Mi Contra Fa

Books and Carrots

"Queens of the Merovingians" has arrived! Woo!  It is a beautiful book, and I foresee many an evening spent curled up with Google Translate.

"Performing Medieval Narrative" has also arrived!  I got reacquainted with it when I taught the "Research for the Bardic Arts" class in Owlsherst a few months back.  And then it popped up again as I began to work on the Guthrun project for the PBR class.  I took the hint and found a copy (still at list price!) at Barnes and Noble, of all places.

Finally: Carrots!  Last month, in preparing the Pop-Up Mead Hall, I read in Ann Hagen's books on Anglo-Saxon food that, while they had carrots, they were not the modern orange carrots.  They were a reddish-purple color.  I wondered where on earth one might go to find a purple carrot these days.

Answer: Local Community-Supported Agriculture farmer!  Our pickup for this week included a choice of carrots - orange or purple!  I pounced on the purple carrots and ate one as soon as we got home.

Verdict: Carroty.  Milder flavor than the orange one.  Beautiful red-purple color to about halfway through the root, then it turned orange.

I have no idea what the heritage of this particular varietal is (I suppose I could ask the farm), nor do I suppose that it's any closer to Ye Carrots of Olden Tyme than the orange ones.  Still.  How cool is that?  Purple carrots!

Poetic Edda 2

So, I got a copy of Lee Hollander's translation of the Poetic Edda.  Geez, when people said he was using deliberately archaic language, they weren't kidding.  I'll stick with the Victorian!  On the other hand, he's got a lot of good notes and more recent scholarship in his foreword, on the dating and such.  The Atlikvida gets put at about the 9th century.

I am not particularly worried about justifying the use of the material in an Anglo-Saxon context.  Unless you believe that Wulf and Eadwacer is about Signy, the Niflungs and the Volsungs aren't represented in the Old English literature. On the other hand, other elements of the great Germanic myth-cycles are (e.g., Beowulf wearing armor forged by Weyland; Weyland referenced in the poem Deor; and famously, "What has Ingeld to do with Christ?" 

I suppose it's possible that there's a Norse/English connection but no English/Germanic connection, but I don't really believe that.  I can't prove it right at this moment, but I'm pretty certain of it.

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I also had an interesting conversation with my husband on art and artists in the Middle Ages and today, coming out of some of the ideas I've gotten from the Practice (nee Performance)-Based Research class.  He wanted to emphasize the importance of patronage to the artistic process of yore; I acknowledge it, but I also think that individual artists were more than just mouthpieces for patrons.

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Slowing starting to wonder what the problems being researched in "Practice-Based Research" are.  I had assumed it was matters pertaining to the performance itself?  As in: using practice and self-examination, we will research what works and doesn't work for our arts.  Now from what I'm hearing, I think it might be more along the lines of "Can people be made to do/be/feel XYZ if the artist does ABC?"  Still not entirely sure.

The Poetic Edda, The Artist's Way

I've read through a bunch of pieces at Sacred-Texts.com, including the three lays of Guthrun and the Greenland material.  The Atlakvitha almost gives me the sense that killing her sons was something she did sadly - that she still loved them, but she hated Atli more.  So to hurt him, she killed them, even if it pained her as well.  I don't get so much of that sense from the Atlamol.

The Bellows translation has some archaic phrasing to it (thees and thous) which isn't my favorite thing.  Also, I like to double-check the Victorians.  ...there, got a copy of Hollander's translation for Kindle.  I can read it on the airplane tomorrow.

In the first lay of Guthrun, there's a repeated stanza about how she doesn't cry.  That idea gets picked up in one of the other ones (one of the Greeland pieces? gah, should have noted it) as a sort of a callback.  Her brothers are dead, her children are dead, and she doesn't cry.

And now for something completely different...

I've been reading The Artist's Way, and it's thought-provoking.  I hardly consider myself a blocked artist - at least on the surface, I've been a very prolific one the past few years, having written probably hundreds of thousands of words.  (Not here. Obviously.)  I do think, though, that I have a tendency to lean away from strong emotion and deep connection with the audience, and that possibly focusing on getting a near-literal translation "right" is a nice way of avoiding getting its emotional impact "right."  I'm not sure if this is a shyness/fear of vulnerability thing, or a fear of failing thing.  (I can fairly objectively know if I got the sense of a poem correct and if the rhythm/meter is correct.  I am much less confident of my ability to sell this to the SCA audience.)

Atlantian Bling

Presenting: Staffordshire Hoard Spike and Pearl Pin!

 

I wanted to do a test project before I did Spike, so I went to my jewelry box to see if I had anything I wouldn't mind painting with blue enamel.  And lo! There was a golden scallop with a fake pearl glued to it that I picked up at a thrift store ages ago, with the vague idea of turning it into a Pearl badge.

The enamel is a small bottle of Testors hobby enamel that my husband had lying around, because I'm trying to Buy Less Stuff.  That shade of blue became the correct shade of blue.  He also had a bottle of thinner, which was good.  Anyone who's ever painted pewter miniatures for their wargaming/role-playing hobby knows the drill: I did a wash of blue enamel first on the reverse of the Pearl pin, then once I was sure that it worked, on Spike.  That means I put some paint down, then thinned it out with the thinner so that it went down into all the cracks.

I did two coats on Spike and I'm ambivalent about doing a third.  On the one hand, he's not as blue as he could be, and the color is uneven. On the other hand, I'm going to totally paint over the wire textures on the body if I keep it up, so I'm inclined to leave it.

His horn is a small bit of twisted craft wire, flattened with my pliers and glued to the reverse of the pendant with E-6000 jewelry glue, the stuff I bought for the pin suite.  (I should post pictures.  And documentation. Of ALL THE THINGS.) The cord is a whipcord (4-strand braid) in blue perl cotton and gold metallic cord that I had on hand; it should probably be plain linen thread, but the whipcord is right, according to Walton-Rogers. (I can redo it when I get the linen thread for the Kentish coat.)

I just painted the pin with a thin coat of blue enamel.  The shine of the fake gold comes through in places but it doesn't look green.  I intend to use it to close the neck of my chemise.

Autoethnography

So I have the feeling I missed the point of this week's assignment.  We were supposed to write our project goals in first person, then in third.  Mine were identical statements of work covering the stages of the project I have in mind: historical research, poetry-writing, musical composition, performance development.

Some people in the class who already know what autoethnography is have made some helpful comments explaining that it's sort of more like psychoanalyzing your work.  Or your approach to your work.  Or... something like that. I'm hoping it'll make more sense when I see some examples.

So, in service to that: Why am I drawn to Gudrun, and specifically to the scene of child murder and cannibalism?  It's not a very nice scene, after all.

Ever since I started looking farther into Anglo-Saxon literature, I've been very interested in the women in it.  Most of us have Beowulf sometime in school, and the whole Saxon/Viking/Dark Ages era is shown popularly as Grr! Argh!  What's in your wallet? sort of barbarism and violence.  And yet - we have female voices singing passionate love songs, weeping with broken hearts for their dead, making war, making love, making mistakes and winning victories.  And I want those voices to be heard, because I hear them and I think they have important things to say, and I want to share those things.

Normally, I am drawn to more positive or sympathetic portrayals of women, because heaven knows we get enough misogyny in the typical medieval narrative.  To the point that a character in a medieval narrative points it out, even as she's also painted with the 'lusty wife' brush.  (Alisoun of Bath, represent!)

But.  But but but.  It doesn't do any good, I think, to cover over the dark voices, to present a picture of women that's all innocent of evil.  Yeah, the daughters of Eve thing is overdone, but we're not all virginal Marys either.  We don't know how to understand it when a mother drowns her children in a bathtub, or lets the car roll into a lake, or what have you except to call her either 'crazy' or 'monster.'

And, okay, killing your children isn't sane or good.  But is that really the best we can do for understanding?  Call her a monster, call it a day.  Because monsters aren't people; they aren't me.  I wouldn't do that.  Never.  Ever.

It's too scary, I think, to contemplate that you might.  That yes, there might be something, some event or confluence of events out there that would drive you to that same dark place, the freezing mere of Grendel's dam, from which you emerge a monster.

It's powerful stuff, it's relevant today, and it was relevant a thousand years ago.  Let's hear it sing.

Hurray for Penguin editions!

Indeed, my copy of the Niebelungenlied was Penguin, and a good thing, too!  It had plentiful endnotes that helped resolve why Gudrun would be angry that her husband-slaying brother was killed.

The later 'complete' tale of the Niebelings was a mash up of two earlier lays: The Death of Sigmund and The Death of the Niebelings.  In the earliest versions of The Death of the Niebelings, Gunnar doesn't have Hagen/Hogni kill Sigmund.  Sigmund's not in it at all.  It straight-up starts with Atli/Atilla inviting Gunnar and Hogni over to visit, and Gudrun tries to warn them not to come.  There's no murder to forgive.

In the later versions, where Gudrun is Sigmund's wife before she's married to Atli, she invites her brothers to visit Atli, with the express purpose of killing them.  It's sort of like reading crossover fanfic, seeing how various story elements are reconciled (or not). For example, since Gudrun doesn't need revenge on Atli, she doesn't have to kill her kid(s).  But!  That's far too powerful to waste, so in some versions, she has her son go up to Hagen and smack him to start the fight.  (Hagen, predictably, kills the boy for the affront, as Gudrun knew that he would.) 

Atlakvida is the oldest extant version of The Death of the Niebelings that I think there is. It's in the Poetic Edda, which is 13th cen., so not sure why Penguin had it as a 9th cen?  The events in it are depicted on a runestone dated (according to the Internet!) 8th-12th cen (nice range).  Maybe they used the language to date the poem as being older.

I see that the Poetic Edda also has four 'Lays of Gudrun,' which I should undoubtedly read.  Three or four old translations free online.  Check the references and external links of Atlakvida, and also:

Page for the Poetic Edda
Page for the Codex Regius

As well as the individual poems listed on the Codex Regius page.

Performance-Based Research

So I've signed up for a free online course through Stanford on "Performance-Based Research."  I'm still not 100% clear on what the course is about, but I'm a performer and I research, so this should be good, right?

We've been asked to keep an 'autoethnographical' journal of our research process.  If I understand it correctly, that's pretty much what this blog is.  So!  New tag for 'Performance-Based Research' and off we go.  For my class project, I'm going to do something with the legend of Gudrun.  I am leaning toward a lyric, something like Wulf and Eadwacer that's all immediate emotion, covering her grief-mad decision to murder her two sons by Atli and serve their father their flesh and blood (in revenge for his killing her brothers, natch. Even though said brothers killed her beloved hero-husband Sigurd and Imma pretty sure she wanted them dead for that. I guess just not via her second husband and a snake pit?)

It's also tempting to do it as a short narrative. 

I think I will not do this as a translation, per my usual.  I'll review a few sources (I have one copy of the Nibelungenlied, I think a Penguin translation, and Tolkien's 'Sigmund and Gudrun.'), decide what I want to emphasize, and focus attention there.  As a mother with two small boys, I tend to want to really hit the horror of her revenge while - if I am clever - not demonizing her.  I think I don't want to slip in modernisms about post-partum depression or psychosis - I'm not John Gardner, this isn't Grendel. 

Review the dates for the Huns and for the composition of the various sources and pick lyre or harp.  No idea what I'm going to base any accompaniment on; I'm reviewing Sequentia's website for inspiration.  Not that I can fit their decades of experience into ten weeks but it's a start, yes?

Period Spike in the works!

Real quick - the populace badge for the Kingdom of Atlantia is a blue unicornate seahorse named Spike.

The Staffordshire Hoard had a gold seahorse among its treasure.

You can buy it as a cheap necklace.

So I did.

I foresee a can of transparent blue enamel paint in my future.  And some gold-colored wire and a touch of solder.

EDIT: On second thought, probably not transparent enamel.  It'll show up as green with the gold behind it, won't it?  So opaque blue, but I'll try and make sure the twisted wire ornaments are clean of it.

Duck Bone Flute Follow-Up

So Sunday, I went to the re-opening of Montpelier Mansion just because.  And lo, the gift shop had an assortment of the wooden craft stuff you see at Williamsburg, including a signal whistle.  So I picked up the whistle so that I could study it at home at leisure.

It's not all that good, but the geometry of the fipple is really clear.  So I tried to fix the duck bone whistle by:

• Using a flat file across the upper (mouthward) edge of the blowhole, flattening it and deepening it.
• Using the same flat file to slope the edges of the blowhole.  Shallowly - not the 45 degree angle on the Williamsburg model - but the whistles in my bones book look shallowish, too.  Also, the bone isn't round, it's flattish.
• Removed the fipple and deepened the airway, aiming for twice the depth of the blowhole.
• Reinserting fipple.

Alas, the whistle did not magically work (although... maybe... an improvement in tonal clarity?).  And while trying to remove the fipple for another go with the airway, I cracked off the top of the whistle.  (See: baked bones are brittle.)

But by gum, it looks more like a proper flute blowhole now.  Maybe I should give the PVC pipe another go?

Honeyed Almond Butter: The Stunning Conclusion!

It works!  It really works!

Ingredients

1 c. blanched almonds (I used blanched and slivered from the grocery store because I'm lazy like that)
2 c. water
3-4 Tb. red wine vinegar
Salt
Honey

How To Make

1. Whizz almonds and water together in blender or food processor until almonds reduced to mere specks, approx. 1 min.
2. Pour almond/water mixture into pot, heat on stove set to medium.
3. Get it hot. (New cheese recipes call for 180 F, I think mine reached boiling and was OK)
4. Remove from heat.
5. Add vinegar, stir gently.  It will not form big clumpy curds like milk cheese made this way, but it thickens.
6. Let it rest for a minute or two.
7. Pour into cheesecloth-lined colander.  If you have any earthly use for the whey, put a pot under the colander to save it.
8. (Tie up and) Let drain approx 30-40 min.  (I let mine just sit in the colander, then I gently squeezed out some more liquid)
9. Transfer butter/cheese (there should be 1 - 1.5 c of it) to small bowl.  Add a sprinkle of salt (if desired) and drizzle honey to desired sweetness. Stir to blend in salt and honey.
10. Let sit 24-36 hrs in the fridge for maximum smoothness.

The last part surprised me.  Right out of the cheesecloth on Saturday afternoon, the butter had a definite grainy texture - all the almond motes.  By Monday breakfast, the nuts had soaked up more moisture and gotten softer, resulting in a smoother product.  The vinegar bite had also diminished.

I am definitely thinking the honey is to give it mock-dairy sweetness (and possibly to cover the vinegar) rather than to make a honey-flavored spread.  Although you could certainly do that by adding more honey.

I would take this as evidence for butter eaten as a spread.  This stuff can't possibly be used to cook like butter (it wouldn't melt) so the only role I can see it serving as mock-butter is as a topping, spread or cold filling.  And it does that very nicely!  A lactose-intolerant person or a vegan could put this on a morning bagel as a cream cheese substitute - it fills the role of 'lightly flavored high-fat and protein spread' very well.