I Blow My Nose At You

While the portions of Monty Python and the Holy Grail showing the French abusing the English are funny, they also seem a little over the top. Then you read something like the Gesta Herewardi where the Normans hire a witch to put a curse on the besieged at Ely. As the hag stands on top of a wooden structure so she can see and be seen, she hurls abuse and incantations and then she turns around to finish the job by baring her behind at the defenders. Yes, the witch mooned Hereward. Take that!

What Goes Around Comes Around

Really. Even if it takes six hundred and fifty or so years.

I have been reading so much about the events of 1066 and the fall of Anglo Saxon Britain that it is starting to connect up in my head with other things, such as the fall of Rome in 410 A.D.

Well, it is not completely unrelated. A once great military power falls; their capital taken. There are Germans involved. Only, with the fall of Rome, it was the Germans who were doing the stomping. Six hundred and fifty years later, the Germans are getting their butts kicked by the Normans and their weaselly cousins, the Vikings. See - what goes around, comes around.

When Rome fell, people groaned that it was because they had embraced the Christian faith. While they were pagan, they were masters of the world. This prompted St. Augustine to write his City of God to explain why this is not a reason to start worshipping Zeus once again. Of course Alaric, the Germanic leader who defeated the Romans was a Christian as well so the theory does not completely hold water but..... a few decades after this event, the Germanic tribes were invading Britain because those residents were soft and the pagan invaders were still a warrior culture and much better at fighting. So Hengist and Horsa invade Britain. Then, the Romans send some guy to convert them to Christianity. They start spending their days, vowing celibacy and hanging around churches. Next thing you know, the pagan Vikings come in and totally kick their butts, weakening them to the point that the Normans can finish the job.

There are lessons here: what goes around, comes around. It might take a really long time but I do think karma catches up with you. Also being a Christian is risky; it leads to being on the receiving end of some serious butt kicking. On this winter solstice, I propose a little Woden worship. It just might help save Western civilization.

Hereward, A Review

A professor, whom I am taking a course with, gave me a book to read called Hereward by Victor Head. It is a far cry from Charles Kingsley's novel on Hereward as Head is looking strictly at the historical man. He listed all of the historical sources for Hereward's life and what they contained, although the Gesta Herewardii, account in the Liber Eliensis and even the parts from Gaimar's history that deal with Hereward are too long to be reproduced entirely in the book.

Head is framing his discussion of Hereward the Wake, the Saxon hero of the Lincolnshire fens, around an argument made in a book by a General Harward that he is the descendant of Hereward, and discussing Hereward's career and impact on history. The argument against General Harward got a little tiresome at times. Head also wrote about Kingsley's novel and other Victorian interpretations of the Hereward legend and his connection to the genesis of Robin Hood. He overlooks however, the Waverly novel written by Sir Walter Scott called Count Robert of Paris. The Scott novel sounds fascinating since he places Hereward in the Varangian Guard during his time of exile and places him in a story with Bohemond.

The Victor Head book is an excellent starting place for anyone who wants to know more about Hereward and cannot read Latin, Old English or Old French. What it lacks is the author's best guess for a reconstruction of Hereward's life and the evidence for it.

It is not light reading either. It is a book for when you really want to know just the facts.

Thoughts on Sytherin's Retirement

I suggested a while ago that Salazar Slytherin went to the fens, surrounding Ely, to join the last Saxon resistance to the Norman Conquest when he argued with his fellow Hogwarts founders about who is permitted entry in their school. Back before the last book came out and anything could still be significant, I argued that the arrival of the first Malfoys into his house was probably the last straw for Slytherin and so he went to join Hereward.

It may be that Rowling had never thought that far afield when planning her novels. It may be that she did think of somewhere that he went and it will be included in the oft mentioned encyclopedia that she may publish at some point in the future.

Since Slytherin's descendants now went by the name of Gaunt, I assumed that they somehow married into the family of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III and Duke of Lancaster, but there is another Gaunt, who owned the lands where I thought Little Hangleton was placed on. This Gaunt was Gilbert of Gaunt, a knight from Flanders who came over with William the Conqueror. This Gaunt was also possibly godfather to Hereward and nephew to William's queen, Matilda. This provides Hereward with a powerful friend to reconcile the king to him and any that broke through the siege at Ely with him.

Once the surviving resistance leaders like Hereward or Edric the Wild were reconciled to the king and other potential leaders like Earl Morcar or Earl Edwin were dead, was there any point in carrying on the resistance? And even if you could defeat William, who would you replace him with? Edgar the Aetheling should have been the heir to the throne but he was not able to attract the following that Hereward was and possibly lacked the talent in tactical matters that Hereward seemed to have. Even with Earl Morcar, one of the most important of the remaining Anglo Saxon nobility and an heir of the Mercian royal family, at Ely, Hereward was the resistance leader. So, would Slytherin, by now an old wizard, want to carry on a bush war that had no hope or would he opt for peace and settle on a bit of land?

The other piece of the Gaunt family history, the Peverils also settled in the same area of Little Hucklow ( my candidate for Little Hangleton) where William Peveril, a Norman knight and possibly William I's bastard had a castle.

Another question would be - did Slytherin marry late in life after the pardon by the king or did he retire to a farm with a family that he already had? This is my guess then. He already had a family, took a pardon and retired to Little Hucklow and his only daughter or granddaughter caught a Peveril or (most likely, since the Gaunts were Flemish and not of the hated Norman invaders) a Gaunt eye and so the family name was lost, although the genes and propensity for talking with snakes was passed on.