Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

Last weekend I was rummaging through a book sale and I ended up buying more than a few books. And the best find I had was a book called “Celtic Myths and Legends”. It is a reprint of a very old book by T.W. Rolleston. And evidently its been reprinted many times over the past hundred years.  Here is a quick look at some of the Table of Contents:

The Early Milesian Kings
Tales of the Ultonian Cycle
Tales of the Ossianic Cycle
The Voyage fo Maeldun
Myts and Tales of the Cymry

It looks to be just a wonderful book and although I haven’t started reading it yet I soon will be. 

The real point of this blogpost is the illustrations inside the book. The book calls it like this: “With Illustrations from Famous Drawings and Paintings”. And well, they are really great, all done in black and white, and they have a definite feel about them. Almost hard to describe and I want to say that a lot of them have a tarot card kind of feel to them. The frontispiece is entitled “Cuchulain and the Flaming Wheel” and it is by far my favorite art work in the book.

Earlier this week I was working at my sketch pad and thinking about what I should practice drawing with and the thought came to me about Cuchulain. I broke open the book and started drawing myself a nice replica of the painting. And it came out great - I may even frame it.

The story of the Cuchulain drawing continues -

Yesterday I was working on a new essay for the fantasy guide website. It is a summer reading list for fans of epic fantasy and I was thinking about adding some kind of an illustration to it when Cuchulain came to me again. I took a look at the picture and an idea popped. because of the unusual lighting in the drawing I thought it might be perfect to put a book right in there! So I did!  The Summer reading guide is here

It came out great and it just has that Epic Fantasy book kind of feel to it. I think I might be using this drawing a lot, or even as a banner on a site. It just gives the reading epic fantasy feel perfectly.

Amazon.com doesn’t have this exact copy of the book but they do have a nice reprint here: Celtic Myths and Legends
 

Popularity: 18% [?]

Going through some stuff I stumbled on this picture of some suits of armor in a medieval castle taken during a tour. The thing that struck me about these suits of armor was the size. You can tell by the couple in the picture that the suits are small. Being curious about this I did a little research on the subject and come to find out the average height of a man in Europe around 1735 was about 5 foot 5 (165 cm) This varied a bit by country and North Americans were even a bit taller.

A lot is made of this and the biggest factor was the difficulty in nourishment throughout much of the middle ages. (Maybe the dark ages were so dark because nobody was tall enough to reach the string for the light In todays world we have such an amazing abundance of food. (It’s really quite unprecedented in the total history of mankind).

Anyway, being a writer of epic fantasy stuff I imagined how a group of modern day warriors standing each over six feet tall would dominate the psychology of the battle field. They would strike fear into an opponent and maybe even be called giants! The opposing army would after all only stand as tall as their chins at best.  It would be the courageous opponent who would want to battle such a man in hand to hand combat. But then again, with their heads and shoulders sticking above the fray like that they would make for some great targets for opposing archers - quite vulnerable. - On second thought maybe I will put away the time machine and stick to basketball.

The picture above is inside a castle called Meersburg - It was built around 700 and it still remains in great shape. I have more pics and information about it on my medieval castle website here

Popularity: 6% [?]

Wandering through the hallowed halls of my local library I stumbled on this great old book (The Compleat Gamester). It’s a fun little book that was first written in 1674 and has been reprinted untold number of times since then. This edition I picked up is 1970. 

Here is my review of the book:

Have you ever wondered what kinds of games people played during the Renaissance?  The Compleat Gamester is a guide to just that. It was written in 1674 as a handbook for people of the time to learn how to play games that were currently popular. And it is still widely available today. It is a great way to learn about what kinds of games people played during the Middle Ages. And it is also lends insight into understanding how that period of time still has a tremendous influence on today’s world. Many of the games in the book are still played today.

The Compleat Gamester is a book about games and gaming that was written by Charles Cotton in 1674 which is right in the middle of the European Renaissance.  It is also a book that has had quite a long life having been re-printed many times. It is still very readily available today and the last printing of it was in 1970. Many libraries carry copies of it and plenty of copies can be found at any online book store.

The book gives us a wonderful insight into the leisure activities of the period and these games are divided into several general categories including card games, table games, board games, and outdoor games.  The card games include Whisk and Cribbage. The board games include Chess and Backgammon. The table games section includes billiards and the outdoor games, which to me are the most interesting, include archery, bowling, horsemanship and cock fighting.

There are also lots of games that seem to be lost to the passage of time. These games include card games named L’Ombre, Queen Nazareen Lanterloo, and Beast.  And they include games without cards such as Ketch-Dolt and Sice-Ace.

Another interesting insight into the Middle Ages that we can derive from this book is the sensitivity to the class and caste system. The author often makes comments and observations about the games and what kinds of people play them. This is first revealed to us in the full title of the book which is “The Compleat Gamester or, Instructions how to Play at all manner of usual and Genteel games”.  This sensitivity is most prevalent in how he describes the scene of bowling as a place for rooks where three things are thrown more than the balls. These are time, money, and curses.  He characterizes bowling as being a healthy sport yet something that is more for the rough and tumble commoner crowd.  And it’s funny how that stigma of bowling being a common persons sport still remains with us today.  It makes one wonder if he is the guy that started that whole stigma about bowling.

About the book

Having been written over three hundred years ago the language of the book can sometimes be a bit awkward but it is beautifully done and it is loaded with great illustrations. The very first edition of this book was published in 1674 by Charles Cotton and it is the second most common alternate usage of the word Complete. The most common, and most famous, use of this alternate spelling is of course for the Compleat Angler which was written by a friend of Charles Cotton’s father. Charles, his father, and the author of the Compleat Angler used to go fishing a lot when Charles was a boy. So it is easy to see where the inspiration for the book and its peculiar title came from.

If you are interested in Medieval Period things and games in general, you might want to give this book a look. Who knows, after reading some of the lost games you just might want to give them a try and start a whole new revival.