A Week in the Life of an MA Student

Enough said.

Experience 'Henges' on the Mind

Emily's and my adventures weren't limited to Bristol. Over that weekend, we went to Bath, and from there took a bus to Stonehenge and Lacock (more on that in a minute).

In Bath, we went to the Fashion Museum, which had clothes from the 18th - 21st centuries, but specialized in the 19th century. We also had tea and scones with clotted cream and jam at this delicious café in Lilliput Court. So we can now say that we, like Gulliver, have been to Lilliput and dined amongst the Lilliputians.

Book art from Gulliver's Travels; I'm not sure of the artist or edition.

Below are a few of the best photos we took of Stonehenge.

Photo by Emily--Isn't it awesome?

The most common misconception about Stonehenge is that it is related to druidism. Stonehenge was not built by the druids or for the druids; in fact, by the time the druids came along, Stonehenge was ancient. We still aren't really sure what its intended use was. The current popular theory amongst scholars is that it was originally used as a burial ground. The stones are believed to have been erected between 2400-2200 BCE, or possibly as early as 3000 BCE, but archeologists have found Mesolithic postholes dating from around 8000 BCE, pointing to a much earlier wooden version. The earliest druids didn't appear on the British Isles scene until 200 BCE. What's more, Stonehenge wasn't even the largest or most important of the henges constructed in the British Isles. Silly neo-paganists. Avebury is considered the largest and finest of the lot, and the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney is believed to be one of the oldest. So why is Stonehenge so famous? I don't know. But I'd be willing to chalk it up to good location. It's situated close to Salisbury (historically major religious center, home of the cathedral with the highest spire in England) and halfway between the major cities of Bristol and London.

That being said, Stonehenge was anything but a letdown. I have heard people complain that it's "smaller than they expected," "underwhelming," and that they keep the tourists way too far away from it. False. It was huge, especially considering these boulders were hauled across the country by people who had not yet invented the wheel. You were allowed to get quite close. Not, perhaps, as close as tourists a few generations ago, who were given picks and hammers and told to "chip off a piece as a souvenir." And it was far from underwhelming. This is not a tourist site where you go to do something or really even see something--it's a site where you go to imagine something. And I found that experience astounding. If you can't do that, go to Six Flags.

Ye Olde Blogge

Ever wonder why old places are always "Ye ____"? Why the "ye"? When did it switch to "the"? Actually, it's the reverse. It started off as "the," or rather, "þe." That weird-looking letter is a thorn, which makes the soft "th" sound, as in "thorough" (as opposed to the hard "th" sound, as in "this"). It's still used in Icelandic, but fell out of use in English several hundred years ago. It was often written in a way that made it look closer to a winn (ƿ) or yogh (both other archaic letters), which resembled something between a y and a p. As the þ fell out of use, people started thinking it was actually a y, and started pronouncing "þe curiosity shoppe" as "ye curiosity shop" rather than the proper "the curiosity shoppe." However, as the "the" pronunciation stuck around in most other forms of spoken language, "the" won out over "ye," and "ye" was relegated to themed pubs and souvenir shops.

Buddy in Bristol

The next thing that happened between my last post and today's date is that Emily came to visit! Highlights of the 'Emily in Bristol' experience include:

Drinking wine from Normandy made from a medieval recipe. It was delicious! It's much, much heavier than wine today--more like a port--and imbued with a lot of spices, especially cloves. It was very smooth and smelled amazing.

Going to see the Three Musketeers movie and finding a hippo statue along the way.

Going to a really pretty park and climbing up Cabot Tower.

Cabot Tower was built in 1897-1898 in memory of John Cabot, an explorer from Bristol who discovered North America in 1497. His expedition is thought to be the first European encounter with North America since the vikings left in the 1100s (Columbus landed in Central America).

The first European discovery of North America is credited to Leif Ericson (c. 970-c. 1020) who sailed to Newfoundland, Canada.

View of the park from the top of Cabot Tower.

Touring the S.S. Great Britain. The S.S. Great Britain, designed by Isambard Brunel, was the first iron steamer to cross the Atlantic. She sailed from 1845 to 1884, and was then docked and used as a quarantine ship and warehouse until 1937. Too expensive to keep or even dissemble, they scuttled her. They dug her up in 1970, and it's now an awesome museum. Emily even thought that, as far as museum quality goes, it put the U.S.S. Constitution to shame. Visitors could choose between one of three audio guides: first class, third class, or the "Sinbad the Cabin Kitty" one for kids. The rooms were arranged with all sorts of old dishes and clothing and knickknacks that made it look as if the people had just stepped out for a minute, though there were a few wax figures. They even had appropriate smells accompanying the different areas of the ship--ladies' promenade, kitchen, surgeon's room--a touch that was very interesting but not always pleasant.

One of the coolest aspects was the airtight seal around the ship's waterline. The materials used on the part of the ship that is supposed to go underwater gives preservationists a difficult time: on one hand, keeping it underwater will erode the iron; on the other hand, dry-docking it will cause the material to dry out and decay just as much. Their solution was to create an airtight seal around the ship right at the waterline. The seal is glass or plexiglass (something clear) with an inch or two of water in the middle of it (not touching the ship, just inside the plexiglass), making it look like it's sitting in water, but at the same time allowing you to look down and see the bottom of the ship from ground level, which was really cool. Visitors can then go underneath the ship into a humidity-controlled area and wander around the hull.

Big. Very big.

That's not an anchor. This is an anchor.

Ooh, look, the boat steering thing! (click on it)

All hands on deck! The white line behind Emily separates the first class part of the deck from the area designated for lower members of society.

Hey, look, a cow!

The first class dining room. People with third-class tickets sometimes didn't even get fed. The crew would just randomly decide that they didn't get lunch that day. This led to several riots, which eventually convinced the authorities to create laws standardizing third-class quality of life onboard passenger ships.

Walking in Someone Else's Medieval Shoes

I haven't posted in a month. On the bright side, the reason I haven't was because I was busy racking up adventures to post about!

The first fun thing I did since October 19th was go on a medieval walking tour of Bristol. Unfortunately, Bristol was hit very hard in the Blitz, and so a lot of the tour was, "So where we're standing now used to be a medieval building." There are a few things I can show you, though.

The first thing I learned while on this tour was that Bristol has its own color. Much like Lincoln has its own particular shade of 'Lincoln green,' in the Middle Ages Bristol became known for 'Bristol red.' It's best described as a dark barn red.

Lavold Silky Wool in Bristol Red; photo courtesy of www.dipity.com

The next interesting fact: My dorm building, now located in the center of town, in the 14th century would have been directly on the harbor (now a respectable 20 minute walk away). I would have stepped out my door, rounded the corner, and been face-to-face with some ships.

My, look at all that water!

In the 14th century, with a population of 800 people, Bristol was ranked as one of the three largest cities in England after London, alongside York and Norwich. Today it is the sixth largest in England, with 500,000 residents in the city proper.

Bristol became a prosperous city due to the salt trade. In fact, that whimsical building I posted photos of earlier is an almshouse built by the richest man in Bristol at the time. He amassed his fortune solely on the salt trade, and due to his oodles of money eventually rose to the position of town mayor.

The chapel next to Whoville is the Chapel of the Three Kings of Cologne, and though the almshouse was converted into private housing, the chapel remains an official English Heritage site.

This is the mayor's (John Foster's) residence, built at the end of the 15th century. He had it made in a duplex style as a way of showing everyone in town that he had twice the money as any of the other gentlemen in town, and could afford the equivalent of two houses.

That being said, the largest landowner in Bristol in the 14th century was not a lay aristocrat, but the Church. Over 20% of the city's land was owned by the Church, and over 10% of the population were in some capacity members of the clergy. The friary on Colston Street was one of the first English medieval places to get running water, running it down from a spring near what is now Cabot Tower (and back then was a random hill), and providing it as tap water (Yes, taps! Isn't it exciting?!) to the friary and the neighboring houses.

This is one of the old city gates.

At 9:00 pm, the curfew bell would sound, the iron gates of the city would be shut, and everyone had better be in their houses, or they would be deemed 'troublemakers.' Our guide didn't go into what the consequences of that label would have been.

The street leading up to this gate (not the cross-street on the sign) was originally called Knife Street, and was where all the knife smiths would sell their wares. The name got corrupted over the centuries, though, and is now called Christmas Street. I'm still unclear as to how that could have gotten corrupted that far.

You were expected to have a knife on you at all times. In fact, it was considered good manners to bring your own utensils to a feast. Swords, however, were only allowed to be worn by knights and higher-ranking persons when within the city walls, both as a means of class distinction and as a way of keeping down the violence.

Now Old King Cole may have been a merry old soul, but King Edward II was certainly not. He raised a fish tax as a means of padding his coffers, which didn't take well in a bustling port town like Bristol. The citizens started a riot, the first riot in Bristol's recorded history. They did a bang-up job of it, too: the riot lasted from 1312-1316, ended with Edward II withdrawing the tax. A few years later, Edward II got a bee in his bonnet that the Bristol seaside would be the perfect vacationing spot, and he promptly organized a royal retinue and paid the dear residents a visit, apparently having forgotten all about that nasty little fish tax business. Edward II's wife, Isabella, and his son, Edward III, tired of his tyrannical shenanigans, sent word ahead to the Bristolians and had him murdered upon arrival.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

14th century engraving of Isabella "the She-wolf" of France. I'm not making that nickname up.

On that note, I'll conclude the medieval tour. I will, however, leave you with a few statistics regarding 14th century medieval life in Bristol.

Daily Wages:

Common laborer: 2 pence

Carptenter: 4 pence

Mason: 6 pence

Cost of Dinner:

Chicken or rabbit: 4 pence

Duck: 2 pence

Average Height:

Women: 5'2"

Men: 5'7"

Typical Life:

Age 7: Start working

Age 12: Get engaged

Age 14: Get married

Age 16: Start living with your spouse (this seems a bit odd)

Age 20: By now you have 4-5 children, have finished your stint in the army, and if you're wealthy enough, can run for public office.

Age 40: Retire and start devoting yourself to religion--after all, you're an old fogey and probably won't live much longer.

How to Make Mikayla's Awesome Balsamic Chicken Dinner

The online recipe you are attempting to follow calls for a cup of chicken stock. England doesn’t have ready-made chicken stock. The back of the cubed-stock package says 400ml or ¾ pint boiling water per cube. You don’t know what 400ml looks like, but you do know what a pint of stout looks like. However, you remember that a UK pint is 4oz larger than a US pint. You also have no idea what 4oz of water looks like, and you don’t have any liquid (or dry) measuring cups, because while you have looked everywhere, UK stores don’t seem to carry them. Even if they did, this would not matter, because UK Imperial cup measurements are not the same size as US cup measurements. You decide that two coffee mugs stacked on top of each other looks very roughly like an oversized pint glass. Put 1¾ mugs of water into a pot to boil. Add chicken stock cube. Reduce a lot until it starts tasting like what you imagine chicken stock should taste like, having never actually tasted plain chicken stock, but having seen your mother pour it into cooking pots before.

The recipe you are following assumes that you have already roasted a whole chicken (you will be making this sauce to drizzle over it), and tells you to put the fat drippings into a saucepan. You have uncooked chicken breasts. You decide that a moderate drizzle of olive oil should suffice, especially since you don’t really have much else in the way of possible substitutes.

The recipe calls for two minced garlic cloves. Figuring that garlic cloves, like everything else in Europe, are probably smaller than they are in the States, you mince three cloves. The recipe also calls for one minced shallot. You have ½ an onion. After taking your knife to it such that the pieces are halfway between chopped and garlic-sized-minced, you decide that ¼ of an onion is plenty, and really mincing it would be overkill, so you stop there. Add garlic and onion to oiled pan, then add a dash of nearly-reduced chicken broth for added moisture.

The recipe also wants you to add two teaspoons of freshly chopped thyme. You add 1½ teaspoons of dried thyme. You are aware that dried has less flavor than fresh, but 1½ looks good enough.

When the onions start to get soft, you decide that this is as good a time as any to add the chicken—two breasts, whole. You also add most of the chicken stock and the mustard. The recipe calls for two teaspoons of Dijon. You have Colman’s, but close enough.

According to the recipe, you are supposed to wait for this mixture to reduce to ¾ cup and then whisk in two tablespoons of unsalted butter and two teaspoons of sherry vinegar. Not having a whisk, and no longer preparing a sauce to pour over chicken like the recipe intends, you decide to add them now. The butter is fine and dandy, and probably the only part of this recipe you have actually followed. You like vinegar a lot, but only have balsamic. Add three tablespoons.

Reduce. Reduce, reduce, reduce. You go from having chicken stock soup to having a sticky sauce. While reducing, flip the chicken over, taste the sauce occasionally, and add in ½-1 teaspoon of more thyme and an additional 2-2½ teaspoons of mustard (you are eyeballing, so you're not entirely sure how much you add). Forget the pepper you were supposed to add entirely.

As your chicken is nearing done, and the sauce is very reduced, decide that just chicken isn’t going to cut it for dinner, and throw in a bag of raw carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli. Getting impatient with the cook time on the veggies, but not having a lid for your saucepan, you cover the majority of the veggies with the lid from your chicken stock pot. Leave the chicken outside of this mini-steamer, since it’s already cooked enough.

When the veggies are sufficiently steamed, but not limp, put the chicken and veggies on a plate and drip the remaining sticky sauce over the top. Serves two, so put half in the fridge for tomorrow. While eating, congratulate yourself on your super awesomeness. When you see your flatmate come into the kitchen and start heating up chicken nuggets, gloat inwardly. Wash down with a cold mug of milk (you don’t own drinking glasses).

To see the recipe this stemmed from, click here.

I'm Getting an Inkling

Yesterday, I sat in a pub for four hours with Jon and Magda, working on Latin homework. It was actually kind of awesome. I felt very Tolkien/C. S. Lewis-esque. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis were professors at Oxford (Tolkien was primarily a linguist, Lewis a medievalist, though there were definitely crossovers). They and their buddies formed a group called the Inklings, and would get together at the Eagle and Child pub to discuss their latest works, including The Lord of the Rings and Out of the Silent Planet. Actually, the Hobbit actually started as a linguistics project, and then grew into a full-length fantasy novel.

But back to Latin. Discovery of the evening? I am, by some strange coincidence, very adept at translating sentences involving the words "book," "sword," and "war." This ability doesn't stem from my being a proficient of any other aspect of Latin, trust me. Furthermore, for some equally bizarre reason, our textbook seems to always throw "book" in the same practice sentences and phrases as "sword" or "war." (For those who don't know, I did my undergraduate thesis on legendary swords in medieval literature). I think it's a sign--I was definitely meant to be in Medieval Studies rather than English Literature.

A Book of Books of Books

On Monday, I had my first Research Skills for Medievalists class. It was probably one of the most exciting classes I've ever had. Not the most exciting, but I'm definitely putting it in the College Top Ten because of it's overwhelming usefulness.

We learned about bibliography books and concordances. Prof. Putter gave us each a booklet, a bibliography book of bibliography books, so to speak, containing all of the concordances and bibliography books pertaining to the Western Middle Ages.

Bibliography books are books that list every book written on a particular subject, along with a brief description of what that book covers. Think of them as almanacs. There are bibliography books on everything from Hispanic Arthurian Literature to Biographies of St. Augustine to Iconography of Christian Art. If you want to research, say, 12th century wool trade between England and Normandy, you could go to the Handbook of Medieval Exchange, where it would list all of the known documents and manuscripts pertaining to your topic and which libraries to find them in.

Then there are motif books. These books are a bit like thesauruses. They list all instances in which certain motifs show up in medieval literature. For example, there is the "Rash Boon" motif, where a person asks an unspecified favor of someone else, who grants it too quickly with no questions asked, and then finds the favor not to his or her liking. The motif book would list the motif (and description), and then give you all the variations on the theme. Variation one: The Lady of the Lake tells King Arthur that she will give him Excalibur in exchange for granting her a favor at a later date. Arthur, anxious to get his hands on a magical sword, agrees. A little while later, the Lady of the Lake rides into Arthur's court, where she tells the king that she wants him to decapitate his best knight and give her the head. Now Arthur seriously regrets granting the Lady of the Lake such a rash boon that day out on the pond, because he's unwilling to kill his best knight, unwilling to give up Excalibur, and unwilling to break his promise to a lady.

"King Arthur Asks the Lady of the Lake for the Sword Excalibur," Walter Crane

Variation two: Gwawl ap Clud tricks Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, into granting him any one thing within his power to give. Pwyll agrees, only to find out that this "one thing" is his bride-to-be, Rhiannon. He is forced to hand her over. It's up to Rhiannon to save the day, outwitting Gwawl and marrying her true love.

"Rhiannon," Alan Lee

Then there are concordances. The authors of these are sad little men and women with no social life and a sick sense of fun, for which we all thank them profusely. Concordances are like indices. They list every time a certain word or phrase is used in a text and on which line and page in the text each one can be found. This would have saved me so much time if I had known of these when I was doing my undergraduate thesis. There are over 800 instances in which a sword is mentioned in Beowulf, not to mention the swords in The Song of Roland, or worse yet, Le Morte d'Arthur (a book whose size gives the Bible a run for it's money). And I counted them all by myself. Now, come to find out, I could have just typed "sword*" into a concordance database (or found a hard copy, if need be) and voila! Now the only question that remains is: why were my earlier professors holding out on me?

Say Hwaet?

Shakespeare did not write in Old English.

Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English. Yes, Shakespeare is modern. In fact, the proper term for the Renaissance is “Early Modern,” because there were lots and lots of renaissances over the course of several centuries.

A renaissance is a “rebirth” of classical knowledge. It means that people are suddenly really interested in what the Romans and Greeks were doing, the local monasteries clean up their act like frat boys the night before Moms’ Weekend, and everyone starts using Latin a lot more.

The Renaissance hit its height in the 16^th century, but arguably spanned from the 14^th all the way to the 17^th century. To distinguish this über-renaissance from the rest of the renaissances, historians refer to this period as Early Modern.

So if Shakespeare is Early Modern, what constitutes Old English?

Let me give you a visual ... and an audio. If you click the link below each passage, it will take you to a YouTube video where you can hear the words pronounced. (Trust me, you’ll want to do this—Middle English may look normal-ish, but it sure doesn’t sound like it.)

4^th to 11^th century: Old English, also known as Anglo-Saxon

hƿæt ƿe ȝardena in ȝeardaȝum,

þeodcyninȝa, þrym ȝefrunon,

hu ða æþelinȝas ellen fremedon.

oft scyld scefinȝ sceaþena

þreatum, moneȝum mæȝþum, meodosetla ofteah,

eȝsode eorlas. syððan ærest ƿearð

feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre ȝebad,

ƿeox under ƿolcnum, ƿeorðmyndum þah,

oðþæt him æȝhƿylc þara ymbsittendra

ofer hronrade hyran scolde,

ȝomban ȝyldan. þæt ƿæs ȝod cyninȝ.

Beowulf--opening lines

*Just to clarify, the ȝ and ƿ should blend in size-wise with the rest of the text, but unfortunately, there is no Unicode for these runes, so I had to copy-paste pictures of them into the text, rather than be able to type them or insert them as symbols.

11^th to early 15^th century: Middle English

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The drought of March hath perced to the roote

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;

Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,

And smale foweles maken melodye,

That slepen al the nyght with open eye-

So priketh hem Nature in hir corages;

Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages

And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes

To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

And specially from every shires ende

Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,

The hooly blisful martir for to seke

That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seeke.

Chaucer's "Prologue" to the Canterbury Tales

Late 15^th to 17^th century: Early Modern English

To be thus, is nothing, but to be ſafely thus:

Our feares in Banquo ſtick deep,

And in his Royaltie of Nature reigns that

Which would be fear’d. ’Tis much he dares,

And to that dauntleſs temper of his Minde,

He hath a Wiſdom, that doth Guide his Valour,

To aƈt in ſafety. There is none but he

Whoſe being I do fear, and under him

My Genius is rebuked, as it is said

Mark Anthonies was by Ceſars.

Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act III scene i

By the way, yes, that’s Ian McKellan. Judy Dench plays Lady Macbeth in the same Royal Shakespeare Company production.

The majority of my studies this year will involve me reading Middle English, but next semester, I will also be taking a course on learning how to read and understand Old English. As to that Shakespeare stuff—that’s way too modern for me. ;)

Not All Those Who Wander are Lost

Yesterday, Madeleine (English Lit, from Norway) and I went wandering around the northeast part of Bristol. Here are a few of our findings:

The museum part of the Bristol Museum/Law and Earth Sciences Library Building.

The fountain outside of one of the student union buildings. It's not the Student Union Building, but at least for orientation week it has operated in much the same capacity. Across is the Victoria Methodist Church. This and one other church are right along the bar/club street. One stop shopping for sin and atonement?

One of the more interesting pub signs I've seen in Bristol. This is for the Penny Farthing Pub.

The chimneys in the residential sections remind me of Mary Poppins.

Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey, chim chim cher-ee!

Rent-a-church, anyone?

Yes, that is a giant two-headed blue goose sculpture on a rooftop. No, I don't know why it's there.

A typical Bristol house.

A bridge over some (rather pretty) train tracks, leading to a (rather small) park.

A view from the park. It makes Bristol seem like a quaint, picturesque little town, when it's actually a bustling city.

We came across this incredible garden fence in some part of the residential section (we weren't entirely sure where we were at this point). It's covered in iron creatures that live in and around the water. I have some close-ups of a couple sections of it below.

Baby elephant graffiti! Isn't it cute?

This is an almshouse founded in 1483 by the Mayor of Bristol, John Foster. The chapel on the left edge of the screen was founded by him a few years later. It's so over-the-top whimsical--especially for an almshouse. It looks like it came out of the "It's A Small World" Disney ride.

Close-up of the detail work on arched doorway of the 13th century St. Mark's Church right next to my building. What, exactly, were those medieval monks smoking in their incense burners? At last, mysticism explained.

Hops and Hills

My flat/dorm is at the bottom of a rather steep hill, and my classes are at the top of it (of course). Here's a photo taken halfway between the two points, where the ground levels out for a little while.

The right-hand fork will take you down the hill to the building I live in. To the immediate left of this photograph is the Bristol Museum, which is connected to the Earth Sciences and Law Library. Below are two photographs of the library part of the building.

Needless to say, I am very, very jealous of the Law and Earth Sciences students. Everyone on campus is going on and on about how fantastic the Humanities Library is, because they renovated the interior this summer. I appreciate the timeliness of the renovation (usually everything happens the year after I graduate). However, our building is really modern on the outside as well as the inside. I can get modern at home. I can't get this!

In other news, I went to the Freshers' Fair yesterday, where all of the campus clubs have tables and business representatives from around town forcefully accost you with leaflets and promotional coupons. I didn't really care to sign up for anything; I'm planning on spending my time studying and sightseeing, not hanging out with the Pantomime Club. And yes, they do have that here. However, I did join one group. They are the Bristol Real Ales Society, or as I call it, Pub Club. We'll get together once every week or every other week and go taste beer and cider at pubs and cellars around town, plus members get discounts at some pubs when they go there on their own as well. It was too British for me to pass up.

This Pub Club and its discounts will also come in handy in a couple weeks, when Emily comes to visit. I bet her yesterday that England would win the England vs. France Rugby World Cup tournament this morning. I lost. I now owe her a pint.