highlyeccentric: XKCD - citation needed (citation needed)
Welcome to 2008, the Year of the Thesis. You, O blog, will be sharing me this year with the Archbishop Wulfstan of York. What better way to introduce you to his magnificence than with a mutated medievalist meme?

The Rules, as handed down to me by JLJ:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) List 7 random/weird things about your favorite historical figure.
3) Tag seven more people at the end of your blog and link to theirs.
4) Let the person know they have been tagged by leaving a note on their blog.


The tag tree above me:
I was tagged by Jennifer Lynn Jordan who told us about Prester John
She was tagged by Michelle of Heavenfield who told us about St Oswald of Northumbria and who also has a breakdown of her side of the tree here.
She was tagged by Jonathan Jarrett (look, i spelt it right!), who waxed fannish about Count Borrell II of Barcelona.
He was tagged by Magistra et Mater, who first mutated the meme, and who wrote about Charlemagne.

Well, unless you're an Anglo-Saxonist, *any* information about the Archbishop Wulfstan is both weird and random, so let us start at the begining:

1. Wulfstan is best known as Archbishop of York, 1002-1023. *HOWEVER* he was also Bishop of London from 996 to 1002, and of Worcester from 1002 to 1016. There's this funny thing about Worcester and York- they tended to be held together, despite the fact that one was right up in the north and the other in the central-southern regions of Britain. Wulfstan himself inherited both from his predecessor, Ealdulf. According to Bethurum, Worcester was the wealthier and more important of the two, and probably supported York to some degree. Yet York was the Archbishopric, and it is as Archbishop of York that he is remembered.

2. Mind you, that *my* Wulfstan is remembered as York probably has something to do with the fact that Worcester has its own Wulfstan, St Wulfstan (II) of Worcester. A very boring man, I'm sure. To make things more confusing, *my* Wulfstan is Wulfstan I of Worcester but Wulfstan II of York. Wulfstan I of York seems to have been a bit of a dodgy character, but I don't really know much about him.

3. Wulfstan was a bloody impressive preacher with a superb command of the English language. He was noted for his translatory skill in English even during his time in London- we have a surviving letter in which the writer skives off translating stuff for Wulfstan (either into or out of English, hard to tell) on the grounds that Wulstan was much better at it. To add to that, some of his most thunderously eloquent eschatalogical homilies seem to have been written during this early period.
The whole attraction of Wulfstan, as far as I'm concerned, is his writing. I've only translated fragments here and there... But check out his famous Sermo Lupi, in anglo-saxon or in translation, here. Seriously, Hillsong would kill to have this bloke on staff:
EVERYTHING IS GOING TO HELL IN A HANDBASKET. The world is ending. The AntiChrist is coming. Everything is going to hell in a handbasket... and YOU ARE NOT GIVING ENOUGH MONEY TO THE CHURCH. Even the *PAGANS* give more money to their false gods than YOU give to ME... (Very loose paraphrase by me)

4. However, it seems that, unlike Hillsong, Wulfstan was *not* all about the cash takings at the end of the day. Jonathan Wilcox has a very interesting article in Townend (ed), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, entitled 'Wulfstan's Sermo Lupi ad Anglos as Political Performance: 16 Febuary 1014 and Beyond'. As it happens, Wulfstan was up to his neck in politics and intruige. The Wilcox article constructs a fantastic narrative, which I think I shall tell at some other time. There are battles and parliaments and schemes and betrayals and matrydoms and accidental deaths. For now, let it be said here that apparently said sermon is all about loyalty and betrayal and the decision to call back the exiled king AEthelred from Normandy. Wulfstan was then instrumental in drawing up the law code VIII AEthelred, as part of the restoration process.

5. Also, at the time he gave the Sermo Lupi, Wulfstan was the leading churchman in England, because the Archbishop of Canterbury had been kidnapped by Danes and pelted to death with axe handles and ox heads. How cool is that?

6. We have Wulfstan's own handwriting surviving. This is VERY VERY COOL, people. One day, I will get to touch the pages his hand touched... be still, my beating heart! It's also *useful*, because it's a clear sign of the authenticty of the document, and, if the notes are corrections to his own writings, gives us a fascinating window into the development of his thought.

7. According to Thomas N. Hall ('Wulfstan's Latin Sermons, in Townend (ed)), Wulfstan wrote drafts of his English sermons in Latin. This is curious. I wonder why a native english speaker would take sermon notes in Latin? Some of his sermons exist in both English and Latin, obviously for two different audiences.

~

ok, that was pretty incoherent... coming next time I do some actual work (as a reward): the exciting tale of the Witan of 1014!

Tagging!

I'd like to hear from:
Jeff Sypeck- who, if he's going to talk about Charlemagne, must find seven different odd things to those on Magistra's list.
Brandon Hawk
Dame Eleanor Hull
[livejournal.com profile] ajodasso, who has many dead-writer boyfriends she should DEFINITELY tell us about.
and also
Melanie Duckworth,
[livejournal.com profile] daiskmeliadorn
and [livejournal.com profile] niamh_sage,
the latter three of whom are respectfully requested to broaden the meme's scope as necessary and chose a medievalist-poet, religiously minded woman, and fairy or fairy-ologist, respectively. Or you could do something entirely different, whatever floats your boat.
highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (Default)
But I can't find any cake-hosting sites to upload to. So I guess I'll leave it for my family.

In other news... I have, today:

*Rode my bike, hired out Titanic for my brother (apparently it's the greatest movie he's ever seen. He spent the afternoon in his room with a DVD, a box of tissues and a bowl of popcorn. Go figure.) and 'The sisterhood of the travelling pants' for myself.
*Downloaded Awesome's thesis
*Made a cake
*Started work on manuscript details document for Cotton Nero A.i. Bethurum's introduction makes a LOT more sense after talking to Mrs Bacon and Awesome about manuscript stuff... helps too that Awesome pointed me at Cotton Nero A.i and told me what I was looking for.
*Started a whole new notebook for scribbling about Thesis. No more i-lost-the-page-where-i-wrote-that-down.
*Ascertained which homilies are in A.i, and that they differ from the standard archetype in Bethurum's MSS C and E. Now to find out what the OTHER archetype is, and if they match that. Interestingly, there are apparently corrections on some of those in A.i, in Wulfstan's own hand, which line up with the C/E tradition. This could be fun.
*Iced a cake, and only made TWICE as much icing as a need.
*Washed dishes.
*Defrosted monday's honey stir fry and, having figured out how to separate ONE chicken fillet from the clumps of them in mum's freezer, turned it into a delicious meat-filled honey soy stir fry, making this my first decent meat consumption (bacon pieces and one tin of tuna spread through a whole tuna bake don't count) since... last thursday. And I didn't even eat much of that. Feeling carnivorous now. Red meat pls?

Ye Gods.

Jan. 9th, 2008 01:22 am
highlyeccentric: A character from silentkimbly.livejournal.com, hiding under a lampshade (hiding)
I have never worked this much in my life.
Total of ten hours today, double shift with two hours off in the middle. My third double in four days. Yesterday was nice and calm but tonight was freshly shat from the devil's arsehole. Evil customers with their mega-large group bookings and rambunctious children. Spaghetti from one end of the verandah to the other.
I swear, next time the CMS descend on Roxanne on Glebe Point Road with our finely tuned carousing habits, large collection of BYO wines, extra people without warning, and the "kids table" who lurk around drinking for hours, I am leaving them as large a tip as I can afford, and an apology. Large group bookings suck.

On the other hand, all the other customers who had the misfortune to be around tonight were lovely and patient with our understaffed insanity; tables 36 and 37 were so sweet and highlarious, respectively, that I wanted to tip them. The guy on 37 was Norwegian, on a last night out with his Australian girlfriend before leaving the country. They got completely overlooked for nearly half an hour due to the chaos surrounding the group bookings, but nevertheless when I went out to offer them dessert and be all charming, they pulled out all stops to entertain me, insulting each other and clowing around and generally making the night worthwhile. Then, while their dessert was coming, he got up and wandered over to 36 and charmed the wits out of the middle aged ladies there. When I came back outside he was kissing one of them up the neck from shoulder to chin (apparently because she had expensive perfume on, or so his girlfriend would have me believe). 36 said they had a wonderful night- the food was delicious and the entertainment spectacular. When asked if they meant 37, or either of the two Evil Family Tables Of Doom, they assured us that all were equally entertaining and you couldn't get amusement like that if you paid for it. Once 36 were gone we turned up the music and started on the mammoth cleanup job, while 37 danced- first romantically, then some kind of frenetic disco-dancing, across our verandah. The guy cleared up their table for us- turned up in the bar where I was polishing glasses with his arms full of plates and glasses, and wouldn't hand them over to me, carried them right out the back and stacked them all neatly for the chefs. Customers like that deserve prizes. We gave them cookies, because that was what we had.

Speaking of which, Manic!Manager, a co-worker and I did the Nutbush across the verandah on New Years Eve. Would have to be one of the best NYEs I've ever spent, actually, which just goes to show you that my social life is non-existent.

Spent my break today- what little was left after i rang the Goblin, and before I had dinner- in the public library, finally starting my Anglo-Saxon translations for the summer. Remembered that I actually adore this stuff, and I felt somewhat more like myself again, after a month or so as hospitality-zombie. Then I got slammed in the face with tonight's shift. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

Driving home is tougher some nights than others. New Year's Day, when I finished at 10pm, was for some reason much, much harder than tonight, even though I finished at twenty past midnight. Either way, thank the good lord for museli bars and the Coyote Ugly soundtrack.
highlyeccentric: Me, in a costume viking helmet - captioned Not A Viking Helmet (not a viking)
Happy Christmas all :)1


***


1. Awesome gave this to me over the dinner table after seeing Beowulf, and commanded me to translate. Embarrassingly for all concerned, I didn't even get the joke.
highlyeccentric: Me, in a costume viking helmet - captioned Not A Viking Helmet (not a viking)
It is a fine old classical/medieval tradition to have your memory all sorted out with triggers, so that you can remember long speeches or texts easily. The Memory palace is an old trick for visualising your mind as a series of rooms and storage places.
If, on the other hand, you have a neatly catalogued and alphabetised mental filing cabinet, you might remember this post by Carl Pyrdum as either:
Monkey Butt-Trumpet
or, if you're a particularly neat person, Butt-Trumpet, Monkey.

Moving on to a different kind of memory, if you're wondering which of your dead relatives to pray first for, you could adopt the "spiritual lottery" method. Fr Nicholas has discovered something like a bingo apparatus to help make your prayer time simpler. I have a feeling I heard this via the Cranky Proffessor, but have lost the intermediary link.

While you're at it, you might want to pray for Michael Drout, who clearly treats his Anglo-Saxon literature class with too much levity. He thinks this is educational:

(In Yoda voice): Told you I did. Listen you did not. Now screwed we all shall be. There. I just showed you why natural languages don't use VSO order and summarized the Star Wars I-III.

The question is, can he beat my classmate of last year, who can read the sermons of Wulfstan in the voice of C3PO?

And to round off... a classic piece of Chaucer Blog goodness for those about to set off on the conference round in the northern hemisphere: Middle English Pickup lines.
If, for example, you hear Jennifer Lynn Jordan's paper at NEMSC you might say to her:
-Ich loved thy papere, but yt wolde looke much better yscattred across the floore of myn rentede dorme roome at dawne.
If you should meet a sexy scholar in your field, you might greet them thus:
-Ich notyce that myn demense and thyn do abutte. Wolde yt plese thee to consolidate ovre powere-base in the midlands?

good luck and happy holidays :)
highlyeccentric: Me, in a costume viking helmet - captioned Not A Viking Helmet (not a viking)
So I'm finally Doing Things again. At the last minute, as per usual. Scholarship application due in on friday, Awesome told me off for not getting her help on it earlier, several versions are now kicking around and being edited by different people, and I am generally scared. This putting-down-on-paper all my silly daydreams of being Academically Awesome, and not only having to believe it myself but also convince someone ELSE of it, this is weird and disconcerting.

Awesome gave me instructions to use all kinds of "buzzwords", like the awful one in the title of this entry. This causes me to reflect. Here's me trying to convince the arts faculty that my crush on Wulfstan has the potential to be "cutting edge".
Me. "Cutting Edge".

Yeah, I'm cutting edge all right. The cutting edge of a very rusty old sword.
highlyeccentric: Me, in a costume viking helmet - captioned Not A Viking Helmet (not a viking)
So, [livejournal.com profile] goblinpaladin and I set out, along with Awesome, Pixie and other most excellent members of Old English Reading Group (*waves* greetings Em, Hilbert), to see the much-bemoaned Zemekis/Gaiman/Avery movie that everyone has been going on about for the last month. Thanks to Richard Nokes, we had advance warning: this movie is aimed at people as dumb as Zemekis et al seem to think Anglo-Saxons were.
If you want proper reviews, check out the links I just posted- they take you to Dr Noke's comprehensive Beowulf-bashing carnival posts. I also recommend Gary Kamia's review, quoted by Dr Virago, from which the salient point is that "Beowulf" doesn't fail because it changes the story: It fails because it is so busy juicing up the story that it does not create a mythical universe. It seizes upon an ancient tale, whose invisible roots run deep into our psyches, and uses it to construct a shiny, plastic entertainment..

After seeing Beowulf, I feel all edumacated
I learnt LOTS of things. *nods*

*Fifth-century Danes LOOK like characters from Shrek and DRESS, but not consistently, like badly organised Romans.
*For some reason, unlike Romans, fith-century Danes haven't figured out that it is a good idea to wear a tunic under your chainmail. Thus, we get Beowulf Nudity. Presumably the fact that they haven't mastered the concept of under-tunics is responsible for Beowulf's shiny, nicely-waxed and oiled body (you'd think, after five days at sea, he'd be a bit stubbly, but no...). Can't have chest hair getting caught in your armour. No explanation has yet been offered for the lack of visible chafing as a result of wearing chainmail in a storm without a tunic.
*Faced with a group of Geats, you can tell which one the hero is, because he will look marginally less wooden than all of the others. He'll make up for it with wooden dialogue, though.
*Fifth-century Danish women are treated as chattel (please, someone send Gaiman a copy of Vicious Vikings, before Odd and the Frost Giants goes to print...).
*Also, unlike their men, fifth-century Danish women seem to be blessed with the amazing ability to get more realistic-looking as they get older.
*Only Evil, Slimy People advocate Christianity.
*Anglo-Saxons and/or Danes are all about the beer and violence and sex. (well... the first two, maybe. and i guess the third doesn't get written down much by monks... But, y'know, they were ALSO about honour and family and poetry and eloquence and stuff like that.)
*If, by some miracle of cinematic license, you should have a Norman stone mot and bailey in fifth-century Denmark, the sheer friction of anachronism will cause it to catch alight at the slightest provocation.

The dragon-fight was better than the one in Harry Potter Four, though.
And everyone note that lack of horned helmets. Points to them.

So what has Beowulf done for YOU lately?

I, at least, got something useful out of this... as I was polishing knives tonight, a happily tipsy couple come up to the till to pay their bill. They were debating whether or not to see the movie that had planned to see. My supervisor asked them what they were going to see.
Beee-owh-wolf, they informed us. Supervisor asked what it was about, and they seemed to have no idea. Should they see it or shouldn't they? Dither, dither.
I decided this was my time to step in and tell them they should DEFINITELY see something else. They seemed to like this advice, and gave us a nice credit card tip in return.
highlyeccentric: Me, in a costume viking helmet - captioned Not A Viking Helmet (not a viking)
I'm sure I've rhapsodised about Early Manuscripts At Oxford University before, but let me just state again the absolute awesomeness of that collection. Assorted MSS from seven Oxford college libraries, available for free in digital facsimile form.

Meanwhile, News For Medievalists gives us the excellent news that Cambridge will soon be following suit, having teamed up with tech-heads from Stanford University to put 538 manuscripts from Parker Library, Corpus Christi College online. The collection ranges from the 6th to the 16th centuries and apparently includes one quarter of all surviving Old English manuscripts.

It won't be available for free, but will have to be subscribed to.1 So Oxford win Internet Brownies for putting theirs up for free; on the other hand, Cambridge are putting far more up. You win some, you lose some.

ed: I tell a lie. Awesome just sent me the link. The site is up in beta-release and subscription is free. She is thoroughly impressed with the quality of the resolutions and recommends the Red Book of Darley as 'exceptionally important'.

~

Speaking of Anglo-Saxonists and the internet, Jeff Sypeck of Quid Plura asserts that Compared to other medievalists, Anglo-Saxonists are numerous on the Web, but then they’ve long been a forward-looking bunch. Now, this description of our noble discipline quite surprised me. I'm rather more used to Awesome's summary, which went something like this: "Now, Medieval Studies is an inherantly conservative discipline, and Anglo-Saxonists are the most conservative of the lot". Still, apparently Anglo-Saxonism has a respectable history on the internet, and Jeff offers some suggestions as to how that came to be.

Some things he didn't mention, however, are that Beowulf has now established itself at the point in the public concious where it becomes a LOLCAT joke, or that there is an Anglo-Saxon language Wikipedia.
Not only are Anglo-Saxonists putting the Internet to use in their best interests... the Internet is putting Anglo-Saxon to use in its own interests (which are, patently, the creation of memes and obscure jokes).

Bored?

Nov. 30th, 2007 03:43 pm
highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (grammar time)
Anyone bored out of their brain this (southern) summer? [livejournal.com profile] goblinpaladin and I are going to be working through Peter Baker's Electronic Introduction To Old English if you want to join us. B is doing it for the first time, because he is a NERD and doesn't fancy waiting the twelve months or so before he can take the course at uni. I'm doing it for the grammar review.
Baker's online anthology and Old English Aerobics provide their own answers, so you can pick up a feel for the language even if you lack anglo-saxonists in your vicinity. There will be both translation and grammar involved. We won't badger you, unless you ask us to, about how much you have or haven't done. Plan is, we all help each other out according to our various skill levels, and if everyone learns something then we consider it a success.

So, if you've always wanted to learn some AS but never had the time, or if in fact you never wanted to learn it but you are so bored you'll try anything right now, or you've learnt it before and are bored enough to want to review it, come and join us in a nerdy adventure.

ed: i just noticed the number of times I used the word "bored" in this entry. Rest assured Anglo-Saxon is not boring. It is in fact the BEST possible cure for boredom.
highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (chocolate!)
Here are some photos of cool things which I possess:

A personal tribute to LOLCATS made by [livejournal.com profile] phrasemuffin .
photo! )
I'll put up a photo of the lovely XKCD shirt he bought me when I get a chance to take one.

This Dad found in an old National Geographic magazine, and left on my dressing table for me. It lurked there for nearly a year, unopened, as I shoved it aside every time I came home. When I did finally open it, I squeed. It lived on my wardrobe door at college this year, and is now on my wall at home.
hehe, nerd! )

And what's more, I have a t-shirt from Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog. His store is cool and has many many nerdy t-shirts. I'm fond of the one which reads "CHAUCER: because Shakespeare was too easy". Although I didn't find Chaucer all that interesting, or his language that difficult, when we read him this semester. (The content is another matter. What the hell was he smoking when he wrote the House of Fame?) First person to design and sell a t-shirt reading "CYNEWULF: Because Chaucer is too mainstream" has my eternal adoration.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

A rather unflattering photo, all things considered. But such an awesome shirt. I wore it to Anglo-Saxon class religiously. Needless to say, I will be wearing it to Beowulf next week.
highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (grammar time)
Well... etymology. And possibly not naked. But still, a girl can dream, right?

Throughout his sermons Wulfstan demonstrates not only an enthusiasm for etymology in a fashion typical of many medieval writers, but a particular fondness for defining technical terms by comparing Greek and Latin synonyms or Latin and English synonyms.
-Thomas N. Hall, "Wulfstan's Latin Sermons", in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. Matthew Townend (Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2004), pp 93-140 (pp 105-6).


I knew I loved this man for a reason.
(Wulfstan, that is. Not Thomas Hall, who is nevertheless pretty cool.)
highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (grammar time)

Angelina Jolie is doing philology!!! Angelina Jolie is doing philology naked!!!

(Does it get any better than that?)


Thus asks Michael Drout, in his personal review of the new Beowulf movie. Indeed, this is a question worth asking. Is anything hotter than naked philology? I think not.

[profile] iremos, my german-american lover, had an icon when I first met her, a most excellent icon which ordered its viewers to WRITE NAKED. Which is pretty hot, but not as hot as philology.
Your injunction for this week: DO PHILOLOGY NAKED (but please, for the love of Bede, don't post photos of it on the internet).
highlyeccentric: Me, in a costume viking helmet - captioned Not A Viking Helmet (not a viking)
Last semester, as part of Awesome's Anglo-Saxon course on Devils and Demons, we had to translate the passage introducing Grendel, and his arrival at Hereot. Anglo-Saxon poetry and I have never got along particularly well, and Beowulf in particular i tend to make a dog's breakfast of.
So there I was, late on a Wednesday night, sitting at my college desk, wishing I was doing anything else rather than translate Beowulf (sermons? penitentials? anything?). All around me, as will happen on a Wednesday night in college, there seemed to be a riot going on. Possibly a Viking raid? Someone was definitely being ravaged. There was loud music, incoherent shouting and people vomiting in the bathrooms. YAY.

So you can understand that I was inclined to sympathise with poor ole Grendel, who, according to my sloppy translation, endured a difficult period, because every day he heard mirth loud in the hall; there was the sound of the harp, the poet's clear song.

Hal Duncan, who is not a medievalist at all but still has a less than spectacular opinion of the movie ("a fluffy confection"), describes Grendel's attack on Hereot as "the first instance of music criticism in recorded history".

Meanwhile, I'm not alone in sympathising with Grendel's neighbour-trouble. Nina, at Blog-Her, who attended Richard Nokes' showing of Beowulf, introduces her review of the movie with this reflection:

We live across the street from two sets of very noisy neighbors. They break the golden rule of neighborly politeness by turning their bass up to eleven, which doesn't sit well with Mike and I. Mike, especially, gets upset whenever they come bumping up to their house at 2am. "I give them ten minutes," he says, "and then I'm calling the police."

Eventually, he's going to turn into a shriveled recluse, covering his pounding ears to protect himself from the noise of those around them. Not unlike Grendel, the demon spawn of a succubus and King Hrothgar of the Danes.


So, folks. Grendel is a likeable fellow, if in need of better anger management techniques. Is he man or monster? What exactly does "the kin of Cain" mean, anyway? So far as I can tell from my botchy translation, it's possible that Grendel, descendant of Cain, is a man banished to live among monsters; or equally possible that monsters, "who made war with God a long time", are collectively the descendants of the banished Cain, including Grendel. I don't really think that kind of distinction is helpful though- the contents of the Beowulf Manuscript (Beowulf, St Christopher- dog-headed saint- The Wonders of the East- list of crazy monsters- Alexander's Letter to Aristotole- or is it Aristotle's to Alexander?- and, interestingly, the Judith poem) seem to be collected with an eye to the relationships between man and monster. A monster is someone who is like, but crucially unlike, 'true' humans. Grendel, for example, is outside of the dryht, the warrior community which defines a hero's existence. He doesn't understand or operate by the rules of honour, fued and vengance. (Interestingly, his mother does operate within these structures, so her monstrosity must lie somewhere else.)
Anyway. That's enough meandering about monsters and Beowulf, particularly from Highly-who-hasn't-read-the-whole-poem-yet. I can talk about St Christopher at length later on, if you like.

The cheery folks at Riddle 47 are hosting a Grendel-drawing project, in the interests of investigating different people's interpretations of the man-monster. Leslie Doon has posted her sketch, with commentary, on the blog for all to see.
highlyeccentric: Me, in a costume viking helmet - captioned Not A Viking Helmet (not a viking)

So, I went a bit burko this semester. One of the reasons for this was the essay I wrote on AElfric's homily on Judith.1 It was less fun than Anglo-Saxon essays usually are, and [livejournal.com profile] goblinpaladin and the Wife had to nurse me through it.
As some warped sort of celebration, I decided to go to [livejournal.com profile] iremos's Halloween party dressed as Judith herself.

Accordingly, I decked myself out with gold and purple, although more of the latter than the former. AElfric assures us that all of this dressing-up was for no galnesse, a lovely word which means anything from silliness to lust. I can assure you that I was not at all lustful, although possibly those looking at me were (snot my fault the dress has a slit higher than an anglo-catholic liturgy). AElfric may have Disapproved. Possibly my intention to wear this dress was responsible for my fevered dreams about AElfrician chastity.

you know you've spent too much time studying, when you go to parties dressed as your essays )


also featuring in this photo are [livejournal.com profile] goblinpaladin and [livejournal.com profile] iremos, both looking rather silly and unaware that the photo was being taken.
I did have a balloon, which i decorated ineptly as the Head of Holofernes, but I lost him.

1. That link will take you to S.D. Lee's online edition. Much good may it do you, since no translation is available. Awesome, I believe, is working on one.

highlyeccentric: XKCD - citation needed (citation needed)
Today, O Blog of Mine, you are treated to an exceedingly rare (unique, I devoutly hope) specimen: a Highly essay which is one week late.

Well, the last part of said essay, since the entire thing was long and boring:


highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (waltrot)
Yesterday was the anniversary of the St Brice's Day Massacre, on which day King Æthelred the-later-unrædig1 must have been following some excellent advice for once, since he managed to slaughter assorted Danes. If you like gory news to brighten up your day, check out Executed Today for daily updates on famous and infamous executed persons.

If saints are more your style, Carl Pyrdum has a special entry on St Brice and talking medieval babies.

What's more, you have only a month and a bit left of 2007 in which to follow [livejournal.com profile] thiel's Year With The Saints. Right through 2007, he has celebrated a saint every day. Yesterday, sadly, it was not St Brice but the amusingly named St Homobonus.

1. Which means "ill advised" not unprepared. Although I did find a few "readiness, promptness, preparedness" references in my dictionary when i was looking at all the ræd root words.
highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (Default)
Says [livejournal.com profile] goblinpaladin, quoting my previous entry: "It is a practical precaution against one of the realities of Anglo-Saxon life: another, stronger charm practitioner might easily steal your bees. Be warned."

^I have an image of two beekeepers both hurling dirt over a group of bees and chanting the charm in louder and louder voices, getting very angry.

And now I want to set this up as impromptu street theatre somewhere on campus in O-Week to get people into Old Englisc.

Yes, yes. So do I, very much. Or possibly for EMLAC day next year?
Although, were would we get a group of bees?
highlyeccentric: Me, in a costume viking helmet - captioned Not A Viking Helmet (not a viking)

It seems that Jennifer Lyn Jordan only has to put up a Weird Medieval Animal, and everyone's talking about it. Today, she introduces us to the bee.
Bees are the smallest of birds. They are born from the bodies of oxen, or from the decaying flesh of slaughtered calves; worms form in the flesh and then turn into bees. Bees live in community, choose the most noble among them as king, have wars, and make honey. Their laws are based on custom, but the king does not enforce the law; rather the lawbreakers punish themselves by stinging themselves to death. Bees are afraid of smoke and are excited by noise. Each has its own duty: guarding the food supply, watching for rain, collecting dew to make honey, and making wax from flowers.
Bees are pretty cool, in short. What's more, they're drunkards. Is it any wonder my Anglo-Saxons like them so much? A tightly-knit community serving a single Queen (Anglo-Saxons knew that the lead bee was female), every member with his defined role, and a love of grog to boot! Sounds exactly like life in Anglo-Saxon England to me.

Dr Nokes sums this up with the following:
No sugar cane, no chocolate, no vanilla ... heck, not even any tobacco! It seems that the only material pleasures left would be sex, wine, salted pork, and honey. Combine the three, and you've got Heorot Hall on a weekend.
(That was four, Dr Nokes.)

[livejournal.com profile] goblinpaladin has a post up about medievalism and the procrasinatory value of medievalist blogs. In his footnote, he offers a briefcomment on reading bestiary entries like this:
Not that accuracy is what people are looking for in the middle ages. Allegory, and reading the natural world to find out God's will, is what is important. The important difference in the shift from the Greek Physiologus through Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae and to the later Bestiaries is that the allegorical features become emphasised less and less. Even so, the focus is still on what we 'know' animals do, and less on going out and looking at them. So to comment on the 'modern accuracy' of a bestiary is to completely miss the point.
The Bee doesn't turn up in the AS physiologus at all (which isn't surprising, as it only has three entries). Nevertheless, I wonder what the allegory in the Bee is? Is it something about community or social structure? I think it ought to be.

Dr Nokes also put up a link to the Old English Bee Charm, translated by Karl Young. As I'm supposed to be writing an essay on charms at the moment, I figure it almost counts as work if I blog about this one.

Take earth with your right hand and throw it under your right foot, saying:

I've got it,     I've found it:
Lo, earth     masters all creatures,
it masters evil,     it masters deceit,
it masters humanity's     greedy tongue.

Throw light soil over them [the bees] as they swarm, saying:

Sit, wise women,     settle on earth:
never in fear     fly to the woods.
Please be mindful     of my welfare
as all men are     of food and land.


Young talks about the importance of earth in the charm: The practice of throwing sand or light soil over bees to get them to settle was common among early beekeepers throughout northern Europe. It has been suggested that this confuses their flight pattern, causing them to land. More important, in the magical spirit in which a performance of this sort took place, is that the scatter of soil over the bees defines their earth or home - they may leave gather pollen, but should always return to the precinct defined by the thrown earth.
In researching this essay, I've noticed that earth seems play an important role in a lot of the charms. There is the Land Ceremonies Charm, which is designed to improve the fertility of a field, and involves rituals performed over extracted sods and over the field as a whole. In that case, liturgical and biblical references are used to recall the field to its ordained purpose of productivity.
On the other hand, James B. Spamer's aricle "The Old English Bee Charm"1 referred me to the metrical charm against Water Elf Disease, a non-peer reviewed translation of which I have located here, at The People's Front of Judea. Here, some form of injury or illness (possibly chicken pox? the translation here makes it look like a battle wound, though) is treated by the establishment of a sympathetic relationship with the earth. For those not familiar with the concept, magical sympathy is the principle behind voodoo dolls. A link is established between the subject of the ritual and the item used, and that similarity can be used to manipulate the subject. In the case of a voodoo doll, what its done to the poppet happens to the subject. I get the impression with Anglo-Saxon charms, however, that the link itself is the method of control. In this case, by the pronouncement of the charm, the wound is controlled and forced into a sympathetic relationship with the earth.
The same principle does not seem to be at work in the Bee Charm. Here, earth seems to be associated with ownership (although it's worth asking who is the owner and who the owned- the man or the earth?). This earth is earth in a specific sense, as in the Land Ceremonies Charm- a particular farmer's earth, a particular domain.

The other interesting thing about the Bee Charm is what it tells us about the uses of charms in the Anglo-Saxon period. It was once thought that this charm was intended to protect from a bee-swarm. Rather, it is a precaution against loss of a swarm- a swarming hive could easily leave the beekeeper's lands, settle elsewhere (possibly in another beekeeper's territory) and lose him his livelihood. Fines for bee-theft were notably high in Anglo-Saxon England, so we know that this was a real problem.2
The charm comes in two parts; according to Spamer, it used to be studied as two separate charms which had come to be connected over time. However, he (rightly, as far as I can tell) argues that the charm is a cohesive whole, consisting of a charm against bee-theft, and a second addressed to the bees, asking them to stay.
This charm is to be pronounced by the beekeeper himself, since it begins with  I've got it,     I've found it. It also shows the beekeeper involved in a serious struggle against another charm practitioner, probably another beekeeper. Our beekeeper declares that earth (possession)  masters humanity's     greedy tongue. This almost certainly refers to another man's charm. Note that the spoken word is understood to affect events powerfully. Our practitioner has to counter it with both words and rituals of possession.
What we have here is a charm for use, not by a specially trained or otherwise elect magic practitioner (unless beekeepers were such people- possible, but a bit of a long bow I feel), but by a common tradesman. What's more, the charm is areligious- there is no apparent appeal to deity at all, unless earth or bees are deities. It is a practical precaution against one of the realities of Anglo-Saxon life: another, stronger charm practitioner might easily steal your bees. Be warned.


1.James B. Spamer, "The Old English Bee Charm", The Journal of Indo-European Studies 2, 1979 pp 279-294.
2. Spamer, p. 282.

highlyeccentric: Me, in a costume viking helmet - captioned Not A Viking Helmet (not a viking)
To the modern critical mind it is not only most convenient to study Anglo-Saxon England positively in the light of a Christian state, it becomes almost possible, for the period, to dispense with paganism altogether. For if thereis no self-documentation from the pre-Christian ambit, how can its identity or influence be seriously asserted? What is pagan almost becomes what we are reluctant to let Christianity take the credit for...
- Bill Griffiths, Aspects of Anglo Saxon Magic, (Anglo Saxon Books: Frithgarth, England, 1996), p. 77

YAY!
this is exactly what i think, about all medieval christianity. We want to draw our own dogmatic lines- this is christian, this is not- and somehow expect that this explains a medieval belief system.
highlyeccentric: Sign on Little Queen St - One Way both directions (waltrot)
Apparently Homeland Security Cheif Michael Chertoff recently promised that his discourse would be unambiguously clear, in Anglo-Saxon prose.
What exactly does this mean? Acephalous dissects Chertoff's word choice to find out. Subsequently, and somewhat more tolerantly, Dr Nokes applies George Orwell to the situation.

Meanwhile, J.J. Cohen offers suggestions on how to raise a medievalist.

For some amusement, Dr Nokes offers "Stuck In the Mead Hall", to the tune of the old Stealer's Wheel song.
I've got Celts to the left of me
A Saxon on my right, here I am
Stuck in the mead hall with you
I sent this to my anglo-saxonist mailing list. I believe at least one unsuspecting housecat was subjected to a rendition thereof. That poor cat- first it gets scared off the couch by its owner's distress at my footnote punctuation, then I cause bad filk songs to be sung at it.

Here's a sight you don't see every day: 700 year old church on the back of a truck.

Sydney University are currently ripping up one of the main streets on campus and moving a lot of dirt around in apparently random fashion. Last week [livejournal.com profile] mangelbojangel and his crazy theatrical friends sat out on the main road proper for an hour and a half and watched them dismantle a pedestrian overpass. As you do at 4 in the morning. Apparently it was very boring.
School renovations in Twyford, England, are rather more interesting. News via the Cranky Professor.

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