Much the Miller's Son. A Merry Man?

 Much The Miller’s Son. A Merry Man?

 

 

Picture from Medieval Occupations https://medievalbritain.com/type/medieval-life/occupations/medieval-miller/

 

Much, or Moche, or Midge, or even Nick, in various ballads of Robin Hood, is described as the Miller’s son and one of Robin’s company of Merry Men. ‘Midge’ suggests he was small and possibly harmless, but in one early  ballard (Robin Hood and the Monk) he is shown as being a killer, murdering a page boy and then taking the boy’s place in disguise.

 

This ambivalent attitude to Much also reflects medieval attitudes to millers. Because millers were responsible for turning people’s wheat, barley and other grains, even dried peas, into flour, they were often suspected of stealing part of the flour and giving light weight. Mills were often controlled by local land owners, and peasants resented having to use a mill where the gentry demanded a cut. Peasants were even forbidden from grinding their own wheat – although the discovery of quern stones at medieval sites shows that this law was frequently ignored. Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, portrays a miller as a bully and a show-off, Simpkin the Swagger. In medieval France, too, millers were seen as cheats, as the widespread saying calling millers, tailors, weavers and tax collectors thieves shows.

 

I have a water mill in my novel, “A Summer Bewitchment,” and show the hero Magnus and heroines Elfrida entering the mill in their quest to recover seven missing girls.

Excerpt

Dispirited, she slid off the bony bay and opened the mill door to a blistering fog of flour, a tumult of grinding mill-stones. She flung up an arm, clapping her hands over her ears as the ground shuddered under her feet. Magnus scowled, shouting something before hooking her up and carrying her through the mill into a narrow side chamber.

In this room she could hear again and the dusty flour was a little less thick, but it still formed a billowing cloud within the room. Dropped onto the dirt floor by her husband with no more ceremony than he might have released a bag of wheat, she coughed like a cat with a fur ball. Magnus smeared chaff from his eyes, cursing beneath his breath.

“How the miller stands this I do not know,” he said at length.       

“The money is good.” Mark detached himself from leaning against a beam and approached. “A fresh horse is tethered for you, sir, my lady.”

I am no lady. Elfrida bit down hard on that. She glanced at Magnus. “A message through Father Luke?”

“It seemed the easiest way. Have you brought the clothes?” he asked Mark.

Mark handed him a parcel. “Sir, I have two horses—”

“Go back, welcome Peter to the manor and tell him how things are when you get the chance. Keep a watch on Father Jerome and Tancred, especially Father Jerome. I do not want that priest getting word to the Lady Astrid.”

“Do you think he would try to or even want to?” Elfrida asked, thinking at once of Father Jerome’s pale, sunken look when he realized his lady had gone off without him.

Magnus shrugged. “Why should I care? Mark, I will take both your horses. We shall go faster with two, riding and guiding.”

Mark tugged on his red nose. “I ride Star?” He sounded horrified.

“He is smooth enough and steady.”

“And slow. What do I tell our reluctant guests?”

“Tell Tancred and that priest as little as possible. Let them think we have gone to my wife’s village.”

 

Short Blurb for “A Summer Bewitchment.”

Can a knight and his witch save seven kidnapped maidens? Sir Magnus and Elfrida strive to find the girls, but at what cost to their marriage?

A SUMMER BEWITCHMENT ( THE KNIGHT AND THE WITCH 2)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZTMNWZ9/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=lindsay+townsend&qid=1572605630&rs=154606011&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
Amazon Co Uk
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07ZTMNWZ9/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=a+summer+bewitchment&qid=1572606494&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

Lindsay Townsend 

Movie Kisses Series 4/10/2024 Shakespeare in Love #prairierosepubs #moviekisses

Here we are at the fourth installment of my year-long look at The Kiss in historically-set movies.

Recap of Kisses so far:

• January Kiss –The Phantom of the Opera 

• February Kiss – The Princess Bride|

• March Kiss – The African Queen

Since William Shakespeare was baptized on April 26 (likely born on April 23), 1556, and he died on April 23, 1616, it is only proper that this month’s movie kiss is from Shakespeare in Love.

Shakespeare in Love is a period romantic comedy-drama (1998). The story is a fictional love affair between William Shakespeare and Viola de Lesseps. During this intense, short-lived affair, Shakespeare is inspired to write Romeo and Juliet, which closely mirrors their star-crossed and doomed-from-the-beginning relationship. This movie is a play-within-a-play.

From the beginning, we know Will and Viola will not have their own happy ever after. We know from a few minutes into the movie that Viola’s father has arranged her marriage with Lord Wessex. This event sets off a whirlwind three-week-long love affair between Will and Viola.

Near the end of the movie, Queen Elizabeth sums up what we, the viewer, knew would happen for Will and Viola during every moment of the movie, but we pushed it to the back of our minds, because it’s so darn sad.

As stories must when love’s denied: with tears and a journey.

As such, there are two kisses that matter in this movie (and Will and Viola do a lot of kissing in this movie).

The first kiss comes at the end of the Romeo and Juliet performance when Will and Viola are lost in the moment and they kiss as themselves, but also as Romeo and Juliet. This is their goodbye kiss, but it’s not the kiss that breaks our hearts. That kiss happens in the second clip. Fast forward to 3:38 in this clip to see this kiss.

The second kiss is the heart-wrencher and the tear-bringer. It’s their Last Kiss. It’s the kiss that makes our lips quiver and our eyes misty. This is the ‘Write me well’ kiss that immortalizes Viola for Will as we hear his voice-over and see him writing the play Twelfth Night.

 See you next month for another kiss from the big screen.

Kaye Spencer
www.kayespencer.com

Esther Walker - Civil War Wife? - Civil War Nurse

Post by Doris McCraw

aka Angela Raines

Evergreen Chapel, Evergreen Cemetery,
Colorado Springs, CO.
Photo(C) Doris McCraw

This post is unique to the Civil War Veterans/Civil War Wives buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs. Her story also has many blank places that may never be filled, but I hold out hope.

Like the story of many women from this time period, their lives were not documented. Many of their efforts and events weren't written about. Of course, there are exceptions, unfortunately, Esther's story is not the exception.

She came to my attention as the only female amongst the headstones in the GAR section of the cemetery, however, her stone is removed from the cluster of Civil War Veterans. This set up an intriguing puzzle and one that started this journey of her life. As with most of the stories I research it begins with the death and moves around from there.

Esther's birth is sometime between 1837 and 1844 in Ireland according to census records. She immigrated to the United States around 1853 but her name at that time is still hiding.

Next, according to the GAR/s records, Esther was a nurse with the New York 18th Army Corps enlisted on April 23, 1861, and was discharged on December 3, 1864. 

From here the trail gets murky and even more winding. 

In the 1880 census, we find Esther Dayton, the surname of her children, living on Saginaw St. in Flint, Michigan. Her occupation is listed as a dressmaker. She is also a widow. This record was found by backtracking her sons who were living here in Colorado at the time of her death.

Now, here comes the interesting pieces.

In the 1895 census, Esther is in Ireton, Iowa, and has the surname Walker. 1900 census she is living with James Walker in Iowa. According to the census they married in 1871. James was about twenty years older than Esther. 

As you can see, she was in Michigan with her children in 1880 and the name Dayton. Yet, all records indicate Dayton and Walker are both the same person.

I'll continue the story on the Western Fictioneers blog as she is a veteran also.

Other posts in this series: 

Alpheus R. Eastman - Western Fictioneers Blog

Helen Rood Dillon - Prairie Rose Publications Blog

Virginia Strickler - Prairie Rose Publications Blog

Henry C. Davis - Western Fictioneers Blog

Chester H. Dillon - Western Fictioneers Blog

For anyone interested, I have a monthly substack newsletter: Thoughts and Tips on History

Until Next Time: Stay safe, Stay happy, and Stay healthy. 

Doris

The Day Job

 The Day Job

By C. A. Asbrey

We authors all have to work for a living, but the lucky ones get to give up the day job and spend time as a full time writer. But what do we do until we get there? More than that, what did your favourite author do before they managed to concentrate on writing full time? Some, like Jane Austin, were never in a position to work even if they wanted to, and others like Charlotte Brontë were restricted by society into roles like governesses, or in the cases of Susan Ferrier and Mary Shelley, wrote anonymously so they could maintain their place in society, but I'm more interested in those who seem to have woven a world that captured us while working for a daily crust.

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw gave up work relatively early, in his twenties, being cushioned by being born into a comfortable family in Ireland. Part of the Protestant Ascendency, he was of English descent with a mother from a wealthy family. He began working for a firm of Dublin Land Agents at the age of twenty-three, but moved to London where he eventually took up a position at the Edison Telephone Company with great reluctance. He worked in the basement, demonstrating telephone systems to the public. He said on The Irrational Knot, that his audience was uncertain "as to whether they ought to tip me or not: a question they either decided in the negative or never decided at all; for I never got anything."  

He left when the Edison Telephone Company merged with the Bell Telephone company, and took up writing full time.

The Hardy Tree

Thomas Hardy's family weren't so wealthy. His stone mason father educated him until the age of sixteen, before being apprenticed to a local architect. He moved to London in 1862 and won several prizes from the Royal Institute of British Architects. He worked in London at a time when the railway system was expanding rapidly, but that also meant that land had to be cleared. In a city as old as London that meant either knocking down existing buildings or going through land used for other purposes. When St. Pancras station was under construction the local churchyard had to be cleared, and in the well-established tradition of dumping the most unpleasant jobs on the most junior employees, Hardy was assigned the job of exhuming the human remains and reburying them at another site.

Once this was done, Hardy found himself with hundreds of old headstones. Feeling that it was just wrong to dispose of them, he arranged them in a circular pattern in another part of the graveyard. Over the years an ash tree self-seeded in the centre. It absorbed many stones as it grew, melding into a tourist attraction in its own right. Sadly, the tree died after catching a fungal infection, perenniporia fraxinea, but the grave stones are still there.

The famous writer of Westerns, Louis L'Amour, had a colourful life before taking up his pen. His veterinarian father had financial difficulties in the 1920s, leading Louis and his brother to take to the road. They mined, baled hay, skinned cattle, worked sawmills and lumber camps, became a professional boxer, merchant seaman, and mine assessor. His work not only took him all over the USA, providing a mine of characters and research for his novels, but he visited England, Japan, China, Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, Arabia, Egypt, and Panama. All this was a wonderful preparation for a writer. It echoes the peripatetic life of Jack Kerouac who washed dishes, picked cotton,  worked as a night guard (as mentioned in On The Road), pumped gas, a fire watcher, a sailor, a construction worker, and a railroad brakeman.

It's well known that Arthur Conan Doyle was a surgeon, that Herman Melville was a sailor, and that Agatha Christie worked in a hospital pharmacy during WW1. Charles Dickens started work in a factory as a child, was an actor, Journalist and law clerk, and we can see influences of all these careers in his books. Margaret Atwood was a barista who famously struggled with the till. James Joyce abandoned his medical degree and became a cinema operator. Harper Lee was an airline check-in agent who wrote in her spare time. She was famously given a year off to write, paid for by the composer Michael Brown. 

P. D. James 

Crime writer P. D. James' family did not believe in further education for girls, so she was at a disadvantage when her army doctor husband was hospitalised after WW2, and was institutionalised. She studied hospital administration and worked during the day, writing in the evenings. She moved on to the civil service and worked there, including the criminal section of the Home Office, until her retirement in 1979, when she wrote full-time. A life that's a model for many modern writers, I'm sure.

Looking at the lives of many famous writers, an obvious pattern appears. In the past, a certain degree of privilege and wealth was the main way people were free to explore their creativity, but people have been combining writing with the day job for a long time. 

One thing's for sure. There's no one way to get the life experience to be a writer, but the best use it all in creating their worlds. 

Sir Guy of Gisbourne. A Medieval Assassin.

 

Sir Guy of Gisbourne. A Medieval Assassin.

 

In early legends of Robin Hood, Guy of Gisbourne is an assassin who tries to kill Robin, only for Robin to kill him. In these accounts, Guy is depicted wearing a robe made of horse hide, “topp and tayll and mayne.”  So very distinctive! As horse leather is also tough and hard-wearing, an assassin out in all weathers would find it useful.

 

In later stories, Guy is shown as keen to woo and win Maid Marian, but it is the assassin aspect of his character that intrigues me. In the west, the most famous assassins were those of the order of assassins, the Hashishiyun. Founded in the late eleventh century by the Persian Hasan as-Sabah, the order of the assassins soon became notorious for their obedience to their master and their deterination to kill their opponents, whatever the personal cost. It was believed that to aid their goals, the assassins would use drugs such as hashish (cannabis) to make them utterly fearless and ruthless.

 

Site of Alamut Castle in Iran

The Assassins were Shia Muslims and many of their killings took place within the Islamic kingdom to remove political and religious enemies. From his stronghold in Alamut Castle in Persia (Iran) the Grand Master of the Order, who became known as The Old Man of the Mountain, sent out his deadly emissaries. They killed by dagger, poison or arrows and murdered many men, including three caliphs and the King of Jerusalem, Conrad of Montferrat. Saladin, the Kurdish Sunni who fought against the crusaders, was twice targeted by the Assassins, who failed each time. After the second attempt, the Old Man of the Mountain and Saladin appear to have come to terms.

 

Nevertheless, the Assassins were feared. As an unknown poet of the middle ages said, “By a single warrior on foot, a king may be struck with terror, though he may own more than 100,000 horsemen.”

 

I have an assassination attempt in my romance, “The Snow Bride,” and have included an excerpt.

 

Excerpt.          

 

He heard a faint click and creak behind him and knew at once it was a bow and arrow being readied and aimed. There was no game in the wastes and thickets of hazel ahead, so he must be the target.

Before he completed his conscious thought, he had reacted, dragging his left foot out of its stirrup and head-butting down into the snow, not considering the speed of his cantering horse or where he might land. Snow-crusted brambles snagged and broke his fall, and as he urged his flailing limbs to roll away, he felt the vane of the arrow score the top of his shoulder, where the middle of his back would have been.

“Magnus’s! Areee yeee weeeeelllll?”  

Gregory Denzil’s question crawled from his mouth as the world about Magnus slowed into thick honey. As his jaw crunched against a branch and threatened to loosen more teeth, he felt a trickle of blood run into his eye.

He compelled his sluggish body to sit up, a devil caught in a thicket. He knew he would make that picture, and he grinned, raising an arm to his men and yelling, “Hola! What a ride!”

Denzil and his mob nudged their horses closer. Mark had already leapt from his own with his hunting spear aimed at Denzil's throat. Magnus stood up, cursing with all the oaths of Outremer he could remember, and looked around him. His own men were honestly puzzled, while Denzil's wore expressions of studied innocence.

“Not a good time for archery practice,” he said. All good fun, all men together.

Denzil smiled thinly. “A fool, too eager for sport.”

“Indeed.” As an assassination attempt, Magnus rated it as poor to moderate, but Gregory Denzil had always been lazy. And in the clustered mass of hunters, he saw no skinny stranger with distinctive rings.

“Time to go on?” he asked, knowing if he suggested it, Denzil would say the opposite, which he did.

“We go back.”

 

 

 

The Snow Bride: To buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VSHHX4N

 

 

Movie Kisses Series 3/13/2024 African Queen #prairierosepubs #moviekisses

 

Here we are at the third installment of my year-long look at The Kiss in historically-set movies.

January Kiss –The Phantom of the Opera 
February Kiss – The Princess Bride 

This month, let’s look at three kisses from the Humphrey Bogart | Katharine Hepburn classic movie, The African Queen.

What I really like about the first kiss between the scruffy, grouchy, curmudgeon Charlie Allnut and the prim and proper, yet desperate to be free of her brother’s and society’s hold over her independence in order for her true self to blossom Rose Sayer is that their first kiss:

1) is awkward
2) is spontaneous
3) and blindsides both Charles and Rosie for how it opens up feelings they had no idea they had for each other. It’s adorable, and we love it.

First Kiss Set-up: They have just survived going by the German stronghold on the river. Watch from the beginning of the clip through 1:06.

This first awkward kiss sets emotions in motion for the real kiss that happens after they’d had time to share laughs and become comfortable with each other.

Second Kiss Set-up: This is The Kiss. They are sharing a few moments of admiring the beauty of where they are, and Charlie casually puts his hand on Rosie’s shoulder. Rosie can’t look at him as she puts her hand over his. She’s a conflicted mess of a puritanical upbringing that is telling her feelings for Charlie are inappropriate, but her woman’s heart is in love with him. The Kiss is at 1:28 and fades to black in the movie (and in the clip). If you’ve read the book, there is more intimacy in this scene. After the fade to black in the movie, we are left to surmise what that intimacy was, but we figure it out from the subtle hints.

 

I just love this kiss. They are an older couple who have gone through life not only alone, but lonely, and love has found them as equals in their desperate flight down a river during which they have to depend upon each other for survival.

Third Kiss Set-up: Rosie and Charlie are facing execution by hanging, and Charlie asks the ship’s captain to marry them,  “Because it would mean so much to the lady”, and then Rosie’s shy, but absolutely delighted and touched, gaze-lowered expression is too wonderful. The kiss is at 1:08 in this clip. If you've read the book, you know there is an amusing twist about this marriage that is left out of the movie due to what was deemed acceptable at the time in history this movie was made (1951).

 

I simply love this movie and the romance between Rosie and Charlie.

See you next month for more kisses from the big screen.

Kaye Spencer
www.kayespencer.com

Spring Forward, Fall Back

Spring Forward, Fall Back

C. A. Asbrey

C.A. Asbrey

March is the month when those participating in Daylight Saving Time change their clocks, and do so to the old maxim, spring forward, fall back. Many countries simply don't bother as there's no benefit to those countries closer to the equator, but even in countries where they do change the clocks, some regions rebel and refuse to play. Hawaii and most of Arizona don't participate and neither do most of the US overseas territories like Guam, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands. In Canada, Saskatchewan and the Yukon refuse to play. In Eupope, only Russia, Iceland, Belarus and Turkey stay on the same time all year round. 

A common misconception is that Benjamin Franklin invented the idea, but the piece he wrote about saving times was actually satirical. After being wakened at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m. by the summer sun, he wrote an essay stating that Parisians, simply by waking up at dawn, could save the modern-day equivalent of $200 million through “the economy of using sunshine instead of candles.” By the time he was a 78-year-old American envoy in Paris in 1784, the Founding Father who espoused the virtues of “early to bed and early to rise” absolutely did not practice what he preached. He did not like being wakened by the sun. History notes, Franklin wasn't even suggesting the idea of Daylight Saving Time. He was doing was making fun of the French, and suggesting they get out of bed earlier.

William Willett - It's all his fault!

So whose idea was it? Lots of people think it was the farmers, but they were, and are, dead against the idea. Animals work to a body clock, and cows expected to be milked at roughly the same time every day. It was said by some to conserve energy, but studies have shown that it has minimal, or no, affect. Other studies showed that energy usage increases when the change takes place in the autumn. George Vernon Hudson, an entomologist, published that he changed his clock in New Zealand in 1895, and that it gave him an extra hour to collect bugs in the summer. He suggested that other do the same, but it was dismissed as too complicated. Englishman William Willett was actually the first proper exponent of the idea, publishing a pamphlet 'The Waste of Daylight' in 1907. He actually proposed advancing eighty minutes in monthly increments of twenty each time, reversing it in the Autumn. He was a wealthy builder and suggested that it made it more productive for those working outside. He lobbied parliament, but didn't live to see it enacted. It was brought in during WW1 in 1916, first in Germany, then in the UK. The Defence of the Realm Act introduced it as a wartime production-boosting device to save on lighting and increase productivity. Many countries then followed suit. 

The idea that it was good for productivity has been thoroughly debunked. In fact, it decreases it, mainly because of the impact on people whose sleep patterns are disturbed. Costs save in lighting in the morning are simply transferred to the evening, and a 2013 study found the lost hour cost the U.S. economy around $434 million. The losses are temporary, but happen every year. There are even studies that show that sentences are harsher for those facing court in the days after the clocks go forward.   

That loss of sleep in the spring has real effects on people's health. It has a similar impact to jet lag, and for many people, it throws out their circadian rhythms. Most people recover within a week, but for some people it can take far longer. The result is a measurable increase in heart attacks, ischemic stroke, 5.7% increase workplace injuries, and traffic accidents as people's. 68% more work days are lost due to injury around the time of the March clock change. Time changes can impact appetite, hormone levels, mood, and attention span, so it's not surprising that there's an increasing move to stop adjusting the clock in many states and countries. On a positive note, crime falls at the change of the clocks in March, and many systems change the time automatically nowadays. Every little helps. 

The time changes at 2am to minimize the impact on bars and places of entertainment, and not all countries change on the same dates. Most people are asleep when the time actually switches, but it does mean either shorter or longer shifts for those working overnight. That has implications on how those people are paid, with some places simply ignoring the extra hour as something balanced out in the long term. Others treat it as overtime, or make individual arrangements.  

It's fair to say that changing the clocks isn't universally popular, but it sparked it once sparked an actual riot. In 1997, students in Athens, Ohio were not pleased at their bar being closed an hour earlier. When I say, 'not pleased', I mean over a thousand people had to be dispersed by police in full riot gear using rubber bullets and nightsticks. It made headlines all over the United States, and some protestors were quoted as marking the time change as a factor in triggering the violence. 

Salvatore “Sam” Cardinella.

It did throw up a few interesting legal cases too. One man managed to evade being drafted to Vietnam. He had a relatively low draft number due to his birthdate, and at that point a complex lottery was being used to draw tickets. The unnamed draftee was able to successfully appeal based on the fact that he was born just after midnight. However, his state did not change the clocks, and he was born the previous day in his state, but the next day using Daylight Saving Time, as used where the lottery was drawn. That meant that where he lived, his birthdate should not have been entered in the lottery. He won his case. 

Another legal case centred around the execution of Salvatore “Sam” Cardinella. He was sentenced to death for the murder of a saloon keeper, but was suspected to have been involved in 20 murders, 100 armed robberies and 150 other burglaries. He successfully argued that the changing the clocks was costing him an hour of the life he was sentenced to lose, and while that didn't seem like much to anyone else, it could be an hour in which a reprieve could come through. The case was successful and Cardinella won his extra hour of life. No reprieve came through. The governor did not change his mind. He was hanged sitting in a chair as he was apparently unable to stand.  

Chris Martin

The debate will rage on between those who like the clocks changing, and those who don't want it, and those who do. You may be able to tell I'm not a fan. The one take away I can offer you is that Coldplay's Chris Martin is the great-great-grandson of William Willett, the man who lobbied Winston Churchill to change the clocks. Don't hold it against him. It's not his fault.