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Symbolism: The Rainbow Portrait and Thomas More's Family Portrait

29/9/2014

Even though I have spent many a happy hour gazing at historical images and can always be found with my head in one history book or another I have to admit that I find symbolism in historical works of art quite daunting. I think the main problem for me is not symbolism itself but the use of everyday items that have a symbolic reference and the question of what it's saying, who it's aimed at and would the vast majority of people at the time really get its point?

I suppose it's all a form of propaganda of which the Tudor Rose is an excellent example. This symbol appears in many images of Elizabeth I and proves the importance of symbolism, she, like her father and grandfather needed to reinforce their right to the throne of England and must have seriously thought it a brilliant way of getting their point across. I have read of a portrait of Elizabeth, aged only fourteen, which was a gift to her brother Edward VI, where her finger marks the page of a book is representative of her Protestantism, did children so young as these two monarchs really understand all this?

A common item such as a sieve in Tudor times represented virginity, did every Tudor courtier and foreign visitor know that? The thorn-less rose is another example of virginity and ermine is a symbol of purity and virtue. In one painting of Elizabeth, we can see a snake or serpent on the sleeve of her dress which has a heart-shaped ruby in its mouth. The serpent is thought to represent wisdom and the ruby Elizabeth’s heart, all this is said to imply that the Queen’s wisdom controls her emotions.

My favourite of all has to be the use of eyes and ears, which can be seen in the image above, they have been stitched into the gown of Elizabeth's dress and evidently represent omniscience meaning that Elizabeth was able to hear and see all. I honestly looked at it as just a fabric pattern and missed the meaning totally, how many people of Elizabeth's day had to spend hours looking for hidden meanings in all her paintings, and why did they not know all these things about her anyway?

Non Sine Sole Iris (No Rainbow without the Sun)

Another portrait, painted by Hans Holbein, that is full to bursting with symbolism is a wonderful portrait of Thomas More's family from the reign of Elizabeth's father Henry VIII. More was at the height of his career when he commissioned this painting which features twelve people one of which is John Clements. Who is Clements? The symbolism within the painting points to the answer, but I need not go into this myself.

You can read more about the symbolism in the portrait of More's family below

Leslau, Holbein, More and Clement – Matt's History Blog (wordpress.com)

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Battle of Stamford Bridge

28/9/2014

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The 25th of October saw the anniversary of a fierce battle that was to play an important part in shaping our country, not Hastings, which was less than a month later, but the Battle of Stamford Bridge in the County of Yorkshire.

Five days before the battle, Harald Hardrada, King of Norway and his English ally Tostig Godwinson, who was angry because he had not been given the Earldom of Northumbria the previous year, sailed up the Ouse in longships and with over ten thousand men. Only four days after hearing of the invasion, Harold Godwinson marched the hundred and eighty miles to east Yorkshire and surprised the invaders at Stamford Bridge. Previous to the onset of the battle, Harold had tried to persuade his brother to return and fight for his cause, promising him the Earldom of Northumbria, but Tostig was not interested, as he felt sure that the invaders were in a strong position. But Tostig was wrong, Hardrada's mighty army was separated by the River Derwent, the majority of his men were on the east side and a smaller group on the West, the same side of the Derwent as the English. Later the English advance party attacked and defeated the smaller Viking army and those who were left began to flee across the bridge. According to legend, when Harold's army did arrive they were confronted by a large axe-wielding Viking who held the English army at bay single-handedly, cutting down over forty men with a couple of swipes of his axe. The English retaliated with their 'hero of the day' a lone soldier in a boat, who with one thrust of his trusty spear wounded the Norseman enough to let the English pass. Eventually, the defending English army succeeded in defeating Hardrada's men. Hardrada himself was killed by an arrow in his windpipe and Tostig was cut down with a sword. The king's force followed and killed most of the fleeing army, some men drowning in the river but many were cut down as they ran. It is said the areas on which they fell were still white with bleached bones fifty years after the battle.

William the Conqueror landed at Hastings on the 14th of the following month with over seven thousand men, King Harold arrived with his force of up to thirteen thousand men, many of them weary from the battle and all of them weary from the march south.

A question then? If King Harold had not fought the Scandinavians at Stamford Bridge and then not had to march his army over two hundred miles south would he have succeeded at Hastings?

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Hel the Female Ruler of Helheim

26/9/2014

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"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here"

Within the dark and cold world of the dead we find Hel, the daughter of Loki, the god of mischief and his mistress, the giant Angraboda. Hel is the daunting female ruler of Helheim.

Hel is depicted in two ways, either she is half alive and half dead, with her face and upper body of a living woman and the thighs and legs of a corpse, or she is seen with her bones on the outside of her body rather than the inside.

From what is known as her 'sick bed' she rules her kingdom, the destination of those who have not lived a good life, a place of disease, a place of the old and a place of those who did not die a brave death on the battlefield.

Helhiem is described thus:

“.......................Hela’s hall.
Iron-barred, with massive wall;
Horrible that palace tall!
Hunger was her table bare;
Waste, her knife; her bed, sharp Care;
Burning Anguish spread her feast;
Bleached bones arrayed each guest;
Plague and Famine sang their runes,
Mingled with Despair’s harsh tunes.
Misery and Agony
E’er in Hel’s abode shall be!”

Lying within, are many levels most are for the damed but there is a level for those souls who wish to repent. It is Hel who judges these poor souls, and it is she who decides in which of the nine levels of Heliem they should be sent. One level, it could be said, is a form of heaven, another is Nastrond, the room of punishment where snake venom is continuously dropped on the wicked. Helhiem, of course, is not dissimilar to our Hell and has nine levels just like Dantes nine circles within his Inferno. Dante has his Archeron and his Vestibule, a place where souls of the dead congregate before they enter hell. Heliem, no doubt has its equivalent.

In fact, it is exactly where Hel is sitting rather ominously in the image above, welcoming a dead warrior.

The inscription "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" should be prominently displayed somewhere don't you think?

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Excalibur - Arthur Pendragon's Story Set in Stone.

20/9/2014

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Excalibur, Arthur Pendragon's mighty blade, did this hero of romantic legend have such a sword and if he did, where did its story begin?

I should point out, before you read on, that most people think that the sword which King Arthur pulls from the stone is the mythical Excalibur, it isn't, there were two swords. Excalibur was given to Arthur by the Lady in the Lake toward the end of his life, and as Arthur's story ends it is thrown back to where it came, a hand rising from the lake to catch it and then it disappears. The drawing of the sword from the stone takes place before Arthur is king and is not, I don't think, ever mentioned again. It is in earlier versions of Thomas Malory's story La Morte D'Arthur, written in the late fifteen century, that both swords are merged into one and called Excalibur and this is the reason we think of only one sword today. So where does the story of the Sword in the Stone originate?

Lying inside Rotonda di Montesiepi or Montesiepi's Hermitage in Tuscany, there is what is known as St.Galgano's Sword, it has been embedded in a stone for over eight hundred years which is around the time that Geoffrey of Monmouth was writing his Historia Regum Britanniae, it is in this work that we get the first glimpses of the legendary Arthur. Was it from this sword we see below that Monmouth got his inspiration?

St Galgano's Sword

The tale of King Arthur's sword appears in the twelfth century work by Geoffrey of Monmouth called, as just mentioned, Historia Regum Britanniae. The sword was named Caliburnus, from the Welsh word Caledfwlch. Monmouth got his inspiration for his work from three men, Bede, Nennius and Gildas and it is Gildas that is of interest here. Gildas was a six century cleric, his work is an important source for those interested in the legend of Arthur because he wrote of the events and the people of his own time and this fact makes him a contemporary of King Arthur. Four centuries later, Gildas, or the followers of Gildas are mentioned in the tenth century Annales Cambriae or Annals of Wales where these followers rose up against King Arthur, refusing to acknowledge him as king. We can place Gildas in the early history of Cornwall, and we know that he had many followers living Cornwall after his death. My 5x great grandmother was Patience Tregilgas whose family I have traced to a piece of land just outside Mevagissy in Cornwall called Tregilgas. Tre is Cornish for home and therefore this piece of land is the ancient settlement of some of the followers of Gildas.

Photograph of the settlement of Gildas taken by me in 2005

If Gildas talks of a powerful Cornish tribal leader then Monmouth would have based his Arthurian story on Gildas accounts probably embellishing the facts and here we see the very beginnings of an English legend.

Geoffrey of Monmouth story of Arthur in his Historia Regum Britanniae

As we know in the legend, Arthur's sword is set deep a large stone and, as we have seen, the Sword of St Galgano too is embedded in a rock, but the similarity between this sword's story and that of Arthur's ends there. Arthur's sword is representative of his future kingship and glory this will bring, Galgano's sword, however, is a symbol of brutality and piety. Arthur's takes his sword from the stone, Galgano places his in the stone, Arthur's story and that of St Galgano's are a mirror image of each other. All the known facts that make up Arthur's story, Geoffrey of Monmouth had put together from what he read in the writing of Gildas, and probably what he read of his Cornish followers in the Annales of Wales, it is unlikely that Gildas wrote of a Cornish tribal leader who a embedded a sword in a stone. If it wasn't from Gildas that Monmouth gets his idea of a mythical sword it would be wonderful to think that Monmouth's idea of Excalibur comes from the story of St Galgano's sword, but it sadly it does not.

However, whose to say that it was not the other way around, after all Arthur's and Galgano's tale is a mirror image of each others, they both occur at almost the same time, could it be that Monmouth's Caliburnus, was used by the people of Tuscany to explain their sword and Arthur's Sword in the Stone tale begins here.

Saint Galgano was born Galgano Guidotti in 1148 in Chiusdino, a village in what is now the modern province of Siena in Italy. Galango was said to have been a medieval Tuscan knight, the son of a feudal lord. Galgano had a reputation for selfishness and being somewhat of a rebel in his youth. Galgano, after have a vision of the Archangel Michael, saw the error of his ways, abandoning his old life for that of a hermit at Rotonda di Montesiepi. To prove his total commitment to his new cause Galgano plunged his sword into a large stone forcing it through the rock up to its hilt, thus changing the sword into a cross a symbol of his new found piety. Galgano died here on 30 November 1181 and since then pilgrims have arrived in large numbers and miracles have been performed. A papal commission was set up in 1185, after which Galgano was canonised in 1190. For centuries the sword was thought to be a fake, but researchers revealed in 2001 that the sword is in fact, twelfth century. The University of Pavia, who tested the metal of the sword also used ground penetrating radar analysis and revealed that beneath the sword there was a cavity in which is thought to be the body of Galgano. Incidentally, in the church, there are two mummified hands and these too are twelfth century. A local legend says that anyone who tried to remove the sword from the stone had their arms ripped off.

Galgano Guidotti vision of the Archangel Michael

Geoffrey of Monmouth wasn't the only one writing of the legend of King Arthur in the twelfth century, French writer Chretien de Troyes wrote of the legend too. Where then did Troyes get his inspiration? It was Troyes who introduced the tales of Lancelot and Sir Percival, both these knights are never mentioned by Monmouth, so Monmouth wasn't where Troyes got his ideas, in fact no one really knows where he got them. There was another writer whose stories were written a little later than Monmouth and Troyes named Robert de Boron. Boron wrote The Grail Story of Joseph d'Arimathe and the story of Merlin and it is here in Borons tales that for the first time that we may have our answer. Boron's predecessors only wrote of Excaliber but it is here that we first hear of Arthur actually pulling out a sword. Boron's sword was not drawn from a stone but from an anvil which is placed upon a stone, it is interesting that Boron's tale appears only a few decades after Galgano's canonisation.

Robert of Boron's tale sets Arthur's story in stone.

In Monmouth's history, we witness the birth of a heroic leader, a bold adventurer who lays conquest over many lands, a leader who slays a Cornish giant and who heads for the Isle of Avalon to heal his wounds. Cretien de Troyes may have picked up some threads of Monmouth's history and Malory's, Morte d'Arthur, published in 1485 by Caxton, would have been a book devoured by the medieval world and we know for certain that Henry VII read it. He was fascinated by the tale, and why wouldn't he, after all he was desperate to be a king like Arthur, here was a king to aspire too. Henry VII named his first born son Arthur and insisted that his wife give birth at Winchester, the spiritual home of Arthur's Round Table. So were doe's Galgano appear in this tale? Did the pilgrims talk of the story of Arthur when they saw the sword, was it a clever marketing ploy to attract more visitors? and was Robert de Boron inspired by Monmouth's stories and St Galgano's embedded stone to write what we have come to know as the tale of King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone.

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Lace-making

17/9/2014

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Tudor and Elizabethan Ruffs

Lace-making is an ancient craft but it was not made in its true form until the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A true lace is created when a thread is looped, twisted or braided to other threads independently and originally made out of linen, silk, gold and silver threads. Today it is often made from cotton thread or a synthetic fibre.

During the Tudor era, the ruff was the single largest user of lace, and the wearing of a ruff defines the Elizabethan age. We did see ruffs during Elizabeth's father's time, but they were just small frills that surrounded a tall collar. In the 1560s the ruff had evolved into a large separate article of clothing tied on by strings that were introduced to England from France.

Ruffs started out as starched linen edged with lace, but by the end of the 1500s ruffs were almost entirely of lace, and because it came in narrow strips several had to be sewn together to form the nine inches it usually took to make a large ruff which had to be supported by both starch and wireframes. Ruffs, on the whole, were white, but were could be coloured with vegetable dye and were either pink, yellow or sometimes mauve. A pale blue colour was popular but the Elizabeth disliked it and issued a statement which stated:

"Her Majesty's pleasure is that no blue starch shall be used or worn by any of her Majesty's subjects, since blue
was the colour of the flag of Scotland "

The year 1615 saw the beginning of the end of the large starched ruff and by 1640 it was the falling ruff that was
becoming more popular.

Interestingly, between 1570 and 1625 the fan-shaped ruff with an open neck was only worn by unmarried women.

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The Sleepy Wiltshire Village of Bratton

9/9/2014

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In a lot of ways, the sleepy and picturesque English village of Bratton in Wiltshire has a lot in common with Laurie Lee's novel Cider with Rosie. It has rose covered thatched cottages, narrow paths and a single village shop, where if you stand outside long enough you get to hear of what going on in the village, from the time of someone's doctor's appointment, all about granny who is still trying to give up smoking or the route of the midnight dash to the vets of a poorly cat.

As you walk through its narrow lanes you can be forgiven for thinking you have been plunged into another world, as with Lees book, the new world has arrived here, Bratton has a main road running through its centre, new housing and its infant school is bright and modern and you can sit outside the pub, a conversion of three eighteen century buildings into one, and enjoy your local ale.

The village of Bratton can be found sheltering under the north edge of what only could be described as a mighty great hill. This 'hill' is in fact an escarpment of Salisbury Plain. Bratton lies just over a mile from the bigger town of Westbury and not too far from the beautiful city of Bath. A village in its own right since 1892, Bratton comes up trumps in both Geography and History categories. It can boast of its proximity to Salisbury Plain, a three hundred square mile chalk plateau leading to the above-mentioned large grass covered escarpment, Bratton also lies on the edge of Bratton Downs, a geological site of special scientific interest.

Historically speaking, Bratton can also boast of many events linked with its ancient past from its White Horse hill carving, one of only sixteen in the country, a double-ditched iron age hill fort, the suspected site of an Anglo-Saxon battle won by King Alfred the Great against an 'uncoordinated band of Vikings' under its leader Guthrum. Bratton has a fifteenth century court house used by Judge Jeffreys, the notorious hanging judge during the Monmouth Rebellion, earthworks of a moated medieval English Heritage site and finally, Bratton was the home of Major General Sir Jeremy Moore, Commander of British land forces during the Falklands War who lived in the village for twenty years until his death in 2007.

Like other West Country English villages, Bratton is pleasant, but unlike some that are much prettier Bratton has, as previously mentioned, an ace up its sleeve. It is steeped in history and has a beautiful array of geographical features. If you blink as you pass through you will miss it, but if you have your walking boots and are prepared to stop and look you will be genuinely surprised.

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Death of Amy Robsart by William Fredrick Yeames.

8/9/2014

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On the 8th of September 1560, Amy Robsart, wife of Robert Dudley was found dead at the bottom of the stairs at home in Oxford.

Robert Dudley, the younger son of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland was handsome and quite ambitious and was more interested in the opportunities that were offered as a member of the queen's court than his young eighteen year old wife Amy Robsart. They had married on the 5th June 1550 at the royal palace of Sheen in Richmond. In the years that followed Dudley became the queen's favourite and in 1558 she bestowed on him the position of Master of the Horse, this, and the attention of the queen kept him away from Amy. Two years later, Amy sent away her servants from her house at Cumnor Place in Oxford and was later found dead at the foot of a flight of stairs with a broken neck and two wounds on her head. The coroner found that she had died from a fall downstairs; the verdict was 'misfortune' and therefore an accidental death. At the time Dudley was suspected of having ordered her death.

Elizabethan murder mystery or misfortune?

What then is Yeames implying in his 1877 painting? Are the two men in the shadows responsible for her death having pushed her down the stairs? Certainly, the younger man is shocked, maybe he wants to go to her aid but the older man is holding him back whilst looking for signs of movement? Or has the younger man just returned a few minutes after Amy's fall and has not yet realised that he standing with the murderer or are they both innocent of the alleged crime?

What do you think?

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The Wash and King John's Lost Treasure.

6/9/2014

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The Wash is a large bay on the east coast of England that lies between the counties of Lincolnshire and Norfolk. It is one of the largest estuaries in the United Kingdom and is fed by the rivers Witham, Welland, Steeping, Nene and the Great Ouse. Collecting 10% of the water that drains from the county's lands it is the second largest inter-tidal, uncovered when the tide is out, mudflats in Great Britain.

People have lived on the surrounding fertile land for centuries and it was this stretch of water that the Vikings used as a major route to invade East Anglia between 865 and the start of the Norman Conquest. The Wash was given the name of Metaris Aestuarium, meaning the reaping/mowing/cutting off estuary during the first century by Claudius Ptolemy, a Roman astrologer and mathematician. The Romans built large embankments that protected the land and prevented flooding, but they had all but disappeared by the end of the fifth century. In later years Dutch engineers began a large scale land reclamation and drainage project, and this has continued on and off over the years. The mid 1970s saw another drainage project when vast areas of the marsh were enclosed and drained and used for farming. The Wash is a Special Protection Area and is the home to over fifteen species of bird such as the Oyster Catcher which feeds on the shellfish who too make their home here. The Wash not only has a varied natural history it can boast of one interesting historical event.

Apart from school, I learned all about history through the funny mishaps of our kingdom's monarchs by reading the wonderful Ladybird and the Look and Learn books. They illustrated such stories as King Alfred burning the cakes or in the case of King Cnut, the eccentricity of trying to order the tide around as he sat soaking his feet, but anyone who was born in the fenlands of Lincolnshire and Norfolk would have grown up with another famous tale.

It is the Wash that plays host to an interesting and somewhat amusing incident in history, the story of how, in 1216, King John lost England's crown jewels in the murky water of the estuary.

John was not a popular king, previous to his unfortunate accident he had lost much of England's lands in France, been excommunicated and forced to sign the Magna Carta. The following year the king broke his word, this action was the starting point of the First Barons' War. John travelled around the country to oppose the rebel forces, directing a two-month siege of Rochester Castle. Later retreating from the French invasion, John took a safe route around the marshy area of The Wash to avoid the rebel held area of East Anglia. In the October of 1216, John traveled from Spalding in Lincolnshire to a town where he was well liked, Bishops Lynn, now Kings Lynn in Norfolk a town that he had previously granted a royal charter. It was here that he was taken ill, probably with dysentery, and decided not to continue the journey. According to Kings Lynn's Borough Council, it was on the 12th of October that the king left the town, taking the route via Wisbech sending his baggage, plus the jewels on what he thought was the quicker route across the mouth of The Wash. The Wash was much wider than it is today, the sea reached as far as the aforementioned Wisbeach and the inland town of Long Sutton was on the coast and was then a port. Up to three thousand of the king's entourage were carrying the royal wardrobe and the whole of the kingdom's treasury. At low tide, the conditions of the causeway were wet and muddy and the wagons moved too slowly and sank into the mud engulfing the king's most valuable possessions. The men of the train struggled with the trunks whilst others pulled at the horses to encourage movement but eventually, everything was covered by the incoming tide. The accident probably took place in between the tiny hamlet of Walpole Cross Keys and what we now call Sutton Bridge which crosses the River Nene.

The king's journey continued to Swineshead Abby, near Boston in Lincolnshire, where his health became worse and where legend has it that he was poisoned by a monk called Brother Simon who stole the jewels and made his way out of England with Europe as his destination. Another interesting take on the loss of the king's treasurers is that they were not lost at all and that the king was using the jewels as security, arranging for their 'loss' before they arrived at their destination and using The Wash as a ruse. There seems to be no written documentation to give credence to these two facts so they must remain what they probably are, just tall tales.

On the run from the barons, the loss of the kingdom's 'treasury' may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, which affected his health and state of mind. It was either on his journey or during his one night stay at Sleaford Castle that he heard of the loss of the treasure, his health continued to deteriorate and following his arrival at Newark Castle, the king died on the 18th of October 1216. He didn't live to see his English barons switch their allegiance taking the side of the new king, his nine year old son Henry.

The Gatehouse of Newark Castle

John is yet another English king who has suffered from bad press over the years, he was no hero, he was vengeful and untrusting and is it any wonder, as a child he received no support from warring parents, no support from a self obsessed brother and as king no support from his people, what chance did he have? W L Warren in his book King John sums up fairly accurately in my view the cause of his troubled reign.

"talented in some respects, good at administrative detail, but suspicious, unscrupulous, and mistrusted. His crisis-prone career was sabotaged repeatedly by the half-heartedness with which his vassals supported him—and the energy with which some of them opposed him.’

But what of the king's treasure? Is it buried centuries deep under Sutton Bridge?

Since 1216 there have been nearly eight hundred years of silt deposited over all the gold and silver plate, the coins and the jewelry, it's highly unlikely to ever be found. Recently Nottingham University did some work trying to discover the causeway King John's royal train may have passed over, no doubt other interested parties will search in the future and maybe they will find something. But did this event happen at all, did 'evil' King John snigger with glee as he arranged for the 'disappearance' of his treasure or was it just an accident that has been exaggerated over the years? Yes, I think an incident occurred on a cold winter's day in 1216, and yes the story has been embellished.

There are two contemporary accounts, one by Roger of Wendover, an English chronicler who died in 1236 and one by Ralph of Coggeshall, an English monk and chronicler who died in 1227. Both were writing at the time of the loss.

Roger of Wendover writes rather melodramatically and calls it a major disaster, he writes:

'the ground opened up in the midst of the waves, and bottomless whirlpools sucked in everything'

Ralph of Coggeshall refers to it as more of a misadventure, stating that it was not the whole of the royal baggage train that was lost but the vanguard who carried household items, church and holy relics, but not the whole of the treasury.

Some valuable items, belonging to the king of England did get lost in The Wash, but not treasure as we would imagine, there was no large chest overflowing with coins, necklaces and gold goblets, only kitchen equipment and finery collected from churches. As Coggeshall suggested maybe the real treasure was in second train that never started its journey across The Wash which eventually ended it's days thrown in among the new king, Henry III's treasury. I suppose we could call that lost!

One final note. In the mid fourteenth century Robert Tiptoft, a local Norfolk gentleman became very wealthy almost overnight and according to folklore this was due to finding all of the Kings treasure and not handing it back to the crown, but that's another story.

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Byard's Leap: A Story of a Witch and a Blind Horse.

4/9/2014

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Just the other evening I watched yet another film telling the story of Snow White. The ever-lovely Snow White has changed over the years, no longer is she the rosy-cheeked innocent of my day, but a self-confident, sword-carrying, feisty teenager. Snow White’s father’s new bedfellow hasn't changed much either, her disguise is still a stunning medieval beauty, but like Snow White, her alter ego has changed. Now she is beautiful in her ugliness, no longer the horrible hag with the wart on the end of her hooked nose, or a cackling, hand-ringing gorgon, that frightened the little eight-year-old girl that was me.

Eugene Delacroix's horse leaping over a gate.

A hunchbacked hag is how most of us imagine a witch. She is always ugly, a woman with a bent walking stick and a black cat using sorcery or casting spells on anyone who gets in her way. In my home county of Lincolnshire, we have no witches today, or if we do I’ve never seen one! But in days gone by there were those who are said to have ridden on broomsticks, flying around causing havoc among the fenland-living folk. Of course, the aforementioned Lincolnshire folk told tall tales of such women, these stories and songs have passed into popular culture. Ethel Rudkin of Willoughton in Lincolnshire was a dedicated collector of folklore ephemera which she was collecting in the mid-1920s and 1930’s she was an expert in this field. Her book Lincolnshire Folklore was self-published in 1936, the information in it was taken directly from the people in the villages of Lincolnshire. Of witches, she writes

“In the presence of a witch, so she shall be powerless against you, clench both your fists with the thumbs inside and under fingers”

“If you pluck straw from the thatch of a witches house and hold it in your hand she cannot harm you”

Maybe this is where the saying clutching at straws originates?

Map showing the re-alignment of the A17. Photo Credit National Library of Scotland

On a sunny day out two summers ago, my husband and I stopped at a lovely little cafe for a cup of tea at the village of Byard’s Leap and found, to my amazement, that it was the site of the origins of a local legend about a wicked witch and a horse. Byard’s Leap is a civil parish in North Kesteven on the B6403 on the north side of the A17 and one of seven districts in the County of Lincolnshire. Within this tiny hamlet, there are a number of different legends one is the story of a horse named Byard.

Living in a small area of trees and bushes, in times gone by called a spinney, was a witch called Old Meg. Meg lived in her home on Ermine Street at a place called High Dyke. Her evilness caused all the crops to wither and the local farm animals to die. Fortunately, living in the same area was a soldier and a hero who was willing to come to the villager's aid by telling everyone he would kill her with his sword by plunging it into her wicked heart. Not having a horse of his own he went in search of a suitable mount and passing by a pond he saw a few horses drinking, throwing a stone into the water he picked the horse who had the quickest reaction. The said horse was known as Blind Byard. Soon our hero and Byard were off in search of the wicked witch. Eventually, they found Meg, she was summoned to leave her home by our hero but she refused on the grounds that she was eating her dinner, “Come back another day” she croaked! The soldier duly waited unknowing that Meg had snuck out the back door and was creeping up behind, she sank her long yellow nails into the rump of poor Byard who was so shocked he ran and leaped over sixty feet in distance.

Byard leaps from the horseshoe over the trees in the far distance.

Meg chased Byard, but the soldier soon gained control of his horse by the time they reached the village pond, turning, and with one swipe he thrust his sword right into her heart where she fell into the pond and drowned.

Today, we can still see the spot where Blind Byard landed after Meg sunk her talons into him. The site is marked by four horseshoes and a commemorative stone.

The spot were Blind Byard landed.

What a wonderful story! Of course, a story is all it is, an embellished tale of a poor old lady that no one liked very much, who was a scapegoat for the villager's problems and who was probably banished by the Lord of the Manor from the saddle of his brown bay! However, as with most stories, there is no smoke without fire.

Bayard is in general folklore a ‘magic horse’ usually a Bay which is renowned for its spirit and has the ability to adjust its size according to the size of its rider. Bayard appears in many medieval romances and first appeared as belonging to one Renaud de Montauban in a twelfth century tale. This horse was able to carry Renaud and his three brothers and hold a decent conversation in French at the same time! Later in the story, Bayard is punished for some misdemeanour by having a large stone tied around his neck, but Bayard is strong enough to smash the stone and escapes to live in a mystical wood.

Renaud and his three brothers.

Bayard can also be found in Geoffrey Chaucer's work Troilus and Criseyde as a talking dancing horse, and in 1286 he appears again in The Canterbury Tales and then again as a blind foolish horse in the Yeoman’s Tale, where it states

"Though you search afar, you shall never find it; Be you as bold as Bayard the blind, that blunders forth and perceives no peril.”

Byard from the History of France by M. Guizot.

Sounds a bit like Byard from Lincolnshire, doesn't it?

By the time of the thirteenth century, Bayard had come to represent the exploits and daring do’s of any remarkable horse and no longer is associated with magic, in fact from the end of the thirteenth century Bayard is now often found as a fool of a horse in English literature.

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Tudor and Elizabethan Ruffs

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