Betwixt Us Twain

Vaguely Medieval Books review’d, no I.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) is emphatically not about the Middle Ages – in the same way as The Sword in the Stone is not, and Kingdom of Heaven is not, but not in the way that The Pillars of the Earth is not. That is, it needn’t be set in the sixth century at all, but since Mark Twain clearly thought of the sixth century as a place of social cruelty, superstition and backward thinking, it’s as good a century as any other to represent such things.

The Hero is one Hank Morgan, who is knocked out in a boxing match in the 1880s and wakes up under an oak tree thirteen centuries earlier. Taken prisoner, and with the gift of fore-hindsight, Hank predicts that his being burned at the stake will coincide with a solar eclipse, thus persuading everyone that he is magician; this allows him to usurp Merlin as King Arthur’s advisor. From this strange beginning, Hank – newly renamed The Boss – sets out to bring Progress to the people of England.

Now The Boss is what we might call a cultural chauvinist. As his memoirs state pretty early on:

I saw that I was just another Robinson Crusoe cast away on an uninhabited island, with no society but some more or less tame animals, and if I wanted to make life bearable I must do as he did – invent, contrive, create, reorganize things; set brain and hand to work, and keep them busy. Well, that was in my line. (ch.7)

With the aid of a pleasant young cipher called Clarence, he blows up Merlin’s tower with dynamite, lays underground telephone wires, builds electric plants, founds a newspaper, establishes a military academy that he calls West Point, introduces stocks and shares (‘they used the Round Table for business purposes, now’), and generally sets about trying to turn medieval England into nineteenth-century America.

The general ethos of the book is that progress is linear, the future necessarily more advanced than the past in all ways, and that progress is generally brought about by an enlightened person showing the unenlightened the errors of their ways. And Hank is just the man. Later we read:

Here I was, a giant among pigmies, a man among children, a master intelligence among intellectual moles: by all rational measurement the one and only actually great man in that whole British world. (ch.8)

Chapters have titles like ‘Beginnings of Civilization’, and remarks like ‘Measured by modern standards, they were merely modified savages’ abound. This, as any fule kno, is a Distinctly Un-Medieval Idea.

Sir Kay ruins everything, again.

After all this, Twain seems mildly respectful of Thomas Malory. Hank remarks to his lady companion Alisande, ‘If you’ve got a fault in the world, Sandy, it is that you are a shade too archaic’, but elsewhere he uses The Morte Darthur word-for-word as ‘war correspondence’. As has been noted by numerous editors, critics and Wikipedia contributors, it is the romanticising of the Middle Ages by authors like Walter Scott that provokes his ire; Twain’s medieval England is populated by knights in gleaming armour and feathered helmets, who live surrounded by people starving, freezing, suffering excommunication and dying from violent beatings and terrible diseases.

The social commentary of the book is far more interesting and valuable than any of its cod-medievalism. Hank as an American believes himself to live outside the remit of an Established Church and unbound from notions of aristocracy and inherited honours, and plans to reorder society accordingly. [I actually read the last few chapters while drinking from a House of Lords mug. Irony, it transpires, tastes of Earl Grey.] That many of the book’s most memorable chapters revolve around slavery – and that Twain’s original illustrator, Daniel Carter Beard, drove such a parallel home with adjacent images of medieval kings and contemporary slave owners – reinforces the idea that in societies where some are valued more at birth than others, whether by race or sex or class hierarchy, huge numbers of people will not only suffer from that inequality, but will come to accept that inequality as natural and sacrosanct.

The destruction of the aristocracy and the Catholic Church, prefigured in passages on the Reign of Terror, actually brings about the destruction of both the kingdom, following Malory’s scheme, and Hank’s own plans for a republic. A piece of glorious cheek, that the Orkneys should turn against Lancelot, Gareth and Gaheris die, the Round Table fall, and so on, over a stock market disagreement; and likewise that fear for the immortal soul should lead to the abandonment of the railways. Are the English too weak to live without an aristocracy and an established Church? Hank would think so, but in the devastating final battle against Insurgent Chivalry, where twenty-five thousand on the other side die from bombs, electrocution, drowning and artillery fire, the moral ‘victory’ of the modern world is hardly apparent. Hank’s former remembrance of nine dead slaves sours in the light of his statement,

Of course we could not count the dead, because they did not exist as individuals, but merely as homogeneous protoplasm, with alloys of iron and buttons. (ch.43)

The great irony is that Hank’s power is only afforded to him by his having been born in an era where scientific novelties abounded; he holds power because he holds anachronistic information, and with this information he directly causes the obliteration of tens of thousands of men. He rails against the unwillingness of the English people to liberate themselves, but has an iron-clad plan as to what this liberation ought to entail. And the many human tragedies of the Arthurian cycle are meaningless against the wider political picture, the man-ness of man being ultimately subservient to the direction of the age. If we learn one thing from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, it is that the only important people are the ones pulling the strings.

How medieval was it? Dolly Parton in a zoot suit playing a harpsichord.

Verdict? Caused hundreds to tremble, and many women to faint.

You Only Yol Once

To paraphrase George Steiner, it rather sucks for everyone who wants to write about the sea that the phrase ‘wine-dark’ has already been taken. The need to write something new is one of the several tribulations of an Arts’n’Humanities PhD student. Nonetheless, there are things for which I know myself to be wholly unqualified, and thank goodness that my eminent, anonymous forebears were rather better-equipped. So, well aware of my limitations, and with no further ado, I leave it to Sloane MS 2593. Have god Yol, make god chere.

Wolcum yol, thu mery man,
In worchepe of this holy day.

Wolcum be thu, hevene kyng,
Wolcum, born in on morwenyng,
Wolcum for hom we sall syng,
Wolcum yol.

Wolcum yol, thu mery man,
In worchepe of this holy day.

Wolcum be ye Stefne and Jon,
Wolcum Innocentes everychon,
Wolcum Thomas martyr on,
Wolcum yol.

Wolcum yol, thu mery man,
In worchepe of this holy day.

Wolcum be ye, good newe yere,
Wolcum twelthe-day, bothe infer,
Wolcum seyntes lef and der,
Wolcum yol.

Wolcum yol, thu mery man,
In worchepe of this holy day.

Wolcum be ye Candylmesse,
Wolcum be ye qwyn of blys,
Wolcum bothe to mor and lesse,
Wolcum yol.

Wolcum yol, thu mery man,
In worchepe of this holy day.

Wolcum be ye that arn her,
Wolcum alle and mak good cher,
Wolcum alle another yer,
Wolcum yol.

Wolcum yol, thu mery man,
In worchepe of this holy day.

Let’s Get Physickal

I have man flu. The fact that I am not a man has not prevented me from developing this infamous disease. It is explicitly not the flu (I had a jab – thank you, NHS) but it is so much worse than a cold. Having the lurgy caused me to think very long and hard on the words of John Audelay:

And to lese my tast and my smelling,

And to be seke in my body,

Here have I lost all my liking –

Passio Christi conforta me.

You see, I’ve had only an intermittent sense of taste for several days, and am the offspring of a turbo hypochondriac. But had I lived in the Middle Ages, I’d have died so many times by this point that the inability to taste chicken curry shouldn’t be my primary concern.

Being unwell in the Middle Ages can’t have been much fun, regardless of wealth or status. My sister and I went to the Hôtel Dieu in Beaune, and were struck, as most visitors no doubt are, by the terrifying artwork that would have covered the walls. While dying from some strain of plague, who wouldn’t want to gaze on the fiery torments of the Last Judgement? And popular beliefs about medieval treatments, largely blood-letting and wee-tasting, aren’t wildly inaccurate. An amusing 15^th-century recipe from a manuscript in the Huntington Library in California gives Blackadder’s Wise Woman of Putney a run for her money with its suggestion that ‘leek stewed in goat’s gall’ can cure pretty much anything:

…grete hedewark well it slo;

Broken bones will it knit,

And angrey sores wille it flit.

And there are scores of poems that recommend nothing more than praying for your illness to end, occasionally in the form of an exorcism. An early 16^th-century piece exhorts

What manere of evil thou be,

In Goddes name I coungere thee.

Was medieval England overrun by Christian Scientists? We once had a transcription exercise about an ‘Erle of Venyse’ who, in extremis, couldn’t swallow the wafer and so stuck it into the wound on his stomach ‘uppon the place that is next my hert and my love’. [It is fortunate that this chap hadn’t yet succumbed to septicaemia.] ‘And the oste gloted into his body. And þen the side closed ayen hole as hit was byfor.’ But healing miracles are not exactly everyday medicine.

‘Any plans for the holiday, sir?’ ‘Nnngnnnghng.’

It is likely that the majority of what we might call medical practitioners in medieval England would have received no formal training, perhaps even could not read, and that ‘folk remedies’ such as curing blindness by washing the eyes with brimstone and soap, may have been far more widespread than anything of academic origins.

But the fact remains that, as in many fields, medieval medics could be extremely observant, pioneering, even ‘modern’, especially those from Persia and, subsequently, their Italian translators. For every Avicenna there may have been two thousand Wise Women of Putney, and yet every Avicenna stands against the lazy assumption that no one in the Middle Ages thought of their body as anything other than a receptacle of sin. Mnemonics survive that suggest a general interest in the properties of the body:

xxxii teeth that bethe full kene,

cc bones and nintene,

ccc vaines sixty and five,

Every man hathe that is alive.

Even if these statements aren’t wholly accurate. The aforementioned obsession with wee is again justified on medical grounds, that ‘touche of pous [pulse] and urine inspeccions’ are quite handy diagnostic tools. And the survival of hundreds of medical recipes, often in margins and on flyleaves, indicates by the record of accepted ingredients that people wanted to know how to counteract illnesses they would likely encounter properly, rather than just making it up.

The present popularity of health-related exclusion diets, supplements, and the latest super-duper-foods confirms that we, like our medieval forebears, trust that ‘ther is nothing mor mete/ To the help of man than temperat diete’. Our approaches to our health haven’t really changed – we just appear now to have more health to play around with, for which we must be wholly grateful to medical professionals. As Rufus Hound said on The News Quiz this week, it is unbelievable that we are not taking to the streets to protest the constant undermining, and possible dismantling, of the NHS. We cannot allow that those in illness, who most need the support of the rest of society, should be left to the mercy of sharks and witchdoctors.

Anyway I’m trying to beat the man flu with lemons and eucalyptus, and am not averse to taking prescribed medication if it becomes necessary. But I hope it doesn’t, as it’s not at all a proper illness, unless it becomes a chest infection, which my hypochondriac ancestry sees as inevitable. My alcoholic ancestry thinks differently. When I suggest to friends with colds that they try mixing honey, lemon, hot water and whisky, it may sound like I’m making it up, any excuse for daytime drinking, etc., but it works for me and isn’t half as weird as leeks in gall.

Sicut lilium inter spinas

The Christmas tree in hall has had something of a makeover this year. While the departure of the peerless Alec has left this festive pot plant naked of perfect paper snowflakes, the usual net of lights, traditionally flung over the offending spruce like a blanket over a drunken sister, has been replaced by a delicate twist of bluish bulbs. Where at previous ends-of-term I would tipsily mourn the captivity of a prickly tree-whale, now the overall impression is of a Solomonic column in a Viennese church, or a Tudor chimney, or one of those helter-skelters people build for their goats – only glow-y in the dark.

Christmas trees, as any fule kno, were introduced to Britain in the 19^th century and are therefore not in the slightest bit medieval.

However, the cheerful demise of the captive whale, and its reincarnation in my mind as a large Picea abies, got me thinking about one of the more charming bits of the medieval Cult of the Virgin: the plethora of wacky metaphors used in hymns to the BVM. If you’ve seen Sister Act, or are Catholic, you’ll be familiar with terms such as ‘mother of mercy’, ‘queen of heaven’ and ‘lady of angels’. All fairly important concepts. But the sublime weirdness of some of the medieval (and earlier) language of devotional lyrics almost makes one wonder whether Venantius & co were writing for The Mighty Boosh.

A genuine fake medieval tree!

At the simplest level we find porta caeli, gate of heaven, which is a pretty straightforward way of saying that the Incarnation was theologically important. If, like me, you are fundamentally silly, an actual gate may come to mind right about now. In a similar vein, we find porta ex qua mundo lux est orta, gate through which the light of the world is risen (you may now be picturing a wall and some lens flare). We then progress to stella maris, star of the sea, the meaning of which I can’t pretend to understand but which a) is popular with the Spanish navy and b) gives some vaguely academic context to my idea of the tree-whale.

The floral metaphors are particularly abundant: Röslein, rosebud, and Blümlein, little flower, from the 16^th century German hymn Es ist ein Ros entsprungen; ‘floure of virginitee’ from a 15^th century MS in the Bodleian; ‘rose of swych vertu’ from the Trinity Carol Roll; ‘suete flur of Parays’ from Harley MS 2253; holly (not ivy). Mary as radix, root (from Jesse’s branch, or tree) is another entry-level theological statement, but one with pretty pictures. The language of the Song of Songs is also put into play: amica mea, columba mea, formosa mea, my love, my dove, my fair one. The text of this canonical love-song contains similes as diverse as ‘a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots’ (1:9), ‘a roe or a young hart’ (2:9), teeth ‘like a flock of sheep that are even shorn’ (3:3), temples ‘like a piece of pomegranate’ (3:4), and a face ‘as Lebanon, excellent as the cedars’ (5:15) – so the Virgin as dove is quite tame by the poet’s standards.

But here, as in everything else, the volume is turned up several notches by Hildegard von Bingen, whose kaleidoscopic antiphons are an exercise in the extended metaphor. As both splendidissima gemma, most splendid jewel and candidum lilium, white lily, as virga ac diadema purpure regis, branch and crown of royal purple, Mary in Hildegard’s chant texts is the pinnacle of natural and man-made perfection (oh hi there, theology), and the famously trippy abbess isn’t pulling any punches. O frondens virga and O viridissima virga of course play with the aural resemblance of virga, branch and virgo, virgin, but Hildegard’s songs contain the a full catalogue of Other Things the Virgin Can Be. In the sequence O virga ac diadema, Mary is a branch, a crown, a flower, the mirror of God and the dawn. She is medicine, light in a coloured gem, and the star of the sea.

If your mental image is of something by Arcimboldo, you’re probably doing this right.