These quarantine times give us medievalists plenty of parallels to draw: times of plague and difficulties of travel -- but the effects are the same on us. Normally I would be with my family in Scotland by this time. There I would be hearing the screams of the gulls, the occasional melodic outburst of a blackbird and the friendly croaks of my beloved magpies.
Now I lie awake in the (earlier every day) dawn light listening to a very different set of birds: sparrows galore, North American robins -- enormous athletic birds so different from the jolly European kind -- finches, wrens, catbirds, four kinds of woodpeckers including the giant pileated woodpecker whose laugh echoes often. The crows come by to eat the corn. The bluejays tend to come in a pack and chatter loudly to one another. In the morning and at dusk you can hear the turkeys gobble.
In Scotland it is National Unicorn Day, the day they celebrate the national beast. With the lockdown and everyone staying indoors, they have become plentiful again, so I hear. Thus from medieval Scots history I offer you a tale told by a unicorn (on good authority!) from The Talis of Fyve Bestes(beasts that is, not besties). The executive summary:
“The Unicornis Tale” recounts how, in his youth, a boy named Gundulfus threw a stone and broke a cockerel’s thigh bone. He leaves home to study and returns on the night before he is due to travel to Kent to receive a benefice. His family and friends convince him to stay rather than travel that night, promising that the cock’s crows will wake him in the morning. The cock refuses to crow as an act of revenge and Gundulfus loses his position.
A few posts back, I posted the text of a medieval Latin hymn to the Goddess of Love from the 13th century “Little Renaissance.” At the time, I included a literal translation, but declined to translate it into poetry on the grounds that I couldn't do it justice.
What I had unwittingly done, of course, was to set myself a challenge.
(In the unlikely event that you've ever wondered what poets do while lying awake at night, you now know.)
So here's the best that I can do with it. You can even sing it to the same tune.
I'm delighted that a long-anticipated book is out at last! The Picatrix: A Medieval Treatise on Astral Magichas been long in production for the Penn State Magic in History line. As a member of Societas Magica I have seen bits of the work in progress which tantalised. From the blurb:
A manual for constructing talismans, mixing magical compounds, summoning planetary spirits, and determining astrological conditions, Picatrix is a cornerstone of Western esotericism. It offers important insights not only into occult practices and beliefs but also into the transmission of magical ideas from antiquity to the present. Dan Attrell and David Porreca’s English translation opens the world of this vital medieval treatise to modern-day scholars and lay readers.
[Today, we sit down for a quick interview with Australian author, Warwick Hill. A follower of Fjorn Sid, Hill discusses how his spirituality influences his writing; his medieval novel, Pagan Child; and his upcoming projects.]
BookMusings: How would you describe your personal spiritual path? Are you eclectic or part of a particular tradition?
Mumming was long a popular entertainment for the dark time of the year. The Christmas and New Years or Hogmanay plays offered adventures, dragons and Saint George and other wild characters -- Turkish Knights or Kings became popular after the Crusades. They offered an opportunity for hijinks, costumes and ritual of course. But they had another important theme, too.
When you say 'medieval drama' people generally think of mystery and morality plays. Mystery plays, after all, are how many people in the later Middle Ages knew their bible stories. In addition to the colourful paintings on church walls, they were probably the most vivid information they had about what Christianity was meant to be all about. The comic approaches may surprise you if you've not encountered them before. Noah's wife has to be dragged onto the arc because she didn't want to leave her friends. Then there's the thief who tried to disguise a hidden lamb as a newborn babe; the suspicious shepherds think it's an ugly baby but they don't catch on at first that it's the lost sheep they're looking for. The morality plays are more generalised but have characters that embody good and bad qualities like Mercy. Mischief and Mankind.
But between the Middle Ages and Shakespeare's time there are many other kinds of plays, from adventurous episodes in Robin Hood's life (all probably more entertaining than the new film) to seasonal mummings to more philosophical works. One of these is John Rastell's Nature of the Four Elements which may well appeal to folks here. The play is dated to about 1517-18. The one surviving copy is imperfect, but it gives an interesting insight into how people conceived of the four elements and their effects on the natural world.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
In Scotland it is 
