Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
(Bryan Sykes)The result of a very ambitious project (taking DNA samples from countless Britons and Irishmen in order to determine the genetic origin of the various peoples of the Isles), this follow-up to The Seven Daughters of Eve compares genetic evidence to accepted "history," popular belief, and oral tradition – and often reaches surprising conclusions.
Like John Sadler (author of Border Fury), Sykes is a delightful rarity in this day and age: a highly intelligent, highly educated man who writes in an engaging, popular style. Without compromising his own intellect or patronizing his readers, he relates complex concepts in simple, jargon-free English – and tells an absorbing, scientific "detective story" in the process.
Going Primitive: A Guide for Replacing Your Modern Camping Gear With Period Alternatives
(F.L. Watkins)This is another neat one I picked up at (you guessed it…) King’s Mountain. The title is self explanatory, but every re-enactor, SCA geek and LARP wanker should own a copy.
During my SCA days (and I wasn’t an "authenticity maven" by any stretch of the imagination), the sight of coolers, cooshies, thermos bottles and other modern conveniences at events left me gritting my teeth and seeing red. And it still does. I pride myself on my nonviolence (well, maybe not that much…), but seeing anything other than metal, wood, leather, wool, linen, etc. at a reenactment still makes me want to carpet-bomb the site as if it were a collection of pitiful huts on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
It certainly wasn’t the newer members’ fault, mind you. The old-timers often hesitated to dole out their knowledge of various "period" arts and crafts, predictably enough. Being both a one-trick pony and a fulltime loser is a miserable condition, to be sure; and when one uses membership in a fringe-group as the foundation of one’s identity, progress (specifically, the young learning from and improving upon the skills of the old), suffers.
Under these circumstances, being "top dog" is generally more important than the welfare of said group. To the Type-A "control freak," it really is better to rule in hell than serve in heaven – even if one’s digs resemble the former more closely than the latter -- the inevitable consequence of caving in to a personality disorder. This is why a typical SCA camp looks like the Grim Reaper eating shit in a liposuction clinic when compared to that of a Civil War, Old West or Revolutionary War reenactment group. A shabby, inauthentic camp is a shabby, inauthentic camp – end of fucking discussion. This is why I eventually wearied of SCA – and why Civil War and Revolutionary War reenactments generally draw large crowds, while SCA events draw little more than scorn -- and flies.
Enter F.L. Watkins and his booklet. From the acknowledgements, I gather that Watkins is/was affiliated with the SCA. From the bibliography, I gather that he’s affiliated with other reenactment groups (he cites Muzzleloader magazine and The Book of Buckskinning series, among others) as well. The tone of his pamphlet is kinder and more constructive than that of my rants, but I gather that he and I have had similar bones to pick in the past.
While Going Primitive isn’t a "nuts and bolts" how-to manual, it offers sane, sensible and workable solutions to the "Coleman cooler question," as I once sarcastically referred to the matter. Watkins is a rare breed: engaging without being breezy, and educated without being pedantic. He understands that prior to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, military support technology (as opposed to combat technology) didn’t change very much – and makes the most of the similarities. As I’ve said, I’m nobody’s "authenticity maven," but had more people thought like Watkins, I’d have enjoyed reenacting much more than I did. With a few cosmetic changes, there’s very little difference between a Viking’s drinking horn and an "Overmountain man’s" powder horn, after all. And a fat slob guzzling homebrew from souped-up powder horn looks infinitely better than a fat slob guzzling Budweiser from a longneck bottle…
Going Primitive
has been in print since 1991 – shortly before I washed my hands of reenactment groups for good. Had only Watkins written it earlier (and had only his ideas taken hold), I might not have quit at all. It should be required reading for every re-enactor – and it wouldn’t hurt those LARP wankers to have a look-see either.Proverbs & Sayings of Ireland
(edited by Sean Gaffney and Seamus Cashman)When first I spotted this book, I expected it to consist of two pages; the first reading "No surrender!" and the second, "God made us Catholic -- Armalite made us equal!"
"A cynic’s work is never done," as cartoonist Peter Bagge once opined…
As luck would have it, a cursory reading allayed my initial suspicion so much; I actually bought a copy.
My mother often accuses me of slighting my "green" Irish and Anglo-Norman roots in favor of my Ulster Protestant and Scottish ancestry, so I hope purchasing this book put her mind to rest. It really is a delightful little volume, and I’d recommend it to any Irish-descended American, Canadian, Australian, New Zealander, etc.
Broken down alphabetically into classifications, Proverbs and Sayings of Ireland provides a sampling of Irish wit and wisdom on everything from ability to youth.
Although the Irish are frequently (and quite unfairly) maligned by bigots; and their intellectual capacity often questioned (Sadly, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and the late, unlamented "Chappaquiddick Ted" serve only to confirm the worst "Hibernophobe" stereotypes), many Irish sayings are every bit as profound – and ring as true -- as anything found in the Tao Te Ching, Proverbs, the Bhagavad Gita or Ecclesiastes.
You’ll have to buy your own copy, but I’ll leave you with a few of the choicer aphorisms.
"Often the hound that was made fun of killed the deer."
"A man is often a bad adviser to himself and a good adviser to another."
"It’s the jewel that can’t be got that’s the most beautiful."
"Every man is bold until he faces a crowd."
"Don’t show all your teeth until you can bite."
"In spite of the fox’s cunning, his hide is often sold."
"Death stares the old in the face and lurks behind the backs of the young."
"Greatness knows modesty."
"There is often the death of a person between two words."
"There are two things that can’t be cured – death and want of sense."
"The friend that can be bought is not worth buying."
"Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are."
"Take gifts with a sigh -- most men give to be paid."
"Better knowledge of the evil, than the evil without knowledge."
"After the chieftains fall, the fight seldom continues."
"A bad wife takes advice from everyone but her husband."
"Though the proverb is abandoned, it is not falsified."
The Steel Bonnets
(George MacDonald Fraser)Were it not for fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, I’d never have discovered Fraser. During the dreary winter of 1981, I found myself imprisoned in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters in Patrick Henry Village (Oftersheim, Federal Republic of Germany) with no friends and fuck-all to do. Fortunately, there was a Stars and Stripes bookstore ten minutes’ walk from the glorified tenement we called "home."
I suppose my parents felt sorry for me (and reckoned that if I had spending money, I’d go somewhere else – anywhere else – and spend it), as they doubled my allowance a few days after we took up residence in that wretched, Dickensian shithole. (And I do mean "shithole": When first I saw it, I was seized by a near-irresistible urge to paint a crescent moon and stars on every door in sight…)
In retrospect, I don’t fault my folks for wanting me to fuck off now and again. Spending two months in a two-room apartment with a manic-depressive thirteen-year-old; an eleven-year-old with ADD; a huge, very opinionated tabby cat (he thanked us for his eight-hour flight in the luxurious cargo-hold of a 727 by pissing in my suitcase), and a dog couldn’t have been very enjoyable for either of them.
To what I imagine was their immeasurable relief, I did fuck off whenever the mood struck me. From a realistic point of view, I suppose they were simply glad to be rid of me for a few hours. To reiterate: I don’t blame them. At thirteen, I was moody, sarcastic, irritable, and above all – irritating. (And fuck you, John. I can actually hear you snickering: "Yeah, so what’s changed?")
When I wasn’t staring out the window and longing to be back in Georgia with J.R., Sandra, "Fleabag," Andy, Jeff, and my other buddies, I was in the can, jerking off to mental images of Lynda Carter, Barbi Benton and a chick from my eighth-grade Spanish class. The few times I actually did anything constructive and exchanged pecker for pen, I wrote awful, quasi-Lovecraftian drivel that delighted my little brother, but probably left Ma and Da doubting my sanity as much as I doubted theirs. No wonder they were so eager to have me out of the apartment…
PHV, putting it bluntly but honestly, was fucking dump. Like most military housing, then and now (from what I saw at Ft. Benning last year, "supporting the troops," still doesn’t include providing them with habitable quarters), PHV’s sheer squalor left many of us envying our countrymen on the other side of "the pond," who were fortunate enough to live in trailer parks and housing projects.
If this collection of three-story outhouses had a saving grace, though, it was the proximity of the library and the Stars and Stripes bookstore to the BOQs.
I spent many hours in both, but it was in the latter that I found three collections of Frank Frazetta’s paintings. Like most males, I’m visually oriented, and Frazetta knew how to appeal to that orientation. (Why do you think his book covers were so popular?) The figures in his paintings seemed alive – as if they’s spring off the page at any moment; and his use of color was simply amazing – bold, bloody reds and yellows against murky, sepia backgrounds, for example. Then there was his subject matter. Frazetta was an incredibly versatile illustrator, but he was best known for his fantasy art. If, by chance, you grew up during the ‘70s and 80’s, and read Robert E. Howard’s "Conan" series, you’re familiar with Frazetta’s work: his paintings grace the covers of all the 70’s collections.
I seldom read "Sword and Sorcery" these days, as I find the genre juvenile, reductionist, and much less interesting than the "real" world of crystal-strokers, bigfoot stalkers and UFO weenies. But then again, I have a life nowadays, and have for some years. When I was a pimply-faced, "pussy challenged" teenager, though, I didn’t have one, and I suppose that’s why I found fantasy so appealing. I read everything from Dunsany (whose work I still enjoy, incidentally) to Vardemann and Milan – for all that the pornographic nature of their offerings earns them a sub-genre of their own -- "Pork Sword and Sorcery."
I also played Dungeons and Dragons, Gamma World, Dragonquest, Traveler -- the whole nine yards. And since it’s bound to be the first question the reader asks…No, I didn’t have a real girlfriend until my senior year.
I’m not too proud to admit it: I was a geek with a capital "G". I briefly drifted away from the gaming scene during twelfth grade ("Lessee… I can finish module FU-4: ‘Search for the Sacred Skinflute of Shere Khan’ with my asshole of a brother and the other douche-bags whose company I keep; or I can invite my girlfriend over and get the ol’ knob polished. Faith an’ begorrah! Whatever to do? Curse Dame Fortuna and my peckerhead friends for foisting so cruel a choice upon me… "), but for most of my teens, I was fucking hopeless. At thirteen, I was especially hopeless, so I bought two of the three Frazetta books from Stars and Stripes on that cold, pissy afternoon in 1981, and went my merry, geeky way.
Now I’ve mentioned that Frazetta was a master of exploiting the visually oriented, male half of our diseased, fucked-up, evolutionary dead-end of a species. Beyond this, he was a grandmaster of exploiting visually oriented male geeks; easily the most diseased, fucked-up, evolutionary dead-ends of all. When viewing his work, the typical, underweight (or tubby – it was always yin or yang, with no middle ground), socially inept gamer/nerd wanted to be one of the sword-swinging, muscle-bound barbarians Frazetta painted – and wanted to fuck the brains out of the voluptuous pieces o’ tail his hyper-Nietzscehan supermen were invariably shown rescuing or abducting.
And with the possible exception of Boris Vallejo, nobody – but nobody – painted more voluptuous pieces o’ tail than Frank Frazetta.
I’m not sure when the sickening "waif" look became popular, although I believe Twiggy got the "Buchenwald chic" ball rolling, back in the ‘60s. If this is the case, she should be tried under the Napoleonic/Hitlerian "patriot act" (and why, incidentally, has no ostensibly "conservative" Republican ever accepted my challenge to discuss that statist abomination article-by-article?) and summarily executed for crimes against inherent, male, sexual proclivities -- but that’s neither here nor there.
I am, however, absolutely certain that I despise that androgynous, pigeon-titted look with a fucking passion. Anorexics are eminently unattractive, and that’s that. Like most healthy, heterosexual males who’ve made Christy Canyon, Kayla Kleevage, Donita Dunes, Ebony Ayes and Minka wealthier than any human should be, I prefer women with big knockers, wide hips, butts that don’t form a perfect 90-degree angle with the floor (I don’t share the "brothas’" obsession with "junk in da trunk," but a shapely ass is a definite plus), and appreciable calf- and thigh-muscles.
On the world-famous, highly respected "Bean ‘E-richter’ Scale," Raquel Welch, Adrienne Barbeau, and Cassandra "Elvira" Peterson all rate a leg-wettin’ "10," while Parker Posey, McKenzie Philips and Callista (the etymology of her given name still leads me to laugh my ass off: Kαλλιστα? I don’t fuckin’ think so, Bubba-Jack…) Flockhart rate a schlong-shriveling “0.”
Admittedly, I wouldn’t be in any great hurry to shag the real-life counterpart of the so-called "Willendorf Venus" (she works at a Waffle House in Bessemer, Alabama, incidentally), but with women -- as with food – I’ll take a modest surplus over a deficit any day.
Frank Frazetta, bless his horny li’l heart, painted women who were completely off the world famous, highly respected B.E.S. They were too female to be real; Jungian archetypes rendered on canvas. Every one of ‘em, it seemed, had "a little too much" -- but in all the right places. Leafing through the books as I pogo-sticked past the NCO Club on my own tallywhacker, I suddenly realized that art wasn’t the exclusive preserve of martini-swilling butthounds and palette-wielding panhandlers.
Friendless, nerdy, horny teenagers could appreciate it, too…
As I’ve said, most of Frazetta’s work was fantasy-oriented. There were exceptions to the rule, though, and one, in particular, caught my eye. It was a painting of a charging British lancer with a naked and quintessentially Frazetta-esque woman slung inexplicably (and uncomfortably, one imagines) across his horse’s withers. As it happened, the painting was entitled "Flashman at the Charge." I found it both memorable and humorous, but thought nothing more of it.
Several years later, whilst ferreting out bargains in a used bookstore in Atlanta, I spotted the same painting – on the cover of an identically titled book. My curiosity piqued, I bought it, tucked into it – and found that it was one of the funniest books I’d ever read.
George MacDonald Fraser’s "Flashman" is actually Thomas Hughes’ character of the same name -- stolen directly from Tom Brown’s School Days and "projected" into the future. He’s no less despicable in Fraser’s series than he was in Hughes’ novel, but Fraser eschews Hughes’ third person narrative and lets "Flashy" tell his own story -- with hilarious results.
It’s also worth mentioning (however loath I am to admit it, given my preference for nineteenth century literature) that Fraser was a better writer than Hughes. What impressed me the most, though –aside from the quality of Fraser’s writing – was his grasp of history. In my forty-two misspent years of life, I’ve read far too many historical novels, the authors of which obviously knew not whereof they wrote. Fraser’s meticulously researched book was a ray of sunshine piercing the stygian gloom of a (generally) dismal, anachronism-plagued genre. Shortly after reading Flashman at the Charge, I hunted down every title in the series, and have yet to read one I’ve disliked.
It’s a long way (both geographically and chronologically) from Balaclava to the Borders, from the Crimea to Cumberland. Fraser, however, successfully made the trip, departing from the historical fiction at which he so excelled to pen The Steel Bonnets.
Researched as thoroughly as his novels, The Steel Bonnets is possibly Fraser’s magnum opus. Providentially able to adopt and employ both the etic and emic perspectives (he was of Highland Scottish parentage, but born and raised in Carlisle, and writing about Lowlanders and Sassenach), Fraser was an anthropologist’s dream, an "outsider" and an "insider," simultaneously -- and paradoxically. As a Highland Scot climbing the English socioeconomic ladder (in a "bass-ackwards" part of the UK, no less), Fraser combined the dispassionate objectivity of an "outsider" with the intimate, intuitive understanding of one’s neighbors that the "insider" alone enjoys.
In short, like John Sadler, George M. Fraser knew his subject front and back. The subject in question is one that’s always fascinated me: the "golden" age of the reiver clans who, during their heyday, made the English/Scottish frontier a very "interesting" place in which to live.
"Not so the Borderer: bred to war,
He knew the battle’s din afar,
And joy’d to hear it swell.
His peaceful day was slothful ease;
Nor harp, nor pipe his ear could please
Like the loud slogan’s yell.
On active steed, with lance and blade,
The light-arm’d pricker plied his trade,--
Let nobles fight for fame;
Let vassals follow where they lead,
Burghers to guard their townships bleed,
But war’s the Borderer’s game.
Their gain, their glory, their delight,
To sleep the day, maraud the night,
O’er mountain, moss and moor;
Joyful to the fight they took their way,
Scarce caring who might win the day,
Their booty was secure.
-- Sir Walter Scott, "Marmion"
I grew up reading this sort of romanticized horseshit, and I admit that I still love it – for all that it cavalierly ignores reality. I gather that Fraser loved it, too, as he never disparages Scott, even when taking a far more sanguinary (i.e. realistic) view of the subject. This is another of the book’s "selling points": without denigrating the chief dramatis personae on the Borders’ bloody stage, Fraser takes a hard, cold look at them as human beings. Perhaps ironically, he renders them all worthier of our respect in the process. ("…for the moment it is enough to say that the constant strife, or the threat of it, bred up a race of hard people along the Border line. They lived in a jungle, and they had to live by jungle rules. This is not to excuse them, if that were necessary, but to explain. If a man cannot live, and ensure that his family lives, within the law, he has no alternative but to step outside it.")
Despite the modern tendency to whitewash or mudsling; apotheosize or demonize historical figures (depending upon whether or not one approves of their causes); we "moderns" actually degrade our heroes and our villains by robbing them of their humanity in so doing.
If Kinmont Willie, for example, was (as the balladeers stopped just shy of maintaining) ten feet tall, and made of stainless steel and equally stainless integrity; why should posterity care about his adventures? Could any reasonable man expect less of such a demigod? In my not-so-humble opinion, the question answers itself.
Fraser deftly avoids this pitfall from the beginning. Better yet, he avoids it consistently, through his even-handed treatment of his subject matter. Unlike many works on Scottish history, The Steel Bonnets owes nothing to the "Blind Harry" school of anti-English polemics. In a work chronicling the rough-and-tumble, anarchic history of the Anglo-Caledonian border, this is not only sound policy: it gives Fraser’s work the authority born solely of dispassionate honesty. Without condemning or condoning either "side" (although in this context, the notion of "sides" is misleading at best and inapplicable at worst: in a microcosm characterized by endemic conflict and governed only by the lex talionis; ties of friendship, kinship and – at times – pure pragmatism often rendered nationality meaningless), Fraser examines both.
The hallmark of his genius, though, lies in his ability to remain dispassionate, while never waxing disinterested or uninterested -- he cares so deeply; he refuses to settle for anything less than the unvarnished truth, which he unearths and presents to the best of his ability.
From the first chapter onward, he paints a stark, brutal, and yet irresistibly fascinating triptych: Scotland, England, and the de facto no-man’s-land that lay between them, which, to reiterate, was a microcosm: a broad swath of ground, the residents of which -- although divided by a man-made line -- had more in common with each other than with their nominal countrymen. ("The important point is that it was not a one-way traffic, or even a two-way one. Scot pillages Scot and Englishman robbed Englishman just as readily as they both raided across the frontier; feuds were just as deadly between families on the same side of the Border as they were when the frontier lay between them; Scots helped English raiders to harry north of the line, and Englishmen aided and abetted Scottish inroads. The families themselves often belonged to both sides—there were English and Scottish Grahams, for example (and no family ever made better use of dual nationality). Add to this the fairly obvious fact that sex attraction is immeasurably stronger than national policy, and the picture becomes more complex still.")
Divided into five parts and forty-seven chapters, The Steel Bonnets leaves no stone unturned in its three-hundred and seventy-nine pages. Beginning with the construction of Hadrian’s Wall and Ending with James VI & I’s final pacification of the Borders (and the expulsion of various troublesome clans to the Ulster Plantation, where they became the ancestors of the so-called "Scots-Irish," Fraser explores every aspect of Border life and culture, and still devotes considerable space to the major "players" who worked so hard at "shaking loose the Borders."
Although the book stands on its own merits, it’s a perfect companion volume to John Sadler’s Border Fury, James Leyburn’s The Scotch-Irish: A Social History, David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, and even James Webb’s Born Fighting and Jim Goad’s The Redneck Manifesto.
To be continued
Comments