Shelley's Heart

After he drowned in July of 1822, Percy Bysshe Shelley was cremated on a beach near the city of Viraggio.  His heart was snatched from the pyre by his friend and fellow Romantic Edward John Trelawney, and was retained by his second wife, Mary Shelley, until her death in 1851.  The heart of Shelley is currently interred with the body of their only surviving child, Sir Percy Florence Shelley.

Another interesting disembodied heart is that of the French Dauphin, son of Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI...but that's another story altogether.

Cold Case

Word on the street has it that Amelia Earhart's last days may finally emerge from the mists of time...the final resting place of this distinguished "aviatrix" who went missing on July 2, 1937 during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe has long been debated, but now new evidence suggests that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made an emergency landing on an uninhabited South Pacific island called Nikumaroro.

What evidence, you ask?  A finger bone...yes, that's all...still, phalanges are quite important things to be finding on uninhabited South Pacific islands, and so scientists, or discoverers, or whoever, are shipping the bone off as we speak to have it tested in some Oklahoma lab.

Anyway, here's a news article.  Keep checking back as the results come in.

And I seriously hope she wasn't eaten alive by giant crabs.

William Tell

Remember William Tell?  Who shot an apple off of his son's head?

What was up with that, anyway?

I checked the Wikipedia page and it appears to be entirely mythological (despite oddly specific dates being given...apparently the apple incident was said to have occurred on 18 November 1307, for instance).  William Tell, the legend goes, was a man from what is today Switzerland who defied a tyrant, was really good at archery, and became a vigilante assassin type.  His son's name was Walter.

For those who study these sorts of things, the story of William Tell has connections with similar Germanic, Danish, and Norse oral traditions (wonderfully, there is another Wikipedia page entitled "Shooting an apple off one's child's head" that will tell you all about it).  I suppose Americans these days aren't too interested in Mr. Tell and Son, but the Germans, French, and Swiss apparently find the story quite gripping...there are a lot of operas, essays, and insurrections held in the name of William Tell from these parts, it would appear.  One American was quite inspired by the Tell saga, though: his name was John Wilkes Booth, and this might explain the lack of popularity that William Tell experiences in my neck of the woods today.

Hibernation

While sitting at work, I had a sudden fragmented memory of learning that Medieval life wasn't nearly so bad as everyone makes it out to be...well except for the plagues...and that in fact, all winter long, people would just eat, sleep, and laze about until it came time to get working (planting, invading) once again.

A bit of research led me to QI with Stephen Fry as the source of this information, and some further digging gave me this article, both of which discuss human "hibernation."  True, it doesn't sound as festive as Mr Fry implied - but then, what does? - loads of cattle indoors, corpses in the rafters, and crusts of bread for dinner is hardly the mead-drinking, story-telling, wood-carving free-for-all I was hoping for...but the essentials seem similar, and apparently, plausible.

However, I can't seem to find much about Middle Ages chillaxing that hasn't been written by Graham Robb...and I do see a fair amount that seems to imply people weren't just lying around.  So maybe this is just a crackpot theory.  Still, perhaps we ought to test it out...who wants to hang out for the next five months with me in the North End?  I've got cannoli, films, Bananagrams, and several shelves of books, there's a liquor store just around the corner.

Hoard

Excuse me while I go grab my metal detector...

(Oh, and which way to the nearest field?)

Gar-what?

Garum: fermented fish sauce.

Yep, my three favorite things all rolled up into one...oh wait.

This entry kind of goes along with that Legionnaire Salad a few entries down...but I'm going to file it under history rather than recipes, because I highly doubt that any of you are going to give the old garum fish sauce a try over the weekend.  For one thing, although apparently the flavor of the finished sauce was mild, the production process reeked to high heaven.  And that's saying something, in a culture like Rome's.

Oh, did I not mention that this is an ancient Roman predilection?  Well, technically it's Greek - but the Romans stole it from the Greeks like they did just about everything else, and so we're calling it Roman like we do the rest of it.

So basically (and I know I said I wasn't providing a recipe, but here I go anyway) to make garum, you take the innards of all your fish and eels and what-have-you, toss them in a barrel (or amphora), sprinkle on some salt, and add some weight to the top.  Then (apparently) this sits in the sun for a while (a long while) while everything goes to mush.  Yummy.  But we're not finished...the mixture has to be strained, so that you end up with a sort sludge called allec that's good for feeding the plebeians, and a thick and pungent liquid, garum of course, that is more expensive than caviar and that you can add to basically whatever dish you're cooking.  The beauty of a sauce...

If you don't feel like cooking, you can always just take your garum and water it down with water...or wine...or honey...or whatever you have at hand, really, and that will be a delicious snack for you, plus a treatment for both constipation and diarrhea, and as an added bonus it will get rid of your freckles.

Quiet Ambrose

Let's hear it for Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, who could to read silently to himself. 

From Augustine's Confessions: "When he read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still. Anyone could approach him freely and guests were not commonly announced, so that often, when we came to visit him, we found him reading like this in silence, for he never read aloud."

Rate's Commonplace Book (And Other Things You Should Read, Despite Their Length)

Okay...I am sorry I am continuing to slack here...but I'm knitting a pair of mittens and anyway I have a scratch on my palm that makes typing uncomfortable.  (I got it collecting bricks...long story.)

Anyway, this one is interesting - I couldn't say it better myself.  Tomorrow or thereabouts I will pick back up with the posts actually written by me.  Rather than reblogging.

Mmkay here you go!

Linky!

For MacBess

Li'l sister Bess is heading off to a year in Scotland (I am incredibly jealous!) and so, in honor of that occasion, I thought I would put together a 'brief' history of Scottish costume.  I was thinking of doing a piece on Scots as a language, but in the end, clothing was more pretty to look at than words.  And what could be more iconic than a laird in his kilt and sporran...or perhaps not?!?!

Because you see, as with so many things, the romantic ideal is a hideous lie.  Right now that lone Scotsman standing on a hill (or marching in a valley, or rowing on a loch), head-to-toe tartan and wrestling a set of pipes that you're envisioning is probably not what most of history has to say.  R. R. McIan's iconic Clans of the Scottish Highlands (published in 1845) is a beautifully-illustrated travesty.  And Braveheart is wrong.  I'm so sorry.

The facts are, though, that proper tartan skirts didn't really crop up as a fashion trend until the 17th century (that's 1600 onward)...and then they were outlawed in 1746 after Culloden...and, to add insult to injury, it has even been suggested that the kilt mayyy have been invented by an Englishman!  Although I don't believe it.   But even if it was, the northern regions of Britannia surely weren't inhabited by ginger nudes until 1599, right?  ...riiight?

Right.  As I am sure Bess will soon be able to testify, Scotland is too chilly for running around starkers.  History major that she is, she'll also doubtless be able to inform us all that the
Highlands were essentially the West Virginia of ancient days (how fitting, knowing the history of Appalachia, eh?)...record keepers really didn't have much inclination to jaunt out to the backwoods and document the trendsetting abilities of the locals.  Which is a real shame.  Despite our not having much contemporary detail about traditional dress from 1000AD onwards, those brainy historians have managed to scrape together a basic rule of thumb for the reenactors to abide by (or, more likely, promptly ignore).  And that is...for most of history, 'Scottish dress' has either been Irish or Northern European. 

Boo.  What fun is that?  Let's just pull out the Braveheart wardrobe!  Freedom!

But wait, you rabble.  I've got more to say on the subject.  Sadly, it's probably going to be a vast oversimplification because I haven't got the energy to thoroughly take into account century, subculture, and social class...but do you even know what Irish and Northern European dress is?  Indeed.

So, back when it wasn't so much Highlands-and-Lowlands but more I-can-name-all-hundred-clans-how-about-you, the Scots (as it were) generally dressed in a Celtic manner.  This included a linen shift or tunic called a léine - sometimes embroidered and/or hooded - which was either either knee- or floor-length, depending on if you were a man or a lady.  This garment eventually became Ireland's (possibly) iconic Saffron Shirt, which was banned by Henry VIII.  Because the point of clothing in these days was protection from the elements, the tunic would be topped by a cloak (a brat, to be precise), and was sometimes accompanied by some sort of leg covering of either leather or wool.  And the style stayed like this pretty much up through the end of the 1500s.

At which point...enter the belted plaid!  This ancestor of the kilt and descendant of the cloak was worn as an outer garment in the Highlands and was, as the name suggests, a long strip of plaid cloth belted onto the body.  Now pay attention, because here is where they trip you up: plaid refers to the cloth - 4 to 6 yards of woolen blanket or rug - and not to any sort of checkered pattern; the belted plaid could be solid, striped, or checked, and in any color you can think of.  Apparently, to don the plaid, one had to place the fabric on the ground, pleat it up, lie on top, and roll (seriously.) like a hooligan.  Rad.

Clan tartans don't really come into being until 1800 and beyond, after the law banning traditional dress was repealed, and well after Jacobites, Bonny Prince Charlie, and the Battle of Culloden.  Only at this point did checkered fabrics corner the market (literally), and only then did Georgian and Victorian romanticism spur Lowlanders and Highlanders of all classes to take to the kilt.   Really, before this point, although Scottish districts may possibly have had local weavers with specific signature patterns and weaves, on the whole, easily-identifiable clan tartans would have been a potentially life-threatening handicap in the lawless landscape of earlier periods.

Hmm...I'm slightly sorry that I haven't mentioned the women's costume...but there's just too much else to cover, and historical authors don't seem to want to dwell on feminine clothing for some reason, so all of the descriptions are vague afterthoughts.  I suppose women would have worn modifications of male garb?

Anyway, I haven't even mentioned accessories!  My first thoughts were mostly erroneous - dirk (a blade), kirk (a church), berk (gasp!) - only one out of three, and if I had really known what I was talking about I would have said sgian dubh instead.  So.  I've already mentioned shirts (long, loose ones, I believe); in addition, depending on era and inclination, one might encounter waistcoats, jackets, coats, and lace-on-sleeves; tanned skins and hides for added warmth; hose, trews (a sort of shorts of varying length), tartan trousers, or occasionally breeches; rawhide leather sandals called ghillies or leather moccasins called cuarans; any sort of hat that eventually becomes the more modern Tam o' Shanter or Glengarry Bonnet; and a sporran, although even this leather-and-fur pouch is arguably a more recent addition.

Now, as to the outfit in action...there's a sort of kilt mystique out there that deserves at least a nod of recognition.  Documentation exists to suggest the Celts fought in battle covered only in woad...I'm not sure about that, but the idea has certainly carried over to more recent Scottish engagements.  Please do keep in mind that the belted plaid at least was a modified cloak and not a modified skirt, and so when warriors throw off their plaids and fight only in their shirts, this probably doesn't mean their 'noble parts' are vulnerable to a frontal attack.  Shirts, for one, were a bit longer than they tend to be these days.  Anddd as to what's under the kilt?  Historically, of course, undergarments as we know them simply didn't exist...but beyond that, I can't seem to get a straight answer.  I'll just leave it with one Scotsman's two cents, namely that "rough wool and cold winds on tender parts build character!"...and we'll have to ask Bess upon her return.

And - I'm sorry - but one last item before I wrap this up - my darling sister most likely won't encounter traditional Scottish garb (romanticised or otherwise) on a daily basis (I think?), but she very well may gain some experience with traditional academic garb.  And so, to keep everyone in the loop, I'll just quote from an instructional guide:

The St Andrews gown is knee length made of a rough scarlet fabric with purple velvet facings. There was a large inside pocket which would conveniently hold a bottle or can of a suitable libation. It was capable of being fastened at the neck with clasps but it was considered unlucky to do so. Similarly, gowns were not washed or laundered...There was a distinct heirarchy to the way in which the gown was worn which again may have unwittingly reflected the braiding and trimmings found on the robes of the aristocracy which designated the rank of the wearer (3). At Queen's College, bejants were mandated to wear the gown firmly on both shoulders. Second years were alluded to as “Semis” which may have been short for semi-bejant. Their increased stature was reflected by the wearing of the gown off the left shoulder. Tertians (third years) left the right shoulder free whilst Magistrands (fourth years and above) had the gown trailing off both shoulders.

Incidentally, if you're interested in another set of Roo family perspectives, she's promised to keep up a blog of her adventures here (although give her a couple days to get settled and 'find her voice'...no pressure, Bess...but it's gonna be totally awesome!).

Help Help I'm Being Impressed

Spent last night watching Horatio Hornblower (mmmmm Ioan Gruffudd)...if you haven't seen it, I'll recommend...

But today I thought I'd briefly discuss impressment!  That's right, the 18th century British Navy's "drafting" process.  The sun doesn't not set on the Empire all on its own, after all.

Actually, this was fairly terrible...apparently press gangs would hang around docks and kidnap any young and able-bodied men they could, and then sell (?) them to the navy.  Life was brutal in pretty much all parts in the 1700s, but in my opinion it doesn't get much worse than being stuck on a moldy boat with a bunch of scurvy men on the eve of a battle at sea.  But maybe that's just me. 

Anywho, check Wikipedia if you're interested in reading a slightly more scholarly look at the subject.

Green Man

More mythology!

So.  While the Green Man exists across many eras - pre-Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance - as well as, it is speculated, in cultures both within and without western Europe, the figure is most often found (and overlooked) in churches of the British Isles.  Strangely, for as prevalent as the Green Man is, the precise mythology surrounding him is shrouded in the pre-literary mists of time.  He is likely tied to rebirth and fertility in the same way ancient kings were.  (I now have a vivid image of Mr. Moxie from 11th grade standing majestically at the front of the class, arms outstretched over his high-fastening pants, and sonorously proclaiming that, in order for the spring to come again, we would have to flay the living skin off of his body and sacrifice it to the earth.)  Regardless...parallels have been drawn between this figure and everyone from the Celtic God Cern and Jesus to Robin Goodfellow and even Peter Pan.

But I haven't told you what the Green Man looks like!  Well, next time you are in an old English cathedral, look for a figure peering out of a leafy border, a face with vines for hair, or merely an expression sprouting foliage, and remember this post.

Save Ferris

This is a photo of George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr., who invented the first official Ferris (duh) wheel for the 1893 Chicago World Exhibition.  He also founded a steel company for bridge builders and railroad contractors in Pittsburgh, PA (represent!).  And now, the really depressing part: he died in 1896 of typhoid fever... :( ...and his ashes waited in a crematorium for someone to claim them for over a year.  Boo. 

But thanks, GW , for bringing us your fabulous wheel!

Neckclothitania

Thatsss right...all my favorite cravat styles.  I hope you're taking notes.

Roland the Farter

I am not making this up.

I apologize for the juvenile humor...but it appears that in days gone by, juvenile humor was the only kind of humor.  (And if you're wondering how I came across this little gem, it was in a book my dad was reading about the Battle of Agincourt).

And in the interest of accuracy, I'll just pull directly from Wikipedia:
Roland the Farter (also known in contemporary records as Roland le Fartere) was a medieval flatulist who held Hemingstone manor in Suffolk and 30 acres of land in return for his services as a jester for the king. Each year he was obliged to perform "Unum saltum et siffletum et unum bumbulum" (one jump, one whistle, and one fart) in King Henry II's court at Christmas.

...Apparently this was the king's favorite party trick.  I repeat, I am not making this up.

Hmm, and perhaps later, if you're extra good, I will tell you about the king whose favorite party trick was to pretend to eat his court midget, Jeffrey, between two loaves of bread.  Those crazy dudes.

The Rude Man

...or the Cerne Abbas Giant has been chilling out on a hillside in Dorset for some time now.

Although actually, no one is quite sure just how long he's been there.  The history is fairly interesting - read more about it here.  And of course, Wikipedia is always a font of information.

Smallpox

This seems strange to me, but I read it in a journal article...so I guess it's not a lie?

Apparently smallpox, the first human infectious disease (or any other disease, I think...) to be made preventable by innoculation, is also the only human infectious disease to have been entirely eradicated. 

Which arguably makes one Mr Edward Anthony Jenner of Gloucestershire the most humanitarian man in the history of, well, humanity.  Let's hear it for Eddie and his cowpox/smallpox jab, saving countless millions since 1796!

Suffragette City

...actually, nothing to do with cities in this one.  Women's right to vote, yes...

 So isn't this interesting?  And arguably quite pretty?  I found it on ebay (yes...), but it's an example of suffragette jewelry.  Made in the UK during the Victorian era, this type of accessory was beauty with brains.  Bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and brooches exist, but the colors of the gems are always the same, and - in true Victorian spirit - they spell out a message. Pearls, peridot, and amethyst; white, green, and purple...this stands, in the words one Mrs Pethick-Lawrence, for, "[p]urple as everyone knows is the royal colour. It stands for the royal blood that flows in the veins of every suffragette, the instinct of freedom and dignity...white stands for purity in private and public life...green is the colour of hope and the emblem of spring."  Perhaps a bit antiquated in sentiment, but the substance at the root still seems solid enough to me.

Incidentally, it's purple and not violet.  A common misconception has recently arisen that the colors are green, white, and violet, for "Give Women the Vote"...a nice notion, but unfortunately one that came about a hundred years too late.

Addictive Greenery

Does anyone remember the reason why Rapunzel was up in that tower in the first place?

If you are a bit rusty on your fairy tales, you're probably grabbing a coin right now to toss - heads is evil/domineering/tyrannical (step)father, tails is wicked witch. (Am I riiight?)

The version I read as a kid is all about the witch. But what did a mean old lady ever have against a somewhat ditsy/spazzy girl with super-long hair? I've got the answer to that, too. And you see, it all comes around to the father - although this guy was less evil and more bumbling. Apparently Rapunzel's mom had an intense and prolonged craving for something green and leafy and made Mr R. steal some from a forbodingly walled garden. And you can probably guess how things went from there.

But wait...green and leafy cravings? No, my Grimm's wasn't a thinly-veiled pro-drug manifesto (at least, not in this instance), and I know this because the veggie was clearly named. Problem is, I can't find the book, so I'm not 100% sure what that name was.

My instinct was arugula (aka rocket - yeah!), probably because I get unnatural urges to consume large quantities of this particular lettuce. But upon reflection and introspection, I'm now thinking the leaf in question was rapini. Plus, it sounds like Rapunzel, which is nice...because that's a ridiculous name, princess or no. (And actually, was she even a princess?) Rapini is also known as broccoli rabe/raabe/raape/rape...yipes..., a lot of other Italian words, and possibly mustard greens. It looks pretty boring and doesn't seem to have any addictive properties. I don't think I've ever consciously eaten any though, so it may be exquisitely delicious. You'll have to take Rapunzel's mom's word for it.

Oh, there's another option for what herb the aforementioned mother was hungering for - rampion. This one's an obscure Medieval English thing and is kind of like a turnip. And there's your dose of general knowledge for the day.

Plants Are Apparently Evil

George Ellison of The Smoky Mountain News writes:
 
Let’s give the last [and first...] word to Horace Kephart, who describes “laurel hells” to a T under the heading Thickets in the second volume of Camping and Woodcraft (1906): “A canebrake is bad enough, but it is not so bad as those great tracts of rhododendron which ... cover mile after mile of steep mountainside where few men have ever been. The natives call such wastes ‘laurel slicks,’ ‘woolly heads,’ ‘lettuce beds,’ ‘yaller patches,’ and ‘hells.’ The rhododendron is worse than laurel, because it is more stunted and grows more densely, so that it is quite impossible to make a way through it without cutting, foot by foot; and the wood is very tough. Two powerful mountaineers starting from the Tennessee side to cross the Smokies were misdirected and proceeded up the slope of Devil’s Court House, just east of Thunderhead. They were two days in making the ascent, a matter of three or four miles, notwithstanding that they could see out all the time and pursued the shortest possible course. I asked one of them how they had managed to crawl through the thicket. “We couldn’t crawl,” he replied, “we swum,” meaning they had sprawled and floundered over the top. These men were not lost at all. In a ‘bad laurel’ (heavily timbered), not far from this, an old hunter and trapper who was born and bred in these mountains, was lost for three days, although the maze was not more than a mile square. His account of it gave it the name that it bears today, ‘Huggins’s hell.’

Who would have thought that laurels and rhododendrons could be so sinister?

Bibliotheca Alexandrina

I mentioned Alexandria in the ancient world several weeks ago when discussing the seven wonders.  I meant to say then that I am surprised the Library of Alexandria doesn't make that list.  And if you think libraries are boring then you clearly need to go check out the Bodleian in Oxford or the Trinity College Library in Dublin...or even the National Archives in DC.

Anywho.  The Royal Library of Alexandria is, for me, up there with the Titanic in my random-destructive-things-in-history-that-just-make-me-want-to-scream list.  This was apparently one of the largest centers for learning and information in the ancient world (although no one now knows how large it was, exactly, or how many original works it contained).  Also, no one knows when or how it was destroyed (that's how completely crap the people were who destroyed it were).  Julius Caesar may have done it when he set fire to the city of Alexandria, which would make me side with Brute...or perhaps the library burned in the third century AD by the hand of the Roman Emperor Aurelian or else by the Christian Patriarch Theophilus.  Possibly this scholars' refuge lasted into the Dark Ages but was destroyed in the 600s by an invading Arab army.

Either way...grrrr.  Think of all of the things that were lost!  Gah!  I don't know what else to say.