Six Hundred Posts

 So I started this blog over eleven years ago, and as of today I'm making my 600th post.  In honor of this milestone, I'd like to make a few comments about medieval social history and fantasy literature, the blog's two (related) topics.

Most fantasy these days is set in some version of a society like that of Europe in the Middle Ages.  Exactly where in that thousand-year period is not always particularly clear, but hey, this is an imaginary past, with magic and wonders, set in an imaginary landscape, so we don't need to get all technical.  Do we?

How did fantasy and the Middle Ages get associated?  Part of it is fantasy's roots in fairy tales and folk tales, which get bawdlerized into sweet pictures of princesses in tall, pointed caps from which a veil is suspended.  Some of these tales (like "Puss in Boots") were written in the early modern period, which from a modern perspective doesn't look that different from the medieval period.  Some (like those of the Brothers Grimm), though written later, depict a country life not wildly different from that of half a millennium earlier.  In some ways the Middle Ages persisted until the railroad and the telegraph transformed transportation and communication in the nineteenth century.

More specifically, all modern fantasy has been inspired by JRR Tolkien, who was a medievalist who specialized in medieval literature.  He was able to keep much of the ethos of that literature while creating characters modern readers could identify with.  Readers loved it and wanted more.

Modern industrialization has taken all the glory out of most work, and with most household objects made by strangers on the other side of the globe, we have lost connection to our own possessions.  The Middle Ages (or at least an imagined version of that time) is seen as a period in which we made our own excellent objects, grew our own food, were close to the natural world, and didn't get stuck in highway traffic.  Plus glory!

 Medieval literature was full of glorious wars and celebrations of bravery.  Right up through WW I a lot of people still believed in this, at least in Europe, though the American Civil War, with its deaths and maimings and friends turned against each other, had reduced American enthusiasm for wars with cannons and rifles.  Strikingly, fantasy battles never have cannons and rifles.  It's mostly swords, where if you kill someone it's an up-close-and-personal event, where you could get killed yourself just as easily.

Cannons reached the real Middle Ages in the fourteenth century, transforming warfare, as foot soldiers became valuable as cannon fodder (the enemy cannons shoot, kill the foot soldiers, and then you quick charge before they can reload).  Castles also changed.  But no one wants to read about this.

Instead most fantasy today is set in a society that looks a lot like Tudor-Stuart or Elizabethan England (sixteenth century), but with twelfth- and thirteenth-century weaponry.  Our heroes wander through a world with few peasants (Tolkien didn't have peasants either, though the hobbits were sturdy yeomen).  There are castles and kingdoms, lots of kingdoms, often just a few weeks' walk apart.  In fact, medieval kingdoms were a lot larger than that, and the division of Germany into multiple little principalities was a later phenomenon.

While I'm on the topic of things that bug me about modern fantasy, every crossroads village in these stories has a tavern, serving brown stew (with meat, probably savory, but certainly brown), and full of ruffians and ne'er do wells (that is, the tavern is full of them, not the stew).  In fact a medieval tavern or brew house was there for the locals, so everyone didn't have to brew their own beer, and was connected with the village bakery, which served a similar purpose.  It might provide food, but it was almost certainly vegetarian.

Then there's fantasy religion.  Some stories have no religion at all, which seems wildly unlikely.  All societies have some version of religion.  More likely, there's some organized religion that appears to be a weird mashup of the modern evangelical movement and stereotypes of the Spanish Inquisition.  Priests tend to be scheming hypocrites who don't actually believe what they preach, or fanatics.  Sorry, I know too much about the history of medieval religion to be able to reconcile this with what is supposed to be (fictional) events taking place in a historically-based medieval society.

But it's fantasy! Yes, I know.  My main "Yurt" fantasy series is set in something that's like what the nineteenth century would have been like if there had been no Protestant Reformation, no American hemisphere to be discovered, no French Revolution, no Industrial Revolution (with magic filling the latter gap).  But with religion.  And magic.  And no gunpowder.  When one is making up a society, one can make up all sorts of things (my sister and I once made up an island society where the people were marsupials).  But if you want readers to think you're inspired by the Middle Ages, change things around on purpose, not because you don't know better.

© C. Dale Brittain 2025 

Frogs in the Middle Ages

 Did they have frogs in the Middle Ages?  Of course they did. Europe today has frogs, as it did a thousand years ago, even if not as many different species as in the Americas.

 But what's interesting is how frogs were considered then.  On the one hand, they were considered slimy and disgusting (the way a lot of people still consider them), perhaps connected to disease, perhaps connected to dark deeds.  On the other hand, they were highly useful.

For one thing, a lot of folk medicine started with frog parts as an ingredient.  It made perfect sense at the time.  Frogs always stood on the border, between tadpole and frog, between land and water, between (the next logical step) sickness and health.

One recommended cure for toothache from the early Middle Ages involved opening the mouth of a live frog, spitting into it, and then releasing the frog unharmed, so it would carry away the pain.  Of course there was more involved—you had to do so under a waning moon, on a Tuesday or Thursday, be wearing shoes, and catch the frog while reciting the words, "Argidam, margidam, sturgidam," whatever that might mean.  My guess is that if your toothache persisted it was because you pronounced it wrong.

Toads, frogs' more terrestrial cousins, also served as sources of medical potions.  Both frogs and toads could be cut up, the pieces boiled or mixed with oil or with honey, dried, and saved up for when needed.  Depending on how used (and which part was used), frog and toad parts could be toxic or could be healing.  It's that land-water thing again!

Frogs also featured in stories.  A lot of medieval writers wrote their own versions of fables, and one popular story told of a frog who saw an ox, was jealous of its size, and decided to inflate itself until it was just as big.  Not surprisingly, the frog soon burst, and this could be a comment about people getting too proud or striving too high.

Frogs could also be eaten.  They weren't raised the way sheep or cattle were, but if one lived near a pond or quiet stream one could add variety to the diet with an occasional dish of frogs' legs.  Of course, healthy frogs require clean water, as is still the case, and a reason that modern frog populations are now declining.

The medieval perception of frogs is being studied primarily by Dr. Greti Dinkova-Bruun of Toronto. Click here for a summary of some of her recent work, which inspired the above discussion.

Oak trees and acorns

 It's October, and oak leaves are starting to turn brown.  You don't get the brilliant colors of autumn foliage with oaks that you get with maples, and oaks hold onto at least some of their leaves well into winter, but dry oak leaves blowing around the lawn are one of the signs of autumn.

Medieval Europe of course had oak trees, though not as big a variety as North America.  England indeed has only one kind of oak.  Both in Britain and on the Continent oaks were an important part of the economy.

Oaks grow fairly fast, at least when they're young, but they are a hardwood (unlike pines and other conifers), long lasting, straightforward to cut and shape.  Fine furniture and cabinets today are routinely made of oak.  Medieval buildings used oaks for timbers, as I've discussed earlier, such as the hundreds of oak trees used for the rafters of Notre Dame cathedral back in the twelfth century.

Unlike food crops, which are planted and harvested every year, oaks take decades to grow to full height and hence are not really "cultivated."  But you could still have a managed wood lot.  This became especially urgent as Europe's growing population required more fields cleared for wheat and other crops, with resulting disappearance of trees.  By the late twelfth century there were often restrictions on cutting trees in certain woods for fuel, saying that only dead, fallen branches could be gathered (and no, you couldn't help along a branch falling with judicious use of a saw).

But the acorn were at least as important as the wood.  Acorns are edible and were eaten by Native Americans, but they have to be soaked to get the tannin out and then cooked, and my guess is that they still wouldn't be that tasty (but then I've never tried).  They are of course a major food for squirrels and for some birds, such as bluejays, who indeed are partially responsible for spreading oak forests in North America, and acorn woodpeckers, who will make a number of holes in a downed log and stuff acorns in them to save for later.  (It's always a problem when acorn woodpeckers decide someone's house is a good "downed log" to use for the purpose.)
 

 

But the most important consumer of acorns in the Middle Ages was the pig.  Pigs were left to run more or less wild for most of the year, fattening up in the fall on acorns.  Indeed, one of the "chores" of October was to knock acorns out of the oak trees so that the pigs could eat them.  This was followed by the "work" of November, which was catching the nice fat pigs, butchering them, and eating as much pork as one could hold and smoking and salting the rest.

 

© C. Dale Brittain 2025

For more on farm animals and other aspects of life in the Middle Ages, see my ebook, Positively Medieval, available from Amazon and other major ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback!

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.

 

Medieval mystery stories

 Medieval literature is the ancestor of much of modern literature.  Fantasy, of course, began in the Middle Ages:  knights and nobles having adventures with a strong admixture of the marvelous or supernatural.  Romance as a literary genre isn't quite as closely tied to its medieval roots, but the twelfth century was as eager as the twentieth to celebrate the power of love.  A lot of stories, like the "Guillaume de Dôle" tale I retold as the novel The Sign of the Rose, involve couples falling in love and marrying.

 

How about the mystery genre?  That has a lot less medieval precedent.  There is  nothing that could be considered a "whodunnit" in medieval literature. no amateur detective trying to figure out who the killer is before the killer can strike again.  Sure, a lot of people ended up dead in medieval literature, but it was usually pretty obvious who the killer was -- often the hero.  (The butler never did it.)

Now a novel in the mystery genre is actually a comedy.  This may sound strange on the face of it, how can something be a comedy that starts out (by the second chapter anyway) with a dead body?  Well, for the Greeks (who invented the categories of comedy and tragedy) a comedy has a happy ending, with problems solved.

A mystery story involves somebody being murdered, but by the end the evil murderer has been identified and caught, and the amateur detective, who doubtless had some scary moments, is triumphant.  Some detective stories are grittier, but the most popular sub-genre is the so-called "cozy" mystery, where there's a dead body but no gory details and lots of nice human interaction and even humor along the way.

Starting in the 1980s, a number of authors decided to rectify the absence of medieval mystery stories by writing some, set in the Middle Ages but using the conventions of the modern mystery story:  a dead body is found, an amateur detective (like a friar) becomes almost accidentally involved, has a few adventures, thinks things through, follows some clues, and emerges with the murderer revealed and brought to justice.

All lots of fun, but obviously improved if the author actually knows some medieval social history.  There's one popular author of medieval mystery stories (who shall remain nameless) who seems to have missed a lot of medieval reality.  In just one story (made into a TV show) our amateur detective hero becomes involved in a case where a noble wedding is held at a monastery (No! a monastery is a place withdrawn from the world, not a party venue); hides from the murderer by blithely dressing up in a dead leper's clothes (No! no medieval person would think this was fine); and visits an abbess who is sitting on her nunnery's front porch, knitting (No! an abbess doesn't just sit outdoors chatting with anyone who comes by, plus knitting wasn't invented yet).

© C. Dale Brittain 2025

For more on medieval literature, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback.

 

The martyrs of Lyon

 Sanctity is constantly redefined.  What is holy to one group of people in one place will not seem holy at all to others in another time or place.  Think about, even today, the difference between the plain interior of a Presbyterian church, where nothing is supposed to interfere with the contemplation of God, and the ornate decoration of a Catholic church, where the decoration is done to glorify God.

 

(The above is a chapel in Peru.  Different Presbyterian and different Catholic churches will of course differ from each other as well.)

 Similarly, the role of saints did not stay the same throughout the Middle Ages.  Saints, present in their relics, ready to help (or punish) the deserving (or the wicked), now seem like a standard feature of medieval Christianity, but it was not always that way.

The martyrs of Lyon are a good example of the evolving role of the saints.  Supposedly in the year 177 AD a whole group of Christians were martyred in Lyon (traditionally forty-eight of them).  Lyon was a major Roman provincial capital in what is now France, over toward the east side, about three-quarters of the way down.  It's still a major French city.

The emperors of the first few centuries AD were noted for trying to stop the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, and there are numerous stories of Christians put to death for refusing to give up their faith and subscribe to Roman state paganism by sacrificing to Jove (Jupiter).  The Lyon martyrs all refused to denounce Christianity and were, it was said in the fourth century, put to death.  Enough Christians escaped to tell the sad story.

So much for the original account.  But this story lacked relics, which by the late fifth century were becoming a part of the stories of most saints.  Christianity was now widely tolerated, and the Christians of Lyon had to explain why, when other cities were discovering the remains of their Christian martyrs, they had nothing beyond the memory.  They explained that when their martyrs were killed, the bodies were burned, and their ashes were dumped in the river

A hundred years later, in the sixth century, things had changed again.  Christianity was now the official religion of the Empire, and saints were widely revered, not just as holy people worthy of remembrance but as figures still active in the present.  Now the Christians of Lyon not only said they had the relics of their martyrs, but they had always had them.  The surviving Christians of 177 were said to have gone downstream, miraculously located the water-soaked ashes, and reverently brought them back to be set in a fitting memorial.  And the martyrs, who had been nameless in the original account, now had names.

Some of the names might seem a little odd to us, such as Rhône River (the river into which the ashes were dumped), or Mature, or Maternal, or Bibles, or Fourth, or October.  They could have originally been nicknames or descriptors, but by the sixth century they were the martyrs' names.  A church was erected to honor them, complete with their  ashes.

We may chuckle now over this story, but for the sixth-century Christians of Lyon, in a time when other churches around Gaul were  finding and honoring the remains of their local martyrs, it was important that the (more or less) historically attested martyrs of their own past be properly acknowledged and revered.  After all, they worked miracles!

 

© C. Dale Brittain 2025

 For more on medieval Christianity, see my ebook Positively Medieval, available on Amazon and other ebook platforms.  Also available in paperback.