandde Angel-face who appears in Culhwch and Olwen: “no-one placed his spear in him at Camlan, so exceeding fair was he; all thought he was an angel helping”. No doubt there are lots of other subtle references like this that I missed.

A plus point for me was that fantasy and magic play almost no role in the plot, much less than in the previous two books (This might explain in part why I thought In Winter’s Shadow the strongest of the trilogy). Gwalchmai still has his Otherworld sword and horse, but if they have any magical powers they are scarcely mentioned. Medraut is said to serve the ‘Darkness’, as his evil sorceress mother Morgawse did before him, but for the most part this could be taken as a metaphor for ordinary human vices such as cruelty and greed.

A sketch map at the front of the book is useful for following the characters’ journeyings, for those not familiar with the geography of Britain and Brittany, although not all the places mentioned in the text are shown on the map. There’s no Author’s Note in the advance review copy; I don’t know if there will be one in the final version.

Moving retelling of the Arthurian legend from the perspective of Gwynhwyfar, completing the story of Gwalchmai begun in Hawk of May and Kingdom of Summer.

October recipe: Stir-fried chicken wings with butternut squash

2011-10-29T21:41:00.002+01:00

Butternut squashes are at their best in autumn, when their warm colour and rich flavour bring a welcome touch of comfort to offset the shortening days and the nip in the air. This spicy cross between a stir-fry and a braise uses butternut squash and chicken wings, and is a warming meal on a chilly day. It’s also quick to cook, ready in about 20 minutes after you’ve chopped up the ingredients.

Chicken wings are ideally suited to this recipe, because they are just the right size and thickness to cook in about the same time as the diced butternut squash or pumpkin. Larger joints, like chicken drumsticks, don’t work because they take too long to cook through. You could also use thickly sliced chicken breast or diced pork instead of the chicken wings.

Pumpkin works just as well as butternut squash, so if you’re planning to make a pumpkin lantern for Halloween and are wondering what to do with the pumpkin flesh, here’s a good use for it.

Serves 2

Stir-fried chicken wings with butternut squash

3 or 4 chicken wings, depending on size
Approx 12 oz (approx 350 g) butternut squash or pumpkin
Half a red or yellow pepper
Half a small onion or 1 small leek
Root ginger, approx 1” (approx 2 cm) cube
1 clove garlic
3 Tablespoons (3 x 15 ml spoon) light soy sauce
2 Tablespoons (2 x 15 ml spoon) cooking sherry

Halve the chicken wings at the ‘elbow’ joint. This is quite easy to do with a sharp and fairly strong cook’s knife. I find it easier to cut just to the lower side of the joint, where the wing has two small bones (the upper part of the wing has a single thick bone).

Peel the butternut squash or pumpkin and remove the seeds. Cut into chunks about half an inch (about 1.5 cm) cubed.

Wash the pepper, remove the seeds and cut into pieces about half an inch (about 1.5 cm) square.

Peel and chop the onion (or wash, trim and slice the leek). Peel and shred the ginger. Peel the garlic.

Heat about 1 Tablespoon (about 15 ml) cooking oil in a wok or large frying pan. Add the chicken wings in a single layer and brown on all sides.

Add the diced butternut squash or pumpkin, and stir-fry for 1-2 minutes until starting to colour.

Add the chopped pepper, onion or leek, ginger and crushed garlic, and stir-fry about 30 seconds.

Stir in the soy sauce and sherry. Put a lid on the wok or frying pan, turn the heat down, and cook gently over a low heat for about 12-15 minutes. Turn the chicken wings once or twice during cooking. It’s ready when the juices run clear when a knife is inserted into the thickest part of the chicken wings, by which time the squash or pumpkin should be soft.

Serve immediately with noodles or rice.

Locations: Edale, Derbyshire

2011-10-26T13:51:00.006+01:00

On the far side another blind valley bit into the hills, and beyond it the fitful moon gleamed on a line of dark cliffs crowned by rocky teeth.
“That’s Kyndyr!” Lilla exclaimed. “Luned says there’s no way over it!”
Severa laughed, as clear and buoyant as the skylark’s song. “There is if you’re with me! That valley is Combe’s hafod, and I spent seven summers retrieving stray sheep from Kyndyr.”
[…]
“… a lung-bursting climb up an ever-steepening rocky valley that pierced the hillside like a sword slash…”

--Paths of Exile, chapter 14

“another blind valley bit into the hills”
View over the Edale valley from the south

Larger version of same photograph

This photograph was taken from the middle of the ridge that forms the southern rim of the Edale valley, and you can see how the uplands form a ring around the head of the valley, enclosing it. You can also see this from the contours in the topographical map link. There’s a road into Edale at the mouth of the valley in the east, but the only way out of the head of the valley is over the hills.

“a line of dark cliffs...”
Close-up of one of the gritstone edges overlooking Edale

“...crowned by rocky teeth”
Close-up view of one of the tors

“...retrieving stray sheep from Kyndyr”
Lamb perched on a ledge halfway up a tor on Kinder Scout, bleating piteously for someone to come and help it down.
(Yes, it did get down safely. After ten minutes or so the mother ewe arrived, they bleated back and forth a few times, and then the mother showed the lamb how to jump across to another ledge and then down to safety, probably the way it got up there in the first place).

“an ever-steepening rocky valley”
The upper part of Grindsbrook Clough. ‘Clough’ is used in Northern England for a steep or narrow upland valley. This is the route taken by the fugitive party in Paths of Exile as they climb out of Edale and onto Kinder Scout.

‘Combe’ in Paths of Exile is modern Hope (see map link at end of post). Hope is derived from Old English ‘hop’, meaning a small enclosed valley, particularly one that overhangs the main valley. In the early seventh century as imagined in Paths of Exile, the language spoken in upland Derbyshire is Brittonic (an ancestor of modern Welsh and Breton). So I translated the Old English ‘hop’ into its approximate Brittonic equivalent, ‘combe’ (spelled ‘coomb’ in Cumbria), also meaning a small upland valley.

‘Kyndyr’ is Kinder Scout. See earlier posts for pictures of the Kinder Scout plateau and some of its gritstone tors.

‘Combe’s hafod’ in Paths of Exile is modern Edale (see map link), the valley immediately south of Kinder Scout and separated from the Hope valley by the long upland ridge of Mam Tor and Lose Hill. Several of the hamlets in Edale have the name ‘Booth’, a Norse word meaning temporary shelter (related to modern Scottish ‘bothy’). I have imagined that Edale in the seventh century was used by the inhabitants of Hope for summer grazing in the valley and on the slopes of the surrounding hills. ‘Hafod’ is a Welsh term meaning something like ‘summer farm’, roughly equivalent to the Norwegian ‘saeter’ or Scottish shieling.

Map links
Scroll around to see how Hope and Edale relate to each other
Hope
Edale

Writing About the Anglo-Saxons: History and fiction in the age of Sutton Hoo

2011-10-11T11:10:00.004+01:00

I will be taking part in a one-day event "Writing About the Anglo-Saxons: History and Fiction in the Age of Sutton Hoo", to be held at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, UK on 23 October 2011.

No charge for admission. Book places in advance at Sutton Hoo Reception (01394 389700), or ask at Reception on the day.

Full details here

Talks on aspects of Anglo-Saxon history and culture and the challenges of recreating the world of early mediaeval Britain in fiction and non-fiction

Panel discussions

Question-and-answer sessions

Book signing

Participants:

Carla Nayland, author of Paths of Exile, historical novel set in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria

PM Sabin Moore, author of Stormfrost and Brightfire, historical novels set at Sutton Hoo

Paul Mortimer, re-enactor and author of Woden's Warriors, a non-fiction study of Anglo-Saxon warrior culture

Steve Pollington, author of numerous non-fiction works on Anglo-Saxon history and culture

Connie Jensen, proprietor of Trifolium Books UK, publisher of historical fiction set in Anglo-Saxon England, including Paths of Exile and Bride of the Spear

Burgh Castle Roman fort: Cnobheresburg?

2011-09-29T20:44:00.003+01:00

[...]Fursey set himself with all speed to build a monastery on a site given him by King Sigbert [...] This monastery was pleasantly situated in some woods close to the sea, within the area of a fortification that the English call Cnobheresburg, meaning Cnobhere’s Town.

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History Book III ch.19

The location of Cnobheresburg is uncertain. It was presumably in East Anglia, since King Sigebert was able to grant it to a monastery, and from Bede’s description it was some sort of fortification close to the coast. Bede’s phrase ‘within the area of’ may imply that it was a large fortification and the monastery did not occupy all of it. All this is consistent with Burgh Castle as a possible location for Cnobheresburg. The mid-seventh-century pottery and the sixth-to-tenth-century inhumation cemetery inside the fort are also indicative of occupation at the right sort of date, especially if the timber building beside the cemetery was a church.

However, there may have been other fortifications along the coast of East Anglia that would also fit Bede’s description and that have since been lost to coastal erosion (there was a Roman shore fort at Felixstowe, for example). Unless or until further evidence is found, the identification is open to interpretation.

St Foillan

Fursey’s brother St Foillan is said to have taken over as abbot of the monastery of Cnobheresburg and to have fled to Nivelles in what is now Belgium with the books, relics and remaining monks in 651 after Penda of Mercia invaded East Anglia and sacked the monastery (see Wikipedia article on St Foillan). If Cnobheresburg monastery was completely destroyed and abandoned in 651, this could be inconsistent with the date of the inhumation cemetery and the pottery at Burgh Castle, both of which suggest some form of occupation extending into the ninth or tenth century, well after St Foillan’s departure. However, it is possible that not all the monks left with St Foillan, or that others rebuilt the monastery after his departure (or that the story is unreliable; the source for it is a record from the monastery at Nivelles, and I do not know the date of the document or its reliability).

Cnobhere

Nothing is known of Cnobhere. The second element of the personal name is ‘here’, meaning ‘army’, so it would be a suitable sort of name for a warlord, and a warlord is the sort of person one might expect to be associated with a fort, but this is pure speculation.

Since the name Cnobheresburg was established by the time the site was granted to Fursey, Cnobhere (whoever he was) presumably pre-dated the 630s. It is perhaps likely that he was long gone by then, or he might have objected to having his fort handed over to a monk, although he may have been a party to the transaction for all we know.

Church of St Peter and St Paul

The church of St Peter and St Paul stands just north of Burgh Castle Roman fort, an attractive small church with a round tower. The listed building record identifies the tower as late 11th century, with the rest of the church being later (British Listed Buildings). See earlier post for more details.

If the building near the cemetery inside the fort walls was an early church, the church on the current site may have replaced it at some point, perhaps when the fort site became unsuitable or was taken into use for some other purpose. Since the inhumation cemetery inside the walls has a date range in the sixth to tenth century, somewhere in or after the tenth century may be a likely time for the church to have moved. There are many possible reasons why the church might have relocated. I can think of at least three, and no doubt there are others:

The Viking raids of the ninth and tenth centuries, which hit East Anglia hard and may have led to abandonment of the monastery, with the church later rebuilt on a different site;

Norman takeover of the fortified area for the motte and bailey castle, requiring any church/monastery/inhabitants within the walls to move to a different site;

Collapse of the west wall of the fort – it is not known when the collapse happened, and it may have been sufficiently alarming an event to prompt relocation of the church in case the rest of the fort followed suit.

Interpretation

The various archaeological findings on the site of Burgh Castle Roman fort suggest a surprisingly long history:

third and fourth century use as a Roman military base;

hoard of expensive Roman- and German-style glassware, dated to the early fifth century and therefore buried at some (unknown) date after that;

’pagan Saxon’ cremation cemetery on the site of the Roman military cemetery in the field east of the fort, date uncertain but probably somewhere around the fifth / sixth century;

traces of timber structures in the fort interior with pottery dated to the mid-seventh to ninth century;

inhumation cemetery in the fort interior, radiocarbon dated to the sixth to tenth century.

Between them, these take us almost up to the existing church tower at the nearby church of St Peter and St Paul (eleventh century). Burgh Castle may not have been inhabited continuously, but it seems reasonable to infer that it was in use at least on and off over several hundred years.

The monastery mentioned by Bede that was founded at Cnobheresburg in the early to mid seventh century is an obvious candidate for association with the inhumation cemetery and the timber structures and pottery inside the walls. The dates are reasonably consistent, assuming that Cnobheresburg did not cease to exist when St Foillan left in 651, and an inhumation cemetery is the sort of thing one would expect to find on a monastic site, especially if the associated timber building was a church. However, the identification of Burgh Castle with Cnobheresburg is not proven.

If Burgh Castle is the site of Cnobheresburg, it’s an attractive speculation (but no more than that) to associate Cnobhere, who gave his name to the site at some date before the 630s, with the hoard of glassware and/or with the early pagan Saxon cremation cemetery identified in the field east of the fort. This field was also the site of a Roman military cemetery. This does not necessarily indicate continuity of occupation. Roman cemeteries often had tombstones and mausolea, some of which may have remained standing for a long time. It is perfectly possible that the people who used the cremation cemetery arrived on the site after the fort had been abandoned, recognised the Roman cemetery as a burial place – or simply as unsuitable for agriculture because of the standing remains – and used it as an appropriate place to inter their own dead. In this scenario, one could imagine Cnobhere as the leader of a group of Anglian raiders-turned-settlers (like the later Norse), who took over the fort and made it his base, either having found it abandoned or having evicted the previous inhabitants. However, the re-use of the Roman cemetery may also be consistent with continuity of occupation. The Roman garrison could have handed over to a replacement garrison of federate troops, who brought a different funeral rite with them. Or possibly the Roman garrison or their descendants simply changed the funerary rite they chose to use, possibly to reflect a change in their perceived identity. In such a scenario one could imagine the eponymous Cnobhere as the last Roman commander (the Late Roman Army had Germanic officers in high command) or his descendant, the sort of person who could have owned a hoard of expensive Late Roman glassware, deciding to go into business for himself as a local ruler when orders and supplies stopped arriving from HQ, and signalling his independent status by changes in social customs, including (but not necessarily limited to) the preferred funeral rites. Something similar may have happened at Birdoswald on Hadrian’s Wall, with a change in building structure to a warlord-style timber hall on the site of the fort granary, as discussed in earlier posts here and here. I need hardly add that this is speculative.

References
Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.
British Listed Buildings, available online
English Heritage listing, available online

September recipe: Plum sponge pudding

2011-09-27T20:07:00.000+01:00

Late plums, such as the variety Marjorie’s Seedling, are still in season in September, and make excellent puddings. Plum sponge pudding is simple and delicious, and can be eaten hot or cold according to the weather. Here’s the recipe:

Plum sponge pudding

1 lb oz (approx 450 g) plums
4 oz (approx 100 g) sugar
4 oz (approx 100 g) butter
4 oz (approx 100 g) self-raising flour
2 eggs

Halve and stone the plums.

Grease a heatproof dish and put the plums in the bottom. The fruit should come no more than halfway up the sides of the dish, or the juices may boil over during cooking.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat in the eggs.

Stir in the flour, and mix thoroughly until smooth. It should just drop off the spoon.

Spread the sponge mixture over the plums.

Bake in a hot oven at around 180 C for 25-30 minutes until the sponge is risen and golden brown. Some of the plum juice will probably bubble up through the sponge during cooking.

Serve hot or cold with cream, ice-cream, natural yoghurt or custard.

If there is any left over, it will keep in an airtight container for two or three days at room temperature.

I usually expect to get about 6 portions out of this recipe.

Kingdom of Summer, by Gillian Bradshaw. Book review

2011-09-18T11:30:00.002+01:00

First published 1981. Edition reviewed: Sourcebooks, 2011. ISBN 978-1-4022-4072-0. 329 pages. Advance review copy supplied by publisher.

Kingdom of Summer is the second in Gillian Bradshaw’s Arthurian trilogy, sequel to Hawk of May (reviewed here earlier). The story still revolves around Gwalchmai (Sir Gawain in the later legends), though it is narrated by his (fictional) servant Rhys ap Sion. Many of the characters are figures from the legends, including Morgause, her husband King Lot of Orkney, their sons Gwalchmai and Agravain, Morgause’s illegitimate son Medraut, Arthur’s knights Cei and Bedwyr, and Arthur himself. Maelgwn Gwynedd, historical king of Gwynedd in the early to mid sixth century, appears as a secondary character*. The central character, Rhys ap Sion, and an Irish servant girl called Eivlin are fictional.

Rhys ap Sion is a freeborn farmer, peaceably working his family’s land near the River Severn. When a wounded warrior, Gwalchmai ap Lot, seeks hospitality at the farm in a bitter winter, Rhys feels drawn to him and goes with him as his servant to Arthur’s stronghold at Camlann and then on a diplomatic mission to Maelgwn Gwynedd. There Rhys encounters Gwalchmai’s sinisterly beautiful mother Morgause and suave brother Medraut, not to mention their attractive Irish serving girl Eivlin. As Rhys learns more of the dark secrets haunting Gwalchmai’s past, he comes to realise that the schemes afoot threaten not only Gwalchmai but Arthur’s kingdom itself.

Fantasy is less dominant in Kingdom of Summer than in Hawk of May, a plus point for me. Gwalchmai still has his magical Otherworld sword and horse, and supernatural duels and healing miracles feature in the plot, but for me the strongest aspect of the novel was the interplay between the characters. Apart from Morgause, who is evil incarnate (as expected from her role in the previous book), everyone has a mix of strengths and weaknesses. Gwalchmai is at first sight the ideal hero of legend, brave, courteous and near-invincible in battle, but he is haunted by his not-entirely-honourable treatment of a woman several years earlier, and he is endearingly hopeless at practical matters such as obtaining food and shelter. Agravain is a complete contrast, brash, arrogant, inclined to casual violence and not given to thinking if he can help it, but also likeable in his ebullience. Medraut is a contrast again, charming, subtle and persuasive. The conflicts between the three Orkney brothers are sharply drawn, and test Rhys’s loyalty to Gwalchmai.

Rhys himself, as the narrator, is a central character in the novel, and the tale is as much his as Gwalchmai’s. A hard-headed farmer – both literally and figuratively – he is rather out of his depth in the world of warrior honour and Otherworldly weapons, and his down-to-earth common sense is both a support and a contrast to Gwalchmai’s rather abstract concerns. The Irish girl Eivlin is a delight. Her first line, on being asked where she got that kettle, is to reply, “A hen laid it in the rafters, having been affrighted in a coppersmith’s shop”, which sold me straight away. In her own way, she demonstrates as much courage and loyalty as any of the warriors.

There are two distinct plot strands, Gwalchmai’s search for the woman he wronged and Morgause’s evil schemes to destroy Arthur and all he stands for. The first is resolved – although there is, I think, scope for it to reappear – and the second is clearly setting up for a climax in the last book of the trilogy. I shall be interested to see how it plays out.

There’s a sketch map in the front for anyone who is unfamiliar with the geography of Arthurian Britain, although not all the place names are marked and Less Britain appears to be placed in modern Picardy and Normandy rather than its more usual location in modern Brittany. The ARC has no historical or author’s note, although there may be one in the finished version. Not that it matters greatly, because the Arthurian legends have been told and retold so many times that they have near-limitless scope for interpretation.

Second in an engaging fantasy trilogy retelling the story of Gwalchmai (later Sir Gawain) of Arthurian legend.

*Although Maelgwn is dated to the early to mid sixth century (died in 547), I’m not sure that Kingdom of Summer is intended as set in the same period; Maelgwn may have been displaced earlier in time to make him contemporary with Arthur’s heyday. The author’s note for Hawk of May commented that ‘the novel is only partially historical’, so chronology is not that important.

Author Michael Dean – book signings and talk in Colchester and Chelmsford

2011-09-14T20:33:00.003+01:00

Michael Dean, author of The Crooked Cross (reviewed here in 2009), will be signing copies of his new novel, Thorn, at Waterstones in Chelmsford on Saturday 17 September 2011 12 noon – 2 pm.

Michael will also be giving a talk about the book and signing copies at Colchester Library on Saturday 24 September 2011, 11 am – 12 noon.

Thorn is published by Bluemoose Books, ISBN 9780956687647. It’s a historical novel set in mid-17th-century Amsterdam, and featuring the philosopher Spinoza and the artist Rembrandt.

Here’s the blurb:

THORN is a Rabelaisian tour through Amsterdam in the mid-17th Century and very, very funny.

In 1656, at the height of The Dutch Golden Age, two giants of European culture meet: philosopher Baruch Spinoza, a Jew of Portuguese descent, and Rembrandt van Rijn, the greatest Dutch Master, find themselves inextricably linked through a failed mercantile venture and membership of the freethinking ‘Waterlanders’ which, in challenging the Calvinist doctrine of the day, pits them against the authorities in Amsterdam.

I’ve read THORN and I think it’s an astonishing book; very powerful, exciting, disturbing and also very funny. It is true to the ideas of its great protagonists Spinoza and Rembrandt and makes the parallel that their lives were made almost impossible because they both sought the truth. It’s a powerful, shocking and moving story of religious intolerance and, as such, more relevant today than it might appear on the surface. DAVID NOBBS

So if you're in the Chelmsford or Colchester area of Essex, UK, over the next couple of weekends, you may like to go along. I expect to review Thorn here in due course (I have a copy on order but it hasn't arrived yet).

Fire in the East, by Harry Sidebottom. Book review

2011-09-01T20:12:00.003+01:00

Penguin, 2009. ISBN 978-0-141-03229-0. 391 pages

Set in 255-256 AD, mainly in the Roman frontier city of Arete (Dura Europos) on the River Euphrates in modern Syria. The central character, Ballista, is based on a historical Roman officer, although little is known about the historical figure. The Roman Emperors Maximinus Thrax, Gallienus and Valaerian, and the Persian King Shapur, are historical figures who appear briefly or have an important off-stage presence. All the other main characters are fictional. The siege of Arete is a real event, known from some remarkable archaeological discoveries (see the Wikipedia page).

Originally sent to Rome as a diplomatic hostage for his father, chief of the Angles in what is now southern Denmark, Ballista has risen to high command in the Roman Army. His career has taken him to the frontiers of the Empire on the Danube and in the far west. Now he is on his way to face the Empire’s greatest threat of all, the Sassanid Persians in the east. Posted to the frontier city of Arete on the River Euphrates, last outpost of the Roman Empire, Ballista is given the title Dux Ripae (War-leader of the Riverbanks) and charged with defending the city against the expected Persian invasion. But Ballista has few troops to strengthen the city’s depleted garrison. Watching the Persians’ enormous army mass before the gates of Arete, Ballista knows that to hold the city with the limited resources at his command will take a feat of military genius – or a miracle. And to make matters worse, there is at least one murderous traitor at large in the city, intent on sabotage, assassination and betraying Arete to the Persians...

This is a military adventure with plenty of action – naval battles, desert ambush, assault and siege engineering – reflecting the author’s background as an academic expert on ancient warfare. At first, the pace is leisurely to slow, as Ballista and his staff travel across the Mediterranean in a trireme on the way to Syria to take up his appointment. This section felt like something of a travelogue, perhaps because it is so clearly a prelude to whatever is going to happen when Ballista takes up his command, although it gives the reader time to get to know the main characters and introduces some of the various religions and cultures. Once they reach Arete and begin the preparations for the city’s defence the pace picks up, and when the siege itself gets underway it becomes positively gripping. The last half of the book, as the Persians try various ingenious methods to take the city and Ballista’s defenders try equally ingenious methods to stop them, reminds me a little of Tolkien’s Battle of the Pelennor Fields in Lord of the Rings (and in case anyone is wondering, that’s a compliment). The mounting evidence of a traitor, or traitors, in the city adds to the growing menace of the Persian army outside to ratchet the tension ever higher. As the narrative is told in third person from a variety of points of view, the reader sometimes knows things that the main characters do not, which also helps to build suspense. Ballista is both intelligent and highly experienced, so he is always trying to out-think the Persians as well as out-fight them – and the Persians in turn are always trying to out-think him. If you have even the slightest interest in military engineering and have wondered how artillery, assault towers, siege ramps, battering rams and mines were used in practice, this is a book for you.

Contrasting cultures, opinions and religions are well drawn. Arete has a mix of classical paganism, various Eastern religions and Christianity, and a Persian slave boy provides a zealous description of the Persians’ religion. Ballista’s religious beliefs from his childhood among the Angles are based on Tacitus’ Germania and Norse mythology (in the total absence of any sources in between), so don’t be surprised to encounter the Viking gods in this novel; if anything, the slightly incongruous note helps to reinforce Ballista’s situation as an outsider to patrician Roman society. The prose style is straightforward modern English with a generous helping of modern four-letter words, sprinkled with archaic terminology for period colour and with an attractive line in sardonic humour.

The ‘end’ of the novel is clearly only a pause leading into further adventures, and the historical notes in the Appendix make it clear that at least two more novels will continue Ballista’s story. The half-century or so between 235 AD and about 285 AD is sometimes called the ‘Third-century crisis’, reflecting the many political and military upheavals that shook the Roman Empire as it got into a habit of losing battles and rattled through short-lived Emperors like a bored child through a toy box. It’s a period with plenty of scope for drama, and as it is also a poorly documented period – possibly because everyone was too busy trying to stay alive and on the right side of the chaotic politics to write anything down – very little is known about it so the scope for historical fiction is similarly immense. The author comments in his historical note that one of his academic colleagues congratulated him on his choice of setting because “...so little is known for sure that no-one could prove me wrong.”

Nevertheless, as the author says, he has taken care with the historical background. Even when events and people are not known with any certainty and have to be invented, something is often known in broad terms about the world in which the story takes place, such as technology, trade routes, material culture and so on. A detailed Appendix gives a brief introduction to the known history, people and places, together with suggestions for further reading. A list of characters may help to keep the cast straight, although I found the writing sufficiently clear that I did not need to refer to it, and a detailed glossary defines most of the period terminology for readers unfamiliar with the setting. Two maps at the front of the novel are invaluable for understanding the geography and the detailed progress of the siege.

Gripping military adventure set against the dramatic background of the Roman third-century crisis in the Near and Middle East.

August recipe: Plum jam

2011-08-29T23:19:00.002+01:00

Plums are abundant in August and early September. If you have a surplus, one way to store them is in plum jam. Any variety of plum can be used to make jam, or you can use a mixture of different varieties according to taste and availability. Dark purple plums tend to make a deeper coloured jam, whereas pink-hued plums like Victorias will make a lighter colour.

The quantity below will make about three or four medium-sized jars of jam. You can start eating it straight away, or it will keep indefinitely provided the seal of the jar isn’t broken.

Plum jam

2 lb (approx 1 kg) plums, any variety or a mixture
2 lb (approx 1 kg) sugar. I usually use granulated sugar

Wash the plums.

Halve and stone the plums. If the plums are large, chop the halved plums into pieces of the size you would like to find in the finished jam.

Put the chopped plums in a large saucepan with 2 Tblsp (approx 30 ml) water.

Cook over a very gentle heat until the juice starts to run. Then simmer for 15 – 20 minutes until the fruit is soft enough to mash with a wooden spoon. You don’t actually have to mash it, and I usually don’t because I like whole fruit jam, but it’s a good indicator for when the fruit is ready to go on to the next stage.

Add the sugar and stir until it has dissolved (a minute or so).

Add a small piece of butter. This is supposed to help stop the jam sticking.

Bring the jam to a full rolling boil – this means lots of bubbles across the whole surface of the liquid in the pan (see picture). Don’t lean over the pan and keep any children or pets out of the way. Boiling jam will sometimes spit, and as it is both hot and sticky it can give an unpleasant burn.

Boiling jam (All together now: "Double, double, toil and trouble....")

Boil until the setting point is reached. To test for setting point, scoop out a teaspoonful of jam and drip it onto a cold plate. It will form a pool. (If it forms a bead, your jam is ready – take it off the heat straight away and proceed to the next step). Wait for the pool to cool (30 seconds or so), then push it horizontally with your finger. If the surface wrinkles, the jam is ready. If the pool stays liquid, keep boiling for another 2 minutes and test again. I usually find this jam reaches setting point after about 15 minutes boiling.*

Remove the jam from the heat, and pour into clean glass jars. I find the easiest way to do this is to pour from the pan into a heatproof jug, then use the jug to fill the jars.

Seal the jars immediately. I seal jam jars with a layer of cling film and then a screw-top lid, but you can use any method of your choice as long as it is air-tight.

Let the jars cool, label them, and store in a cupboard until needed.

You can scale up the quantity as you see fit, but remember that you need plenty of space in the pan for the jam to boil without boiling over. If the pan is about half-full after you put the sugar in, that should be about right.

*I am told that a sugar thermometer makes it easier to recognise setting point. I’ve never used one, so can’t comment. The old-fashioned way works for me.

Paths of Exile now available as e-book

2011-08-24T13:09:00.005+01:00

Paths of Exile is now available as an e-book on Amazon Kindle UK, Amazon Kindle US and in several e-book formats including Kindle, Epub (Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo), Palm Doc and others on Smashwords. The first 20% is available in most formats on Smashwords if you want to try before you buy.

Burgh Castle Roman fort: Church of St Peter and St Paul

2011-08-19T18:35:00.004+01:00

The remains of the Roman shore fort are by far the most impressive visible features on the site of Burgh Castle Roman fort, with three of the four walls and their massive bastions still standing to near full height (see my previous post for pictures).

The church of St Peter and St Paul stands one field north of the remains of the Roman fort (see map link here). It is is an attractive small church with a round tower. The listed building record identifies the tower as late 11th century, with the rest of the church being later (British Listed Buildings).

Church of St Peter and St Paul, Burgh Castle

I wonder if some of the red bricks and tiles visible in the tower (among the flintwork and around the arched window, not at the top of the tower which looks like a later rebuild) are Roman bricks and tiles recycled from the nearby Roman fort.

Close up of tower showing red bricks and tiles among the flints and around the window

Most round church towers are found in East Anglia, mainly in Norfolk, some in Suffolk, and a handful in Essex and neighbouring counties. Why round towers? One possibility is that round towers were chosen as a consequence of the local building materials. The main building stone available in most of East Anglia is flint, which comes in irregular nodules. Flint makes a perfectly good building material, especially if combined with plenty of mortar, but it isn’t great for the construction of corners. This can be solved by importing stone from elsewhere to make the corners (you can see this technique in the corners of the church doorway in the photo). Or it can be solved by avoiding corners if at all possible and building round towers.

Another possibility is that round towers happened to be fashionable, or were chosen as part of an expression of regional or local identity. A thought that occurs to me is to wonder if round church towers could have been influenced or inspired by the round bastions on surviving Roman fortifications. Remains like Burgh Castle Roman fort are impressive even now and must have been more so a thousand years ago when the Roman forts were better preserved and large buildings were fewer than today. Someone who had seen one of the Roman forts might have decided to follow this example of how to build a tower, on the practical grounds that it had clearly worked in the past, and then the idea may have been copied at nearby sites and become a local fashion. If the forts were even vaguely remembered as ‘Roman’ structures, it may also have seemed fitting to borrow some of their architecture when building churches for a religion whose headquarters was Rome. Early monastic foundations built within Roman shore forts may also have reinforced such an association. I need hardly say that this is speculative.

Burgh Castle Roman Fort is a possible site for the seventh-century monastery called Cnobheresburg, mentioned in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. If this is the case, the existing church may be a replacement for an earlier church, either on the same site or nearby, perhaps within the walls of the Roman fort. The dedication to St Peter and St Paul is consistent with an early foundation; Aethelbert of Kent built a monastery with a church dedicated to St Peter and St Paul in 602 (Bede Book I Ch. 33), the church built in York in 626 was dedicated to St Peter (Bede Book II Ch. 14), and the seventh-century Chapel of St Peter on the Wall at the Roman shore fort near Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex is a likely candidate for the church founded at a place called Ythancaestir in 654 (Bede, Book III Ch. 22). More about Cnobheresburg in another post.

References
Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.
British Listed Buildings, Church of St Peter and St Paul, Burgh Castle, available online

Libertas, by Alistair Forrest. Book review

2011-08-11T17:52:00.002+01:00

Edition reviewed: Quaestor2000, 2009. ISBN 978-1-906836-07-8. 218 pages. Also available as an e-book in various formats at Amazon Kindle and Smashwords.

Libertas is set in the first century BC in southern Spain and the Mediterranean, against the background of the civil war between Roman generals Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. The historical figure of Sextus Pompey (younger son of Pompey the Great) is an important secondary character, and other historical figures including Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompey (elder brother of Sextus), Marcus Agrippa and Titus Labienus make brief appearances. All the main characters are fictional.

Melqart, nicknamed Pito, is the son of a respected baker in the quietly prosperous mountain town of Munda in Hispania Ulterior (modern southern Spain). When the Roman army decides that Munda’s location is of strategic importance, Pito’s talent for invention earns him a role as a surveyor, map-maker and deviser of a signalling system. But when Munda finds itself the focal point for a savage battle in the Roman civil war, Pito’s old enemy, the villainous local thug Arsay, sees his chance to seize power. If Pito is to survive and rescue his beloved family from slavery, it will take all his courage and ingenuity, not to mention the help of unexpected allies…

Melqart (Pito), the central character and narrator of this adventure tale, is an unusual and likeable hero. A reluctant warrior who only fights if he has to, Pito would much rather solve a problem by applying his brains than his fists. He turns out to be a talented inventor, coming up with innovations such as a mirror signalling system, a retractable keel and a torpedo. Pito is drawn to knowledge in all its forms, from the library of scrolls left by the Greek philosopher Archimedes* in Syracuse to the spiritual wisdom of the enigmatic mountain hermit Uriel. He also has a semi-mystical relationship with the magnificent mountain eagles that patrol the skies above Munda. Indeed, the eagles are as important as the human characters, intervening decisively at crucial points in Pito’s life.

The historical Sextus Pompey displayed considerable enterprise after his father’s defeat, not only managing to avoid getting killed but setting up for a while as a successful pirate and operator of a maritime protection racket on the island of Sicily. He is a memorable character in Libertas, a rogue with style, wit and charm who, despite his shrewd eye for the main chance, is generous and immensely loyal to his friends, including those of modest status like Pito.

Pito’s adventures take him far and wide across the Mediterranean to the desert kingdoms of North Africa and the volcanoes of Sicily, encountering a variety of different cultures and people. Details of daily life – baking bread, a village feast, growing and preparing food – are described with as much care as the dramatic scenes of battle, storm and volcanic eruption. The landscape of southern Spain around Munda (modern Monda) is beautifully portrayed, with its craggy peaks, aromatic mountain pastures, rivers, ravines and olive groves. Pito reflects from time to time that Munda is a little corner of Paradise on earth, and it would be difficult not to agree with him.

Libertas shows how a largely peaceable and prosperous community can be suddenly devastated, just because it happens to be a convenient place for a battle between rival foreign powers. The inhabitants of Munda have little or no direct involvement in the conflict between Roman political factions, but the war arrives anyway with all the random violence of a hurricane, wreaks its havoc and leaves the bewildered survivors to pick up the pieces as best they can.

The Battle of Munda in 45 BC was a real event, although its location is uncertain according to the Author’s Note. Here it is placed near modern Monda, inland from the Costa del Sol. The fictional coastal village of Apollacta is a clever play on the modern name of the coast – it translates as ‘Apollo’s Shore’ or the coast of the sun god. Holidaymakers heading off for a break in the sun this summer might like to pack a copy of Libertas and imagine what this popular corner of southern Spain might have been like two thousand years ago.

A short Author’s Note at the back summarises some of the underlying history, and two maps at the front show the location of Munda and a plan of the town as imagined in the novel. Particularly useful is a map showing the battlefield of Munda in detail and the dispositions of the forces involved, sensibly placed in the relevant chapter so the reader can refer to it during the gripping battle scenes.

Fast-paced adventure tale of invention, courage, friendship and survival, set in the idyllic landscape of southern Spain against the background of the civil war between Caesar and Pompey.

*Yes, that Archimedes, he of the “Eureka” moment, the Archimedes screw, etc.

Locations: Derbyshire’s gritstone tors

2011-08-05T17:28:00.003+01:00

Gritstone tors on Kinder Scout

Gritstone is the characteristic rock of the ‘Dark Peak’ landscape, extending in an arc around the west, north and east of the Derbyshire Peak District. As its name implies, it’s a hard coarse-grained sandstone formed from grit laid down on the bed of a vast river delta around 300 million years ago (long before the dinosaurs, to put the timescale into context). Gritstone is hard, abrasive and very strong. Its sharp-edged crystals make it ideal for grinding grain, hence its alternative name of Millstone Grit, and its strength makes it a sturdy building stone.

In the landscape, gritstone forms high windswept moorlands of heather and blanket bog, vertical cliffs called Edges, and strangely sculptured rock outcrops called tors. The tors are among the most atmospheric features of the gritstone moorlands of the Dark Peak, carved by wind, rain and frost into weird shapes.

Part of Paths of Exile is set in the Dark Peak in the Upper Derwent Valley (see map link at the bottom of the post), where the gritstone tors on the high moorlands make for a distinctive landscape.

[…]
All along the eastern horizon, an irregular row of boulders and tors marked the edge of a slightly higher plateau. The rock was dark grey in colour and curiously rounded, like stacked cushions or piled cakes of bread. At close quarters it was coarse-grained and abrasive, full of large rounded pebbles and occasional tiny flecks that caught the light and sparkled in the sun. […] A short distance away to the south, a gritstone tor reared its stepped profile against the bright sky.
[…]

--Paths of Exile, chapter 11

“...like stacked cushions or piled cakes of bread”
If you look at the topographical map in the link below, you’ll see that one of the tors on Derwent Edge is called ‘The Cakes of Bread’.

“...reared its stepped profile against the sky”

“...coarse-grained and abrasive...”
Close-up of gritstone. You can see the pebbles embedded in the rock; presumably they were washed down the rivers that formed that long-ago delta and deposited along with the sand and grit. The pebbles vary between rocks in different locations. These are quite small, a centimetre (half an inch) or so across, but some of the tors elsewhere on the moors contain pebbles the size of a walnut, and where they have weathered out the tors are riddled with round cavities like a Swiss cheese.

Gritstone tors can weather into fantastic shapes, resembling a natural sculpture park – or, for a (fictional) group of exhausted fugitives familiar with tales of man-eating monsters who “walk nightlong / The misty moorland”, something altogether more intimidating:

Who says trolls are mythical?

Gritstone tors like this one were part of the inspiration for including beliefs in trolls in Paths of Exile. For a discussion on troll-like creatures in Old English myths, see my earlier post on Eotens.

Map link
Upper Derwent Valley. The reservoirs were not there in 605 AD!

Bring It Close, by Helen Hollick. Book review

2011-07-31T17:00:00.003+01:00

Silverwood Books, 2011. ISBN 978-1-906236-62-5. 385 pages. Advance review copy provided as PDF by publisher.

Bring It Close is the third in the Jesamiah Acorne pirate series, following Sea Witch (reviewed here a few years ago) and Pirate Code. Set in October-November 1718, mainly on the coasts of North Carolina and Virginia in what is now the US, Bring It Close features the notorious historical pirate Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, as a main character. Other secondary characters such as the governors of North Carolina and Virginia, Blackbeard’s crew and the British naval lieutenant Robert Maynard are also historical figures. The two central characters, pirate captain Jesamiah Acorne and white witch Tiola, are fictional.

Captain Jesamiah Acorne has inherited his family’s tobacco plantation, accepted a government amnesty and, in theory, retired from piracy. Bored and still troubled by questions about his father and his family’s past, he has a one-night stand with an old flame, causing his lover, the midwife and white witch Tiola Oldstagh, to quarrel with him and depart to attend a difficult birth. The plantation turns out to be run down to the point of bankruptcy, his half-brother’s widow is disputing the inheritance, the fearsome pirate Blackbeard still wants revenge on Jesamiah for sinking his ship, and Jesamiah’s dead father is trying to contact him from the world of the dead. Jesamiah finds himself arrested for piracy – ironically, this time he is innocent of the charge – and sentenced to hang. If he is to save his life, clear his name and be reunited with his beloved Tiola, he will have to hunt down and kill Blackbeard. But, unknown to Jesamiah, Blackbeard has sold his soul to the Dark Power, the implacable enemy of Tiola and the power she represents, and cannot be killed …

Bring It Close is a fantasy set against the swashbuckling historical background of piracy in the Caribbean and along the east coast of North America. Central to the novel is a supernatural struggle between the powers of Good (the Immortals of Light, the Old Ones of Wisdom), represented by Tiola, and Evil (the Dark Power, the Malevolence), represented by Blackbeard. Attempts by governments to stamp out piracy, and the antagonism between Jesamiah and Blackbeard, are components of this larger conflict. The magic forces are real within the world of the novel, not beliefs held by the characters. Here Blackbeard is, or was, a human who has sold his soul to the devil and is now possessed by the Dark Power. Tiola is a non-human immortal being, one of the Immortals of Light, who has taken human shape. Having fallen in love with a human, Jesamiah Acorne, she can communicate with him by telepathy and has supernatural powers over earth, air, fire and water (but not salt water). However, Immortals of Light are forbidden to kill, and so Tiola cannot use her power to destroy Blackbeard. Indeed, she has to take great care to keep her identity secret from the Dark Power inhabiting Blackbeard’s body, since the Dark Power could harm her and those she cares for. As Blackbeard is protected from death by the Dark Power, and as Tiola is not permitted to use her opposing power to kill, the supernatural battle is at something of an impasse, and is maintained as a conflict throughout the book.

As well as the magical conflict, there is no shortage of earthly action, from tavern brawls to naval battles, blackmail, political double-dealing and a harrowing childbirth scene. Blackbeard is the major historical figure, and according to the author’s note, “many of Blackbeard’s scenes happened – but without Jesamiah and Tiola of course”. The historical Blackbeard came to fame as an adult and not much is known of his early life, giving the author scope to weave him into the lives of the fictional characters and to develop unexpected connections between them.

As a character, Blackbeard in the novel is pure evil, as one might expect from a pirate who has literally sold his soul to the devil. Jesamiah is still much as I remember him from Sea Witch - his liking for drink and women, not to mention his complete lack of tact and his talent for making enemies, get him into trouble on a regular basis, and he has to rely on his resourcefulness, quick wits and ability to lie through his teeth to get himself out of it again. Fans of Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow will probably also take a liking to Jesamiah Acorne. Jesamiah’s painful childhood, stormy family history and troubled relationship with his dead father thread through the narrative, as do the dark memories borne by his father’s ghost. Some of this complicated family history seems to have featured in the second book in the series, Pirate Code, but I had no difficulty following the narrative even though I haven’t read Pirate Code. So although Bring It Close is the third in a series, it can be read as a stand-alone.

A useful Author’s Note explains some of the historical events underlying the novel, and sets out the reasoning behind some of the fictional additions. There is also a glossary of nautical terms and a diagram of a ship to help readers unfamiliar with seafaring terminology.

Swashbuckling fantasy set on the coasts of colonial Virginia and North Carolina, featuring the dashing fictional pirate Jesamiah Acorne and the historical pirate Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.

July recipe: Chard and cream cheese lasagne

2011-07-29T18:13:00.002+01:00

Chard, also known as spinach beet or perpetual spinach*, is a type of leaf beet, mainly available in summer and autumn in the UK. It’s a green leafy vegetable looking a bit like a more robust version of spinach, but whereas spinach tends to run to seed in hot weather, chard will happily carry on growing until the first frosts.

The young leaves can be eaten raw in a salad like lettuce, larger leaves are cooked like spinach. I generally regard chard as more or less interchangeable with spinach, and use whichever happens to be growing in the garden at the time. So you could also make this recipe with spinach instead of chard, or with a mixture of the two, according to preference and availability. Being July, it’s chard season at the moment, so here it is made with chard.

Chard and cream cheese lasagne

Serves 2

10-12 oz (approx 300-350 g) chard leaves
Half an onion
1 large clove garlic
4 oz (approx 100 g) cream cheese or ricotta cheese
0.5 teaspoon (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) grated nutmeg
0.5 oz (approx 10 g) butter
2 teaspoons (2 x 5 ml spoon) plain flour
Approx 0.25 pint (approx 150 ml) milk
2 oz (approx 50 g) cheddar-type cheese, sliced
Approx 4 oz (approx 100 g) dried lasagne sheets**

Wash the chard leaves thoroughly. Cut out the thick central stalk from each leaf. Put about a teaspoon of butter in the bottom of a large saucepan, and put the chard leaves on top. Don’t add any extra water, the drops of water clinging to the leaves after washing will be enough to steam the leaves. Put a lid on the saucepan and cook over a low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring several times during cooking to make sure the leaves at the top get swapped for the ones at the bottom of the pan. The chard will wilt and soften, and will cook down to a fraction of its original volume. When it’s a soft dark green mass, it’s cooked. Remove from the heat and drain, pressing the cooked leaves with a wooden spoon or spatula to squeeze out excess moisture. Leave to cool.

Peel and chop the onion. Chop the chard stalks. Peel and crush the garlic. Fry onion, chard stalks and garlic in about a tablespoon of cooking oil over a low heat for 5-10 minutes until the onion is soft and starting to colour. Remove from heat.

Chop the cooked chard leaves, and stir into the onion mixture. Stir in the cream cheese and nutmeg, and season with salt and pepper.

Now make a white sauce. Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Remove from the heat and stir in the flour.

Blend in the milk a little at a time, stirring thoroughly between each addition to remove any lumps (remember to scrape any lumps off the back of the spoon). Bring to the boil, stirring all the time until the sauce thickens. Remove from the heat.

Grease an ovenproof dish about 7” (about 18 cm) square. Spread one-third of the spinach and cream cheese mixture in the bottom of the dish. Top with a layer of lasagne sheets. Spread another one-third of the spinach and cream cheese mixture on top, and cover with another layer of lasagne sheets. Spread the last one-third of the spinach mixture on top, and pour the white sauce over. Top with the sliced cheddar-type cheese. (You may find you end up with three or four layers of lasagne rather than two, depending on the size and shape of your dish and the size and shape of your lasagne sheets. Adjust as necessary, just make sure that the lasagne and the sauce layers alternate with each other and that you start and end with a layer of sauce).

Cook in a moderate oven, approx 180 C, for approx 35 minutes until the cheese is golden and bubbling.

Serve with salad or a green vegetable.

**You could use fresh pasta, but the weight will be different from dried pasta.

*Sharp-eyed readers of Paths of Exile may have noticed a mention of growing spinach in a vegetable plot. I imagine it as a spinach beet of some kind, as leaf beets have been grown in Europe for centuries. Chard is probably the nearest modern approximation.

Paths of Exile – new Trifolium Books edition now available

2011-07-27T13:16:00.003+01:00

The new edition of Paths of Exile, published by Trifolium Books UK, is now available from retailers including Amazon, Book Depository and bookshops. It has a new cover, new and revised maps, and a new character list. An e-book version should be available soon – more details here in due course.

Paths of Exile was selected as Editor’s Choice in Historical Novels Review, August 2009:

Paths of Exile is a wonderful story, one that conjures up this long-gone age in extraordinary detail and reveals a profound understanding of its politics, cultures, and religions based on extensive research. It may be true, as Nayland admits, that “solid facts are rare indeed in 7th-century Britain”, but these characters—some real, others pure fiction—are so solid and credible that they will stay with you long after you turn the last page....

--Full review on the Historical Novel Society website (scroll down)

More information, including free sample chapters and the historical note, on my website.

About the novel:

Northumbria, Britain, 605 AD. The Roman Empire in the West has faded into memory, replaced by a colourful mosaic of competing kingdoms. The changing times bring great opportunities - and great dangers.

Eadwine is the youngest son of the king of Deira, guardian of a neglected frontier and the faithful ally of his eldest brother and hero Eadric. His ambition is to be a worthy lord to the frontier district, a good husband to his betrothed, and a reliable second-in-command to his brother. All these hopes are swept away when Deira is invaded by its powerful and predatory neighbour Bernicia. Eadwine reaches the capital just ahead of the invaders, having fought a fierce rearguard action, only to find that Eadric is already dead, shamefully murdered by a unknown assassin.
Eadwine survives the subsequent disastrous defeat, and now finds himself on the run for his life. The fearsome King of Bernicia, Aethelferth, has sworn an oath to the gods to kill Eadwine as thanks for the victory, and no king will dare to defy Aethelferth by offering Eadwine refuge. Eadwine must evade Aethelferth's relentless pursuit, identify and take vengeance on his brother's murderer, and rescue his betrothed. Along the way, he will lose his heart to another woman and discover a shattering secret that challenges all the ideals he holds dear.

The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams, by Bill Page. Book review

2011-07-23T19:14:00.002+01:00

Matador, 2011. ISBN 978-1848766105. 325 pages. Review copy kindly provided by author.

Set in Late Roman Britain in 368–370 AD, in the area south of Corinium (modern Cirencester), The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams follows on from The Moon on the Hills (reviewed here last year), though it can stand alone. The Barbarian Conspiracy of 367-8 that forms the backdrop to the novel is a historical event, and some historical Roman Emperors are mentioned. All the main characters are fictional.

Promoted to acting Primicerius (captain) of the Corinium Civil Guard after his predecessor Saturninus mysteriously disappeared on the first night of the Barbarian Conspiracy a year before (events recounted in The Moon on the Hills), hard-bitten ex-soldier Canio has had enough of the army and enough of the Civil Guard. When a dying army deserter tells Canio about a hoard of gold bullion hidden in a lake many miles to the south, Canio sees an opportunity to buy himself the luxury retirement of his dreams. But the deserter makes him swear that he will take a figurine of the goddess Hecate to the lake and throw it in – and Canio has his own dark reasons to fear Hecate. He persuades a young priestess, Vilbia, who is searching for Saturninus, to accompany him in the hope that she or the goddess she serves will somehow protect him from Hecate. On their physical and spiritual journey in search of the gold, Canio finds himself developing a brotherly affection for Vilbia. But will Hecate guide them to the gold – and if she does, what will be the price?

The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams follows on from the events in The Moon on the Hills, and features some characters who appeared in the earlier novel. It also resolves some plot threads that were left open at the end of The Moon on the Hills, and readers who (like me) wondered what really happened to Saturninus and Pascentia will find the answers here. However, The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams can stand alone. Readers who have read The Moon on the Hills will recognise the events and people referred to, but the backstory is explained as required and it isn’t necessary to have read The Moon on the Hills first.

The central character is Canio, who was second-in-command to Saturninus in The Moon on the Hills. I remember Canio as a tough ex-soldier with a liking for alcohol and an unscrupulous eye for the main chance. In The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams he is revealed to be a more complex character than he first appears, haunted by the memory of a tragedy in his distant past. Canio has a nice line in cynical humour, and referring to their horse (Antares) as a third person in the party becomes a running joke between him and Vilbia. The development of his character as the narrative unfolds was one of the most interesting features of the novel for me. Part of this is achieved by showing his developing relationship with Vilbia. As Vilbia says as she learns more about him, “…some made me like you better, some not so well.”

Like its predecessor, The Sower of the Seeds of Dreams features some lovely, lyrical landscape descriptions. Most of the novel takes place in high summer, and the rich beauty of the area that is now Gloucestershire and Somerset is brought vividly to life, from the salt-marshes of the coast to the vast reed-beds of the Somerset Levels.

As well as a journey through the geographical landscape, the novel is at least as much a journey through the spiritual landscape of Late Roman Britain. Roman gods, British goddesses, the soldiers’ cult of Mithras and Christianity all play a role, and the ancient myth of Proserpina/Persephone and her abduction by Hades is a key component. The characters believe in omens, portents and supernatural powers; this is a world where a strange dog can be a sign from the gods. Vilbia in particular is seeking a renewal of her faith in the goddess she serves, and even the outwardly materialistic Canio seems to be searching as much for spiritual meaning and human contact as for the hidden gold. All the apparently supernatural events are at least ambiguous, capable of some natural explanation or possibly confined to the characters’ imaginations, so it is up to the reader to decide whether to share the characters’ beliefs.

The journey in search of the gold keeps the tale moving along at a steady pace, punctuated by colourful encounters – some benign, some mysterious, some dangerous – with fellow-travellers and local residents. All the main plot threads are resolved by the end, although there is still scope for interpretation of some of them, such as the significance of the Hecate figurine.

A helpful historical note explains some of the underlying history and provides a glossary of Latin terms used in the text, and a map at the front is invaluable for following the characters’ journey for readers unfamiliar with the geography. There is also an outline of the roles played by each character in The Moon on the Hills, for readers who haven’t read the earlier novel or who would like a refresher.

Beautifully described exploration of the natural and spiritual landscapes of Late Roman Britain.

Burgh Castle Roman Fort

2011-07-20T11:53:00.005+01:00

Burgh Castle Roman Fort is an exceptionally well preserved Roman shore fort. The west wall has long since collapsed into the adjacent estuary and marsh, as you can see on the satellite image on Google Maps.

Satellite image of Burgh Castle on Google Maps

The east wall and much of the north and south walls are still standing to most of their original height, with massive solid projecting bastions at the north-east and south-east corners and on the walls (two on the east wall, either side of the gate, and one on each of the north and south walls).

East wall of Burgh Castle, showing the gap marking the position of the original east gate and one of the projecting bastions

Looking north along the east wall of Burgh Castle from outside the east gate, showing the projecting bastion with the north-east corner tower in the background

One of the bastions

The walls now stand about 15 feet above modern ground level, massively built with a core of mortar and rubble. They were originally faced with neatly cut square flint blocks interleaved with courses of red tile, although a lot of the facing has now gone.

Wall near east gate

End-on view of wall at the east gate, looking north with the interior of the fort on the left

Close-up of well preserved facing

Location

Burgh Castle is located on the east bank of Breydon Water in south Norfolk.

Topographical map link here

If you scroll west on the topographical map link, you’ll see that there is a vast area of marsh criss-crossed by drainage dykes and dotted with windmills, extending west from the current course of Breydon Water for several kilometres. In Roman times this was a major tidal estuary open to the sea and stretching inland towards the site of modern Norwich. Even now, there are only three crossing places, at Norwich, via the chain ferry at Reedham Ferry, and at Great Yarmouth.

View west across the marshes from the interior of Burgh Castle; in Roman times this would have looked out across a large tidal estuary

Burgh Castle fort was occupied in the third and fourth centuries, and a hoard of high-quality early fifth-century glassware (pictured on the information board by the east gate) suggests occupation into the fifth century.

Information board at Burgh Castle by the east gate, showing the fifth-century glassware hoard and a reconstruction of the fort as it might have looked in 340 AD

Roman name

The Roman name of Burgh Castle fort may have been Gariannonum or something similar. A commander of a cavalry unit based at a site called Gariannonor is mentioned in the Late Roman list of military offices, Notitia Dignitatum, under the command of the Count of the Saxon Shore:

Sub dispositione viri spectabilis comitis litoris Saxonici per
Britanniam:
Praepositus equitum Dalmatarum Branodunensium, Branoduno.
Praepositus equitum stablesianorum Gariannonensium, Gariannonor.
Tribunus cohortis primae Baetasiorum, Regulbio

--Notitia Dignitatum, Latin text, available online

Branoduno is Brancaster in north Norfolk, Regulbio is Reculver in Kent, so it would be logical for Gariannonor to be situated somewhere between them, which is consistent with the location of Burgh Castle. It is also consistent with the river name mentioned in Ptolemy’s second-century Geography, “Ost Gariennus Fl.” or “the estuary of the River Gariennus”, listed between the Wash and the Thames estuary.

If Burgh Castle Roman fort was called Gariannonum, no trace of the Roman name remains in the modern name, which is derived from the Old English ‘burh’, meaning a fort or fortified town.

Burgh Castle may be the site of Cnobheresburg, mentioned by Bede. More on this in another post.

References
Notitia Dignitatum, Latin text, available online
Ptolemy, Geography, translation available online

Lady of the English, by Elizabeth Chadwick. Book review

2011-07-10T20:00:00.004+01:00

Sphere, 2011. ISBN 978-1-84744-237-6. 521 pages. Edition reviewed: advance review copy supplied by publisher.

Lady of the English is set mainly in England, Normandy and Anjou between 1125 and 1149, spanning the years in which Empress Matilda (daughter of King Henry I of England) was first heir and then contender for the throne of England. All the main characters are historical figures, including Empress Matilda, her father Henry I, her second husband Geoffrey of Anjou, her eldest son Henry FitzEmpress (later King Henry II of England), her stepmother Adeliza of Louvain and her supporter Brian FitzCount.

Empress Matilda is the only surviving legitimate child of Henry I after the death of her brother in a shipwreck. When her husband the Emperor of Germany dies, leaving her a childless widow, Henry I summons Matilda to England and makes his barons swear an oath to her as his heir, as his second marriage to Adeliza of Louvain is childless and looks likely to remain so. But then Henry forces Matilda to marry Geoffrey of Anjou, a boy barely into adolescence, a marriage that is as unpopular with some of Henry’s barons as it is with Matilda herself. When Henry I dies unexpectedly, Matilda’s cousin Stephen and his unscrupulous brother the Bishop of Winchester conspire to seize the throne. Matilda is determined to fight for her rights and those of her young son Henry – but the conflict will exact a terrible price.

As with the other Elizabeth Chadwick novels I’ve read, Lady of the English concentrates on the personal and emotional lives of the historical characters and the relationships and conflicts between them. Not just romantic relationships – indeed, the novel is refreshingly free of invented adulterous love affairs, a big plus point for me – although readers who like a strong romantic storyline will find one in the love story between Adeliza of Louvain and her second husband Will d’Albini. Adeliza is as much a central character in the novel as Matilda, and her longing for a child and then her second marriage and family life with Will d’Albini give the novel a strong domestic focus. Apart from a few vivid vignettes, such as the Battle of Lincoln and Matilda’s dramatic escape from Oxford, most of the action takes place off-stage. So does much of the political manoeuvring; there’s an intriguing hint of foul play around the death of Henry I that I would have liked to know more about, and I would also have liked to see more of Matilda’s dealings with the influential men who joined her cause and left it again. For the most part, war and politics are seen through their effects on the personal lives of the characters and the conflicts they cause.

As well as the conflicts due to the war, and personal conflicts between the characters, there is also an interesting look at conflicts arising from social conventions. Matilda is the most striking example; a ruler is expected to be stern, a woman is supposed to be soft and pliant, a contradiction in terms that causes difficulties for Matilda at every turn. Adeliza’s agonised yearning for a child during her barren marriage to Henry I is in part due to the pressure on a woman to fulfil her social duty of providing her husband with heirs, and part of her joy in the family she raises with her second husband Will d’Albini comes from being able to fulfil the expected role of mother as well as wife. Social expectations can weigh just as heavily on a man, as shown by Brian FitzCount who (as portrayed here) is a warrior by expectation and a scholar by temperament, and pays a heavy emotional price for that conflict (among others).

Brian FitzCount was one of the most memorable characters for me, a honourable man trying to do his best in a marriage and a social role neither of which was of his choosing. Young Geoffrey of Anjou was another memorable character, a childish bully who thinks the way to make himself look big is make someone else look small and whose attitude to his marriage to Matilda is to think that he will “have an Empress at his beck and call”. Henry FitzEmpress was also convincingly drawn, no mean feat as he develops from a baby through a precocious child to the threshold of adulthood during the novel. I also liked Brian FitzCount’s wife Maude of Wallingford, doggedly getting on with the unglamorous but vital business of managing the logistics of a household under siege and reflecting that she feels “like a donkey staggering along under a heavy burden of firewood, while Brian ignored her to look at the fancy glossy horses prancing past with bells tinkling on their harness”.

As well as the main characters, readers of Elizabeth Chadwick’s other novels may enjoy spotting appearances by secondary characters from other novels, such as John FitzGilbert the Marshal (from A Place Beyond Courage) and Hugh Bigod (who appears briefly at the start of The Time of Singing*, review here).

A helpful Author’s Note summarises some of the underlying history and sketches out some of the reasoning behind elements in the narrative, and a family tree at the front of the book may be useful to keep the family relationships straight for readers who are not familiar with the period. The plethora of Matildas in the period is neatly dealt with by using variant forms of the name – Matilda, Maheut, Maude – to differentiate between different individuals. The advance review copy only has placeholders for the maps, which will no doubt be included in the final edition and which should help interested readers follow the action and the characters’ journeys from place to place.

Colourful portrayal of Empress Matilda and Adeliza of Louvain, against the background of the Anarchy in twelfth-century England.

*For The King's Favor in the US

Hanging bowls: what were they for?

2011-07-01T17:36:00.004+01:00

Replica of the burial chamber from the Mound 1 ship burial, Sutton Hoo visitor centre, view of west wall. The large hanging bowl can be seen beside the spear shafts, left of the centre of the picture.

In an earlier post, I discussed hanging bowls, large thin-walled copper alloy* bowls with suspension points around the rim, often beautifully decorated with mounts made in coloured enamel. They are mostly associated with high-status burials of around the seventh century in what is now England. What function(s) might they have had?

The first thing to say is that hanging bowls may not all have been used for the same purpose in all places and at all times. The period in which they were deposited in graves spans at least a century, and they may also have been in use before and after it was fashionable to use them as grave goods. It is quite possible that their use changed over time or varied by region, and also quite possible that the same hanging bowl in the same household could have been put to more than one use.

Funerary use only
It is possible that (some) hanging bowls were specifically acquired for use in a funerary context and may not have had a use in ‘life’ at all. The cremation burials in Mounds 4, 5, 6 and 18 at Sutton Hoo were associated with fragments of copper-alloy bowls (Carver 1998), and a cremation burial in a hanging bowl was found at the nearby Tranmer House cemetery when the visitor centre was built (Sutton Hoo Society; Pollington 2003). The Tranmer House cemetery is tentatively dated at a little earlier than the mound cemetery at Sutton Hoo (Sutton Hoo Society), and weak stratigraphic evidence suggests that the cremation burials in mounds 5 and 6 may pre-date the ship burials (Carver 1998). If bronze bowls in general and/or hanging bowls in particular were already established as suitable containers for cremation burials, perhaps as a high-status alternative to the classic pottery funeral urn, they may have continued to be regarded as suitable grave goods when inhumation burials came into fashion.

Cooking vessels
This seems unlikely. The thin copper-alloy sheet is not robust enough to make hanging bowls useful cooking pots (Pollington 2003). Moreover, the internal decoration would have been obscured by anything opaque like thick soup or stew, quite apart from the difficulties of cleaning sticky or burned-on residues out of the delicate decorations (and don’t even think about the problems of cleaning stew out of the mounting point for the rotating trout in the large Sutton Hoo hanging bowl).

Storage vessels
Hanging bowls could have been used to store small quantities of valuable perishable items (e.g. imported spices or dried fruits), perhaps to hang them out of the reach of mice. However, this would also have obscured the internal decorations and may be unlikely for this reason.

Purely decorative
Hanging bowls may have held nothing at all and been purely ornamental objects with no purpose other than to look beautiful and display the owner’s wealth/status/exotic foreign connections.

Lamp reflectors
It is unlikely that hanging bowls would have been used as lamps holding sticky substances such as wax, tallow or oil, as this would have obscured and/or damaged the internal decorations. Possibly they could have been used as lamp or candle reflectors, suspended by one of the attachment points and held at an angle behind a lamp or candle flame by means of cords or chains from the other two attachment points to a hook or hooks on the wall. The shiny surface of the metal would have reflected and intensified the light, and the coloured decorations may have reflected attractive patterns that would shift with any movement of the flame or bowl (a sort of cross between stained glass windows and a lava lamp).

Serving vessels for drink
Hanging bowls are typically up to around 30 cm in diameter, and the large bowl from Sutton Hoo was 13 cm deep. So the capacity is a few litres, not sufficient to hold a commodity in bulk. The elaborate decoration is also consistent with some sort of ‘special’ purpose, perhaps for display or use by privileged individuals, rather than as a routine household container. They could perhaps have been used to serve drink to high-status individuals, such as the owner of the hall and/or privileged guests.

Although this is an attractive possibility given the central importance of alcoholic drink to high-status early medieval life (a lord’s hall is a ‘mead-hall’), it may not be the whole story. Translucent liquids such as beer, mead or wine would have obscured the internal decorations to some extent, which may argue against this use of hanging bowls unless seeing the decorations start to appear as the level of liquid dropped was part of the appeal (a signal for a refill, perhaps?).

A further clue may come from the location of the large hanging bowl in the Sutton Hoo ship burial. It was not on the east wall with the tub, cauldrons and suspension chain, which suggests that it was not considered part of the kitchen equipment. Nor was it on the coffin lid with the drinking horns, drinking bottles, Byzantine silver dish, silver spoons and nest of silver bowls, which may indicate that it was not considered as (just) high-class tableware. Instead, the large hanging bowl was on the west wall, with what Martin Carver calls “the symbols of office” – the standard, whetstone sceptre, shield, lyre, and a bundle of spears threaded through the handle of a Coptic bowl (Carver 1988). The photo of the replica burial chamber in the Sutton Hoo visitor centre shows it in its context within the grave.

It’s possible that the hanging bowl was put here for some prosaic reason, such as there just happened to be a suitable peg. However, the burial chamber does not give the impression that it was furnished haphazardly. It must be at least possible that the position of the hanging bowl on the west wall may have something to say about its function.

Water containers
The hanging bowls may have held a clear liquid such as water that would leave the internal decorations visible, and might perhaps intensify their visual appeal by rippling prettily over the designs. The model trout in the large Sutton Hoo hanging bowl would also be consistent with the bowl having been used to hold water, as the fish could be seen as ‘swimming’ in the water as it rotated on its swivel pin in the bottom of the bowl.

In this context, it is worth noting that there is a contemporary documentary reference to copper-alloy hanging bowls in a high-status context in eastern England in the early seventh century. This is a slightly enigmatic reference from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, written in 731, describing an episode in the early seventh century. Bede tells us of King Eadwine (Edwin) of Northumbria, who ruled from 617 to 633 AD:

Such was the king’s concern for the welfare of his people that in a number of places where he had noticed clear springs adjacent to the highway he ordered posts to be erected with brass bowls hanging from them, so that travellers could drink and refresh themselves. And so great was the people’s affection for him, and so great the awe in which he was held, that no one wished or ventured to use these bowls for any other purpose.

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History Book II Ch. 16

Now, these bowls mentioned by Bede need not necessarily be the same type of object as the copper-alloy hanging bowls that were buried in graves at the same period. Nevertheless, it is striking that they correspond in date (Bede was writing in the early eighth century, in this case about events in the seventh, exactly the date range proposed for the hanging bowls in graves), location (eastern ‘Anglo-Saxon’ England), status (associated with royalty in Bede’s account, found in wealthy graves), material (brass or bronze*) and form (bowls hanging from something).

The limited capacity of the hanging bowls makes them rather impractical as containers for the routine drinking water of a household, and may indicate that if they held water it was ‘special’ water of some kind, either from a special source or used for special purposes. I can think of several possibilities, and no doubt there are others:

Holy water. Perhaps the most obvious, given the importance of holy water in Christian rituals. It has been argued that the craft techniques and decoration on hanging bowls suggests that they were Christian objects from western Britain (Dark 2002, p.132-133). It may be significant that the period of deposition of hanging bowls, mainly (perhaps entirely; Geake 1999) during the seventh century, coincides with the period during which Christianity became established among the English kingdoms. Kent converted shortly after St Augustine’s arrival in 597, and the South Saxons converted around 680 under Bishop Wilfrid. The English kings and nobles were probably well aware of Christianity for some time before ‘officially’ deciding to convert, and hanging bowls may have been valued for their Christian connotations. This does not necessarily imply that the graves containing hanging bowls were ‘Christian’; it is perfectly possible to borrow the trappings and/or rituals of another culture and/or religion without necessarily subscribing (entirely) to its beliefs. Raedwald of the East Angles, a likely candidate for the occupant of the Mound 1 ship burial maintained a temple with altars to the Christian god and to his own gods. Perhaps he had a hanging bowl of holy water in the same temple for the same reasons. Even without an explicit dual religion policy, it’s still perfectly possible to attach a superstitious value to the artefacts of another religion, regarding them as ‘powerful’ or ‘magical’ or ‘lucky’ in a nebulous way.

Water from a spring considered sacred is a potential non-Christian context for holy water. Sacred springs have a long history in Britain (more about sacred springs in a later post). Even if the English kings did not necessarily believe in the associated deities, they may still have considered water from sacred springs as ‘magical’ or ‘lucky’ or ‘powerful’ (in a similar way to that suggested for Christian holy water above). Something like this may lie behind Bede’s description of the hanging bowls placed at springs by King Edwin/Eadwine, although it may have been no more than a kindly attempt to make life a little easier for travellers (having “wandered for many years” himself, Eadwine probably knew more than most about the exigencies of travel).

Medicinal or healing water. Holy water or spring water is mentioned as an ingredient in medicines in Old English leechbooks. Perhaps the hanging bowls contained water to be used for this purpose, keeping it separate from the routine household supply.

Water used for some ceremonial purpose, such as washing the hands or some implement before performing a religious rite, or a formal guest ceremony in which a stranger becomes a guest of the household after being invited to wash with water from the hanging bowl.

Divination. There are several possible ways in which water in a decorated bowl might be used for some sort of divination ceremony. Objects or coloured liquids could be dropped into or floated on the water in the bowl, and their positions and movement regarded as indicative of future events or answers to questions. The speed, direction and/or degree of rotation of the trout in the bottom of the Sutton Hoo hanging bowl could have been considered significant. Or the distortion of the internal decorations as water in the bowl moved over them, and/or reflections in the water surface, could have been considered to have meaning. It should go without saying that this is speculative.

Conclusion
Hanging bowls were placed in rich graves over a period of at least a century. It seems unlikely that they were used as food containers or for cooking, as this would have obscured internal decorations. The rotating trout in the large Sutton Hoo hanging bowl is consistent with the bowl being used to contain a clear liquid such as water. A contemporary documentary reference mentions copper-alloy hanging bowls (not necessarily the same type of object) in association with spring water. The position of the large hanging bowl in the Mound 1 ship burial at Sutton Hoo is consistent with (but does not prove) some sort of military, official or ceremonial function. This is also consistent with the limited capacity of the bowls, if they held a modest quantity of ‘special’ water intended for a specific purpose. What this purpose might be, or what made the water special, is open to speculation. Holy water, in a Christian or non-Christian context, is an obvious possibility, perhaps used for healing, divination or ceremonial purposes.

As ever, other interpretations are possible. Hanging bowls may have had a variety of functions in different places, at different times and in different households.

References
Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.
Carver M. Sutton Hoo: Burial ground of kings? British Museum Press, 1998, ISBN 0-7141-0591-0.
Dark K. Britain and the end of the Roman empire. Tempus 2002, ISBN 0-7524-2532-3.
Geake H. When were hanging bowls deposited in Anglo-Saxon graves? Medieval Archaeology 1999;43:1-18, available online
Pollington S. The mead-hall. Anglo-Saxon Books, 2003. ISBN 1-898281-30-0.
Sutton Hoo Society

*In theory, bronze is an alloy of copper and tin, brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. In practice, both terms are somewhat imprecise and can refer to a range of copper alloys with various amounts of other metals. Copper-alloy is a useful catch-all term.

June recipe: Gooseberry meringue pie

2011-06-30T09:29:00.003+01:00

Summer time, and the gooseberry season comes round again. I’ve previously posted recipes for gooseberry fool and gooseberry jam. Last year, Gabriele commented that meringue-topped tarts or pies are called Baisertorten in Germany, and can be made with gooseberries. So I thought I would try making a gooseberry meringue pie this season. I made the recipe up, and it seems to have worked well. I used green gooseberries, which are the first to come into season, and I should think it would also work perfectly well with red gooseberries. Here’s the recipe:

Gooseberry meringue pie

Sweet pastry
6 oz (approx 150 g) plain flour
4.5 oz (approx 125 g) butter
2 Tablespoons (2 x 15 ml spoons) icing sugar
1 egg yolk

Gooseberry filling
10 oz (approx 300 g) gooseberries
3 oz (approx 80 g) light brown soft sugar
1 oz (approx 30 g) cornflour
1 egg yolk

Meringue
2 egg whites
2 oz (approx 50 g) white sugar (granulated or caster)

To make the pastry case
Sieve the icing sugar and mix with the flour

Rub the butter into the flour and icing sugar until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Stir in the egg yolk and mix to a soft dough. In theory, you’re supposed to chill the pastry in the refrigerator overnight. I never do, and it seems to be fine. This quantity of pastry will make enough for two tart cases, so split the dough into two. The second piece can be frozen and used for another tart or mince pies. (Or you could use ready-made pastry if you prefer)

Roll out pastry thickly and line a flan tin about 7 inches (approx 28 cm) in diameter.

Bake the pastry case ‘blind’, i.e. empty, in a hot oven approx 200 C for about 10 - 15 minutes until pastry is set.

To make the filling
Wash the gooseberries. Top and tail them (i.e. cut off the stalk at one end and the remains of the flower at the other).

Put the gooseberries in a pan with the sugar. Heat gently (lowest possible setting) until the gooseberries release some juice, stir to dissolve the sugar. Simmer for about 10 minutes until the fruit is cooked.

Mix the cornflour to a smooth paste with a little water.

Pour the cornflour paste into the gooseberries, stirring all the time. Bring to the boil. It should thicken to a near-solid consistency.

Remove from the heat and allow to cool a little. Beat in the egg yolk. (The spare egg yolk will keep in the fridge for a day or two and can be used in custard tart)

Pour the gooseberry filling into the cooked pastry case.

To make the meringue
Whisk the egg whites in a clean bowl until standing in soft peaks.

Fold in the sugar using a metal spoon.

Pile the meringue on top of the gooseberry filling in the cooked pastry case.

Bake in a hot oven, approx 180 - 200 C, for 10 – 15 minutes until the meringue is set, crisp and golden brown.

Serve hot or cold. I expect to get 4 – 6 slices out of this recipe, but that depends how big a slice you like. It will keep a day or so at room temperature if you don’t eat it all at one sitting.

Giveaway of Moon In Leo at Trifolium Books

2011-06-29T08:18:00.002+01:00

Trifolium Books UK are running a giveaway of the e-book of Moon In Leo by Kathleen Herbert (reviewed here last month) for today, 29 June, only. This is the anniversary of the day when Kathleen, debilitated from a stroke, gave the draft of Moon In Leo to Connie Jensen in two carrier bags. Connie and Mike Jensen at Trifolium edited the draft into final form, and then published it in print and e-book.

Giveaway open to anyone on the planet for 24 hours only, until midnight UK time today. Simply go to the Smashwords page for Moon In Leo, select the e-book format of your choice (Kindle, Epub, etc), and enter the free coupon code posted by Connie Jensen on the Trifolium Books blog to download the e-book for free. Instructions, link and coupon code are now up on the Trifolium Books blog here.

While you're there, you might like to have a look at Connie's charming little short story for children, Farmer Ted's Easy Day, available free of charge all the time.

Paths of Exile: new cover

2011-06-28T12:47:00.002+01:00

Here is a preview of the new Trifolium Books cover for Paths of Exile.

There's a post about the background to the double-headed dragon design on the Trifolium Books website here.

Paths of Exile to be re-published by Trifolium Books

2011-06-23T21:48:00.007+01:00

I am delighted to announce that Paths of Exile is to be republished by Trifolium Books in July 2011.

It will have a new cover, revised and expanded maps and a new character list, together with a new print layout. The publisher, Connie Jensen, explains her approach to layout and design here.

Trifolium Books is an independent publisher based in Cumbria, UK. Their first title was Kathleen Herbert's last novel Moon In Leo, which I reviewed here (before Trifolium decided to publish Paths of Exile), and they are investigating the possibility of republishing her excellent Cumbrian Trilogy in due course. I've long admired Kathleen Herbert's Cumbrian novels, and am very pleased to have my novel(s) under the same roof.

Paths of Exile should be available some time in July, with e-book editions for Kindle, iPad and other formats to follow shortly. More details here and on the publisher's website as they become available.

The Dig, by John Preston. Book review

2011-06-16T13:21:00.001+01:00

Penguin, 2008, ISBN 978-0-141-01638-2. 230 pages

The Dig is set in the summer of 1939 during the discovery and excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. All the main characters are historical figures. Note that the author’s note says that “Certain changes have been made for dramatic effect”, but no further detail is given about what has been changed. Readers looking for an account of the actual excavation should consider themselves warned that they should not treat the novel as fact.

In April 1939, as clouds of imminent war gather over Europe, Mrs Edith Pretty of Sutton Hoo House, Suffolk, asks local archaeologist Basil Brown to excavate the ancient mounds on her land. When Basil unearths the ship-rivets of a magnificent early medieval ship, apparently undisturbed, academics from London and Cambridge promptly descend on the site, all eager to be involved in what promises to be a major discovery. When young Peggy Piggott, newly married to her former professor, discovers the first items of exquisite gold jewellery in the remains of the burial chamber, it becomes clear that this dig will exceed anything that had previously been imagined.

This is a slim volume, more of a novella than a novel, beautifully written in precise, literary prose. Sections are narrated in turn by Edith Pretty, Basil Brown and Peggy Piggott, each with their own distinctive tone. Peggy’s narrative in particular captures some of the wonder and awe inspired by the discovery of the burial; however, for the most part the ship burial is a backdrop for the characters’ emotions and relationships. Each character has their own concerns and preoccupations, and these form the main focus of the novel. Edith Pretty, widowed, lonely, in failing health and seeking solace in spiritualism, is increasingly anxious about her young son Robert and her ability to be a satisfactory mother to him. Peggy Piggott is intelligent and sensitive, and already uncomfortably aware that her marriage to her former university professor is in trouble, even though they are still on their honeymoon. She is at a loss as to why, or what to do about it, and even more uncertain about how she should react to Mrs Pretty’s nephew Rory, who is turning out to be something of a kindred spirit. Basil Brown, despite being “a tough old bird” for whom “it takes a lot to ruffle my feathers”, resents the high-handed manner in which he is pushed aside by the bombastic academic who muscles in on the excavation. All these contrasting people are brought together by the discovery of the ship, which holds its own significance and resonance for each of them.

The style is understated, and much is hinted at and left to the reader’s imagination. Expect to have to read between the lines and to be alert for small clues. In particular, the conflict between the academics, the Ipswich Museum staff and Mrs Pretty over who gets to run the excavation almost all happens off-stage. There are a few hints in Basil Brown’s narrative, but surprisingly little sense of the professional rivalries and passions that must surely have run high over such an important discovery.

An epilogue, narrated by Edith Pretty’s son Robert, gives the endings to most of the characters’ stories, although questions still remain.

Short, light, literary interpretation of some of the people involved in the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939.

Hanging bowls

2011-06-07T18:49:00.003+01:00

Replica of the large hanging bowl from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, in a reconstruction of the burial chamber at the Sutton Hoo Visitor Centre.

Hanging bowls are impressive and rather enigmatic artefacts mainly found in princely ‘Anglo-Saxon’ burials in what is now eastern England.

They are typically large circular bowls made from thin copper-alloy (bronze, brass or related alloys*) sheet, with three attachment points for suspension cords or chains. The large bowl at Sutton Hoo (see photo) was approximately 30 cm in diameter and 13 cm deep as reconstructed from the fragmentary state in which it was found. It had been hung on a nail on the chamber wall by one of its suspension rings, but presumably the bowls were normally suspended using all three rings.

The attachment points are sometimes simple rings or loops, or sometimes fashioned in the shapes of birds or animals whose heads or necks form the attachment ring. The large bowl at Sutton Hoo has attachments in the shape of animal heads that appear to be looking over into the interior of the bowl (Pollington 2003). Decorative mounts were typically applied to the attachment points. Sometimes the mounts were integrated with the attachment point to form a decorative structure. For example, a hanging bowl from York has mounts in the form of birds with the birds’ heads and beaks forming the attachment points (see picture on the York Museums Trust website here). Sometimes the mounts were separate, for example, in the large Sutton Hoo hanging bowl the mounts have a geometric swirling pattern in coloured enamels and are not part of the animal heads that form the attachment points. The large Sutton Hoo bowl also has three decorative square panels applied to the outside of the bowl between the mounts (see photo).

Many of the bowls also have decorative mounts on the inside of the base. For example, the bowl from York has silver interlace panels on the inside and outside of the base (Tweddle et al 1999). Uniquely (so far), the large Sutton Hoo hanging bowl has a model of a trout or similar fish mounted on the inside of the base on a pin that allowed the fish to rotate (Carver 1998).

Dates

Most hanging bowls are found in rich furnished graves in areas that are now in eastern England and dated to the seventh or early eighth century. It is possible that all known examples belong to this date range (Geake 1999). This tells us when it was fashionable to place hanging bowls in graves, which is not necessarily the same as the period when the bowls were made and used. The hanging bowls could have been made and used for an unknown period before being placed in the graves, and they could have continued in manufacture and use for an unknown period after furnished burial ceased. The large Sutton Hoo hanging bowl and a further hanging bowl found in a cremation cemetery discovered at the Sutton Hoo Visitor Centre had both been repaired before being buried (Pollington 2003). This may simply suggest that hanging bowls had a hard life that made them prone to damage; the thin bronze sheet does not look particularly robust and perhaps they were vulnerable to being cracked or bent if dropped. Or it may indicate that the bowls had been in use for a while, perhaps a long while, before burial.

Hanging bowls are mainly found in furnished early medieval burials in eastern England, generally categorised as ‘Anglo-Saxon’. It may be that hanging bowls were only used in these areas, and perhaps had some special significance in the local high-status culture. However, the apparent distribution may also reflect selective survival of evidence. Rich furnished burials with their concentration of artefacts (many of which may be dateable) are highly ‘visible’ forms of archaeology. In western Britain, where furnished burials are rare to non-existent, hanging bowls may have been used but not survived because they were not buried. We can safely say that hanging bowls were used (at least as grave goods) in eastern Britain where they are found, but not necessarily that they were not used elsewhere.

Provenance

The decoration on the mounts often uses abstract spiral or scroll patterns of a style categorised as British or Irish ** (Pollington 2003). This may indicate that the hanging bowls (or at least the mounts) were made in Brittonic kingdoms or in Ireland and travelled to the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ kingdoms in eastern England where they are mainly found as part of trade, tribute, loot, diplomacy, gift exchange or marriage. Or the same artistic style may also have been in use by craftsmen working in eastern England, either as a local tradition or copied from itinerant craftsmen or both. Whether the hanging bowls were thought of as specifically ‘Brittonic’ by the people who deposited them as grave goods, or whether they were simply thought of as exotic luxury items suitable for proclaiming wealth and status, is open to question.

Function

This is what makes the hanging bowls enigmatic; their function is not known with any certainty. The thin copper-alloy sheet is not robust enough to make them useful cooking pots (Pollington 2003). Were they serving vessels or storage containers? If so, what did they hold and how might they have been used? More on this issue in another post.

References
Carver M. Sutton Hoo: Burial ground of kings? British Museum Press, 1998, ISBN: 0-7141-0591-0.
Geake H. When were hanging bowls deposited in Anglo-Saxon graves? Medieval Archaeology 1999;43:1-18, available online.
Pollington S. The mead-hall. Anglo-Saxon Books, 2003. ISBN 1-898281-30-0.
Tweddle D, Moulden J, Logan E. Anglian York: a survey of the evidence. Council for British Archaeology/York Archaeological Trust, 1999. ISBN 1-902771-06-0.

*In theory, bronze is an alloy of copper with a bit of tin, brass is an alloy of copper with a bit of zinc. In practice, both terms are somewhat imprecise and can refer to a range of alloys that are mostly copper with various amounts of other metals. Copper alloy is a useful catch-all term.

**The usual caveat applies (and should go without saying) that objects do not of themselves have ethnicity.

Ruso and the Root of All Evils, by RS Downie. Book review

2011-05-29T20:37:00.003+01:00

Penguin 2010, ISBN 978-0-141-03692-2. 435 pages. Also published as Persona Non Grata, and the author’s name sometimes appears as Ruth Downie. Try not to get confused.

Third in the Ruso series of historical mysteries, Ruso and the Root of All Evils is set in the south of Roman Gaul (the area around modern Nimes) in the early second century AD. All the main characters are fictional.

When Gaius Petrieus Ruso, a surgeon serving with the Roman Army in Britain, receives an urgent summons home from his brother in southern Gaul, he guesses that the family’s long-standing debt problems have hit a new crisis. On arrival, things turn out to be even worse than he thought. The letter was a forgery, and Ruso’s absence on active service was the only thing stopping Severus, the principal creditor (who, in a further complication, is married to Ruso’s ex-wife), from taking out a seizure order on the family home. Now that Ruso is back, the repellent Severus can go ahead and ruin the family – until he is mysteriously poisoned in Ruso’s study. Not only is Ruso now the chief suspect, as he tries to find the real culprit he discovers that the poisoning is only part of a murky web of fraud, deliberate shipwreck and murder – and Ruso may be its next victim.

Ruso and the Root of All Evils is very much in the same vein as its two predecessors, Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls and Ruso and the Demented Doctor, an enjoyable lighthearted mystery told with humour and wit. As with the previous two, the mystery is fairly slight and is constantly upstaged by Ruso’s complicated personal life. Ruso’s chaotic family have been a major off-stage presence in his life while he was stationed in Britannia in the first two books, and in this third instalment the reader gets to meet them at first-hand. Arria, Ruso’s spendthrift stepmother, doesn’t grasp – or has chosen not to grasp – that there never was any money for retail therapy and home makeovers, and is still trying to persuade Ruso that the house absolutely must have a new outdoor dining room. Marcia and Flora, Ruso’s two younger half-sisters, are scatty teenagers with a penchant for hanging round gladiators. Lucius, Ruso’s younger brother, is trying desperately to keep the farm afloat on a sea of debt, and his kind wife Cassiana is grieving for her brother Justinus (lost at sea a few months earlier in suspicious circumstances) and just about keeping up with her ever-expanding brood of children. They have no idea what to make of Ruso’s girlfriend Tilla, the beautiful British girl he rescued from slavery (see Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls), which is entirely Ruso’s own fault since he didn’t bother to tell his family anything about Tilla’s existence.

On top of this, Ruso’s elegant ex-wife Claudia is now the widow of the repulsive Severus, and as well as being another suspect she is wondering whether trying to get Ruso back might be a better bet after all – except that Ruso’s stepmother is attempting to get him to marry the rich and attractive businesswoman next door. It’s all reminiscent of a PG Wodehouse farce, except that the crime is murder and if Ruso doesn’t solve it his absurd, helpless, harmless family will all find themselves destitute and Ruso himself may end up being executed for murder. The seriousness of the situation makes a sharp, and at times jarring, contrast with the family comedy.

Tilla is even more of an enigma in this third novel than in the previous two, especially as she is out of place in this strange foreign culture and Arria keeps trying to treat her as a servant. She develops an interest in a strange new religion called Christianity – her first Christian prayer is priceless, not to be missed – much to Ruso’s alarm as he disapproves of Christians. Not surprisingly, her relationship with Ruso comes under strain (in fact, the more I see of Ruso, who can be astonishingly obtuse for an intelligent and decent man, the less surprised I am that his previous marriage ended in an exasperated divorce). The relationship between Tilla and Ruso reaches a significant milestone in this book, and it will be interesting to see how that works out in Book 4.

The mystery, or rather two linked mysteries, is intriguing. One is the poisoning of Severus, investigated by Ruso, the other is the death of Cassiana’s brother Justinus in a rigged shipwreck, investigated by Tilla. At first appearing completely separate, the two sub-plots jog along independently for most of the book, and then converge in a dizzying rush of events in the last few chapters. The resolution happens so suddenly that I got lost and had to re-read a couple of chapters, and I’m still not entirely sure I understand the villain’s motive. Not that this matters, because the mystery is secondary to the charm of the book, which comes from the humour, the characterisation, and Ruso’s attempts to make sense of an illogical world.

Entertaining blend of historical mystery and lighthearted comedy, set in early second-century Roman Gaul.

May recipe: Stir-fried pork with asparagus and bean sprouts

2011-05-25T11:16:00.002+01:00

The succulent green spears of asparagus are always welcome, appearing in May and June to herald the beginning of the summer vegetable season. Asparagus is usually cooked by boiling for a few minutes or steaming. You can also cook it in a stir fry, especially if using fairly young shoots.

Bean sprouts work well in stir fries, and are especially useful in spring when many vegetables are not yet in season. You can grow your own in a jam jar in a warm place, like the airing cupboard. They take about a week, and a tablespoon of seeds will produce about 4 oz of bean sprouts. If you haven’t planned that far in advance (!), some shops sell bean sprouts in packets, or you could use mushrooms instead.

Stir-fried pork with asparagus and bean sprouts

Serves 2

7 oz (approx 200 g) boneless pork steak
7 oz (approx 200 g) asparagus
Half a red pepper
Half a small onion
4 oz (approx 100 g) bean sprouts*
1 piece root ginger, approx 1” cube (approx 2.5 cm cube)
1 large clove garlic
2 Tblsp (2 x 15 ml spoon) light soy sauce
1 Tblsp (1 x 15 ml spoon) dry sherry or rice wine

Cut the pork into thin slices.

Wash and trim the asparagus, and cut into sections about 2” (about 5 cm) long. Halve the stalk sections lengthwise, leave the tip sections whole.

Remove the seeds from the red pepper and cut into strips. Wash the bean sprouts.

Peel and chop the onion. Peel the root ginger and shred into fine strips. Peel the garlic

Heat approx 1 Tblsp cooking oil in a wok or large frying pan.

Add the pork strips and stir-fry over a medium heat for approx 1 minute.

Add the chopped onion, ginger and asparagus stalks and stir-fry another minute.

Add the asparagus tips and chopped pepper. Crush the garlic and stir in. Stir-fry another 1-2 minutes until the meat is cooked and the vegetables soft and starting to colour.

Add the bean sprouts and stir-fry for about half a minute. Stir in the soy sauce and sherry and mix well.

Serve immediately with rice or noodles.

*If you can’t get or don’t like bean sprouts, you can substitute mushrooms. Peel and slice the mushrooms and add them along with the red pepper.

Moon In Leo, by Kathleen Herbert. Book review

2011-05-12T12:12:00.000+01:00

Trifolium Books, 2011. ISBN 978-0-9568104-0-3. 402 pages.

Moon In Leo is set in Furness in northern England in 1678, against the background of the Popish Plot. Historical figures including the Earl of Shaftesbury, Earl of Rochester and Titus Oates play important off-stage roles, and others such as the Quaker Margaret Fox appear as minor characters. All the main characters are fictional.

Highly intelligent and educated by her father as a scholar in alchemy, Rosamund Halistan has expected that she and her beloved twin brother Stephen will carry on their father’s work together, unaffected by the political, social and economic troubles brewing in Restoration England. When an attempt is made on Stephen’s life, Rosamund realises that political turmoil is not some distant irrelevance but a real threat to her and her family. Trying to protect her brother and then in danger of her own life, Rosamund comes into contact with two contrasting men, the gentlemanly scholar and fellow-alchemist Simon Challis, and the notorious rake Henry Ravensworth. Both want to marry her, but Rosamund fears that one or both is an enemy with designs on her brother’s life and her inheritance. As treason and plot turn murderous, Rosamund must decide who – if anyone – she can trust.

Moon In Leo is set almost exclusively in the small area of the Furness peninsula in what is now south Cumbria (then Lancashire-over-sands), south of the main Lake District mountains and jutting out into the vast tidal flats of Morecambe Bay between the estuaries of the Leven and Duddon rivers (see map link here). So powerful is the sense of place in the writing that not only can every step of the action be precisely located, the landscape itself almost seems to be an actor in the drama, from the brooding hills around dark Frith Hall to the sunny farmland at Scales and the wide skies and mercurial tides of the Cartmel sands. (Lest anyone think that the quicksands and rip-tides are a melodramatic invention, Morecambe Bay can and does claim lives even today). Readers who know the area will recognise many of the locations, and readers who don’t will find themselves transported there by the writing. I’m reasonably familiar with the Coniston fells, less so with the plains and the coast, and I had great fun tracing the routes and places on a large-scale topographical map.

Rosamund Halistan is the central character, and most of the novel is told in third person from Rosamund’s viewpoint. So it is through Rosamund’s eyes that the reader sees most of the world, and forms a first impression of most of the other characters. Nothing is as it seems, however, and Rosamund often finds herself having to revise her original assessments – sometimes drastically so – as she learns more about the other people and the complicated relationships between them. Everyone is an individual with their own foibles and motivations, past history, values, hopes and desires. As the story unfolds, hidden connections are revealed, and Rosamund comes to realise that many people are far more complex than she originally assumed. For all her intelligence and learning, Rosamund has been educated for all her 18 years in an academic ivory tower, leaving her ill-equipped to navigate the world outside, especially when she comes into contact with the murky world of politics and plot. Warm-hearted and deeply loyal to her family and the philosophy in which she was raised, she is inclined to leap to conclusions that often turn out to be unfounded and lead her into trouble. Her cleverness and courage go a long way towards extricating her from problems, though she also has to rely on help from other, often unexpected, quarters. Rosamund’s alchemical philosophy is all about the search for truth and perfection, and this is neatly paralleled by her search for the truth about the events and people in her life.

As Rosamund, her father and Simon Challis are all practitioners of the occult, supernatural elements such as demons, visions, out-of-body travel through time and space, and use of a crystal ball to see and control distant events play a large part in the novel, almost tipping into historical fantasy. I say ‘almost’, because although these incidents are all too real to Rosamund and are central to her beliefs and actions, not all the characters believe in the occult and it’s largely left up to the reader to decide which beliefs to share. As one of the characters wryly observes, “He took a sigil [magical symbol used to conjure demons] to Chapel Island, but he also took a loaded gun.” Or “... they had a stroke of luck, as Harry would have put it. Rosamund would have said that the Power guiding the universe was looking kindly on their intentions.” Conjuring tricks and charlatanry feature alongside the alchemy and occult practices, and are just as readily accepted as real by some of the characters. Indeed, one of the most magical episodes in the novel is explicitly shown as an elaborate trick performed with benign intent and happy outcome. I wonder if there is a subtle point there about the nature of magic and belief.

The range of beliefs and cultures in the novel is a particularly attractive feature. As well as alchemy and black magic, there are roles for Puritans, Catholics, gypsies, rational materialism bordering on atheism, and a mother-goddess fertility cult closely tied to the traditional rhythms of the farming year. There is a range of political ideas as well, with Royalist versus Parliamentary rivalries left over from the English Civil War only a generation before, disputes over the royal succession, factions disaffected at corruption in government and licentiousness at court, and the egalitarian ideas of the Society of Friends*. The characters think and believe as well as feel, and there is a real sense of turmoil and political upheaval as competing ideas clash.

A list of characters at the front of the book is very helpful for keeping everyone straight, especially in the early chapters as different groups of people are introduced in quick succession. A hand-drawn map at the front is also useful for following the characters’ movements (and the 1:25,000 topographical map in the link above provides even more detail).

Compelling tale of a young woman’s search for truth and love, set in the romantic landscape of Furness in turbulent post-Restoration England.

*Also known as Quakers

Raedwald’s queen

2011-04-30T22:01:00.001+01:00

In the early seventh century, the kingdom of the East Angles was ruled by a king named Raedwald. He is a likely candidate for the occupant of the magnificent ship burial at Sutton Hoo, and Bede lists him among the kings who held some sort of overlordship over all the English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) kingdoms south of the Humber (Bede, Book II Ch 5). Clearly, Raedwald was a powerful king. His queen was evidently also an influential woman, as two episodes in Bede make clear. What do we know about her?

Evidence

Bede

Eadwine (Edwin) of Deira/Northumbria was in exile at Raedwald’s court in East Anglia for an unknown period before 617 AD, on the run from Aethelferth of Bernicia who had annexed Deira and wanted rid of Eadwine:

[Aethelferth] sent messengers to offer Raedwald a large sum of money to murder him [Eadwine]. Obtaining no satisfaction, he sent a second and third time, offering even heavier bribes and threatening war if his demand were refused. At length Raedwald, either intimidated by his threats or corrupted by his bribes, agreed to his demands and promised either to kill Eadwine or to surrender him to Aethelferth’s envoys...

[...]

A friend warns Eadwine of the plot to murder him, but Eadwine refuses to flee, and the friend goes away to find out what else is happening. A short time later the friend comes back with more news, saying:

“...the king [Raedwald] has had a change of heart. He now intends you no harm, and means to keep the promise that he made you. For when he privately told the queen of his intention to deal with you as I warned, she dissuaded him, saying that it was unworthy in a great king to sell his friend in the hour of his need for gold, and worse still to sacrifice his royal honour, the most valuable of all possessions, for love of money.” In brief, the king did as she advised.

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book II Ch. 12

Raedwald had [...] received Christian baptism in Kent, but to no good purpose; for on his return home his wife and certain perverse advisers persuaded him to apostasize from the true Faith.

[...]

He had in the same shrine an altar for the holy Sacrifice of Christ, side by side with a small altar on which victims were offered to devils.

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book II Ch. 15

William of Malmesbury

His [Raedwald’s] son, Eorpwald, embraced pure Christianity and poured out his pure spirit to God, being barbarously murdered by the heathen Richbert. To him [Eorpwald] succeeded Sigebert, his brother by the mother’s side

--William of Malmesbury, Chronicle of the Kings of England, chapter V, available online

This indicates that Eorpwald was the son of Raedwald, while Sigebert was the son of the same mother but not a son of Raedwald.

Interpretation

From Bede’s two mentions of her, we can reasonably deduce that Raedwald’s queen had considerable influence over King Raedwald’s religious policy (maintaining or returning to his non-Christian gods after he adopted the Christian religion) and foreign/military policy (defying Aethelferth of Bernicia). On one occasion the queen is mentioned along with ‘other advisors’, which may indicate that she was acting as part of a group, perhaps representing a strand of opinion or a political faction at Raedwald’s court. On the other occasion she appears to have been acting alone, since the friend says “.. when he [Raedwald] privately told the queen...”. One can argue as to quite how ‘private’ the occasion was, since the friend evidently knew the content of the conversation, but it seems clear that it was not a formal or public occasion such as a councillors’ meeting. Whether the queen’s influence was purely personal, or derived from her formal position as queen, or reflected a role as spokesperson of a group or faction, is open to discussion. Similarly, it is not possible to say whether the political and religious influence she wielded was normal practice or unusual. However, Raedwald’s queen is not the only influential royal woman in Bede’s history; for example, he says of Abbess Hild of Whitby that kings and princes used to ask her advice and take it. So the authority displayed by Raedwald’s queen may or may not have been normal, but it was not unique.

Since Raedwald’s queen is specifically listed among the advisers who talked him out of his conversion to Christianity, it is a reasonable inference that she honoured the non-Christian gods. It is worth noting that we do not know Raedwald’s reasons for accepting baptism in the first place, nor anything about the circumstances except that it occurred in Kent. Nor do we know the background to Raedwald’s dual-religion policy. Bede, as an orthodox Christian, clearly regarded the church with two altars as an abhorrence, but to people accustomed to a polytheistic religion it may have seemed quite natural. Raedwald may not have thought of himself as an apostate at all.

Bede attributes a strong sense of honour to Raedwald’s queen. It is the main argument she uses for persuading Raedwald to reject Aethelferth’s envoys. The circumstances and motives may well have been more complex at the time; a decision to go to war against a king as powerful and as militarily successful as Aethelferth is unlikely to have been taken lightly. It may have reflected an ongoing power struggle for overlordship or territory, as much as a matter of friendship or honouring a promise. However, it seems reasonable to accept that the motivation of upholding honour was the one accepted in Bede’s day, or at least in the source he was using. Bede’s account of the incident is unusually detailed, and he may well have drawn on a tale or saga or heroic poem that was in circulation and available to him at the time but has not come down to us. Honour is a lofty and high-minded motive, and it is specifically attributed to the queen. This in turn suggests that Raedwald’s queen was regarded as an admirable figure (at least in this instance), by Bede or the source he was using or both.

Since the queen was advising Raedwald on foreign policy in 617 AD, and on religious policy some time before that, she was evidently married to Raedwald before 617. We do not know which of Raedwald’s sons were also her sons. However, if Raegenhere and Eorpwald were both her sons, they were of fighting age in 617 AD and old enough to rule in 627 AD, respectively. Raegenhere cannot have been born much later than 600 AD, or he would have been too young to fight in 617 AD, and Eorpwald cannot have been born much after 610 AD or he would have been too young to be a credible king in 627. If both were the sons of Raedwald’s queen, this would be consistent with her being nearer middle age than youth in 617. This is also consistent with her influence; a lady of mature years might be expected to have more authority than a very young girl. If Sigebert was her son by a different father (see below), it also raises the interesting possibility that Raedwald may have been her second husband.

Unfortunately, the name of Raedwald’s influential queen is not recorded in any surviving source, and nor is there any record of her family connections. There may be some clue to her family background in William of Malmesbury’s account. William is quite clear that Eorpwald was Raedwald’s son and that Sigebert was Eorpwald’s brother on the mother’s side, i.e. that they shared the same mother but that, by implication, Sigebert was not Raedwald’s son. Caveat that William of Malmesbury was writing centuries after the events and information would have had plenty of opportunity to get confused in the interim; however, this seems an odd sort of detail to have been interpolated or made up. It is not certain that the mother of Eorpwald and Sigebert was also the same woman as Raedwald’s influential queen. Raedwald may have had more than one wife, sequentially or simultaneously, for all we know. However, since both Eorpwald and Sigebert became kings of the East Angles, it seems likely that their mother was an important figure, and Raedwald’s influential queen would be a logical candidate.

If Eorpwald and Sigebert were the sons of Raedwald’s unnamed queen, Sigebert may provide some clues to her background. First, his name. There are no other S- names in the surviving genealogy of the kings of the East Angles but there are a lot of S- names in the genealogy of the kings of the East Saxons, including at least one Sigebert in the 650s (Bede Book III Ch. 22). This may indicate that Raedwald’s queen had connections with the East Saxon dynasty (although other families may also have used S- names). If she did have East Saxon connections, she could have been an East Saxon princess who married into the neighbouring kingdom of East Anglia, or she may have been previously married to an East Saxon king or prince (or, indeed, both).

Second, Sigebert was clearly accepted as king of the East Angles, even though (if William of Malmesbury is right) he was not a son of Raedwald. Although it is possible that the East Anglian dynasty had simply run out of other suitable candidates, it may indicate that Sigebert had a claim to the kingship that did not derive from Raedwald. One possibility is that Sigebert’s claim came through his mother, if she was herself a member of the East Anglian royal dynasty. This would be consistent with her evident importance at Raedwald’s court. A second possibility is that Sigebert’s father was a member of the East Anglian royal dynasty, perhaps a previous king. It was not unknown for new kings to marry the widow of the previous king. Bede tells us that the new king of Kent, Eadbald, married his father’s widow (second wife, so presumably not his own mother!) on his accession, much to the horror of the Christian Church (Bede Book II Ch. 5). If Raedwald of the East Angles had done something similar, this would also be consistent with the influence clearly held by Raedwald’s queen and with Sigebert’s (eventual) succession to the kingship. I need hardly say that this is speculative.

Although we do not know the name of Raedwald’s influential queen (how very remiss of Bede), we can therefore draw some conclusions about her. First, it is clear that she held sufficient authority to influence her husband’s decisions on matters as important as religion and war. The source of this authority is open to speculation; it could have been derived from strength of personality, the emotional relationship between her and Raedwald, a role as representative or figurehead for a political faction, a position within the East Anglian royal dynasty in her own right or as the widow of a previous king, or any combination of these. Second, it is very likely that she followed the Old English pre-Christian religion, since she was part of the group who talked Raedwald out of his Christian conversion. Third, she was strong-minded and confident enough to argue with her husband. Fourth, if Sigebert was her son, his name may indicate East Saxon connections. Speculating further, if Sigebert was her son, and if his claim to the East Anglian kingship came through her (two notable ifs), she may have held an important position in the East Anglian royal court in her own right, independent of her marriage to Raedwald.

References
Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.

William of Malmesbury, Chronicle of the Kings of England, chapter V, available online

The Whale Road, by Robert Low. Book review

2011-04-19T15:45:00.002+01:00

Harper Collins, 2007. ISBN 978-0-00-721530-0. 334 pages

The Whale Road follows the adventures of a band of Norse mercenaries in 964/965 AD in Scandinavia, Russia and the Ukraine, set against the backdrop of the emerging Rus kingdoms around Kiev. The historical figures Sviatoslav of the Rus and his sons Yaropolk and Vladimir have walk-on parts. Harald Bluetooth of Norway and Denmark is an important off-stage presence, and Attila the Hun – a historical figure from 500 years earlier – is the subject of the heroes’ quest. The legendary Volsungs also feature. All the main characters are fictional.

Brought up on his uncle’s farm in Norway, Orm Ruriksson knows his father only as a name, until a threat from the uncle brings Orm’s father home to take vengeance and to sweep Orm away to a new life as a warrior of the Oathsworn. Sworn to each other and to their formidable leader Einar the Black, the Oathsworn are a verjazi band, Norse mercenaries who travel and fight for pay. This time they are on a quest for a rune-inscribed sword and the legendary hoard of Attila the Hun, trying to keep one step ahead of rivals and ex-employers who are also seeking the same treasures. The trail will lead them across the wild oceans and deep into the Russian steppes to face battle and treachery and dark magic – and the inexorable doom woven by a broken oath.

As the author says in his ‘Note on the history’, this is “...a saga, to be read around the fire against the lurking dark.” It has classic saga ingredients – a sword engraved with runes that has magical symbolism in two religions, a beautiful woman with a mysterious link to the Otherworld, a mountain forge of immense antiquity, a long-lost treasure hoard, desperate battles in far-off lands and epic sea voyages through storm and tempest. It also has something of the feel of the Icelandic sagas beyond the adventure, partly from the prose style and partly because of the sense of grim and implacable fate closing in as a result of the characters’ own choices and the unyielding demands of oath and obligation. The language is laconic, sprinkled with occasional vivid phrases reminiscent of Norse kennings, e.g. “...[the ship] leaped like a goosed goodwife”, “windows comfort-yellow with light”, “crow-wing hair”. The title of the novel itself is a classic Norse kenning – the whale road is the open ocean. Dialogue is terse and lively, liberally laced with black humour and Scots or Norse dialect terms. In keeping with the hard-drinking, hard-fighting life of the main characters, modern four-letter words are frequent; readers who are offended by words such as f**k and c**t may like to consider themselves warned.

The book is narrated throughout in first person by Orm. I often dislike first-person narratives, as the reader sees only the narrator’s point of view, but fortunately Orm is intelligent and interested in working out hidden information and in trying to understand other people’s motivations.

The plot is non-stop action, with plenty of casual violence (the “Glasgow kiss” makes an appearance under another name), gory battle scenes and gruesome ways to die. As one might expect from the subject matter, it’s a dangerous novel to be a character in. The Whale Road captures the precarious nature of life as a mercenary warrior, forever poised between the possibility of riches beyond the dreams of avarice and the (much more likely) possibility of an unpleasant death. It is a little surprising that Orm, an inexperienced youth of 15, fits into this tough, ruthless band with apparent ease, although this might be explained by Orm’s ability to read Latin (which turns out to be a skill of considerable use to the fearsome Einar) and his father’s status as a respected member of the group.

A strong sense of the supernatural is woven through the narrative. Storms are sent by angry gods, a lost comrade has to be honoured by a sacrifice, and who else would emerge from an abandoned mine under a mountain but an angry black dwarf wielding a hammer (a scene that still makes me laugh weeks after reading it)? For the most part the supernatural exists in the minds of the characters; the exception seems to be the mysterious and beautiful Hild with her aura of evil spirits, dark magic and supernatural link to the mysterious treasure hoard.

A useful map at the front of the book and a list of place names with their modern equivalents at the back is helpful for following the Oathsworn on their epic journeys, and a ‘Note on the history’ gives a brief summary of the historical background to the tale. There is no glossary for the colourful Norse terms; I recognised most of them and those that were new to me were clear from the context, but I have a long-standing interest in Norse history. Readers who are not familiar with the period may find the Norse glossary on the author’s website useful.

Gripping saga of epic journeys by land and sea, hard-fought battles and the dark power of oaths, as a band of Norse mercenary warriors seek a legendary sword and a long-lost hoard of cursed silver in tenth-century Scandinavia and Russia.

April recipe: Hot cross buns

2011-04-16T11:36:00.003+01:00

Hot cross buns!
Hot cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns
If you have no daughters, give them to your sons
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns

--Traditional rhyme

Another version uses ‘one ha-penny, two ha-penny’, ha-penny meaning half a penny. The variant I know was evidently coined in more inflationary days :-) I have no idea of the significance of the line about daughters and sons, if indeed it has any beyond a convenient rhyme and scan. Feel free to speculate.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest recorded use of the phrase ‘hot cross bun’ is in 1733:

Good Friday comes this Month, the old woman runs With one or two a Penny hot cross Bunns.

--Oxford English Dictionary

It seems likely to me that some form of enriched sweet bread baked to celebrate a spring festival goes back a lot further than 1733, though in the absence of evidence you can choose your own favourite theory about the origin of the recipe and the significance of the cross. Wikipedia has a few to choose from. It would be terribly prosaic to suggest that two intersecting cuts across the top of a loaf may have started out as a convenient way of dividing it into four pieces.

There are as many variants of hot cross buns as there are cooks. You can vary the dried fruit (some recipes even substitute chocolate chips), you can vary the spices, you can glaze the buns with honey or icing, and the cross can be marked with pastry, flour-and-water-paste, icing or simply slashed with a knife. Take your pick. Here’s my recipe, and a happy Easter to you when it comes.

Hot cross buns

Half a cup (about 2 fluid ounces, or abut 50 ml) tepid water
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons (2 x 5 ml spoons) dried yeast*
1 lb (approx 450 g) strong white flour
2 oz (approx 50 g) light brown soft sugar
2 oz (approx 50 g) butter
2 teaspoons (2 x 5 ml spoons) ground mixed spice
0.5 teaspoon (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) salt
2 oz (approx 50 g) sultanas
1 oz (approx 25 g) currants
1 oz (approx 25 g) cut mixed peel**
1 egg
Milk to mix

Dissolve the granulated sugar in the tepid water and sprinkle the yeast on top. Set aside in a warm place for about 20 minutes until frothy on top. (If using the kind of dried yeast that needs no activation, follow the instructions on the packet).

Mix the light brown soft sugar, flour, salt and spices in a bowl, and rub in the butter. Stir in the dried fruit and peel.

Pour in the yeast liquid, then the beaten egg. Mix well. Add milk until the mixture forms a soft dough. (If it is floury and flaky, add a little more milk. If it is sticky, you have added too much milk; add a bit more flour).

Turn the dough onto a floured work surface and knead for a few minutes until smooth.

Put the dough back in the bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and leave in a warm place to rise for about 1 hour. It should roughly double in size.

Knead again for a few minutes, then shape the dough into 12 buns. Place the buns on a greased baking sheet so they are just touching. Make two intersecting cuts with a knife on the top of each bun to form a cross.

Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour.

Bake in a hot oven, about 220 C, for about 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

Cool on a wire rack. If liked, brush the tops of the warm buns with honey to make them sticky.

Serve warm or cold, with butter. Any left over will keep for a day or so in an airtight tin, or can be frozen.

*This is the kind of dried yeast you have to activate in warm water before using.
**Cut mixed peel is the UK name. I think it may be called ‘candied citrus peel’ or similar in the US..

Kathleen Herbert and Moon In Leo

2011-04-08T18:25:00.003+01:00

Kathleen Herbert wrote three historical novels set in what is now northern England and southern Scotland during the Heroic Age of early medieval Britain (late sixth and early-to-mid seventh century), Bride of the Spear (first published as Lady of the Fountain), Queen of the Lightning and Ghost in the Sunlight. I read them a while ago and liked them very much indeed (all are now out of print, but second-hand copies are reasonably readily available).

Last year, I learned through Sarah Johnson's blog Reading the Past that Kathleen Herbert had written a fourth novel, Moon In Leo, before experiencing ill-health. Her friend Connie Jensen set up an independent publishing company, Trifolium Books, and in February this year Moon In Leo was published as their first title. I bought a copy straight away, and am delighted to find that it's well up to the high standard of the three previous novels (review to come in due course).

Moon In Leo is also set in northern England, in the romantic landscape of the Furness peninsula and Morecambe Bay in South Cumbria - the cover photograph (see above) captures the atmosphere well - but at a completely different time in history, Restoration England in 1678. Here's the back cover copy:

People turned out of their homes; others living rich beyond the dreams of the dispossessed. Science struggling with superstition; celebrity and royalty parading in a public sexual carnival. This love story takes place among the political intrigues and religious hatred of England's age of upheaval between civil war and 'glorious revolution'.

Of the two men in Rosamund Halistan's life, one is a fellow scholar of the occult, the other a wild hedonist with tragic memories. She suspects both of them on attempts on her brother's life and designs on her body and land.

It's harder to find a safe path through the thickets of treason and bigotry than through the rip-tides and quicksands, solid routes and sanctuary in the sands of Morecambe Bay.

More about Trifolium Books and Moon In Leo on the company's blog here.

Map link: Furness

The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey. Book review

2011-03-31T17:13:00.003+01:00

First published 1951. Edition reviewed: Arrow, 2002, ISBN 0-09-943096-7. 220 pages.

The Daughter of Time is a historical mystery set in 1950s England. All the main characters are fictional but the mystery they are attempting to solve is a real one, the disappearance of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ during the reign of Richard III in 1483.

Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard is laid up in hospital with a broken leg. Bored by the predictable reading material proffered by well-meaning friends, he becomes interested in studying historical portraits. One in particular captures his imagination; he thinks the face should belong to a judge or a statesman, and is astonished to find that it is a portrait of Richard III, whom he vaguely remembers from history and Shakespeare as the archetypal wicked villain. Puzzled that the face in the portrait looks so different from his expectations, Grant enlists the aid of his friends and the hospital staff to investigate Richard’s career and the mystery surrounding the disappearance of his young nephews, the ‘Princes in the Tower’. Did Richard III really have them murdered as Grant’s history lessons said, or can the evidence bear some other interpretation – and point to some other culprit?

This is an unusual and ingenious historical mystery, and I found it a delight from beginning to end. It would earn a place in my heart just for Grant’s splendidly dyspeptic opinion of production-line romances, thrillers and gloomy literary fiction:

“The Sweat and the Furrow was Silas Weekley being earthy and spade-conscious all over seven hundred pages. […] The rain dripped from the thatch and the manure steamed in the midden. Silas never omitted the manure. It was not Silas’s fault that its steam provided the only up-rising element in the picture. If Silas could have discovered a brand of steam that steamed downwards, he would have used it.”

This passage appears on the second page and sold me straight away. The rest of the writing lives up to the initial promise, crisp, elegant and compact with not a word wasted. The contemporary characters are sketched in with a few bold brush-strokes that bring them vividly to life as individuals with their own quirks and foibles: the soppy nurse; the brisk nurse; flamboyant Marta, for whom the word ‘actressy’ could have been invented; the rather vague student who is suddenly galvanised when Grant’s investigation catches his interest.

Like The House on the Strand (reviewed earlier), although a very different novel, The Daughter of Time captures the thrill of pursuing an intellectual puzzle and the satisfaction that comes from tracking down an elusive fact. Grant becomes so absorbed in each new scrap of evidence that he quite forgets the discomforts of his injury and the frustrations of confinement. Don’t look for action – the entire novel takes place in Grant’s hospital room, with assorted friends bringing him books and snippets of information. This is a chase purely of the mind, but no less gripping for that. I would hazard a guess that anyone who has pursued a tricky question through obscure historical sources will recognise Grant’s quest.

The Daughter of Time uses Grant’s investigation of Richard III to explore the processes by which actual events get turned into simplified and widely accepted narratives of history, which then take on a life of their own and become highly resistant to question. Grant complains that people do not like having their preconceptions challenged, and then promptly proceeds to demonstrate it himself by taking comical personal offence at his discovery that Thomas More was not a contemporary biographer of Richard III as he had previously believed. For me, this is one of the key strengths of the novel. It reminds the reader, in dramatised form, that many of the things we think we know as ‘fact’ are probably nothing of the kind. Critical thinking and assessment of evidence are vital in history – as in many other fields of study – and while interpretation may be necessary to make sense of an incomplete set of evidence, one should always keep in mind the distinction and be prepared to consider alternative interpretations. The Daughter of Time can be read as an enjoyable case study of that principle.

Although Inspector Grant is convinced that he has solved the mystery and exonerated Richard III, I would suggest that readers who are interested in the history of Richard III’s reign exercise caution before swallowing the (fictional) Inspector’s conclusions whole. The reason that the mystery of the princes’ fate still qualifies as a Mystery is because the definitive answer is not known with certainty and the limited evidence can support more than one interpretation, all of which answer some questions and raise new ones. I agree with Grant that the case against Richard III is far from proven; I part company in that I don’t think Grant’s alternative solution is proven either.

Ingenious, stimulating historical mystery with a sharp point to make about the importance of critical thinking, told in lively and economical prose with a varied cast of characters. Deservedly a classic.

The language of the Picts

2011-03-24T12:21:00.003Z

The people living in what is now Northern Scotland in the Late Roman and early medieval period were known to their Latin-speaking neighbours (and, by extension, to us) as Picts. They spoke a distinct language, but unfortunately no examples of it survive except perhaps a few fragments in place names and personal names. What can we say about the lost language of the Picts?

Evidence

Bede

Bede, writing in 731 AD in Northumbria, clearly recognised Pictish as a separate language:

At the present time there are in Britain, in harmony with the five books of the
divine law, five languages and four nations – English, British, Irish and
Picts. Each of these have their own language; but all are united in their
study of God’s truth by the fifth – Latin – which has become a common medium
through the study of the scriptures.

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book I Ch. 1

Life of Columba

WHEN the blessed man [St Columba] was staying for some days in the Scian island,
he struck a spot of ground near the sea with his staff, and said to his
companions: "Strange to say, my children, this day, an aged heathen, whose
natural goodness has been preserved through all his life, will receive baptism,
die, and be buried on this very spot." And lo! about an hour after, a boat came
into the harbour, on whose prow sat a decrepit old man, the chief of the Geona
cohort. Two young men took him out of the boat and laid him at the feet of the
blessed man. After being instructed in the word of God by the saint through an
interpreter, the old man believed …

--Life of Columba, Book I Ch. 27, available online

At the time when St. Columba was tarrying for some days in the province of the
Picts, a certain peasant who, with his whole family, had listened to and learned
through an interpreter the word of life preached by the holy man, believed …

--Life of Columba, Book I Ch. 33, available online

The Scian island is modern Skye. As Columba needed an interpreter to preach to Picts, it is a reasonable conclusion that the language was distinct from the Irish language spoken by Columba.

Both the Life of Columba and Bede confirm that Pictish was a distinct language, at least in the sixth century (when Columba was preaching) and the eighth century (when Bede was writing). However, neither source tells us much about the language itself. Very little is known of the lost language of the Picts (Laing & Laing 2001). There are two main sources of evidence: a small number of inscriptions (see earlier post on Inscriptions), and place names.

Place names

Bede mentions a single place name in Pictish, in his description of the Antonine Wall:

It begins about two miles west of the monastery at Aebbercurnig at a place which
the Picts call Peanfahel and the English Penneltun

-- Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book I Ch. 12

Aebbercurnig is modern Abercorn, in Lothian on the east coast of Scotland and the south shore of the Firth of Forth. Penneltun is modern Kinneil, near Bo’ness, a few miles further west up the firth.

‘Pen’ is a common British place-name element meaning ‘head’. It occurs in many modern Welsh hill names (e.g. Pen y Fan) and some in northern England (e.g. Pen y Ghent, and possibly in the name of the Pennine hill chain).

Other British place-name elements occur in modern place names in the territories associated with the Picts, such as Aber-, meaning ‘confluence’ (e.g. Aberdeen) and Lhan-, meaning ‘churchyard’ (e.g. Lhanbryde, near Elgin), spelled Llan- in modern Welsh place names. The name element Pit-, derived from ‘pett’, meaning a parcel of land, appears all over the Pictish territories. Its Welsh equivalent, ‘peth’, does not appear in modern Welsh place names, so the use of Pit- as a common place-name element may be distinctive to the Pictish area. (Caveat that modern place names have had centuries to change and evolve since the early medieval period, including the possibility of influence by later languages such as Norse or Norman French, so should be interpreted with caution).

Interpretation

The Celtic languages fall into two major groups, usually called P-Celtic (including Welsh, Breton, Cornish and their ancestors) and Q-Celtic (including Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic and their ancestors). The labels reflect a diagnostic sound change between the two groups; the word for ‘head’ in P-Celtic languages is ‘Pen’ (found in many modern Welsh hill names, and very probably in the name of the Pennine hills in what is now northern England), and the equivalent in Q-Celtic is ‘Kin’ (found all over the Scottish Highlands in place names indicating the head of a loch).

The eighth-century Pictish name Peanfahel, as helpfully recorded by Bede, contains a variant of the ‘Pen’ element. Together with the other P-Celtic elements found in modern place names in the Pictish area, such as Aber-, Lhan- and Pit-, this suggests that Pictish was a P-Celtic language, or contained a sizeable component of P-Celtic.

Some place names contain both P-Celtic and Q-Celtic elements. For example, Pittenweem in Fife contains the characteristic Pit- first element, combined with a second element derived from the Gaelic ‘na h-uamha’ meaning ‘of the cave’, so it means something like ‘portion of land with a cave’ in two languages (Room 1993). Hybrid place-names like this may indicate that there was some bilingualism in Pictland, with people speaking both Pictish (P-Celtic) and Irish Gaelic (Q-Celtic), and able to understand both elements of the name (Laing & Laing 2001).

The modern form of the name recorded by Bede as Peanfahel is Kinneil. Kinneil is Scots Gaelic and is recognisably a variant of Peanfahel with the Q-Celtic ‘Kin’ substituted for the P-Celtic equivalent ‘Pen’. (The second element means ‘wall’, so the whole name means ‘head or end of the wall’, a logical name for a place at the end of the Antonine Wall). This substitution is consistent with some degree of bilingualism in P- and Q-Celtic languages, since it suggests that the ‘Pen’ element was recognised as equivalent to ‘Kin’ and one was substituted for the other. In contrast, the eighth-century English name had evidently borrowed the Pictish name wholesale and appended the Old English element ‘-tun’ (homestead, enclosure) as a suffix to make Penneltun. If the Pictish name Peanfahel had been translated into English it would have become something like “Wallsend” (like the name of the settlement at the eastern end of Hadrian’s Wall, further south).

Some surviving Pictish inscriptions remain undeciphered (see post on Inscriptions), and this has led to suggestions that the Pictish language, or a sizeable component of it, was unrelated to any Celtic language or indeed any surviving language, with the further suggestion that Pictish, like Basque, could have been a survivor of a pre-Indo-European language dating back into the far distant past. This is not easy to reconcile with the recognisably P-Celtic elements in place names, which are consistent with Pictish being a member of the P-Celtic language family. One possibility is that the Picts spoke a P-Celtic language for everyday matters (like naming places), but retained an older unrelated language that was used for special purposes such as inscriptions. This scenario would be similar to the situation in England and the rest of Europe during the Middle Ages, with vernacular languages (English, French, German etc) used for day-to-day communication and Latin used by an educated, mainly religious, elite for formal written applications such as legal documents, international diplomatic correspondence and monuments. There may also be other possible explanations for the apparently incomprehensible inscriptions (see post on Inscriptions). I would be cautious about taking them as proof that Pictish was a unique non-Celtic non-Indo-European language, although this cannot be ruled out.

Conclusion

On the basis of the place-name evidence, slight though it is, I would conclude that Pictish was probably a P-Celtic language, or at least contained a sizeable component of P-Celtic. It may have been a form of the Brittonic language spoken further south – perhaps a very strong regional accent. However, Bede says Pictish was a distinct language in his time, and as Northumbria shared a border with the Pictish kingdom and was on reasonably friendly terms, he was in a position to have accurate information about the Pictish language. So I would take his word for it, and place Pictish as a distinct language within the P-Celtic language group.

Pictish may also have contained a sizeable component of Q-Celtic, given the existence of hybrid place names containing both P- and Q-Celtic elements. This would be consistent with the apparent ease of replacement of Pictish by Gaelic in later centuries. A language consisting of a mix of P- and Q-Celtic would be distinct from either.

Pictish may also have contained a component of some non-Celtic language. If so, this non-Celtic element might be a remnant of an ancient pre-Indo-European language spoken in what is now northern Scotland, but this is not proven. I have suggested elsewhere that the broch-builders of Caithness and the Northern and Western Isles may have been a distinct cultural group within the Picts, perhaps with cultural contacts with Scandinavia (a sort of forerunner of the historical contact between the same areas of Scotland and Scandinavia during the later Viking age). If so, distinct cultural groups may have had distinct local languages or dialects, which may have contributed distinctive features to Pictish and helped to differentiate it from the neighbouring British and Irish languages.

References
Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price, Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X
Laing L, Laing J. The Picts and the Scots. Sutton, 2001, ISBN 0-7509-2873-5.
Life of Columba, Book I Ch. 27, available online
Room A. Dictionary of Place Names. Bloomsbury, 1993. ISBN 0-7475-1511-5.

Map links
Abercorn
Kinneil
Lhanbryde
Aberdeen
Pittenweem

March recipe: Dal

2011-03-23T10:21:00.003Z

This is a warming lentil and vegetable curry, spicy without being too hot. It’s fairly quick to cook after a long day at work, and satisfying without being too heavy. You can vary the vegetables according to the season; in March I usually make it with cooking apples, leeks and celery. It happens to be a vegan dish. You can also vary the spices according to taste, or substitute the equivalent amount of curry powder if you don’t want to use separate spices.

Dal

Serves 2

4oz (approx 120g) split red lentils
8 fl. oz. (approx 200 ml) water
Half an onion
Half a green pepper
4 oz (approx 120g) chopped tomatoes, fresh or tinned
8 oz (approx 250g) any combination of: cooking apple, celery, courgette, leek, squash
1 clove garlic
0.5 tsp (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground ginger
0.5 tsp (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground cumin
0.5 tsp (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground coriander
0.5 tsp (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground turmeric

Put the red lentils and water in a saucepan, cover, and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer on a low heat for 15-20 minutes, stirring from time to time to prevent sticking, until the lentils have absorbed all the water and cooked to a soft yellow mass. If the lentils boil dry before they are cooked, add a little more water, but only add small amounts at a time.

While the lentils are cooking, peel and chop the onion, chop the green pepper, peel and crush the garlic.

Prepare the other vegetables. Wash and slice celery and leeks. Peel, core and dice the cooking apple. Wash and dice courgettes. Peel and dice squash.

Fry the onion in vegetable oil over a medium heat until soft and beginning to colour.

Add the garlic, green pepper, and other vegetables except the tomatoes. Fry a few more minutes until the other vegetables are beginning to colour.

Stir in the spices.

Add the chopped tomatoes. Season with salt and black pepper and mix well. Simmer 5-10 minutes.

Stir in the cooked lentils, mix well, and simmer a minute or two to heat through.

Serve with rice and mango chutney.

I Am the Chosen King, by Helen Hollick. Book review

2011-03-13T17:25:00.002Z

First published under the title Harold the King, 2000.
Edition reviewed: Sourcebooks 2011, ISBN 978-1-4022-4066-9. 672 pages. Uncorrected advance review copy supplied by publisher.

Set in England and Normandy in 1043-1066, I Am the Chosen King tells the story of Harold Godwinesson and his handfast wife Edyth Swan-neck, and the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066. All the main characters are historical figures.

Newly appointed as Earl of East Anglia, Harold, second son of the powerful Earl Godwine of Wessex, has a bright future ahead. When he falls in love with the sweet and beautiful Edyth Swannhaels (Edith Swan-neck) and takes her as his handfast wife, it seems he can look forward to personal happiness as well as power and wealth. But the weak king Edward dislikes Godwine, and Harold’s selfish and ill-disciplined siblings soon give Edward the opportunity to threaten the Godwine family with ruin. And across the Channel in Normandy, Edward’s adolescent kinsman William the Bastard is fast growing into a ruthless and battle-hardened warlord with a ruthless eye on England….

I have long had an interest in Harold Godwinesson, King Harold II, so was very pleased to see him as the central character in this densely detailed novel. Told in third person, I Am the Chosen King switches between England and Normandy, charting the build-up to the Battle of Hastings from both sides. Both Harold and William are fully developed characters, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Harold is the more likeable of the two, depicted here as kind, loving, considerate and competent, prepared to co-operate with others for the common good. William, emotionally scarred by a violent childhood, is harsh, ambitious, ruthless and not infrequently cruel, as he has had to be to survive and to win control of his duchy. William is used to making his own luck and achieving the impossible, and he has set his sights on a crown. Harold, by contrast, has greatness thrust upon him; he has no especial desire for a crown, but he is determined to do his best for the people of England. So the two men are set on a collision course that will culminate in a hard-fought battle on Senlac Ridge near Hastings in 1066 that will become the most memorable date in English history.

I Am the Chosen King is very long, and the political manoeuvring among the English nobility requires some concentration to follow. The first half of the book is rather slow, and is dominated by Harold’s older siblings and King Edward, all of whom make distinctly unappealing company. Edward takes after his incompetent father Aethelraed Unraed in all the wrong ways. Harold’s sister Edith is selfish and spiteful, his younger brother Tostig is self-righteous and grasping, and his eldest brother Swegn is an overgrown toddler who throws murderous temper tantrums. After a couple of hundred pages I was starting to feel that they all deserved each other, and possibly even deserved William. Harold and his sweet wife Edyth seem to be almost the only two pleasant, well-adjusted people in England, and their blossoming love story and happy family life stand in stark contrast to the rest of the family.

A strength of I Am the Chosen King is that it shows the Norman side of the story as well as the English side. Indeed, in the first half of the book William’s determined struggle to gain control of Normandy and then expand its power and gain independence from France makes a more compelling narrative than the bickering in England. One may not like William very much – as portrayed here, he would be a hard man to like, though his wife Mathilda manages it – but it would be difficult not to admire him.

The pace steps up a gear about halfway through the novel as we reach 1064 and events start to rush towards a confrontation. Harold’s ill-fated trip to Normandy in 1064 brings him into direct contact with William, and the two are already weighing each other up as potential rivals. Helen Hollick’s explanation for the mysterious event of Harold swearing an oath on holy relics is plausible, and explains William’s subsequent fury. From here, events crowd thick and fast. The Battle of Stamford Bridge is over in a few pages, possibly so as not to detract from the grand climax of the Battle of Hastings. The novel manages the remarkable feat of making the outcome seem genuinely in doubt right until the last moment – as of course it was to the people at the time, however well known to the reader.

The author helpfully uses variant spellings to distinguish between people with the same name, e.g. the three Ediths are Edith (Harold’s sister), Edyth (Swan-neck) and Alditha (daughter of Aelfgar of Mercia and Harold’s official wife). Family trees for the Norman and English aristocracies at the start of the book also help to keep track of characters, and the two maps will be useful to readers unfamiliar with the geography. A helpful Author’s Note at the end outlines the underlying history, explains how the author filled in gaps – more of them than you might think; 1066 may be a famous date but that doesn’t mean it was fully documented – and explains what happened to the major characters after the end of the novel.

Detailed recreation of the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066, with Harold Godwinesson and his handfast wife Edyth Swan-neck as the central characters.

Pictish language: Inscriptions

2011-03-03T18:52:00.006Z

The people living in what is now Northern Scotland in the Late Roman and early medieval period were known to their Latin-speaking neighbours (and, by extension, to us) as Picts. They spoke a distinct language, but little if any of it survives. A small number of Pictish inscriptions using the Irish script called ogham are known. What can these tell us about the lost language of the Picts?

Evidence

Inscriptions

Most of the surviving Pictish inscriptions use the Ogham script, which was invented in Ireland perhaps around the fourth century and introduced to what is now mainland Scotland via Dal Riada (an Irish-speaking early medieval kingdom in roughly the area of modern Argyll, see map). Ogham is written by making straight strokes across, sloping from or perpendicular to a guideline, originally the edge of a stone.

Twenty-nine Pictish ogham inscriptions have been found, mostly on stones, with three on knife handles (Bac Mhic Connain, Hebrides; Aikerness, Orkney; Weeting, Norfolk) and one on a spindle whorl (Buckquoy, Orkney). Pictish ogham started out closely following the Irish, but later developed more ornate forms and began to be carved on a guideline on the face of the stone instead of along its edge. Most Pictish ogham inscriptions are believed to date from the seventh to tenth centuries (Laing & Laing 2001).

Where they have been deciphered the ogham inscriptions appear to record names, some P-Celtic (Brittonic), some Q-Celtic (Gaelic). Sometimes words of apparently Irish derivation appear, e.g. “meqq” which is thought to be related to Irish “maqq” meaning “son of”. One from Bressay, Shetland, contains “crroscc” thought to be the Irish word for “cross” and “dattr” which is thought to be the Norse for “daughter”.

Some have not been deciphered, for example the baffling inscription on the Lunnasting stone in Shetland, which reads:

ettocuhetts ahehhttann hccvvevv nehhtons

The last word looks recognisably like the Pictish personal name Nechtan, recorded in the Pictish king-list and by Bede. The rest of the inscription has defied all attempts at interpretation so far.

Interpretation

Incomprehensible inscriptions such as the one on the Lunnasting stone have led to suggestions that the Pictish language, or a sizeable component of it, was unrelated to any Celtic language or indeed any surviving language, with the further suggestion that Pictish, like Basque, could have been a survivor of a pre-Indo-European language dating back into the far distant past. However, some of the inscriptions may be incomprehensible only because we have not yet figured out how to read them. For example, the inscription on the Buckquoy spindle whorl was initially thought to be written in an unknown non-Celtic language, but can be interpreted as an intelligible inscription in Old Irish meaning “a blessing on the soul of L” (Forsyth 1995), presumably a good-luck charm of some sort for a person whose name began with L. Some of the other apparently incomprehensible Pictish inscriptions may be similar.

Another possibility may be that the undeciphered inscriptions are written in some condensed form, perhaps abbreviations or shortened forms of words that were readily understood at the time. Modern British coins carry the inscription “ELIZABETH II D G REG F D”. This is a shortened form of a Latin inscription, “ELIZABETH II DEI GRATIA REGINA FIDEI DEFENSOR”, meaning “Elizabeth the second, by the grace of god, queen and defender of the faith”. The personal name is fairly readily recognisable, but trying to reconstruct the full Latin inscription from the abbreviated version could be a challenge if the abbreviation conventions and the Latin language had been lost.

Another possibility is that the incomprehensible inscriptions were not intended to be read as a written script. There is a Pictish inscribed stone at Newton, Aberdeenshire, with an inscription carved in an otherwise unknown (and indecipherable) script, together with an ogham inscription along its edge. The ogham has been dated to the seventh or eighth century, and the main inscription is believed to be contemporary on the basis of the weathering. The main inscription resembles Irish majuscule script, and may have been carved by someone who was illiterate in that script (Laing & Laing 2001). Perhaps the carver, or the patron who commissioned the stone, thought the Irish symbols were beautiful or powerful or both, and carved them as an image rather than as written symbols with meaning. There are other examples of letters used in a way that does not convey a written message; for example, a seax (short sword) blade recovered from the River Thames was inscribed with the full 28-letter Old English runic alphabet. Presumably the runes were there for some purpose other than conveying a written message. Possibly the indecipherable Pictish ogham inscriptions were also using the ogham letters for some purpose other than writing a message.

The inscription on the Lunnasting stone contains many doubled letters. This may be consistent with the letters being used for some purpose other than writing a message. However, doubled letters are not unique to Pictish inscriptions, as English runic inscriptions sometimes contain doubled letters. For example, the Ruthwell Cross inscription contains several examples of words with doubled letters: almeittig; riicnae; gistoddu (Page 2003).

The reason for the presence of doubled letters in runic inscriptions is unknown (Page 2003, p.148). It may be pure chance, or it may reflect some tradition among the carvers of monument inscriptions, or some prosaic reason such as a simple mistake. If you find yourself mistakenly carving the letter you have just carved, you can’t rub out the mistake and correct it, and you can hardly go and make another stone monument and start all over again. It would be simpler just to finish carving the mistaken letter and then carry on with the rest of the inscription. Mistakes would be expected to be more common if the carver was working in an unfamiliar script, as may have been the case for Pictish carvers as the ogham script originated in Ireland. My thanks to Doug Tankard for providing a modern example of an incomprehensible inscription with doubled letters:

Copyright: Doug Tankard.

This is a towel manufactured in China and displaying the motto and crest of the English football team Arsenal. The motto should read ‘Victoria Concordia Crescit’, which is Latin and translates as ‘Victory comes from harmony’. The Chinese manufacturer, presumably (and quite reasonably) unfamiliar with both Latin and Arsenal Football Club, has written it as ‘Victory Contoral Crrhtty’, which contains a recognisable word (Victory) and two words that make no sense. Just imagine trying to reconstruct the language in use in 21st century England if this was the only surviving piece of evidence.

On the basis of the inscriptions, I would be cautious about concluding that Pictish was a unique non-Celtic language, although it may well have contained a non-Celtic component that distinguished Pictish from the Irish and Brittonic languages spoken elsewhere in Britain. Place names also provide a few snippets of evidence about the Pictish language; more on this in another post.

References
Forsyth K. The ogham-inscribed spindle-whorl from Buckquoy: evidence for the Irish language in pre-Viking Orkney? Proc Soc Antiq Scot 1995;125:677-696. Available online
Laing L, Laing J. The Picts and the Scots. Sutton, 2001, ISBN 0-7509-2873-5.
Page RI. An introduction to English runes. Boydell, 2003, ISBN 0-85115-946-X

To Defy a King, by Elizabeth Chadwick. Book review

2011-02-23T12:57:00.003Z

US: Sourcebooks 2011, ISBN 978-1-4022-5089-7, 508 pages.
UK: Sphere 2010, ISBN 978-1847442369, 550 pages.
Uncorrected advance review copy of the US edition kindly supplied by publisher, UK edition sourced independently.

Set in England in 1204-1218 during the turbulent reign of King John, To Defy a King tells the story of Mahelt Marshal, daughter of William Marshal, and her marriage to Hugh Bigod, heir to the Earl of Norfolk. All the main characters are historical figures.

Ten-year-old Mahelt Marshal is the beloved eldest daughter of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke and the greatest knight in England. Used to doing as she pleases and getting what she wants, Mahelt expects the same when she goes to live with the Bigod family, Earls of Norfolk, as the betrothed bride of eldest son Hugh Bigod. But the Bigods are less indulgent, and Mahelt finds herself having to navigate the tricky transition to adulthood at the same time as adapting to a different set of family values and loyalties. When the tyrannical King John turns against her father, Mahelt’s sense of security is severely undermined, and not even the growing love between her and Hugh can make her forget her fears for the Marshal family. As John becomes ever more cruel and unpredictable, the Bigods find their own loyalty tested to breaking point – and as England lurches towards civil war, Mahelt’s marriage and future happiness may be among the casualties.

Elizabeth Chadwick’s Marshal and Bigod novels are beginning to take on some of the character of a multi-generational family saga. John Marshal’s story was told in A Place Beyond Courage, and his son William Marshal’s in The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion. The Time of Singing (US title: For the King’s Favor) told the story of William Marshal’s colleague Roger Bigod and his wife Ida de Tosney, previously mistress to King Henry II. Now To Defy a King moves to the next generation, and brings the Marshal and Bigod storylines together with the marriage between Mahelt Marshal, daughter of William Marshal, and Hugh Bigod, son of Roger Bigod. Like the other Elizabeth Chadwick novels I have read, the heart of To Defy a King is in the relationships between the characters. Hugh and Mahelt’s romantic relationship forms the core of the story, shaped and influenced by a complex web of familial and other ties. The family relationships between Hugh and his father, between Mahelt and her father and brothers, between Mahelt and her family by marriage and between Hugh and his illegitimate royal half-brother William Longespee (son of Ida de Tosney by Henry II) interact to create a vivid, complex picture of the workings of medieval high society.

Readers with fond memories of Roger Bigod and Ida in the hopeful days of their marriage from The Time of Singing may be saddened to see them in To Defy a King. Gentle Ida has been worn down by constant loneliness and strain and now retreats into the background with her sewing. Mahelt, as vigorous and strong-willed as her great father – but, it has to be said, sadly lacking in his tact – is determined not to fade away as Ida has, but she will face a hard struggle to learn to assert herself without alienating her husband and her new family.

Although the novel covers the events that culminated in the signing of Magna Carta and the eventual French-allied rebellion against King John, most of the political and military events take place off-stage. Like The Time of Singing, To Defy a King focuses on the domestic lives of the characters, particularly Mahelt. Political upheavals in the wider world are experienced mainly through their personal effects, introducing tensions in the characters’ feelings, fortunes and relationships.

King John has long had a reputation as a Bad King, and in To Defy a King he thoroughly deserves it. Here he is not just a tyrant but almost a psychopath, obsessively inflicting hurt and humiliation just because he can, apparently regardless of the destructive consequences, and he is a disgusting sexual predator into the bargain. If this King John has a redeeming quality I missed it; even gentle Ida has difficulty finding excuses for his behaviour.

John’s half-brother William Longespee, the illegitimate son of Ida de Tosney by King Henry II before she married Roger Bigod, is a particularly interesting and complex secondary character. He has an uneasy relationship with his Bigod half-brothers, developing into an outright feud with Hugh at one stage, perhaps rooted in the same sense of insecurity as his love of fine clothes and his obsession with seeking glory on the battlefield. Longespee has it all – and never misses an opportunity to flaunt it – but only on John’s sufferance, and he knows it only too well.

A set of family trees at the front of the book will help readers new to the Marshals and Bigods keep track of the characters and the complex family relationships between them. At the back, an extensive Author’s Note explains the history underlying the novel and the (sometimes scant) historical sources, and there is an interesting interview with the author.

Third generation of Elizabeth Chadwick’s Marshal-Bigod family saga, exploring family and social relationships in medieval England through the marriage between Mahelt Marshal (daughter of William Marshal) and Hugh Bigod (son of Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk).

February recipe: Treacle tart

2011-02-21T23:58:00.003Z

Treacle tart is simple to make and delicious to eat, especially on a cold day. Comfort food for the fag-end of winter. It’s made with golden syrup (not black treacle), breadcrumbs and lemon.

Treacle Tart

Serves 4-6

Pastry
3 oz (approx 75 g) plain flour
3/4 oz (approx 20 g) butter
3/4 oz (approx 20 g) lard

Filling
4 oz (approx 100 g) golden syrup
1 oz (approx 25 g) breadcrumbs
Juice and rind of half a lemon

Grease a flan dish about 7 in (approx 18 cm) diameter.

Rub the butter and lard into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Mix with a small amount of water until it forms a soft dough. If too sticky, add a little more flour. If too dry and flaky, add a little more water.

(Or you can use ready-made shortcrust pastry if you prefer).

Roll out on a floured board, and line the flan dish with the pastry. Keep the pastry trimmings to make decorations.

In a small saucepan, mix the golden syrup, breadcrumbs, lemon rind and lemon juice. The easiest way to weigh out the golden syrup is to stand the pan on the scales and spoon syrup directly into the pan to the required weight. Two large tablespoons (15 ml spoons) of golden syrup is about right.

Warm the syrup mixture gently over a low heat until the syrup is liquid, and mix well.

Pour the syrup mixture into the pastry case. Roll out the spare pastry and use to make leaves or other decorative shapes, and arrange these on top of the tart.

Bake in a hot oven at about 200 C for 25-30 minutes until the filling is set and the pastry is golden.

Serve hot or cold, with cream, custard or ice cream.

If there is any left over, the tart will keep for three or four days at room temperature.

Rebellion, by James McGee. Book review

2011-02-16T13:47:00.003Z

Harper Collins, 2011. ISBN 978-0-00-732024-0. 529 pages. Uncorrected advance review copy supplied by publisher.

This historical thriller is set in London and Paris in the autumn of 1812, during Napoleon’s Russian campaign. The central character, Matthew Hawkwood, is fictional. Important secondary characters such as Eugene Vidocq (founder of the French Surete police force), Colquhoun Grant (British intelligence officer) and the main players in the attempted 1812 Paris coup are historical figures.

Ex-soldier and Bow Street Runner Matthew Hawkwood is as tough as they come and no stranger to intrigue and danger. When he is seconded to a mysterious department of the Home Office and sent on a clandestine mission to France, Hawkwood knows it will probably take all his experience and nerve to survive, let alone carry out his mission (when he finally finds out what it is – the secrecy is such that even Hawkwood is not told before setting off). Shipwreck on the French coast is just the start of his troubles, as he is drawn into a deadly conspiracy. Success could bring down Napoleon and end the war – but failure risks taking Hawkwood and his colleagues to the guillotine….

Rebellion is Book 4 in the Hawkwood series. I haven’t read Books 1-3, so I have no idea how Rebellion compares. It seemed to me to work as a stand-alone, although there may be subtleties relating to the previous books that I missed. The central character, Matthew Hawkwood, is a sort of early eighteenth-century James Bond (in Bond’s more macho incarnations; think Sean Connery rather than Roger Moore). Part soldier, part secret policeman, part spy, he is a tough, violent man in a tough, violent world. Hawkwood also has brains as well as brawn, which is just as well as the central conspiracy – an attempted coup d’etat against Napoleon – is a lot heavier on political intrigue than on action.

The first part of Rebellion is suitably action-packed, with a chase sequence through the hills of Portugal and then a stormy Channel crossing. The shift between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 is something of a jolt, and on first reading I found it hard to make any sense of (it turns out to be a cunning piece of authorial sleight of hand, explained about 100 pages later). After this adventurous beginning, the middle third of the book was a startling change of pace, slowing right down to provide a lengthy history lesson in conversation form as various characters explain the intricate ins and outs of French civilian and military politics to each other. This background is interesting stuff in its own right, and essential to follow what’s going on when the action starts up again, but readers who like their thrillers to be full of thrills and spills every few pages may find this section rather slow going. The pace starts to pick up again from about page 350 on, as the conspiracy and its aftermath play out.

I found Rebellion to be distinctly un-gripping. This surprised me, given the subject matter. The stakes could hardly be higher, and although I knew the outcome of the coup in advance (as, I am sure, does every reader the moment they look at the date), the how and why, not to mention the fate of the fictional characters, should offer plenty of scope for suspense. Perhaps it was because Hawkwood seemed to walk in to a ready-made conspiracy without actually having to do very much. The plotters have already made their plans and decided on their actions, and events are already in motion by the time Hawkwood appears on the scene. He just lends a bit of moral support and a helping hand, rather than driving events. As a result, Hawkwood is something of an outsider to the central plot, and I think this contributes to the uninvolving feel of the narrative. On the plus side, it’s a fast and easy read.

For me, the most appealing aspect of Rebellion was the presence of the historical figures Colquhoun Grant and Eugene Vidocq. Like Admiral Cochrane, these two men led lives more extraordinary than anything a novelist would dare to make up. Grant was one of Wellington’s Exploring Officers in the Peninsular War, riding reconnaissance missions deep behind enemy lines. Captured in Portugal, he escaped from custody and then promptly bluffed his way to Paris, where he established himself in the disguise of an American officer and proceeded to spy for British intelligence. Vidocq started out as a thug in the French criminal underworld, before going on to found the French Surete Nationale and then a private detective agency – a case of setting a thief to catch a thief if ever there was one. Beside these two colourful characters, everyone else in the novel rather fades into the background.

The attempted coup of 1812 really did happen, and many of its leading figures appear in Rebellion (Google if you want a potted history). Like Grant and Vidocq, the coup looks like a case of truth being stranger than fiction. Whether it contributed as much to undermining Napoleon as claimed in the novel, it can hardly have helped the Emperor’s cause, and it was fascinating to see the political side of the Napoleonic Wars as a change from the naval and military settings familiar in many historical novels. There is no Author’s Note in the advance review copy, and I hope there is one in the finished version. It would be most interesting to see how much of the conspiracy is fact and how much fiction (I suspect all the most unlikely elements are factual).

Political intrigue in Paris, as disaffected military officers attempt a coup d’etat against Napoleon in 1812.

Snowdrops

2011-02-14T23:58:00.004Z

The snowdrops are in flower again, heralding the approach of spring. A week ago they were in bud, and a couple of fine days last week seems to have brought them fully into flower. It never ceases to amaze me how such fragile-looking flowers can be so tough.

Guallauc ap Lleenauc

2011-02-04T22:56:00.004Z

Guallauc ap (son of) Lleenauc was an important king in late sixth-century Britain, and may have ruled the kingdom of Elmet. What do we know about him?

Evidence

Genealogies

[G]uallauc map Laenauc map Masguic clop map Ceneú map Coyl hen

--Harleian genealogies, available online

Gwalla6c m lyeynac m mar m coyl hen.

--Jesus College genealogy, available online

Both genealogies stop at Guallauc and do not list any descendants.

Welsh Triads

Three Adulterers' Horses of the Island of Britain:Fferlas [Grey Fetlock] horse of Dalldaf son of Cunin, and Gwelwgan Gohoewgein horse of Caradawg son of Gwallawc, and Gwrbrith [Spotted Dun] horse of Rahawd.

--Red Book of Hergest Triads, available online

Three Pillars of Battle of the Island of Britain:Dunawd son of Pabo Pillar of Britain, and Gwallawg son of Lleenawg, and Cynfelyn the Leprous

--Red Book of Hergest Triads, available online

Canu Taliesin
aeninat yn ygnat ac eluet.
--Canu Taliesin poem XXXVIII, ‘Song on Gwallawg ab Lleenawg’, available online

Translations vary. Skene’s translation, which you can find online at Mary Jones’s Celtic Literature Collective along with the original text quoted above, translates the line as follows:

He will judge all, the supreme man.With his will as a judge; and let him be benefited

--Canu Taliesin poem XXXVIII, ‘Song on Gwallawg ab Lleenawg’, translation available online

John Koch translates the phrase “ygnat ac eluet” as “Judge over Elmet”, and concludes that this is equivalent to being ruler or king of Elmet (Koch 1997, page xxiii, footnote 1). A king Ceretic of Elmet is recorded in Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae in the early seventh century (see earlier post on Ceretic of Elmet). No patronymic is recorded for him. A Caradawg son of Gwallawc (variant spellings of Ceretic ap Guallauc), with no territorial affiliation recorded, appears in one of the Welsh Triads (see above). On this basis, John Koch identifies Guallauc ap Lleenauc in the genealogies and Canu Taliesin as the father of Ceretic of Elmet.

Historia Brittonum

Adda, son of Ida, reigned eight years; Ethelric, son of Adda, reigned four years. Theodoric, son of Ida, reigned seven years. Freothwulf reigned six years. In whose time the kingdom of Kent, by the mission of Gregory, received baptism. Hussa reigned seven years. Against him fought four kings, Urien, and Ryderthen, and Guallauc, and Morcant. Theodoric fought bravely, together with his sons, against that Urien.

--Historia Brittonum, ch. 63, available online

Interpretation

Family
Both genealogies show Guallauc ap Lleenauc as a descendant of the founder figure Coel or Coyl Hen (Coel the Old)*. As such, he was related to Urien Rheged (more on Urien in another post) and to Peredur (possible king of York, see post on Peredur), whose genealogies also go back to Coel Hen.

Historia Brittonum lists Guallauc as one of the kings who fought with Urien Rheged against Hussa and/or Theodoric of Bernicia. This is consistent with identifying this Guallauc as the same individual as the Guallauc ap Lleenauc in the genealogies, who was related to Urien Rheged and who was evidently famous as a warrior since he was listed as one of the Three Pillars of Battle in the Triads. Alliance between two kings who were also relatives is reasonably plausible, although by no means a given, as kings from the same family could also be enemies.**

Urien is listed in the genealogies as the fifth generation from Coel Hen, while Guallauc ap Lleenauc is listed as the third or fourth (depending on the version). The difference in generation count is not inconsistent with Guallauc and Urien having been contemporaries. We know from Bede’s information about the Deiran royal family that Eadwine’s great-niece Hild (daughter of his nephew) was of a comparable age with two of his sons, and that his children from his later marriage were of comparable age with his grandson by a son of an earlier marriage, so generations could easily get mixed up.

Date
Neither Hussa nor Theodoric of Bernicia is securely dated, although they can both be assigned to the period between 559 (the end of the 12-year reign of Ida of Bernicia) and 593 (the beginning of the reign of Aethelferth of Bernicia). Both these book-end dates can be deduced from information given in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. Guallauc’s campaign with Urien Rheged against Hussa and/or Theodoric therefore dates to some time in the late sixth century.

Territory
The first element of the name Guallauc means ‘wall’, so Guallauc may mean something like ‘man of the wall’. This immediately calls to mind the two Roman walls in what is now northern England (Hadrian’s Wall) or southern Scotland (the Antonine Wall). This is a likely sort of location for the king mentioned in Historia Brittonum, who fought against kings of Bernicia located between the two Roman walls in what is now north-east England. However, the name may be unrelated to the Roman walls, and even if it did originate in the area, there is no reason why the name and/or its bearer(s) could not have moved to other regions.

John Koch translates a line in Taliesin’s poem about Guallauc ap Lleenauc to mean “…judge over Elmet…”, and concludes from this that he was a king of Elmet. Elmet was a kingdom located in what is now Yorkshire, east and south of modern Leeds, during the seventh century (see post on Elmet). If Guallauc was a king of Elmet, this does not preclude him from fighting a campaign in Bernicia in alliance with his relative Urien Rheged. Early medieval armies were capable of campaigning over considerable distances on occasion (see post on Early medieval armies: campaigning range), so there is no reason why Guallauc could not have led an army from Elmet to campaign in Bernicia if he wished. The same applies in reverse; it may be possible that Guallauc originally came from somewhere in what is now northern England or southern Scotland and became king of Elmet by inheritance, marriage or conquest.

Was Guallauc ap Lleenauc the father of Ceretic of Elmet?
Both the genealogies stop at Guallauc ap Lleenauc and do not mention any offspring. A Ceretic of Elmet is recorded in the early seventh century (see post on Ceretic of Elmet), but no patronymic is given for him.

One of the Welsh Triads refers to a Ceretic ap Guallauc. John Koch uses this Triad to connect Guallauc ap Lleenauc in the genealogies (no son named) with Ceretic of Elmet in Historia Brittonum (no father named), and thus to identify Guallauc ap Lleenauc as the father of Ceretic of Elmet (Koch 1997, page xxiii, footnote 1). If the translation of the line in Taliesin’s poem as ‘judge over Elmet’ is correct, then it seems reasonable that two rulers of the same territory, one dated to the late sixth century and one to the early seventh century, could be related and might well be father and son. It is, however, worth bearing in mind that this identification rests on an inferred connection between separate sources.

Part of John Koch’s argument for identifying Guallauc father of Ceretic in the Triad as identical with Guallauc ap Lleenauc in the genealogies and Guallauc ally of Urien in Historia Brittonum is that the name Guallauc is extremely rare and occurs only once. However, I can think of at least one other Guallauc, mentioned on the Pillar of Eliseg in the genealogy of an eighth-century king of Powys (see post on Powys: the early medieval kingdom). This Guoillac or Guallauc, father of Eliseg, occurs two generations after a king of Powys called Selyf map Cynan, who was killed at the Battle of Chester in around 616, and so Guoillac/Guallauc must date to the mid seventh century at earliest. He cannot possibly be the same individual as the Guallauc of Historia Brittonum who was fighting battles in north-east England in the late sixth century. So I think we can safely say there were at least two individuals called Guallauc, and if there were two, there may have been more.

I am therefore cautious about identifying Guallauc in Historia Brittonum and/or Guallauc ap Lleenauc as the father of Ceretic of Elmet. It is a plausible inference from the evidence available, and as far as I know there is nothing to the contrary. However, I would be wary of accepting it as an established fact.

References

Annales Cambriae, available online
Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.
Harleian genealogies, available online
Historia Brittonum ch. 63, available online
Jesus College genealogy, available online
Koch J. The Gododdin of Aneirin. Text and context from dark-age North Britain. University of Wales Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7083-1374-4.
Red Book of Hergest Triads, available online

*Yes, he may well be the origin of the Old King Cole of the nursery rhyme. No, absolutely nothing reliable is recorded about his cheerful disposition or his taste in music. Pity.

**For example, the battle of Arderydd was fought between two branches of the same family descended from Coel Hen (see post on the Battle of Arderydd).

January recipe: Beef and vegetable hot pot

2011-01-31T20:01:00.008Z

This is a rich, warming winter casserole. You can make it with any combination of root vegetables, according to taste and availability.

It takes a long time to cook, but it doesn’t need much attention so you can do something else while it simmers away quietly in the oven.

If you don’t like pearl barley, you can simply miss it out (reduce the water by about a third if you do this, as the barley absorbs water).

Beef and vegetable hot pot (serves 4)

1 lb (approx 450 g) shin of beef, skirt of beef, stewing steak or braising steak
3 ox (approx 75 g) streaky bacon, smoked if possible
Half an onion
1.5 lb (approx 700 g) root vegetables, e.g. carrots, parsnips, swede, turnip
1 large clove garlic
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) plain flour
1 pint (approx 550 ml) water
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) tomato puree
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) demerara sugar
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) dried rosemary or sage
2 oz (approx 50 g) pearl barley

Dumplings (makes 8)
4 oz (approx 125 g) self-raising flour
2 ox (approx 50 g) shredded suet
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) dried rosemary or sage, or other herbs of your choice

Chop the beef into approx 1 inch (approx 2 cm) cubes. Chop the bacon into small pieces.

Peel and chop the onion. Peel the vegetables and cut into pieces about half an inch (approx 1 cm) cubed.

Fry the beef and bacon in hot cooking oil in a heatproof casserole dish until browned.

Add the chopped onion and vegetables and fry gently until starting to colour. Peel and crush the garlic and add to the casserole.

Stir in the flour and mix well so that it coats the meat and vegetables. Pour in the water and bring to the boil, stirring as the sauce thickens.

Add the tomato puree, Worcestershire sauce, sugar, herbs and pearl barley. Season with salt and pepper. Mix well.

Remove from the heat, cover the casserole with a lid, and cook in a moderate oven at about 150 C for about 2 hours. You can cook it for longer if you like, anything up to 3 hours or so. Don’t try to cook it for a shorter time at a higher temperature. Stir from time to time and check that the barley hasn’t absorbed all the water. If it has, just add a bit more water – the sauce should be the consistency of thick gravy. I usually expect to check the casserole once or twice in 2 hours.

In the meantime, make the dumplings. Mix the flour, suet and herbs in a bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste. Add a few tablespoons of cold water to mix to a soft dough. If the dough is sticky, add a bit more flour, if it is floury and flaky, add a bit more water. Shape into eight balls about the size of a walnut, and add them to the casserole for the last 45 minutes or so of cooking time. (If you end up cooking the casserole for longer than you expected, the dumplings won’t mind a longer cooking time).

Serve with mashed potatoes, or jacket potatoes which you can cook in the oven at the same time as the casserole as they need about the same temperature and cooking time.

Can be frozen. Freeze without the dumplings.

Sparrowhawk visit

2011-01-29T17:33:00.003Z

Our garden is regularly visited by a female sparrowhawk. I rarely see her catch anything, although she has some considerable success with the large local population of wood pigeons if the little clusters of feathers that occasionally appear on the lawn are anything to go by.

She is usually a challenge to photograph, as a hunting sparrowhawk moves at a speed that makes greased lightning look sluggish. My normal view of her is a glimpse of a feathered blur erupting over the hedge, raising a flurry of blackbirds and finches and blue tits ahead of her like a cloud of dust from a broom, and then exiting equally precipitously over the other hedge, transit time measured in seconds.

This time, however, I happened to glance out of the window and there she was sitting on the patio, looking ruffled and somewhat miffed. My guess is that whatever she was chasing performed a handbrake turn round the corner of the house (at least one of the local blackbirds is a dab hand at this manoeuvre), and she failed to make the turn and crash-landed.

She was evidently unhurt, because after a few minutes she stretched her wings, shook her feathers back into order and flew away. But for once she sat still long enough for me to find my camera.

Isn't she beautiful?

The Queen of Last Hopes, by Susan Higginbotham. Book review

2011-01-16T21:05:00.001Z

Sourcebooks, 2011. ISBN . 332 pages. Uncorrected advance review copy kindly supplied by publisher.

Set in England, France and Scotland between 1444 and 1482, The Queen of Last Hopes tells the story of Margaret of Anjou., the French princess who became queen to Henry VI of England and found herself having to fight for his throne during the power struggle known to history as the Wars of the Roses. The novel covers Margaret’s life from her marriage to Henry until her death. All the major characters are historical figures.

Married at age fourteen to Henry VI of England to seal a peace treaty, Margaret of Anjou finds that although Henry is a good man – indeed, bordering on the saintly – this is not at all the same as being a good king. Simmering conflicts claim the life of Margaret’s friend, and then explode into outright war when Henry suffers a bout of mental illness. With a baby son to fight for as well as her husband and herself, Margaret has to take command, raising armies and on occasion marching with them. Margaret’s indomitable spirit carries her through war, exile, shipwreck and robbery – but her greatest personal cost is yet to come.

If you are familiar with the cruel and vengeful Margaret of Anjou made famous by one William Shakespeare (“O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!”), you are in for a surprise. The Queen of Last Hopes undertakes the commendable task of telling the story from Margaret’s side and mainly through her eyes, and presents a much more sympathetic Margaret than Shakespeare’s “…. stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless”. The reader can hardly fail to admire beautiful, unlucky Margaret, battling on with courage and perseverance literally to the last hope.

The Queen of Last Hopes is narrated in first person, mainly by Margaret. Although Margaret played an unusually active role in events, even she could not be everywhere at once, and some chapters are narrated in first person by other characters who were at the centre of the events described. In this way the novel can recount events directly even when Margaret was not present, avoiding the need to have her listen passively while someone else tells her about them, and can also show some other points of view. Each chapter is headed by the narrator’s name and the date, and you do need to pay attention to these to be clear about who is speaking (and the time frame, as sometimes the novel skips forward by several months or even years in one go).

The most successful of the secondary narrators for me was Henry (Hal) Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Like many of the English nobility he changed sides more than once as the fortune of war ebbed and flowed, and sometimes found himself with friends and family on the opposite side. His narrative touches on the conflicts and divided loyalties inherent in a civil war between two branches of the same family in a way that Margaret, who as a Frenchwoman is outside most of the kinship and obligation networks that criss-cross the English aristocracy, cannot. Hal’s affair with a down-to-earth London confectioner, Joan Hill, is a delightful story in itself, and adds a warmly human counterpoint to the high politics of the rest of the novel. It’s a reminder that while the aristocracy were busy trying to murder each other for a grab at the crown, the rest of the country was getting on with the workaday business of earning a living, regardless of who was calling himself king this week. Anne Neville’s relationship with Margaret’s son Edward is also refreshingly down-to earth, a political alliance that both parties are prepared to make the best of, and with the makings of a successful marriage.

Margaret’s narrative is framed from the perspective of Margaret looking back over her life from old age. Perhaps time and reflection have distanced her from her tumultuous youth and prime. Her narrative is remarkably matter of fact and the emotion is understated, even when she is recounting heartbreaking loss and hair’s breadth escapes. As de facto leader of the Lancastrian party, Margaret had to guard her feelings and put on a brave face in public, and there is a guarded quality about her narrative, almost as though she is maintaining a similar protective shield against the reader. The epilogue, narrated by her lady-in-waiting Katherine Vaux in extreme old age, is an especially poignant vignette. Amidst the celebrations of Henry VIII’s wedding to Catherine of Aragon, Katherine Vaux watches the beautiful, hopeful young foreign princess and, remembering Margaret of Anjou, fears for her future – fears that the reader, who knows how Catherine’s marriage worked out, knows to be all too justified.

A helpful Author’s Note summarises the underlying history and sets out the reasons for any divergences, and a useful list of characters at the front of the book helps to keep track of the large cast (probably especially helpful to readers who are new to the period). A list of Further Reading provides suggestions for interested readers who want to pursue the history in more depth.

Detailed, sympathetic portrait of Margaret of Anjou.

Ceretic of Elmet

2010-12-29T17:39:00.004Z

Ceretic was a king of the Brittonic kingdom of Elmet in the early seventh century. The likely location of the kingdom of Elmet was discussed in an earlier post. Ceretic is the only king of Elmet explicitly mentioned in the surviving sources, and it seems likely that he was the last. What do we know about him?

Evidence

Historia Brittonum

Edwin, son of Alla, reigned seventeen years, seized on Elmete, and Expelled Cerdic, its king.

--Historia Brittonum ch. 63, available online

Annales Cambriae

616 Ceredig died.
617 Edwin begins his reign.

--Annales Cambriae, available online

Assuming that the Ceredig who died in 616 is the Cerdic, king of Elmet, mentioned in Historia Brittonum, Annales Cambriae seems to have got the events the opposite way round. If the records refer to the same individual, it is possible that Edwin (Eadwine) expelled Ceredig/Cerdic before beginning his own reign, or perhaps as part of the same campaign so that events followed close on one another and their order later became confused.

Bede, Ecclesiastical History

Bede refers to a Brittonic king called Cerdic, ruling in around 614. This king Cerdic shares a name with the Ceredig recorded in Annales Cambriae at about the same time, and also with the king of Elmet recorded at about the same time in Historia Brittonum. Ceretic, Ceredig and Cerdic were variant spellings of each other. Ceretic was a popular name*, but three separate Ceretics, two of whom are explicitly called kings and the third of whom was considered important enough for his death to be recorded in the Annales, all contemporaries, seems rather unlikely. The simplest explanation is that all three sources refer to the same individual.

….a dream which her mother Breguswith had when Hild was an infant, during the time that her husband Hereric was living in banishment under the protection of the British king Cerdic, where he died of poison.

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book IV ch. 23.

I discussed Hereric in an earlier post. Bede’s story suggests that Hereric’s death is likely to have occurred around the time of Hild’s birth in about 614, so Ceretic was reigning at that time.

The Welsh Triads

Three Adulterers' Horses of the Island of Britain:Fferlas [Grey Fetlock] horse of Dalldaf son of Cunin, and Gwelwgan Gohoewgein horse of Caradawg son of Gwallawc, and Gwrbrith [Spotted Dun] horse of Rahawd.

--Red Book of Hergest Triads, available online

Caradawg is a variant spelling of Ceretic.

Genealogies

There is no patronymic for Ceretic of Elmet given in Bede, Historia Brittonum or Annales Cambriae. As far as I know, the Triad mentioning a Ceretic ap Guallauc does not give him a territorial association. I cannot find a likely candidate for Ceretic of Elmet in the Harleian, Jesus College or Men of the North genealogies listed on Keith Matthews’ website.

On the strength of the reference to Ceretic ap Guallauc in one of the Welsh Triads (see above), John Koch suggests that Ceretic of Elmet was the son of Guallauc ap Laenauc, who appears in the genealogies and in Canu Taliesin (Koch 1997, page xxiii, footnote 1). If this is the same Guallauc recorded as an ally of Urien Rheged in Historia Brittonum, he was active in the late sixth century. More about Guallauc in another post.

Interpretation

Age

Historia Brittonum is clear that Ceretic was ruling Elmet when Eadwine ruled Northumbria, and we know from Bede that Eadwine ruled from 617 to 633. Annales Cambriae says that Ceretic died in 616 (assuming this is the same Ceretic), which would imply that Ceretic was ruling Elmet at the beginning of Eadwine’s reign rather than the end. If he is the same as the king mentioned by Bede, he was ruling in 614. So we can reasonably conclude that Ceretic was an adult in 614-617.

If we take John Koch’s suggestion that Ceretic of Elmet was the son of Guallauc, then Ceretic’s father was leading armies in the late sixth century.

Ceretic could have been born as late as the late 590s, if he was born well into his (putative) father’s active life. This would place him in his late teens in 614, just about old enough to be a king. None of the sources mention any children, which would be consistent with Ceretic having been too young to have married or fathered children before the end of his reign. However, the sources available to us are very patchy and it is perfectly possible that Ceretic did have children and they were simply not considered important enough to be mentioned (as is very likely if they did not hold positions of political or ecclesiastical power).

Ceretic was probably born some time after 550 (550 would make him 64 years old in 614), otherwise he would have been getting too old to be an active ruler in 614-617. This would make him an adult at the time of his father’s campaigns in the late sixth century, and so it is slightly surprising that he is not mentioned even in passing, but I wouldn’t read too much into that.

On the whole, I would favour a birth date for Ceretic somewhere in the middle of the possible range, probably some time around 580 or so. This would make him too young to take a senior role in his father’s campaigns in the late sixth century, and he would be an adult in his thirties by the time we know he was ruling Elmet in 614-617.

Family

No children, wife or parents are recorded for Ceretic of Elmet, so his family background and connections are uncertain. If John Koch is correct that he was the son of Guallauc ap Laenauc, then his family was a branch of the ‘Men of the North’ and claimed descent from the founder figure Coel Hen. This would make Ceretic and his father relatives of Peredur (possible king of York, see post on Peredur) and Urien, king of Rheged. This is quite a likely familial association for someone who ruled a territory in part of modern Yorkshire.

If Ceretic of Elmet is the Caradawg ap Gwallawc of the Triad, then presumably he was associated with some famous incident of marital infidelity, since he is listed as one of the Three Adulterers. Make of that what you will. (Sometimes I wish the Triads were just a little less cryptic).

Politics

Assuming that Ceretic of Elmet is the same British king Ceretic mentioned by Bede, he had given refuge to Hereric of Deira. Since Bede says that Hereric was living under Ceretic’s protection, this indicates that Hereric’s presence was officially recognised and sanctioned by Ceretic. Hereric’s wife and at least one young daughter, possibly two, were also living with him at Ceretic’s court. This may suggest that Hereric had been there some time, long enough to establish a household, and/or that he felt sufficiently secure there to bring his family to live with him. If he had been on the run from a recent defeat in battle, say, or if he doubted Ceretic’s intentions, it is perhaps unlikely that his wife and baby daughter(s) would be with him. This is consistent with Ceretic having a friendly attitude towards Hereric, rather than one of hostility or resentment, though this is speculative.

If Ceretic was friendly towards Hereric of Deira, this may indicate personal friendship, kinship or a political alliance (or any combination thereof). Ceretic’s marriage and family ties are unknown, and he may have had connections with the Deiran royal family in general or Hereric in particular. Elmet and Deira were neighbouring territories and would be natural candidates to ally together against predatory neighbours. Aethelferth of Bernicia had annexed Deira some years earlier (see post on Dating the annexation of Deira), which may well be the reason that Hereric was living in banishment in Elmet in the first place. Ceretic may have been willing to shelter Hereric to honour an alliance. If Hereric was planning to make an attempt to reclaim Deira, Ceretic may have been prepared to offer help and support, either to honour an alliance, out of self-interest or both. Aethelferth had a long track record of military conquest, and if Ceretic feared Aethelferth’s intentions towards Elmet he may have hoped that an attack by Hereric would weaken Aethelferth and forestall an invasion of Elmet.

If Hereric and Ceretic were on friendly terms, this raises questions about Hereric’s death while under Ceretic’s protection. We know from Bede that Hereric’s uncle Eadwine, also in exile from Deira, was living on friendly terms at the court of King Raedwald of the East Angles at about the same time (616/617), and that Aethelferth of Bernicia, Eadwine’s deadly enemy, sent envoys to Raedwald offering him bribes if he would murder Eadwine and threats of war if he would not. Raedwald was swayed by Aethelferth’s arguments – Aethelferth was an extremely powerful king at the time, very probably the most powerful in England – and agreed to kill Eadwine, until he was talked out of it by his queen (Bede, Book II ch. 12). Perhaps something similar happened with Hereric and Ceretic in Elmet, except that Ceretic did not have a queen who persuaded him to change his mind. Many other possibilities come to mind: Hereric’s death may have been due to natural causes and mistakenly or maliciously attributed to poison; he may have been killed for some personal motive that had nothing whatever to do with his membership of the Deiran royal family or Ceretic’s political position; he may have been secretly assassinated on Aethelferth’s orders, or by a rival from his own family, without Ceretic’s knowledge or consent; he may have been killed by somebody to discredit Ceretic… the list is limited only by your imagination.

Hereric’s uncle Eadwine expelled and/or killed Ceretic a few years after Hereric’s death, according to Historia Brittonum. No motive is recorded. It may have been an act of vengeance for Hereric’s death, if Ceretic was believed to have been responsible or even if he had only failed to prevent it. If it was a straightforward land grab with no motive except gain, it is possible that Hereric’s death served as a convenient excuse, if one was needed.

Fate

Historia Brittonum says that Ceretic was expelled from his kingdom, Annales Cambriae says that he died in 616. Both may be true; if he was driven out of his kingdom, perhaps injured in battle, he could have died shortly afterwards in exile.

Ceretic does not appear in the genealogies, and none of the sources mention any children. This may indicate that he did not have children, or that none of them held a position of sufficient political or ecclesiastical importance to warrant a mention by the chroniclers. Either way, it suggests that if Ceretic had any children, they did not subsequently reclaim his kingdom.

References

Annales Cambriae, available online
Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.
Historia Brittonum ch. 63, available online
Koch J. The Gododdin of Aneirin. Text and context from dark-age North Britain. University of Wales Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7083-1374-4.

*The name Ceretic belonged to: Caratacus, the first-century British king who fought the Romans; Coroticus, a fifth-century king in northern Britain ticked off by St Patrick; Vortigern’s interpreter in Historia Brittonum; the eponymous founder of Ceredigion in what is now mid-Wales; Cerdic, the founder of the royal line of Wessex; Caradog, an eighth-century king of Gwynedd. And those are just the ones I can think of.