From: ddfr@quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Subject: An Tir Query plus lots of odds and ends
Reply-To: ddfr@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 07:45:08 GMT


           An Tir Query 

Anything happening in the Vancouver area on the Weekend of September
5th? I will be there on mundane business during the previous week.
Reply by EMail to DDFr@Midway.UChicago.Edu

            Source of SCA Fighting

"I put it to you that SCA fighting derives almost entirely from Paul
of Bellatrix's ideas of how to use a sword, rather than from any
extant manuals of heavy weapons combat." (Aryk)

Paul's influence has certainly been large, but this very much
overstates it. Fighting was somewhat different in the years before
Paul, but not as totally different as your comment would suggest.
Current fighting represents a lot of diverse influences; what I fight
and teach, for example, is only a little different from what it would
be if Paul had never existed (for details, see the new edition of the
Miscellany).

          Metals and Colors

"If you bothered to look into the subject (heavens, what a thought)
you would find that "hordes" were named after colors, not metals.
(Hmmm... a heraldic pun...)" (Tadhg)

It seems to follow that gold is a color rather than a metal. Odd view
for a herald.

        Policeman libelling us?

One point about all the furor over a policeman possibly libelling the
SCA... . So far as I can tell, none of us actually know that the
posted document is real. It might be--but all we know is that someone
posted it somewhere, and somebody on the Rialto picked it up and
posted it here. Has anyone actually seen any solid evidence that the
policeman wrote what he is claimed to have written (or said it, or
...)?

         Translating Names

"I think a better question is when and how should names be
translated? If have an Irish persona, should you leave your name in
the original Irish, meaning that few people will understand what the
name means, much less be able to pronounce it?  Or should you
translate it into English and loose the grace, poetry, and essential
Irishness inherent in the other language?" (James Moore)

I believe the period answer is that names were normally translated
into the local language. So if we assume that what we are speaking is
English, I suppose we should translate our names as they would be
translated into English at our persona's time. If we assume we are
all speaking our own languages and happen to be mutually intelligible
through some magic none of us notices ... .

      In Defense of Icelandic Law

""By "legal system" I didn't mean "system of laws" -- I meant "system
of law enforcement," which was sufficiently primeval to count
effectively for naught. "(Hossein/Greg, on Icelandic law)

There was no public enforcement of law, but that is not the same
thing. There is also little or no public manufacture of computers in
the U.S., but that does not mean we have no computers.

If one judges the level of enforcement by how much violence there
was, I think it is arguable that Iceland had better law enforcement
than other European systems. Someone did a body count from the
Sturlungasagas, and the result, as I remember, was a mortality rate
from violence of about one in ten thousand per year. My guess is that
Norway, Normandy, and England lost a larger fraction of their
combined population to violence in three weeks of the year 1066 than
Iceland did in its worst fifty years of feuding (the Sturlung period).

Is your impression, reading the sagas, that they describe a more
lawless society than contemporary literature elsewhere in Europe? If
there was really no effective enforcement, why did they spend so much
time and energy litigating?

           Re Lothar's List of 
      Presumptively Period Foods

"Here is a listing of foods I presume to be period. ... 
worchestershire sauce (approximating the Roman and medieval sauce
liquamen)" (Lothar)

I have seen this assertion made (indeed, someone once attributed it
to me!), but I have not seen any evidence for it. Whether or not
worcestershire is similar to liquamen (I do not know much about Roman
cooking), liquamen is not, so far as I know, a medieval sauce.
Platina refers to something called "liquamen," but it is entirely
different--not a sauce but pork fat, as I remember.

"halvah, baklava" (Lothar, the same posting)

Hulwa is a general term in medieval Islamic cooking for sweets. I
know a period Hulwah recipe distantly related to what we call halvah,
but not any that are close (that does not mean they do not exist--but
I would want to see the evidence). Similarly, I have a period recipe
that, as I do it, comes out vaguely like Baklava, but it is not all
that close, and the similarity is the result of my interpretation,
not anything clearly specified in the original recipe.

          Pennsic Geography

"I believe Mount St. Hellandgone was a name coined by people whose
gorge was made to rise by naming a minor topographic feature "Mount
Eislinn"." (Aryk)

Whereas I thought it was coined by one of those who ended up camped
on it one Pennsic, because there was no room anywhere else. Half an
hour to the rest of the war, and poison ivy in the mowed field
between.

          Early Period Chauvinism

"Again, I would like to pose the question?  Why does this "early
period  chauvinism" exist in some Kingdoms?  I don't mean people who
simply prefer early period personas for themselves, I mean actual
intolerance toward others who have chosen a later time period.  What
I find especially odd is that the chauvinism always only seems to
work one way.  I haven't noticed late-period persona being similarly
intolerant of early-period types.  Does anyone have any ideas as to
why this is?"  ( Nicholas van Leyden)

I can offer one guess. History as commonly perceived by most people
is a progression mostly upwards; it tends to be taken for granted
that the present is better than the recent past, which is better than
the more distant past (possibly with an exception for the fall of the
Roman Empire). And the dark ages--which cover a lot of early
personae--are particularly seen as a period of ignorance, babarism,
etc. So some people (sometimes including me--David not Cariadoc)
enjoy reversing the cliche--suggesting that Elizabethan England was a
decadent and tyrannical society compared to the real glories of
twelfth century (or ninth century, or ...) England.

In a way, this is analogous to a point that has come up with regard
to Pagans and Christians and (in the mundane world) blacks and
whites. If you believe that almost everyone takes it for granted that
group A is better/more powerful/more prestigious/ .... than group B,
then insults directed at group A feel much less offensive than
similar insults directed at group B.

Cariadoc/David
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca