The Making of a Wizard

 I've got a new book!  It's officially a prequel to my main fantasy series, The Royal Wizard of Yurt, and it's entitled "The Making of a Wizard."

 Like all the books in the series, it's told from the perspective of Daimbert, my wizard hero.  Daimbert isn't me, but he has my sense of humor.  Fans are fond of Daimbert (good choice), to the extent that they are reluctant to like my books unless they have Daimbert in them.  I finished writing the main 6-book series something like twenty-five years ago, but fans wanted more.

So I wrote three novellas (short novels) that take place in between the main books (the main series covers about thirty-five years in the lives of the characters).  Great, said the fans, but we want more!  So now I've written this prequel, a novelette (something longer than a short story but not long enough to be called a short novel). I fear this will inspire the fans to say they want more.  (I love you, fans!)

"The Making of a Wizard" tells how Daimbert, a young man from a family that imported and wholesaled wool to the weavers, decided to break out of the family business and study magic.  The wizards' school stood at the top of the hill, in the center of the great City, visible everywhere, but seemingly inaccessible to someone from the warehouse district, until the day Daimbert decided to climb up there.

Not sure what the excellent artist from whom I bought the cover art had in mind (he goes by the handle of "unique designs").  But I think it shows the wizards' school, mysterious and packed with books.

For someone who has never read the Royal Wizard of Yurt series, you could start here.  But the real "gateway drug" to all my fantasy novels is the first full-length novel in the series, "A Bad Spell in Yurt."  It came out originally in 1991 but is still attracting new readers.  For those who've already read and enjoyed the whole series, I hope you like this one too, as it fills in some of the background on Daimbert's life and character.

At the moment the book is just available on Amazon, as an ebook (buy or read for free with Kindle Unlimited) or as a slim paperback.  Here's the US link. Enjoy!

© C. Dale Brittain 2025

Hay and Straw

 Today most people probably don't know the difference between hay and straw.  We've become such an urban/suburban society that basic farm knowledge is rare.  And yet, a century-plus ago, supposedly a lot of new army recruits were so uneducated they didn't even know the difference between left and right, and hence had trouble marching when they were told (for example) to put their left food forward.  The story goes that therefore the sergeants ended up tying bundles of hay to one foot and straw to the other, because the country bumpkins knew that difference at least.

Urban legend?  Mocking story?  Hard to say.  But there is an old army chant (to be used when marching in step),  "Hay foot, straw foot, belly full of bean soup, left! left!" etc.

Okay, medieval people knew the difference between hay and straw.  Hay is basically tall grass, complete with seed heads.  It is used for animal feed and is quite nourishing. Scything hay was one of the agricultural activities associated with the month of June, as seen in the mosaic below, from the monastery of Tournus. (Note the word Iunius, meaning June, on the left.  Recall that there was no distinction between U and V in the Middle Ages.)

 

Hay could be grown on fields that were too steep or rocky for most crops, because there was no plowing involved, just let the wild grasses grow.  Modern haying, which is done with machines rather than a person standing there with a scythe, requires a relatively smooth surface.  Then as now, there was always a concern of unwanted weeds getting mixed in, because the whole purpose was to produce food good for animals to eat.

Interestingly, poppies, which are now treated as Good and taken as a symbol of veterans, were considered what we would call a Noxious Weed because they'd get into the hay field and grow up all prickly, ready to hurt an animal's mouth when they ate the hay.  Poppies got their positive spin from a poem about the World War I battlefields, where in the years after the fighting, grass and wild weeds like poppies spread over the fields, "In Flanders fields, the poppies grow..."  Medieval people still hated poppies.

 Straw on the other hand is the stalks left after grain (the seedheads) is taken off for human consumption.  The whole plant, stalk and all, would be harvested, then the grain separated out, leaving the stalks.  The stalks would have very minimal nutritional value, unlike hay.  Cows can digest cellulose, but even for them straw is pretty minimal as a food.

But that didn't mean straw was useless.  Even now, straw is routinely spread in stables.  It provides something for animals to stand on other than the bare floor, and it absorbs wastes, meaning that you can muck out a stable more easily by getting out the used straw than trying to clean a bare floor.  Straw is also good for wiping things down, from a sweaty horse to a new-born calf.

Wheat straw was especially valued.  Medieval wheat was tall, 6 or 8 feet, unlike modern wheat, which is only half as tall.  Modern farmers don't want all that stalk, but wheat straw in the Middle Ages was used for thatching roofs, for weaving into baskets, and similar projects.

For more on medieval agriculture, see my new ebook, Positively Medieval: Life and Society in the Middle Ages.  Also available in paperback.