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#gerald of wales
the-busy-ghost · 20 days
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Currently wading through the 'Speculum Duorum' by Gerald of Wales for uni which is basically a lengthy call-out post for his feckless nephew.
I would recommend reading if you're interested in 150+ pages of mediaeval whingeing interspersed with biblical quotations but frankly this is not Gerry at his best so I would advise sticking to the Descriptio Cambriae or De Instructione Principis.
However I do want to single out at least two of his comments about William de Capella (the feckless nephew's tutor and, according to your man Gerald- who totally isn't sore about it- a Rotter and a Bounder and a Cad of the Lowest Order) because they're kind of petty even by the standards of this text:
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(Insert 'Are you wearing the chanel boots' meme here)
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(Not the gumdrop buttons Lombard sword!)
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pilibdc · 10 months
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Currently Reading
The History and Topography of Wales by Gerald of Wales aka Giraldus de Barri aka Cambrensis
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wolfcat-hybrid · 1 year
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Reading Gerald of Wales is so fun because you think oh cool I might get to learn about what life was like for people in the 12th century and then he says some buckwild shit and like. What do you even do
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liminalpsych · 1 year
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Appendix C in Faletra's translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain
My feelings on the various excerpts from other texts included in Appendix C of Michael Faletra's translation of Geoffrey's Historia regum Britanniae. These focused on the arc of King Arthur's development and are all very short excerpts, often just a long paragraph.
A quick plug for a fantastic Arthurian podcast I stumbled upon earlier this week, Eavesdropping On Arthurians. The very first episode is a professor talking with the podcaster about all these texts and more, as well as how to pronounce them, and the early references to Arthur. It was an informative and interesting listen, I really recommend it if you're interested in any of these texts or pre-Galfridian Arthur. (The second episode is about Geoffrey of Monmouth's depiction of many powerful women in his texts, who he presents as pretty much universally positive. Theoretically as a way to support Empress Matilda's bid for the throne. Also a worthwhile listen.)
From Aneirin, The Gododdin
This is the single poem that mentions Arthur; it's considered the first extant reference to the figure of Arthur. I talked about Y Gododdin in this post if you want the poem and more details on the full text.
From What Man is the Gatekeeper? (Pa gur yw y porthor?)
This one's neat! It's not even the entire poem. I've ordered a copy of the Black Book of Carmarthen and will be reading it in its entirety and context once that arrives. This is an early Brythonic poem where the poet describes Arthur and his band as vanquishers of a variety of supernatural monsters. This one has been estimated as being from the 10th century originally, and gives us Kay (as "Kei the fair") and Bedivere (as "the accomplished Bedwyr" by the side of Arthur in battle), and describes Arthur as laughing as he fought and killed "by the hundreds".
From The Stanzas of the Graves
Another one from the Black Book of Carmarthen. This talks about the resting places of many different legendary Cymric heroes, and mentions Arthur in the line "But the world's marvel indeed is the grave of Arthur". Pretty short excerpt, nothing much to respond to here.
From Triodd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads
Faletra notes that these are probably mnemonics for bards, and the professor in the above-mentioned podcast agrees with this. It mentions Arthur, Mordred's betrayal, and the battle of Camlann. Very brief excerpt.
From The Legend of St. Goeznovius (Legenda Sancti Goeznovii)
Faletra writes that this text might date from around 1019. The short excerpt he includes (just about a paragraph) talks about Vortigern, Arthur as a king (possibly written before Geoffrey's Historia depicted Arthur as a king, which is interesting because most sources I've read say he was just written as a general or war-leader before Geoffrey's History).
From William of Malmesbury, The Deeds of the Kings of the English (Gesta Regum Anglorum)
The first English historian to mention Arthur, apparently; unlike the Legenda Sancti Goeznovii, William describes Arthur as a warlike military leader with great prowess in the battlefield. He also mentions Ambrosius and Vortigern. Another brief paragraph of an excerpt.
From Caradoc of Llancarvan, The Life of Gildas (Vita Gildae)
Written in the early to mid twelfth century. It's one I want to read in its entirety, I think. The excerpt shared by Faletra talks about "the holy Gildas" who "loved the king (Arthur) dearly, striving always to obey him", though his twenty-three brothers were very rebellious against Arthur and won several battles against him. Arthur manages to kill the eldest brother eventually, and Gildas grieves and weeps about this, but also prays for Arthur at the same time, apparently because he's a proper Christian saint.
From Gerald of Wales, The Description of Wales (Descriptio Kambriae), 11.2
The second Gerald excerpt. He writes to try to reconcile the lack of records of Arthur as king prior to Geoffrey of Monmouth. He postulates that Gildas (of Vita Gildae, above) threw all of the books about Arthur and cast them into the sea because he was so upset about his brother's death, so that's why no one can find any "accurate account" of Arthur prior to Geoffrey of Monmouth's work.
From Gerald of Wales, The Education of Princes (De Principis Instructione Liber), 1.20
Third Gerald excerpt, but not from the Kambriae this time. He describes the supposed discovery of Arthur's tomb, and really emphasizes "look, it's really totally King Arthur's tomb, I inspected it myself, he's not coming back". He also posits that Avalon is Glastonbury Tor, and that's where Morgan took Arthur after the Battle of Camlann.
From William Caxton's Preface to Sir Thomas Malory Le Morte Darthur
I really just skimmed this one, as I'm not chronologically to Morte in my "read all the core Arthurian texts" quest and figured I'd end up reading Caxton's preface when I got to the point of reading Malory. Caxton argues that Arthur was a real person and was a king.
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I was reading a translation of Gerald of Wales' Topographia Hibernica and...I know everyone's obsessed with the horse fucking but I actually never realized that he brings in LGE?
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And he doesn't bring in the TDD.
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thelegendofeowyn · 9 days
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‘Tis repugnant in regard of the Form which cannot inform and actuate any matter but that which is prepar’d and dispos’d for it.
- Of Lycanthropy, 1664
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tunglo · 1 year
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This tale originates from Itinerarium Cambriae - Journey Through Wales - Gerald of Wales' 1191 account of a preaching tour / crusade recruitment campaign he undertook with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Baldwin of Forde, in 1188. In his section on Neath he included the story of Elidyr, a priest who had been known to his uncle, David FitzGerald, the Bishop of St David's between December 1148 and May 1176...
Somewhat before our time an odd thing happened in these parts. The priest Elidyr always maintained that it was he who was the person concerned. When he was a young innocent only twelve years old and busy learning to read, he ran away one day and hid under the hollow bank of some river or other, for he had had more than enough of the harsh discipline and frequent blows meted out by his teacher. As Solomon says: "Learning's root is bitter, but the fruit it bears is sweet."
Two days passed and there he still lay hidden, with nothing at all to eat. Then two tiny men appeared, no bigger than pigmies. "If you will come with us," they said, "we will take you to a land where all is playtime and pleasure." The boy agreed to go. He rose to his feet and followed them. They led him first through a dark underground tunnel and then into a most attractive country, where there were lovely rivers and meadows, and delightful woodlands and plains.
It was rather dark, because the sun did not shine there. The days were all overcast, as if by clouds, and the nights were pitch-black, for there was no moon nor stars. The boy was taken to see their king and presented to him, with all his court standing round. They were amazed to see him, and the king stared at him for a long time. Then he handed him over to his own son, who was still a child.
All these men were very tiny, but beautifully made and well-proportioned. In complexion they were fair, and they wore their hair long and flowing down over their shoulders like women. They had horses of a size which suited them, about as big as greyhounds. They never ate meat or fish. They lived on various milk dishes, made up into junkets flavoured with saffron. They never gave their word, for they hated lies more than anything they could think of. Whenever they came back from the upper world, they would speak contemptuously of our own ambitions, infidelities and inconstancies. They had no wish for public worship, and what they revered and admired, or so it seemed, was the plain unvarnished truth.
The boy used frequently to return to our upper world. Sometimes he came by the tunnel through which he had gone down, sometimes by another route. At first he was accompanied, but later on he came by himself. He made himself known only to his mother. He told her all about the country, the sort of people who lived there and his own relationship with them.
His mother asked him to bring her back a present of gold, a substance which was extremely common in that country. He stole a golden ball, which he used when he was playing with the king's son. He hurried away from the game and carried the ball as fast as he could to his mother, using the customary route. He reached the door of his father's house, rushed in and tripped over the threshold. The little folk were in hot pursuit. As he fell over in the very room where his mother was sitting, the ball slipped from his hand.
Two little men who were at his heels snatched the ball and ran off with it, showing him every mark of scorn, contempt and derision. The boy got to his feet, very red in the face with shame at what he had done. As he recovered his wits he realized that what his mother had asked him to do was very foolish. He set out back along the road which he usually followed, down the path to the river, but when he came to where the underground passage had been there was no entry to be found. For nearly a year he searched the overhanging banks of the river, but he could never find the tunnel again.
The passing of time helps us to forget our problems more surely than arguing rationally about them can ever hope to do, and our day-to-day preoccupations blunt the edge of our worries. As the months pass by we think less and less of our troubles. Once the boy had settled down among his friends and learned to find solace in his mother's company, he became himself once more and took up his studies again. In the process of time he became a priest. The years passed and he became an old man; but whenever David II, Bishop of St David's, questioned him about what had happened, he would burst into tears as he told the story. He still remembered the language of the little folk and he could repeat quite a number of words which, as young people do, he had learnt very quickly.
The Bishop told me that these words were very like Greek. When they wanted water they said 'ydor ydorum', which means in Latin 'aquam offer'. In their language 'ydor' was the word for water, like Greek 'ύδωρ' and just as 'υδρίες' means water-vessels. In Welsh the word for water is 'dwfr'. When they wanted salt they said 'halgein ydorum', which means 'salem affer'. Salt is 'ἅλς' in Greek and 'halen' in Welsh. The Britons stayed a long time in Greece after the fall of Troy and then took their name from their leader Brutus, so that the early Welsh language is similar to Greek in many of its details.
It seems remarkable to me that I do not find so many languages agree as much over any other word as they do in this: 'ἅλς' in Greek, 'halen' in Welsh, 'halgein' in Irish, where g is inserted, and 'sal' in Latin, where, as Priscian tells us, s replaces the aspirate in some words. Just as 'ἅλς' in Greek corresponds to 'sal' in Latin, so '?' is 'semi' and 'επτά' is 'septem'. In French the word becomes 'sel', the vowel a changing to e as it develops from Latin. In English a t is added to make 'salt' and in German the word is 'sout'. In short you have seven languages, or even eight, which agree completely over this word.
If, careful reader, you should ask me if I think that this story of of the little folk is really true, I can only answer with Augustine that 'miracles sent by heaven are there to be wondered at, not argued about or discussed.' If I reject it, I place a limit on God's power, and that I will never do. If I say that I believe it, I have the audacity to move beyond the bounds of credibility, and that I will not do either.
I call to mind what Jerome said when asked a similar question: 'You will find many things quite incredible and beyond the bounds of possibilty which are true for all that. Nature never exceeds the limits of God who created it.' As Augustine implied, I would put this story, and others of a similar nature, should the circumstance arise, among those which cannot be rejected out of hand and yet which I cannot accept with any real conviction.
I find it interesting for its similarities with my favourite medieval 'otherworld' story, the Green Children of Woolpit. Our oldest source for that story is William of Newburgh's Historia rerum Anglicarum, written c. 1189, which claimed the event happened during the reign of King Stephen (1135 - 1154). The children, a brother and sister, were herding their father's cattle when they followed them and the sound of bells to a cave, before discovering themselves in a strange land - the village of Woolpit, where locals found them wearing strange clothes, speaking an unknown language, and with a green tinge to their skin. For days they refused all food, before finally chancing upon raw broad beans which they ate ravenously.
The boy, the younger and sicklier of the children, died shortly afterwards, but the sister was said to have lived to adulthood, working for many years as a servant in Richard de Calne's household before marrying a man from King's Lynn. After learning to speak English, the girl explained she came from 'St. Martin's Land' where the sun never shone and the days consisted of a light akin to twilight. Theories on the children's actual origins range from lost Flemish settlers of Fornham St Martin suffering with green sickness (Paul Harris, 1998), to falling from heaven (Robert Burton, 1621), to arriving via a matter transmission malfunction from some unknown planet trapped in synchronous orbit around its sun (Duncan Lunan, 1996)!
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Would you like to hear the world's bitchiest book review? Even Dorothy Parker herself is impressed by Gerald of Wales who, when asked about his contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, considered a man possessed by demons:
"If the evil spirits oppressed him too much, the Gospel of St John was placed on his bosom, when, like birds, they immediately vanished; but when the book was removed, and the History of the Britons by 'Geoffrey Arthur' was substituted in its place, they instantly reappeared in greater numbers, and remained a longer time than usual on his body and on the book."
APPLY COLD RUNNING WATER TO BURN FOR AT LEAST TEN MINUTES.
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My signature Catan strategy, “Roleplay as Evil Wales”, continues to have a solid 66%(-ish) win rate in a group of 3 (specific) players.
Note: The “Roleplay as Evil Wales” strategy consists of hogging all sheep and using your sheep and sheep port to get armies to take any sheep anyone else gets and make your sheep empire take over the world. Sprinkle in some evil laughs, and name all of your sheep so whenever anyone steals a sheep you can cry out “[sheep’s name], NO! The Empire of Evil Wales will not forget this act of war”, which will demoralize your opponents. I seriously cannot understand how this strategy works as often as it does. I started doing it as a meme. My friends aren’t even bad at the game or anything, Evil Wales is just OP almost every time I use it. Even when I lose with it it’s usually close.
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The Prince of Wales and his son Prince George attend the Rugby World Cup 2023 quarter final match at Stade de Marseille, France, 14 October 2023.
Benoit Payan, Mayor of Marseille, and Gerald Davies, President of the Welsh Rugby Union.
📷: Adam Pretty / Henry Browne - World Rugby / World Rugby via Getty Images / Mike Egerton / PA Images
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castratedvader · 1 year
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changed my mind this is the best book ever written actually
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stonelord1 · 1 year
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The Treacherous 'King of Carew'
  Recently I went on a little jaunt to visit some fine Welsh Castles. One of those happened to be Carew in Pembrokshire, an impressive limestone fortress overlong Carew inlet, which is part of the Milford Haven Waterway. Built by the Norman Gerald of Windsor, the site stands on the lands of his wife, the Welsh princess, Nest.  Long before the castle was raised, an Iron Age, earthen-walled fort…
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petermorwood · 5 months
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Anyone remember a documentary from long ago (1973) entitled "Chronicle - The Longbow" and presented by actor Robert Hardy?
It's not on YouTube, and I haven't seen it for years - but I do have the associated book...
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...so this next bit isn't just from memory.
Besides history of the bow itself, the documentary included several dramatised reconstructions of notable longbow incidents, including a couple from the 1180s as described by chronicler Gerald of Wales.
He tells, for instance, of a mounted man-at-arms in service to Lord William de Braose who was shot through the thigh and nailed to his horse. When he turned the horse to flee, he was nailed through the other thigh as well. That qualifies as Pinning Stuff with Arrows in my book (and in Hardy's, which is where I confirmed my recollection of it).
The arrowhead would have looked like this...
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...or maybe this.
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...and this image by Robbie McSweeney of Guillaume de Mello ca. 1185 shows armour similar to what that man-at-arms would have been wearing:
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If Gerald isn't "drawing the long bow" himself - which means "exaggerating for the sake of a good yarn", and is an idiom still sometimes heard today - then each arrow would have penetrated:
the skirt of his hauberk (chainmail coat),
the gambeson (padded under-coat) beneath,
the chausse (chainmail stocking) under that,
one side of his linen braies (long pants),
his thigh muscles,
the other side of the braies and chausse,
the leather saddle-skirt,
and finally, as much depth of horsemeat as qualifies for nailing or pinning.
Um...
OUCH!
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thewales · 6 months
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The Prince of Wales, Patron of the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU), and Prince George met Sir Bill Beaumont CBE, Chairperson of World Rugby, Gerald Davies President of the Welsh Rugby Union and Christophe Mirmand, Prefect of the defense zone and Prefect of the department of Alpes-Maritimes, during the Rugby World Cup France 2023 Quarter Final match between Wales and Argentina in France.
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liminalpsych · 1 year
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Appendix D in Faletra's translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain
Last appendix in Faletra's volume! Whew.
Appendix D is focused on early responses to Geoffrey of Monmouth. Some of them are downright funny.
From Henry of Huntington, Epistle to Warin the Briton
Henry describes the History favorably to Warin; he found it a year after its completion. Faletra says Henry apparently did this without knowing that Geoffrey had "gently disparaged" Henry's Historia Anglorum in the conclusion to his own Historia.
From Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales (Itinerarium Kambriae), 1.5
Yet another Gerald excerpt. He talks about Merlin but with the name Meilyr: "May it be noted that in our own times (the 12th century) there was a certain Welshman who dwelt here in the vicinity of Caerleon by the name of Meilyr, and he was most knowledgable about the future and the occult." It sounds like there's a similarity to Merlin here, but that's not Gerald's point: his point is that when Meilyr couldn't withstand the insults of the demons that he could see but no one else could, the spirits would vanish if the Gospel of St John was placed in his lap. But if Geoffrey's History of the Kings of Britain were put on his lap, the demons would get worse, landing all over Meilyr and all over the book for longer than usual, and being more annoying.
(It should be noted that Gerald did not like or approve of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History. Mostly because it was a secular history instead of an ecclesiastical one.)
From William of Newburgh, The History of the Deeds of the English (Historia Rerum Anglicarum)
This is a history of Norman England published around 1198. Along with Gerald, William was the other major detractor of Geoffrey's work, and the only major records we have from that era that decry the historicity of the History of the Kings of Britain. Everyone else basically accepted it as fact, and apparently the History ended up pushing out Bede's much more accurate history as the most common reference for the era.
I always delight in spicy academia rivalries, and I just have to include a quote from William's work, because it's in the grand scholarly tradition of deriding another scholar's work. He's comparing Bede very positively against Geoffrey, and as for his opinion of Geoffrey, well…
"In order to expiate the Britons of their sins, a writer has emerged in our own times who has woven the most fantastical lies regarding them and has with shameless boasting elevated their virtues far beyond those of the Macedonians and Romans. This man is called Geoffrey, and he is surnamed Arthur due to the fact that he put the fabulous deeds of Arthur into Latin, drawing from the old yarns of the Britons and from his own imagination and cloaking them with the name of actual history. He has also brazenly published the most fallacious prophecies of Merlin, to which he has certainly added much of his own invention while translating them into Latin, and he has presented them as though they were genuine prophecies that reflected the unchanging truth… There are in fact clear errors in those prophecies of Merlin that are known to refer to the kingdom of the English after the death of this Geoffrey, who translated this doggerel from the British tongue, adding much to it from his own imagination… Furthermore, only someone who knows nothing about ancient history could ever doubt when he comes across that book, which is called The History of the Britons, that it is anything but wanton and shameless lies."
From Ranulf Higden, Polychronicon, V
We then fast forward a couple hundred years, when people started questioning the veracity of Geoffrey's History of the Kings of Britain. The Benedictine monk Ranulf Higden of Chester expresses skepticism regarding the historicity of King Arthur in this excerpt.
And that's the entire volume! Whew. There's also a lengthy works cited and recommended reading, covering primary and secondary sources. I'll also note that between the translator's notes at the beginning (which were very informative) and the translation of the History is a brief chronology of Geoffrey's life and events during his life.
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theroyalsandi · 7 months
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The Prince of Wales chatting with President of the Welsh Rugby Union Gerald Davies in the stands before the 2023 Rugby World Cup Pool C match at the Stade de Bordeaux, France. | September 10, 2023
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