Magicians, seers and sages

 was the theme of this year's Medieval Seminar at UVic. Which was definitely one of the more interesting topics we've had, and--yay!--one which didn't leave me staring at the wall, wondering how on earth to set up a relevant display.

For one thing, literacy! Before literacy was common, writing was strongly identified with magic. Spelling. Grammar and glamour (a magical mind-control) have the same root. What is she writing, below? Perhaps a textual amulet to be carried for protection against evil.

Then from texts to textiles. Spells can be stitched or woven--think of all the mundane craft terms associated with magic. I'm tempted to mention some very good stories with textile magic, but since they're by modern authors and not medieval, I'll try to stay on topic. This below is embroidery by Elisabeth de Besancon, and lovely clean work of course. If I get hold of specific info about the stitches and so on I'll post it, but right now I have nowt.

I had to pick my moment carefully to get all three with their heads down. It's not quite the Three Fates, but evocative, don't you think? Fortunately none of them have shears.

This is just one of the more intriguing-looking bits of the display. Like the dried lizard? I always knew it would come in handy someday. I had fun writing up all the little cards.

Then there's magic associated with music. Enchanted by song, sung to sleep or madness. Fiddles that make all hearers dance. True Thomas the harper of the Queen of Faerie, the horns of Elfland.

I can promise you that none of this spread below was magicked. Just tasty!
After takedown we went home to a medieval feast of Grete Pie (the flour & water crust serves as the baking dish) of pork and chicken and dried apples, plums and raisins, side dishes of spinach salad and canabens with bacon, and a pudding of milk and almonds. (I am open to correction and addition on any of this, since all I did was make up gluten-free pastry for a secondary pie).

Oh, almost forgot. With the invaluable help of Joan (the harpist above) two smallish cloth hangings got painted, appropriate to the theme. I've been trying to pull that together for the last three? four? seminars, and never managed to set aside time. This time Joan made it happen. Yay!

Done over two evenings. The blue one is Joan's. Cool, isn't it? It made me remember how much I like painting.

The panels, racing through.

WFC, as you may know, limits programming to one or two tracks of panels. On the surface, this makes it resemble a small fannish con, like VCon of old. Probably the limitation is to allow plenty of opportunity for business to be done in the bar, but that side is still muchly a mystery to me.

Friday I started with the Who, What or Why Done It panel, about mysteries and puzzles in ghost stories and urban fantasy, which sounded like fun buuuuutttt... when the moderator showed up (late) and then spent what felt like 10 minutes rambling on about what he'd been reading before he came, introducing the panelists (himself), giving them five (long-winded and verbose) questions to consider, talking about the etymology of 'mystery', praising another story he'd read recently, and ... Well, I left before he'd given the panelists a chance to talk. Every time he paused, and I thought 'he's done, he's going to open discussion' another clause would roll oleaginously from his lips, never a period, always a comma. I ditched. (The same moderator drove me from a panel last WFC--why is he asked to moderate?)

And headed over to Writing Human Characters, which was well underway. This was okay, going over fairly well-trodden paths. Make characters human by giving them something they want and can't have, how to make an alien/inhuman 'human', but how to make a character really alien if they're all humans with forehead prostheses? Discussion of monocultural planets and races (one of my pet peeves) and the dubious practice of using non-European stereotypes as a basis for alien races. All in all, entertaining.

Shelf Lives was a slideshow and talk by John Picacio about how he creates book covers, which I found very interesting, especially the layering of effects, and how he gathers photos and items to trigger concepts.

Non-Conciliatory Fantasy was a bit frustrating, in that the panelists (and audience) didn't seem to be clear whether they meant 'conciliatory' or 'consolatory', ie. fantasy that does not bring into harmony, or fantasy that does not alleviate grief. Because those would be different. It strikes me that most epicky fantasy is non-conciliatory because it ends with one side defeated in battle, or mostly defeated but enough undefeated for the sequel, but it rarely if ever ends with treaties, negotiation and hard-won harmony. (Adjust for ignorance--I read very little doorstopper fantasy). But generally the discussion was about non-consolatory fantasy, fantasy that doesn't leave you feeling comforted or reassured. Point made that many epic fantasists were survivors of war, soldiers, drawing on their combat experience, from Tolkien onwards. Was any fantasy classic really conciliatory/consolatory? Conclusion seemed to be that most end with loss, something small and precious saved from the general wreck. Heroes and anti-heroes considered briefly, the anti-hero not a recent development either, Jack Vance's heroes often brutal and amoral, this bearable because of his detachment.

Having missed the Round Robin Painting on Thursday, I wanted to listen to Artists Who Write and Writers Who Paint. It was fun, and convinced me that I'll have to read Seanan McGuire: when the discussion veered over to book covers and how authors are not consulted, she mentioned that she'd been asked what was the one thing she wanted on her cover and she'd said 'clothes'. That her heroine should be fully clothed, no butt-cleavage, no tramp-stamp, and that this wish had been answered. That one reader had taken Toby for a boy, and she'd wanted to hug them for that. Discussion of using art to unblock or to organise and free thoughts by painting/sketching. I was surprised to learn that no one really made sketches or paintings of characters or settings or scenes, though occasionally art echoed the mood of a story-in-progress.

Academic Treatment of Fantasy and Horror, the advance of genre studies in the last ten years. It's happening, but the 'name' universities are still resistant, and likely to continue so. Degrees in genre studies are easier to get via sociology (popular culture studies) or anthropology than through eng lit.

Know the Soup You're In, slideshow and talk by Lisa Snelling about the creative process, and how she balances art and mass production, where she finds inspiration, and finishing with a lovely playful short film made by a friend, which reminded me of early Norman McLaren.

When People Confuse the Author with Their Work was huge fun with lively opinionated panelists and lots of anecdotes. The fear of your mother (of whatever sort) reading your work as an inhibiting factor, and the decision to write deeply flawed characters. Not answering fan mail from prisons. Preconceptions about one's favourite authors, disappointment or relief? Is the confusion more likely with first-person narrative? Three of the panelists had worked in publishing and found it necessary to separate their love of certain authors' works from their increased knowledge of the certain authors' personalities.

Urban Fantasy as Alternate History, a fascinating topic: if supernatural creatures really were part of society, what would the sociological, legal, historic etc. implications be? And it started off well, with examples of how history might be changed, ways the panelists had approached the question, who did it well ... and then it veered into what's the difference between science fiction and fantasy, and the moderator made no attempt to bring it back, but in fact led it determinedly into surely one of the most trite of all genre questions. So I left.

Coarse Dialogue and Graceful Description, about balancing high and low diction in fantasy, moderated by Deanna Hoak, whom I totally fangirl. Did veer a few times into good and bad copyediting anecdotes, and notable for Ellen Kushner and James Frenkel having a set-to. I felt that Guy Gavriel Kay ran on rather when he got hold of the mike, too.

What Makes a Good Monster was okay, but in some ways was a mirror-image of the Human Characters panel. The most frightening monsters are the most alien or the most human? Humans can make the best monsters; Pennywise the Clown is vastly more frightening than the giant spider-thingy it becomes.

The Sorcerer in Fantasy was one of those panels where every panelist disavowed writing about sorcerers, but they managed to muddle through until it turned into a discussion about the difference between magic and technology, which ties with sf vs. fantasy for mind-numbingly irrelevant and over-studied question. I ditched.

Contemporary Rural Fantasy was pretty good, though not brilliant. Contemporary rural settings make for fantasy for teens and children, horror for adults, so much discussion of horror. With population more and more urbanised, perception of country changes, both safer and more dangerous. There have always been works set in the countryside, why is it not recognised as a subgenre, or so often conflated into urban fantasy? Panelists and audience name rural fantasy works, come up with fairly substantial body of works. Moderator says again that subgenre is waiting for iconic work which will establish it.

Bad Food, Bad Clothes and Bad Breath was brilliant. Just bloody brilliant. Discussion of the gritty and unpleasant realities of pre-industrial societies. I'd thought of ducking out early to catch some of Weird Weird West (which I heard was also brilliant, afterwards) but couldn't tear myself away. Must go and find Kari Sperring's academic work (under different name). Why agriculture? Unintentional germ warfare. Insect life. Positive influence of Christianity, sorry about that, guys. Why doesn't anyone in fantasy have lice or fleas (I do happy dance here, because I have, yes, a lousing scene in Willow Knot) and why do the characters have such enlightened views on medicine and slavery and so on? Anyway, I can't restrain myself, but actually do go up post-panel and brag about my lousing scene.

And those were the panels I attended.

the first few churches

UK 08, ever-continuing.

Over that day-and-a-half,, Lucia, Mark and I explored. Not wanting to go too far afield after the long drive from Lincoln, a tour of Wingfield College and St. Andrews, Wingfield, we plumped for Hoxne (pronounced Hocksen), which has St. Peter & St. Paul church with wall-paintings, and a moated vicarage. Not to mention the Swan, a pub in a 15th c. Bishop's Lodge. In an omen for our timing in other instances, we came along just before closing time, and had to be satisfied with an ale for Mark. One of the locals actually spotted his accent as Canadian (Vancouver, which is awfully close), winning a beer to be collected next time we saw him.
Hoxne is known for having one of the better historical claims to a connection with the martyred King Edmund, including (gone now) the tree he was supposed to have been bound to. Mark remembered the name because of the Hoxne Hoard, a Roman find.


St. Peter & St. Paul, Hoxne, has been restored by the Victorian hand, though not as splendiferously as Thornham Magna below.
Pictures of the moat were taken later. On this visit, we noticed first the lovely lychgate, which is, yes, where corpses are brought in for burial. In case you wondered.
The graveyard is somewhat overgrown, and I took photos of leaning gravestones and ivy-covered tombs. There's a surprising variety of types through England. East Anglia has a number of what look like above-ground, oversized stone coffins, usually with a head and foot-stone. There's probably a technical term, but I don't know it.
I also took pictures of trees, but that may warrant a separate post. Or several separate posts. Or just keeping that sort of thing to myself.

What I really wanted to see, though, was the wall paintings. Three large paintings had been recovered in this church, and I just wish my photos hadn't been so blurry. Simon's are better, over on the Suffolk Churches page.
The first one you see is a St. Christopher, usually painted right across from the church door, because if you see St. Christopher first thing in the morning, you're safe from violent death for the rest of the day.
The other two are the Seven Acts of Mercy, shown as seven figures holding scrolls (and possibly insignia). This one is the Seven Deadly Sins, depicted as a tree. There was probably a larger scheme, with more moral lessons, but these are all that survive (or have been able to be recovered so far).
The paintings are as high as possible on the walls, and must have been impressive when all the colour was present and fresh. They're still impressive, damaged as they are.

St. Mary, Thornham Parva (which means Little Thornham) was top of my list of Churches To See. Simon waxes eloquent about it, and with good reason. That was our first church next morning.
It's a proper parish church, layered with history, so that the 14th century wall painting scheme is broken by 15th century windows, an 18th century gallery and 20th century plaques. A cardboard box holding copies of the church bulletin sits on top of the medieval font.
And it's thatched! It has a thatched tower! St. Mary sits, like a few other East Anglian churches we were to see, in the middle of fields. One thatched cottage nearby, but otherwise it's clearly a ways from any parishioners.


The interior is simple, too small to have aisles, but with a restored rood-screen, and a few pieces of rescued medieval glass tucked in the window tracery.
This picture, while giving you an idea of the small compass of the church, hides the two things that make it really remarkable.
One is a rare survival of an almost complete wall painting scheme, the sort of thing that almost every medieval church once had, destroyed in so many cases by later fenestration (sorry, putting in windows), or well-meaning Victorian restorers wanting to reveal 'the beauty of the stonework' by knocking off the plaster. The Puritans, ironically, did more to preserve the paintings: whitewashing over them and painting improving mottoes on top.
But I digress (cries of No! Really?).


The wall paintings tell two stories. One storyline is the martyrdom of St. Edmund, including his flight, the body found guarded by a wolf, the removal of his body to the shrine in Bury. A doorway arch stands in for the bridge that the cart bearing his body was miraculously able to cross (it was too narrow for the cart). The picture here is described as Edmund's head being reattached to his body by monks.

The other storyline is the Infancy of Christ. The Annunciation is missing, but the Visitation, Adoration, and Presentation are all surviving. The paintings are much more intimate, obviously, than the Hoxne paintings. They're at head-height or just above, and the style is simple, almost cartoony to modern eyes. This is not the art of the court.

The art of the court is represented by the other treasure of Thornham Parva, which is the retable. Excuse my blurry and partial photo, as I'm not good at photographing through glass. (Mark took better photos, and I may post them later).
The retable was probably the property of a noble family, hidden away and perhaps part of a secret chapel during the Reformation, then forgotten, eventually found in a stable loft and donated to this little church.
It shows the Crucifixion, with four saints flanking it on each side, holding their insignia. The background is gold leaf, and the figures are painted in oil, which pegs it as an English production. There's a sister panel, identified as being from the same oaks, now in the Museum at Cluny (and which I used as a model for a panel painting I did some years back).
The figures have that dancer's grace of early 14th century painting, with exaggerated hands and length of limb, to give them more gesture and emphasis. The modeling of the draperies is ... just so beautiful that I think I have to shut up about it now.
I'll post Mark's pictures later.


St. Mary Magdalene, Thornham Magna (Big Thornham) is appropriately much grander. It's the church of an important family (as St. Andrew was) rather than a parish church. And it has been restored most impressively, with the brightest Victorian touches of glass and paint.
Jane led us unerringly about, and we found a lane to park in, a raised cart-track alongside the road, paved with dead leaves. It had the air of being left over from the past, though I suppose it was in use enough not to be grown over.
This tree caught my attention on the way in, for its wild exuberance in a clipped and trimmed context. (Look, it's the only tree picture here, and there were some awesome trees at Thornham Parva, but I have some self-control, whatever you might think.)
The grounds are beautifully kept, and there's a fine Victorian angel in the graveyard.
There was one other church, I think, that had as impressive a restored interior (judged purely on its Victorian merits). I'll have to find which it was in my notes.

The day was cloudy while we were there, so I didn't try to photograph the stained-glass windows, which were lovely Pre-Raphaelite style, designed (I found out later) by Burne-Jones.
The hammerbeam roof may be medieval, but overall, it's best to just consider this Victorian Gothic and enjoy it for that.

I have to remind myself just how far up ecclesiastical interiors go. It surprises me each time I enter an old church, that there's so much air enclosed. Modern churches don't seem to reach quite so high.

Huh. How about that?

My article on painted cloth hangings in the Middle Ages, Whips and Angels, is cited twice in Wikipedia. Once for the article on Samite (where they misspell my SCA name) and once for the article on Joyous Entry (where they give my modern name).
Every now and then the article brings me an inquiry on either 'How can I paint my medieval costume to look as if it's embroidered?' or 'How can I tell whether this tatty piece of painted linen is medieval?'
That it should be used within the Society for Creative Anachronism, and perhaps re-enactment groups, for documentation or research, that I pretty much expect. That it should be treated as a 'real' resource always surprises me. Especially when Diane Wolfthal's book The Beginnings of Netherlandish Canvas Painting, 1400-1530, is available.
I suppose it's the immediacy of it being online and not requiring physical movement.

The title, in case anyone is wondering, is a reference to one of the many, many, many (and yeah, many) medieval and early modern painted cloths that have been lost to time and changing fashion and moths. That one was recorded in an inventory which mentioned that it was painted with 'whips and angels', probably for Lenten decoration. It's my little shriek of frustration that so little is known for sure.
Though it would also make a good title for something by krylyr, maybe?

comparative earnings

From my fiction writing I've made $90, from the sale of a short story (novelet).
I was once asked to edit (not copy edit, but editing for flow and style) the opening chapters of a novel, for which I was paid $50. I'd contracted informally for $40, so that was a nice surprise.
I was once commissioned to calligraph and paint a page of parchment in manuscript style, an anniversary gift for which I was paid $700 (materials included).

So, for my second career, which should I pick? Not that I'm quitting my day job, which I rather enjoy. I'd say painting, but I may have exhausted the market for pastiches of East Anglian illumination.

rambly thoughts about magic

I'm not keen on the idea of the Mageborn. Maybe it's my semi-socialist upbringing: What abaht the workers? Or my Canadian background: Who do you think you are?

Whatever the origin, the dubiety is similar to my feelings about genius in art. Nice if you've got it, but irrelevant to the learning of the craft. I rather mistrust the assumption of genius, because it seems to be taken as an easy out--you can't teach someone to be a genius, therefore genius can't be taught. At worst, anyone who isn't a genius isn't worth teaching, the genius doesn't need teaching, and the teaching of the craft is lost.
If that sounds far-fetched, read Jonathan Stephenson's opening essay to Materials and Techniques of Painting, describing how painters lost the knowledge of grinding and mixing pigments, making brushes, and preparing canvas and panel, and how an artisan's craft became a gentleman's hobby. And how that knowledge was painfully regained from the study of a few surviving artists' handbooks and analysis of paint on manuscripts, panels and canvas.
What attracts me to the guild system, and to the idea of apprenticeship, is that it assumes that all crafts are equally accessible. Some apprenticeships are longer than others (a tiler is only a few months, others may be 5 or 7 years) but provided the apprentice is sound of wind and limb, and willing to work, at the end of it he's turned out as master (later as journeyman) capable of earning his living, whether by making shoes, casting pewter, tanning leather or painting altarpieces.
Masterpiece once meant a competent work showing mastery of the materials and techniques proving one's readiness to set up shop. Nowadays it means something brilliant and outstanding, original and elite.
But that is a many-layered rant, and I digress.

The idea that only the mageborn can do magic is, to me, like the idea that only a genius can paint or play an instrument. If you have perfect pitch, you'll learn to sing faster than someone who has to begin with scales, sure. Genius exists, and talent exists, but while that gives you a leg up, it doesn't take you to mastery without study and practice. If you don't master your materials and study your techniques, you'll fall behind the 'untalented' student who is willing to do the work. (There's a quote from Wee Free Men applicable here, but I leave it as an exercise to the reader.)
The idea that two people can recite the same words, or make the same gestures, or draw the same circle on the ground, and that one of them is successful and the other isn't, because of some inborn quality in one of them, is not an idea that works for me. It's like saying that you and I can pick up a paintbrush, dip it in the paint, and my brush will make a mark on the canvas and yours won't. Or you and I can sit down at the piano, and your keys will make lovely chiming noises and mine will make a dull thud. Assuming here that both of us have rudimentary training and recognise the different keys, that isn't a plausible result. Come to that, if two untrained people pick up violins, I'd bet that even the musical genius of the pair will not, first try, sound lovely.
You'll note that I'm not using, here, the definition of genius as 'an infinite capacity for taking pains'. I'm using genius in the Romantic sense. I'm all fine with the idea of genius as an infinite capacity for taking pains--and I'm not a genius in that sense either, because I'm lazy and easily discouraged.

Some writers make the Mageborn concept work. I don't mind it in Barbara Hambly's books, in part because she doesn't make it easy--there's years of study and in the Unschooled Wizard series, there's a brutal ordeal followed by years of study. Hambly also plays with a persecuted minority subtext, which you could read as Jews or as gays without much difficulty. That gets risky in lesser (naming no names) hands, because it can too easily turn into 'oh woe, I am enormously powerful and must now angst about the responsibility and how everyone hates me' which is boring and makes me want to smack said characters (a poor plan, because they're both enormously powerful and immature). On the whole, I think Hambly does it well and avoids the traps. It doesn't hurt that she's a damn good writer.
I don't think I could make it work, because I can't follow through with the system. I'd keep fussing about details and genetics and logic. I like the concept of magic as learned craft, and I like folkloric magic, though I can't claim to be any sort of authority on it. Only that when I read about it, it seems to fit together, to make sense to a non-rational part of my brain.

An interesting thing about what I might call documentable magic (surviving grimoires and folk practices) is that it doesn't seem to concern itself particularly with the sort of things that fictional magic-users do. (Admission of bias: when I read the word 'magic-user' in fiction I twitch, because to the best of my knowledge, the phrase was created by the authors of gaming manuals. It's not in the OED, which does list the more evocative 'magic-monger', and also gives 'magic' as an adjective meaning 'addicted to magic', which provides an interesting slant on 'magic-user'.)
Folk magic divination is used to discover how long one may live and who one will marry, and what the weather will be. Charms are used against illness or injury, against theft or to recover lost or stolen items, to make crops grow and to keep animals healthy, to gain someone's affection (or lust), to bring on or avoid pregnancy. This is all rather petty and commonplace compared to what magicians in fantasy novels or FRP games do. No casting of fireballs, no petrification, no raising armies of the dead.... No tech-substitutes like wards that act like tripwires, or communication via crystals.
To generalise horribly, folk magic concerns itself with basic survival, food and shelter. Grimoire magic concerns itself with gaining influence and power over others. FRP magic seems to be most concerned with winning battles--naturally, since FRPs are largely combat and quest-based. FRP games do view magic-user as a craft, something learnt rather than inborn, due to the mechanics of the game. And due to the mechanics of the game, the learning part tends to be backstory.
To generalise even more horribly, some sizeable percentage of modern epic fantasy seems to have the same structure and needs as an FRP campaign, with the addition of magic being an inborn gift, rather like being the True King but without a validating prophecy. But I don't read that much epic/high fantasy, so I'm probably biased, misled by the back-cover blurbs and a quick thumb-through.

I'm drawn to humble magic, useful everyday magic. That's what makes sense to me, but I can see that it isn't as exciting as fireballs and darkness-by-day and other cool CGI effects.
You do find some fairly high-end magic in folktales. Petrification, yep, transformation, yep, sleeping for a hundred years, yep, bringing the dead to life, yep. The mechanics are not explained, and sometimes the internal logic of the story is a little shaky. Magicians are rare in folktales; witches are common indeed. There are also random characters not identified as magicians or wizards, who still employ magic. Cooks, princes, daughters of ogres, peasant girls and enchanted animals, any of them may have a handy spell for good or ill. While there aren't many designated magicians, the contest of magic shows up fairly frequently--at least, that's how I interpret the chase and disguise sequences where one character throws down a magic item to delay pursuit, or transforms herself to mislead pursuers (Fundevogel). I don't know whether Stith Thompson would agree.
Medieval romances (of which I have read maybe half-a-dozen) have magic elements. Some flashy, like transformation, and some lower-level practical jokes, like gowns or goblets that reveal infidelity (always good for a laugh). Some useful, like shields that can't be broken, or belts that prevent injury. Magicians seem to be rather more common, witches rare. I have the impression that magic is more often the plot device that starts the trouble and the plot, rather than resolves it, but I haven't read enough to validate or disprove the impression.
The courtly fairytales (Perrault, Madame d'Aulnoy) (really good Terri Windling essay here) were fond of stage dressing and gadgets, seven-league boots and caps of invisibility--swiped from Greek hero-tales, perhaps?--and those were adopted by the literary fairytale writers like Andrew Lang and Dinah Mulock Craik.
Gadgets seem to have been dropped in modern fantasy in favour of what the Tough Guide calls Quest Objects. I'm not sure why, perhaps because of a lack of acquaintance with the classics, perhaps because they might have made things too easy, too apt to be solved within a single volume. The written fairytales used more magicians and wizards than they do witches, and magic starts the trouble often enough, as do magic beasts like dragons. Force of arms and virtue, sometimes aided by gadgets, sort things out. The clever peasant girl and the lucky simpleton don't get so much love here--back to the folktales for them.
Which brings me back, I guess. Folktales are often about the triumph of the humble, the simpleton winning the clever princess, the old soldier beating out the Devil, the clever peasant girl winning the king, the unfavoured child rewarded for a kind act.

Just so there's something pointful in this rambling...some useful books on folk magic include:

Anglo-Saxon Magic, by Dr. G. Storms, published Martinus Nijhoff, 1948 - The first chapter is a concise introduction to common concepts of magic, the uses of spittle, blood, dirt, water and silence. Almost all the charms are concerned with protection against illness, theft, and general harm. Life is precarious.

The Galdrabok: an Icelandic Grimoire, by Stephen Flowers, published Samuel Weiser, 1989 - This is 'book magic', relying almost entirely on runes and signs. It doesn't portray the magicians as particularly benevolent or enlightened, since the majority of spells are intended to gain the favour of the powerful, find out thieves, and play unpleasant practical jokes (oh, and force women to sleep with you.)

English Folk-Rhymes, by G. F. Northall, published Kegan Paul 1892 (reprinted) "A collection of traditional verses relating to places and persons, customs, superstitions, etc." Ch.4 on superstitions includes charms and spells, and, slightly cloaked in Latin, a very down-to-earth spell for gaining the affection of a young man. Some of the other sections include rhymes that look very like spells, and could be easily adapted.

The Secret Common-Wealth & A Short Treatise of Charms and Spels, by Robert Kirk, published D.S. Brewer for the Folklore Society, 1976 - Short, as it says, but ties in nicely with the other sources. Mostly of interest for the first section, his account of Fairies and Elves.

The Fate of the Dead, by Theo Brown, published Brewer for the Folklore Society, 1979 - "A study in folk-eschatology in the West Country after the Reformation" and utterly fascinating (I'll probably blog just about this book at some point) in its examination of the folk beliefs about book-learning and the power of the printed word. An unmarried Oxford graduate is the best man to banish a ghost, in case you were wondering.

The Pattern Under the Plough, by George Ewart Evans, published Faber, 1966 - a small but dense book showing how belief in magical protections and encouragements is woven into rural life in East Anglia. Hagstones, witch-bottles, threshold burials, and how to jade a horse.

ills that flesh is heir to, a non-writing post

I now have an appointment with a rheumatologist. Not until next week, and I don't know whether I'll come out of it with anything more definite than I presently have, which is that it looks a lot like rheumatoid arthritis, but it's difficult to diagnose RA until it's done real damage.
The Naproxen (can I say a drug name on here without attracting med-spam? I guess I'll find out) is working well so far. The stiffness in my hands and wrists is fairly constant, but I can work it off mostly, and I haven't had anything like the mid-January hand-cramps that kept me from doing anything.
There's what I might call a veiled threat in my hands, a hint that without medication they would be quite painful. Which is interesting in itself, because usually I'm in the position of thinking 'well, I don't know how much good these painkillers are doing, and I just have to take it on faith that I'd hurt worse without them'. The last time I recall being aware of a barrier between me and actual pain was when I was doped up after my first miscarriage, and that was emotional pain kept at a remove. This is physical pain kept at a remove. It's an odd sensation.

In an unexpected way, the possible diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis is helpful. When I thought the pain was somehow connected with the rotator cuff injury back in April, it confined me. I believed that my body was warning me, that the pain was a way of telling me 'don't do that'--if only I could guess what 'that' was. I ended up with a frozen shoulder because I was trying not to cause the pain by the wrong kind of movement, afraid of muscles and tendons fraying apart, under my skin where I couldn't see.
But if it's RA, pain is my body's way of blowing a raspberry at me, or showing me who's boss. It's gloating, not warning, and so I don't have to obey. I need to be aware of my new limitations, and not overwork myself, but the pain isn't necessarily related to harm. It's random.
And it is random. It buzzes about my body like the reverse of Gold Bell Armour, the mythical martial arts technique. Instead of having one vulnerable point that I can move about my body at will, my body has many vulnerable points, that it moves around against my will. One day my right thumb swells up and I can't write my name, another day my right forefinger and left little finger balloon, and the next week my wrists turn red and swell.
Again, the Naproxen is keeping this in check. I am appreciative. So far none of it has interfered with my typing, for which I am deeply appreciative. I am more easily tired, I think, and have somewhat less energy, but it's too soon to know if that's continuing or temporary. It may just be winter blahs, and I'll perk up when the sun starts coming up earlier.

Sunday I had a burst of enthusiasm, and not only brought The Willow Knot up to 60k, but chalked out the design for the last bit of painted wall in the new tent, a 4x8' Saint Barbara on an old tablecloth, to fill in the bit of wall that SS. Crispin and Crispinian, Dunstan and Eligius don't quite cover. Then I made cookies (butterscotch chip) to test whether I can do the things that I enjoy, still. Apparently I can, though my wrist is sore today, and that may be payback.

But this is a writing blog, not a moaning-about-the-flesh blog, so I'll stop. Next time I'll catch up with my writing news, honest.