I've heard that warriors, charging into battle, get erections.

I wonder if it's true.

Being myself a bard rather than a warrior, I have no personal experience of the matter. Knowing my own unpredictable man's body, though, with a mind (not to mention a sense of humor) of its own, I could well believe it.

Ah, the mysteries of male physiology.

Now, erections are about lots of things—ask any guy waking up in the morning or (again, reportedly) hanged man*—and sex is only one.

But if this nugget of received wisdom is actually trustworthy, I could well understand why the Redcrest legions so feared the skyclad charges of Celtdom.

After all, it's kind of hard not to take an erection personally.

Not to mention the fact that a bobbing boner pointing in your general direction tends to be rather, er, distracting. Charging into battle against a naked, shrieking, woad-stained enemy with a sharp sword in his hand is decidedly not a good time to go losing your focus.

I don't personally know many warriors—in fact, I can't think of any—who have experienced the kind of face-to-face combat that the ancestors did, so there's no one of my acquaintance that I can ask directly. If there's a way to web-search this topic without first getting directed to every porn site on the planet—and believe me, I really don't want to go there—I have yet to find it.

(Porn sites carry lots of computer cooties, and besides, who's going to trust a porn site for information of any kind?)

Well, the best way to get a question answered is to ask it. So I'll put the question out there.

Warriors? I offer you my bard's ear.

If you're for talking, I'm for listening.

*I hear that Óðinn has a good rune for the purpose.