Junicode v. 0.7 [via dm-l]
[lifted wholesale from the Digital Medievalist list]
update:
Yet another release of Junicode, the font for medievalists.
There were significant problems with some Windows apps in version 0.7. These have now been fixed in version 0.7.1; all Windows users should update their copies. But there are other incremental improvements as well, so OS X and Linux users may as well update.
Be sure to delete the old version before installing the new: there have been some file name and font name changes, and so failure to delete the old copy will surely cause problems.
Peter Baker
http://junicode.sourceforge.net
One more note by the way. If you have a *very* recent version of Firefox you can see the new advanced typography support in that browser tested/demonstrated with Junicode here:
http://faculty.virginia.edu/OldEnglish/juntest/
Insular letter-shapes, true small caps, historical forms, and more, including (my personal favorite) reversed and mirrored runes. I hope very much that this kind of typography will eventually be supported in all the major browsers.
Version 0.7 of Junicode, the font for medievalists, has now been released; download it at
http://junicode.sourceforge.net
This version contains numerous new glyphs, including:
- Complete IPA Extensions range in all four faces
- Complete Runic range in all four faces
- Mirrored runes in the regular face (accessible via the OpenType rtlm feature tag)
In response to user comments, line spacing settings have been restored to those of earlier versions. A new hinting system has been adopted for greatly improved screen display.
A WOFF version is available for web developers. The font has been tested in Windows 7, OS X and Ubuntu Linux. Please write if you run into any problems installing or using it.
As always, Junicode is completely free.
Peter Baker
Digital Medievalist — http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/
Journal: http://www.digitalmedievalist.org/journal/
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Discussion list: dm-l@uleth.ca
Change list options: http://listserv.uleth.ca/mailman/listinfo/dm-l
Angels at National Geographic
The Evolution of Angels at National Geographic.com.
Viking Cemetery Discovered in Poland
I am still skeptical about stone Saxon baby coffins, but this article describes some wooden Viking coffins, which is interesting.
Cherries at Christmas – folk motifs (and the Second Shepherds’ Play)
The first time I read the Second Shepherds’ Play,[1] I was curious about where the cherries came from and what they meant.
The first shepherd says:
Hail, thou comely and clean one! Hail, young Child!
Hail, Maker, as I mean, from a maiden so mild!
Thou hast harried, I ween, the warlock so wild,—(725)
The false beguiler with his teen now goes beguiled.
Lo, he merries,
Lo, he laughs, my sweeting!
A happy meeting!
Here’s my promised greeting,—(730)
Have a bob of cherries! [1]
To which I said, basically, “what?” Various readers and notes informed me that cherries were traditionally associated, variously, with Christmas, the Christ child, the shepherds, folk songs etc, but “it’s traditional” is never good enough for me. I want to know why it’s traditional, what it means, and where else I can see it in its native context, and won’t be satisfied with an anthology telling me “it’s traditional” or with various people’s guesses. I’ve had some good class discussion speculating on the symbolism of the shepherds’ gifts though.
I still haven’t sorted out the full context and weight of meaning, but I have over the years come across some traditional (in the sense of, passed down and done all over as folk music and not attributed to any one composer) lyrics and tunes relating to the Christ child, or his mother, being given cherries at or near his Nativity. There’s a tune called “The Cherry Tree Carol” that dates from at least the 15th century telling of a skeptical Joseph responding with spite to a pregnant Mary’s requests for him to pick her some cherries: “Let the father of your bastard child pick them for you!” he says in essence. A miracle ensues in which the boughs bend down, through God’s power either from heaven or from in the womb, to themselves give Mary her cherries and Joseph his chastisement for doubting the paternity of Mary’s child.[3]
I recently found a performance of “Cherry Tree Carol” done at Durham Cathedral in 2009 (as part of a programme with a rather amazing group of performers playing acoustic instruments, some medieval and early modern. This was actually a Sting-engineered thing, but regardless of what impression you’ve gotten from him over the years through the media, or your opinion of his music at any stage of his career (or your opinion of his beard in this recording), this performance is certainly worth a look/listen. You’ll have to see clips from other songs in the programme in order to get the full impression of the ensemble and the instruments and arrangements here, as this clip – as are most recordings of Cherry Tree Carol I’ve heard – is pretty much a capella).
For those more interested in the instruments, there is at least one song featuring a very interesting instrument in the lute family (I believe – I am happy to corrected by those more knowledgeable) – it may be a theorbo, in fact, which has been known to inspire theorbo-envy in young guitarists, but I haven’t had time to track it down and be able to say for sure. I don’t have time to track the clip down on youtube right now, but I’ll find it eventually. Those interested in traditional fiddle may note that Kathyrn Tickell is featured here, and given room to do her thing; she’s delightful and I love her — and so is a young relation of hers, Peter Tickell, who I’d never heard before and who I might also be in love with (in a properly discreet, tasteful, semi-maternal and intellectual way, given that he is probably half my age if that. I’m not entirely rational when it comes to stringed instruments, in all fairness, and in fact there were a few tracks where I wished there were no vocals. But if there *must* be such a thing as holiday albums, more should be like this. If I never hear “Winter Wonderland” and its ilk again as long as I live, it will be too soon).
***
[1] As I’ve ranted about before when writing about this play, it is often mispunctuated as Second Shepherd’s Play, but the manuscript reads Secunda Pastorum; the genitive here is a clear sign that it is a play of shepherds, plural, hence Second Shepherds’ Play.
[2] This quotation is from the modernized Everyman Text at enotes.com.
[3] It’s also Child ballad #54, of which there are several versions given in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, an e-text version of which is here.
Wellcome Library – Specialist in mediaeval or early modern medicine
via Digital Medievalist
SPECIALIST IN MEDIAEVAL AND EARLY MODERN MEDICINE – WELLCOME LIBRARY
Please find below details of a new post we have here at the Wellcome Library. The job description and application details can be found on the Wellcome Trust website:
https://jobs.wellcome.ac.uk/iRecruit/VacancyDetail.aspx?VacancyUID=000000001930
Just in case that link doesn’t transfer properly, all current WT vacancies are visible on the main wellcome.ac.uk site
Please pass on to anyone who you think may be interested in the post
Job Title: Specialist, Medieval and Early Modern Medicine
Location: London
Closing Date: 21/12/2011
Salary: £35,000
Job Details
Specialist, Medieval and Early Modern Medicine.
We are a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in health by supporting the brightest minds.
The Wellcome Library provides insight and information to anyone seeking to understand medicine and its role in society, past and present. We are one of the world’s major resources for the study of medical history and we also provide access to a growing collection of contemporary biomedical information resources relating to consumer health, popular science, biomedical ethics and the public understanding of science.
The role of Specialist, Medieval and Early Modern Medicine is key to the future development of the Library’s role as one of the world’s premier locations for research in the history of early medicine and science. With digitisation plans for the collections being set up, the Wellcome Library is looking for someone who is forward thinking and passionate about the potential for digital technologies to support and enhance scholarly use of early manuscript and printed collections, as well as engage a wider public audience. Reporting directly to the Head of Research and Scholarship, the successful candidate will an established academic historian of medicine or science, with experience of working with early manuscripts and rare books, and of using digital resources for historical research. Candidates should have a higher degree in History with specialisation in pre-modern medicine or science and must be able to demonstrate the following:
• A strong academic profile
• Knowledge of relevant collections, including those outside the Wellcome Library
• Knowledge of current academic work in fields relevant to the Library’s pre-modern collections
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral, including the ability to engage non-specialist audiences
• Strong influencing and persuading skills
• Good networking skills
• An aptitude for collaboration and team-working
• A reading knowledge of Latin and at least one other relevant foreign language
Salary c. £35000 p.a (depending on experience) plus excellent benefits Closing date for applications: 21 December 2011 Interviews : w/c 23 January 2012
Phoebe Harkins
Assistant Librarian, Discovery & Engagement Wellcome Library The Wellcome Trust
183 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7611 8628
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7611 8369
The Wellcome Trust is a charity registered in England, no. 210183. Its sole trustee is The Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered in England, no. 2711000, whose registered office is at 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK.
http://www.wellcomelibrary.blogspot.com
Medieval Association of the Pacific Benton Award
Dear MAP Members and Friends,
I am writing as the Vice President of the Medieval Association of the Pacific (MAP), in charge of handling the Benton Award, to remind you that specifically independent medievalists and graduate students are encouraged to apply. Please also circulate this announcement to graduate students who might not know about it.
The John F. Benton Award
This award, named in honor of its progenitor, John F. Benton, MAP President 1982-1984, provides travel funds for all members of the Medieval Association of the Pacific–independent medievalists and graduate students in particular–who might not otherwise receive support from institutions.
The award may be used to defray costs connected with delivering a paper at any conference, especially for MAP conferences, or connected to scholarly research. Up to three awards will be presented each year, for $400 apiece. Applications should include a one-page vita, an abstract of a paper submitted to the conference, and a photocopy of the Call for Papers or conference announcement; if the application is for travel to research, it should include a one-page vita, and a letter outlining the research project. Send applications via email attachment by January 5, 2012 to the vice president of the Association, Anita Obermeier (AObermei@unm.edu<mailto:AObermei@unm.edu>).
<http://www.csun.edu/english/map09/static.php?id=grants>
Anita Obermeier
Vice President, Medieval Association of the Pacific
via Mearcstapa
OE weak masculine noun curiosity
For reasons that hardly bear recounting, I found myself trying to fit eaxlgestealla into a sentence last week in a context that demanded it be a genitive plural. Dutifully mimicking my paradigm of nama, I arrived at eaxlgesteallena. That looked odd, never mind a bear to pronounce, so I went combing through the corpus and found Elene‘s gn pl eaxlgestealna at line 64. I then spent a chunk of time going through grammars trying to arrive at a reason for this that was better than “you know those crazy Anglo Saxons and their free-wheeling orthography!”
I imagine there is actually some rule I’ve assimilated poorly. I mean, if one is supposed to know how to decline eaxlgestealla, then someone must have articulated a rule or tendency at some point. But I don’t know where to look for it. None of my grammars treat multi-syllable weak nouns in giving paradigms, and the concept of elision is nowhere to be found. My thinking process:
Now, sometimes nouns are caught in the process of moving from one category into another over time, and you get a mix of forms, like winter which was originally a u-stem but which you’ll also see with a strong gen sg ending as wintres instead of, presumably, wintra. Perhaps that is what’s going on with eaxlgestealna, a switch between classes/categories and thus endings in some places, so where we would expect the -ena gen pl ending for a masc weak noun, we find instead the ending of a strong noun … no, that won’t work, there is no strong -na ending, just the -a ending (I was thinking of scina, but the root is scin-). So such a borrowing would render gen pl eaxlgestealla which is not attested. And in any case I’m not sure that borrowing from other classes occurs with categories other than u-stem nouns.
Now, where elision is not discussed as such, syncopation is, and I don’t imagine there is much in the way of technical difference between the two (though syncopation in the older OE grammars refers to the loss of a vowel between two consonants and I don’t know that elision is that precise, generally, so maybe syncopation is a subset of elision?). But again, the only discussion of syncopation as such that I can find right now is in reference to 1. verbs, and there are fairly precise “rules,” and 2. loss of a vowel when adding endings to two-syllable *strong* nouns (nom sg heafod but acc sg heafdes, though you’ll also see heafodes, so either way is acceptable). It’s not clear that this applies also to weak nouns, though. And it’s tough to tell what might be going on because eaxlgestealla is a rare word in the surviving OE corpus (I only found four instances – one gen pl, two nom sg, and one nom pl), so we can’t even see the noun fully declined “in the wild”).
There is the possibility that eaxlgestealna, which is attested only once in the surviving corpus, is a scribal error. But then one might expect that editors would have simply emended it so that we wouldn’t even know it existed unless we were paleographers or devout readers of editorial notes. That it is not emended to eaxlgesteallena makes me keep looking for the rule or guideline that would account for it.
Assuming there’s some un-doubling rule I don’t know about to account for the loss of the L, I was thinking I couldn’t rule out an alternative -a ending for the genitive plural of weak masc nouns, and it just isn’t Baker, which is the OE grammar I know best; Moore and Knott do mention either -a or -ena as alternatives for gen pl endings of fem o-stems. Perhaps something similar exists for masc weak nouns and, uh, no grammar mentions it because eaxlgestealna is our only surviving example of the variation, and it’s so rare as to not have made an impression? If that were so, then eaxlgesteal(l)ena ought to be an acceptable spelling – it just isn’t attested because we lost so much of the corpus. Sounds unlikely, though… plus that variation gives us eaxlgesteal(l)a and not the -alna ending. So that can’t be it.
Elision – or syncopation – it must be, then, if it is so that elision or syncopation can account for both the consonant *and* the vowel loss in the next syllable, *and* we accept that this is an orthographic variation that is not mentioned in any of the grammars I have around my feet at the moment. Unsatisfying, but in trying to think through other alternatives, that (offered by a friend in another online forum) is the only one that makes sense to me. It’s just these older grammars are so exhaustive you’d think it would have been mentioned.
The most vexing thing is not knowing where to look or who to ask to find a definitive explanation for this.
Anybody got any input?
“baby’s stone coffin” at Whitby?
Jonathan Jarrett has another “for those who couldn’t make it” conference report, which I always love reading even though most of the time I don’t have any idea what he’s talking about (Catalonian charters and Pictish archaeology… out of my depth there). There are some lovely photos of a trip to Whitby, one of which prompts this post.
Apparently a stone, er, thing is on display at the nearby Church of St. Mary with a sign next to it saying “Saxon Baby’s Coffin.” To which I can only say “what?” I am no archaeologist, and it’s been a while since I’ve researched death, interment, etc, but a stone “Saxon Baby’s Coffin” strikes me as an improbable thing. I am going to find out what I can (since I would rather chase down obscure interesting bits of possibly-misidentified material culture than put these references into Chicago style), but if anybody wandering by knows about stone Saxon baby coffins, or (more likely) about this non-Saxon-non-baby-coffin artefact at Whitby, please do tell. I presume they call it a coffin and not a sarcophagus for a reason, [*] and I presume there is some reason other than whimsy for its being identified as a “Saxon baby coffin,” but as of yet I don’t know a thing.
ETA: I’ve found a photo from a photographer’s trip to the abbey and church – scroll down (and ignore the caption asking about your “knowledge of Old English words” under a photo of some perfectly modern English). And in Googling about, I’ve discovered another thing on-site also frequently referred to as a stone coffin, which you can see here. I bet it’s actually some sort of watering-trough.
ETA2: Nothing at the Whitby Abbey Headland Project page, last updated in 1999 (except for the mention that the 18 graves excavated as part of the project contained bodies probably wrapped in shrouds and placed directly in the earth – as usual – rather than inhumed in coffins, never mind stone coffins, if such a thing as a Saxon-era stone coffin even existed.
ETA3: They did eventually find evidence of a scant handful of wooden coffins at the Whitby cemetery.
ETA4: The Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture in England: Northern Yorkshire does mention the excavation of a “portion of a Saxon headstone” at Whitby, which is in itself quite rare as mortuary practice, I think, so it may be that there are other unusual or uncommon features of interments here. However, the same volume also records the excavation of a “portion of a Saxon stone used as a mould,” among various other bits which, broken up, might resemble other things to some people – like a baby-sized stone coffin 
[see pp 232-33 and thereabouts]
ETA5: Ok, maybe I have to allow that there may have been such things as AS-era stone coffins after all, much to my surprise: the above volume led me to the description of the following, from the work of Seaton (NZ785178):
1. Coffin. Present Location: Lost? Evidence for discovery: Three stone coffins together with human remains were found prior to 1860 and the location was marked on the Ordnance Survey 6-inch map, 400 m to the east of Seaton Hall. . . . One of the coffins, decorated with interlace, was noted in 1874 ‘doing duty as a water-trough on the slope of the hill to the left of the approach to a farm house . . . “ [. . . ] “Discussion: Coffins hollowed from a single stone, as this appears to have been, are uncommon monuments in the pre-Conquest period, but a decorated stone sarcophagus of this type is known from St. Alkmund’s church, Derby, which Radford dated to the ninth century.”
SO… maybe I was wrong to be so incredulous about Saxon stone coffins (except note use of “sarcophagus” in same paragraph, which might be part of the problem. [**] But I remain unconvinced concerning Baby-Saxon-Stone-Coffin.
ETA6: Ooh, I found a creative commons image of the St. Alkmund’s Sarcophagus, so I can have a picture in this post after all. But please note the obvious sarcophagus-ness of this sarcophagus – I insist that this is not a coffin.
St. Alkmund's Sarcophagus
And now I really must give up this wild goose chase and get back to the dissertation which has absolutely nothing to do with any of this (which is probably why this was so alluring in the first place…)
—————————————————————————————
[*] I’m allowing for interment in stone, or within stone structures, in the case of burial beneath church floors, within sarcophagi inside churches (I would assume mostly for high-ranking clergy and the wealthy), and in crypts (I would assume mostly not in Anglo-Saxon-era English churches). It’s the Saxonness of a stone coffin, and the abbey-ness of its original location, and the baby-ness of its supposed inhabitant/recipient given its Saxonness and abbey-ness, that I’m having a problem with. (St. Cuthbert didn’t even get a stone coffin!) There are some extant wills outlining donations to the monastery associated with the deceased’s burial in the ambulatory or other parts of the monastery, but these date from the 15th century.[1] Were infants buried in stone coffins at abbeys prior to 867? Was anyone? Is this infant supposed to be a member of a Northumbrian royal family? Did they find this thing in/under the site of the original abbey itself or in the surrounding cemetery or what? Basically, who says it’s a Saxon baby coffin?
[**] I suspect there may be difficulties with terminology here – to my thinking, if it is a structure meant to stand above ground or be built into or form a part of the architecture of a church or other building, it’s a sarcophagus – maybe a tomb – but not a coffin. Maybe I have the wrong operative definition of a coffin, in thinking of it as a container for a body which is inhumed completely? (Still… I’m not buying a Saxon baby sarcophagus either.)
Here, for instance, is where William II (Rufus) supposedly lies, in Winchester Cathedral; scroll down just past the tomb of Matilda Queen of Flanders, awash in a pretty pink glow in the photograph.
Not a coffin! Also neither Saxon nor Anglo-Saxon. (And actually probably not containing William II, for that matter.) But maybe someone would call that a coffin. Would they?
The Wirksworth Stone is sometimes called a coffin-lid, but I would not call the resting place from which it was taken a coffin at all, not least of all because this magnificent carving was clearly not meant to be buried, but to be seen. Indoors. Above ground. And so St. Betti (or whoever this was beneath it) was placed inside a vault, not a grave. (Even assuming the stone vault uncovered in the 19th century in St. Mary’s was original and contemporaneous with the stone, which I don’t know very much about and don’t know to be true.) ……Wow, I desperately miss England.
—————————————————————————-
[1] George Young, A History of Whitby and Streoneshalh Abbey, vol. 1 (Whitby: Clark and Medd, 1817): 352-353.
homilies, spancels, procrastination, folklore, and nábrókarstafur
A while back I posted inquiring about the lore behind TH White’s mention of Morgause capturing Arthur’s affections with the magical spancel, a sort of tape or ribbon made from the skin of a dead man. I got a few alluring tidbits from well-read passers-by,* though I have yet to do much with this tradition, as I’ve been a bit busy tracking down some really cool, weird, and gross stuff from some Old English homilies that owe a hell of a lot (imo) to Celtic Christian influence. Unfortunately, my advisor doesn’t think my translating a homily and saying “hey, check this weird stuff out!” is quite enough for a chapter, so I’m at a bit of an impasse right now (but the whole point of blogging is to avoid thinking about the damned dissertation anyway).
When I was a kid, my family would travel over to Florida to visit my great-grandmother, who had a wicked sense of humour, a vast collection of local legends (many of which she made up herself), and a trove of sayings that rivaled the Cotton Maxims in range (and sometimes the Kalevala in obscurity). One of the stories with which she regaled the younger generations was of the Seacanamarampus – a huge sea-creature of great age but uncertain parentage that lived in Pensacola Bay mostly, except for when it took short tours to other areas of the Gulf Coast. To this creature were attributed the odd melancholic blasts of sound that drifted over to her house on foggy nights (most of us grandkids had no idea what a foghorn was). It’s no wonder I grew up and joined MEARCSTAPA.
Many of her tales were doubtless told to deter us from wandering beyond a certain distance from the house, or to otherwise keep us out of trouble. One particularly effective tale was her grim assurance that if we wandered over into the empty lot a few blocks away, we could count on being snatched up and absconded with like [fill in name of probably-fictional, long-dead-or-disappeared-neighbor-kid]; the culprits were hobos who would take us and sell us to the gypsies, or perhaps the gypsies themselves, who would steal us and poke out our eyes with red hot pokers, or else maybe the Apple Lady, who would put us into a sack made of human skin, sling us over her shoulder, and cart us off to who-knows-where. Perhaps my great-grandmother’s tale-weaving and embroidery of local legends accounts somewhat for my lifelong interest in folklore, crypto-zoology, and accoutrements made out of human skin. (Am NOT warped for life.)
But if you, like me, are interested in such gruesome oddities (and especially if you, like me, wait to catch up on your blog reading until you have several pressing deadlines on matters that will determine your fate or at least the course of your life over the next few years and you can’t muster the courage or energy or optimism to do anything about them except cower and whinge)** then you might appreciate this little tidbit. Journey on over to Got Medieval for the context surrounding Necropants.
Yes, I said Necropants. While this gruesome item doesn’t involve love magic, it does require, like the spancel, flaying the flesh from a corpse in one continuous piece. I quote Wikipedia:
“Nábrókarstafur – Necropants, a pair of pants made from the skin of a dead man that are capable of producing an endless supply of money.”
AWESOME.
Unfortunately, from the account at the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, it sounds like once you step into the pants, they must be worn continuously in order to work, so in that aspect they are a bit more of a drag than the spancel.
———-
* Including Eamonn Kelly! As in, National Museum of Ireland Eamonn Kelly! How cool is that? And you can read a story involving the spancel in Matthew Archdeacon’s 19th century Legends of Connaught (see “Fitzgerald” around pp 85-86), courtesy of Google books.
** Those pressing matters with pressing deadlines would be, er, the job market, my unwritten statement of teaching philosophy and unwritten job letter draft ANDTHEJILCOMESOUTNEXTWEEKOMGSHOOTME and, oh, the small matter of the two dissertation chapters I need to have written in the next two weeks which, er, aren’t written and apparently aren’t being written since I’m studiously catching up on blog posts rather than chapter-writing :/
