Hawk of May, by Gillian Bradshaw. Book review

First published 1980. Edition reviewed: Sourcebooks, 2010, ISBN 978-1402240706, 356 pages. Uncorrected advance review copy supplied by publisher.

Hawk of May is the first part of a fantasy trilogy retelling the Arthurian legends, focussing on Gwalchmai as the central character. Gwalchmai translates literally as “Hawk of May”, hence the title, and in later legend he becomes the character Sir Gawain. Other key figures in the legend feature as major characters – Arthur, his evil sorceress sister Morgause, her sons Agravain and Medraut (Mordred), Bedwyr (Sir Bedivere) and Cei (Sir Kay). Gwenhwyfar (Guinevere), not yet Arthur’s wife, gets a walk-on part near the end, and will no doubt reappear in the later books. The historical king of the West Saxons, Cerdic, makes an appearance. So do some other figures from the scanty historical records, such as Maelgwn Gwynedd and Urien Rheged, although they are displaced in time by half a century or more from their actual positions in the mid to late sixth century. The setting for Hawk of May is post-Roman Britain at approximately the end of the fifth century, taking the dates for Arthur’s major battles from Annales Cambriae and for Cerdic’s reign from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. However, as the author’s note says, “...since the novel is only partially historical, geography is not that important.” and neither is chronology. The novel works best when read as a story set in the timeless world of “once upon a time”, rather like the medieval Arthurian legends themselves.

Gwalchmai is the second son of Queen Morgause and her husband King Lot of the Orkney Islands. To his father’s disappointment, he shows no noticeable talent as a warrior, although he is a skilled horseman and harpist. Bullied by his elder brother Agravain, Gwalchmai leads a lonely existence until his beautiful mother, whom he worships, offers to teach him reading and, later, black magic. After witnessing some of its cruelties, he comes to fear and hate sorcery, renounces it, and after an adventure in the Otherworld he comes into possession of a magic sword and the skills to wield it. Magically returned to the real world in southern Britain, Gwalchmai sets off to offer his services to Arthur – but Arthur has his own dark reasons to hate and mistrust Morgause’s son. Will Gwalchmai ever persuade Arthur to accept him, and will either escape the shadow of Morgause’s evil magic?

Hawk of May is a fantasy novel, centred on a supernatural conflict between the forces of good (the Light) and evil (the Darkness). Gwalchmai undertakes a supernatural journey on a magic boat to the Otherworld, where he obtains a magic sword and later acquires a fairy horse. He has superhuman strength in battle, and has to physically fight and kill at least one real demon. The magical elements are key to the plot, whereas the approximate historical setting in somewhere in post-Roman Britain is incidental.

Within this fantasy environment, Hawk of May is a coming-of-age story, as the young Gwalchmai has to break free of his mother’s influence, make his own choices and earn a place for himself in the world. The plot mainly follows his upbringing and the circumstances that bring him to Arthur’s warband, so is fairly slight. Perhaps this reflects the book’s position as the first in a trilogy, setting up characters and situations for the novels to come.

Characterisation is effective, with most of the major players clearly drawn as individuals. Gwalchmai is endearingly humble, ever ready to attribute his battle success to supernatural favour rather than to his own prowess as a warrior. He grows from a child to a young man without losing his youthful idealism. Arthur, as portrayed here, is a charismatic battle leader, human enough to win his followers’ affection as well as their admiration. I can see why men would have been drawn to fight and die for this Arthur (something that isn’t always apparent in Arthurian fiction). Among the secondary characters, Cei and Agravain are archetypal ‘Celtic’ warriors, boastful, quarrelsome, flamboyant, cheerful and always ready for a drink or a fight, preferably both. Bedwyr is an intellectual as well as a warrior, with an interest in philosophy and a disinclination to take sides in petty quarrels. Morgause is pretty much pure evil, but given her traditional role in the legend it might have been rather tricky to make her a nuanced character. Gwenhwyfar is attractive and realistic, as far as I can tell from her very brief appearance, which bodes well for the rest of the series (assuming it is going to develop along the traditional lines).

Fantasy retelling of the Arthurian legend from the perspective of Gwalchmai, describing how he came to Arthur’s following as a young man.

September recipe: Ratatouille

This is a delectable vegetable stew that makes full use of late summer vegetables – sweet peppers, courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines. Serve it with grilled pork or lamb chops, or add cooked haricot beans and serve with fresh bread for a vegetarian meal. It freezes well, so you can make it in the late summer when the fresh ingredients are plentiful and thaw it for a reminder of summer in the middle of winter.










Ratatouille (serves 4)

1 lb (approx 450 g) courgette* (green or yellow or a mixture)
1 lb (approx 450 g) aubergine**
4 Tablespoons (4 x 15 ml spoon) olive oil
1 onion
3 large cloves garlic
1 red pepper
1 lb (approx 450 g) tomatoes
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) fresh basil (or other herbs of your choice)

Chop the courgette and aubergine into approximately 2 cm cubes. Sprinkle with salt and leave for 30 minutes. Then rinse the courgette and aubergine in a bowl of cold water to wash off the salt, and drain on kitchen paper.

Peel and chop the onion. Crush the garlic. Remove the seeds from the red pepper and chop.

Chop the tomatoes. You can peel them if you like, but I never do. Tinned tomatoes are not as nice in this recipe as fresh ones, so use fresh tomatoes if at all possible.

Fry the onion and garlic gently in the olive oil in a large saucepan until softened and starting to colour. Add the courgette, aubergine and red pepper.

Put a lid on the pan and simmer over a low heat for about 20 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Add the chopped tomatoes and chopped herbs, and season with salt and black pepper to taste. Stir well.

Simmer for another 30 minutes or so over a low heat until the vegetables are almost disintegrating.

Serve with grilled lamb or pork chops, or add cooked butter beans (or haricot beans or canellini beans) for a vegetarian casserole. It goes particularly well with fresh bread to mop up the juices. If using beans, approximately 1.5 oz (approx 40 g) per person of dried beans is about right, soaked overnight and then cooked for about an hour in boiling water.

*Also called zucchini
**Also called eggplant

The Anglian Tower, York

The ‘Anglian Tower’ is a small stone tower in the north-west wall of the Roman legionary fortress at York. It is near the west corner, about 60 m north-east of the surviving Multangular Tower at the west corner. The name ‘Anglian Tower’ was bestowed when the tower was opened for public display after the 1970 excavation, but it owes more to confidence than evidence, since the tower itself is not securely dated. What do we know about it?


Picture from Wikipedia under Creative Commons licence















Discovery

The Anglian Tower was first discovered in 1842, when a route was being constructed through the city defences to allow access to St Leonard’s Yard (Tweddle et al 1999, p. 216). It had been buried inside an earth bank that had been constructed on top of the original Roman defences. A later re-excavation was carried out in 1970.

Evidence

Structure

The Anglian Tower is rectangular, about 3.6 m by 3.1 m, and the standing remains are about 4.7 m high (Tweddle et al 1999, p. 189). The walls are 0.45 to 0.6 m thick, (Tweddle et al 1999, p. 251). It has two doorways, one in each side, supported by simple arches. The original roof was replaced by a brick vault in the nineteenth century (Ottaway 2004, p.142).

The front of the tower is set into a shallow cut in the top of the Roman fortress wall, and the back wall of the tower stands on the Roman rampart (Ottaway 2004, p.142).

The tower is constructed of roughly cut and shaped blocks of oolitic limestone (Ottaway 2004, p.142). This is a different type of limestone to the magnesian limestone used to construct the Roman walls, and the masonry technique is also different.

Dating

The 1970 excavation did not find any direct dating evidence associated with the Anglian Tower (Tweddle et al 1999, p. 189). The date range for the tower’s construction is book-ended by stratigraphy:

• Since the Anglian tower stands on top of the Roman defences and is inserted into a cut in the wall, it must post-date the construction of the Roman wall;


• The Anglian Tower was buried inside an earth rampart strengthened with rough stonework, which was constructed on top of the Roman defences. So it must pre-date the construction of this rampart.

The walls of the Roman legionary fortress at York were rebuilt and repaired at several stages in the life of the fortress. Projecting towers like the Multangular Tower are more commonly seen in later Roman military architecture of the later third and fourth centuries, like the Roman shore forts in Britain. So on stylistic grounds York’s Roman walls have sometimes been dated to the early fourth century, perhaps associated with the Emperor Constantine (the Great) who was proclaimed Emperor by his troops in York in 306 AD. However, the abundant pottery in the associated rampart consistently dates to the late second or early third century (Ottaway 2004, p.75). On the basis of the pottery, Patrick Ottaway considers that the defences had been rebuilt in stone and the Multangular Tower constructed by, or shortly after, the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus (193 – 211 AD), perhaps to mark the Emperor’s stay in York in 208-211 (Ottaway 2004, p. 75).

The stone-reinforced earth rampart on top of the Anglian Tower contained a few sherds of eighth- to ninth-century pottery (Ottaway 2004, p.142). A plausible context for its construction could be as a refurbishment of the defences at around the time the Vikings took York in 867 (Tweddle et al 1999, p.189).

So, these indicate that the Anglian Tower was built at some time after the completion of the Roman stone walls in the early third century (or possibly the early fourth century), and at some time before the stone-reinforced earth bank was constructed in approximately the middle of the ninth century.

Interpretation

The Anglian Tower is built of blocks of oolitic limestone. This stone occurs in flat slabs, and is found in the North York Moors north of York and in the Yorkshire Wolds east of York (Ottaway 2004, p.53-54). It was commonly used in Roman York but mainly in the Roman colonia (civilian city) on the west bank of the River Ouse. A different type of limestone, magnesian limestone, was used extensively in the Roman military fortress. Magnesian limestone is a higher quality building stone than oolitic limestone because it can be cut in any direction and to any size and shape, and is the limestone used to make the facing blocks for the surviving stretches of Roman fortress wall. It comes from the Tadcaster area, west of York.

The other notable feature of the stone used to build the Anglian Tower is that it appears to have been freshly quarried. It is not re-used stone from earlier Roman buildings. In this it contrasts sharply with later buildings such as York’s medieval churches, some of which were almost entirely constructed from re-used Roman stone (e.g the tower of St Mary Bishophill Junior, built in the eleventh century; Ottaway 2004, p.151).

Three inferences can be drawn from the stone used to construct the Anglian Tower:

• At the time it was built, Roman York was not yet regarded as the giant stone quarry it became in the Anglo-Scandinavian and medieval periods. Either the Roman buildings were still in use, or they were still respected, or whoever built the Anglian Tower lacked the technology to demolish them safely;


• Whoever built the Anglian Tower did not use the same materials or construction techniques as the Roman military had used to build the fortress defences, implying a break in construction methods. This in turn could imply that the necessary knowledge had been lost, or that access to the Tadcaster quarries was no longer possible, or a change in fashion, or some more prosaic reason such as a builders’ merchant happening to have a load of oolitic limestone ready to hand at the time of construction;


• Whoever built the Anglian Tower had sufficient knowledge of stone construction methods to build a sturdy tower – it hadn’t fallen down by the time it was buried in the overlying ninth-century earth rampart - and sufficient resources available to obtain the stone and carry out the construction. They also regarded York as sufficiently important to be worth the effort of building the tower.

A late Roman date is consistent with the lack of re-used stone in the Anglian Tower, since the fortress buildings would presumably have still been in use and would not have been available as a convenient stone quarry. ‘Consistent with’, rather than definitive proof, since the Roman army did not invariably use freshly quarried stone for military construction; it re-used stone from redundant structures at other locations, such as the walls at Chester and the fort at Birdoswald on Hadrian’s Wall. The rather rough construction technique may argue against a late Roman date, since one might have assumed that the late Roman Army would have been able to produce a more refined tower for its premier northern fortress. However, this could be explained by haste or the absence of the engineering corps elsewhere. There were plenty of crises in Late Roman Britain that could have provided the context for a rushed repair, or for the army to have been stretched very thin and needing to bodge up a repair with any semi-skilled or unskilled labour they had to hand.

A date shortly after the end of Roman administration, perhaps in the fifth or sixth century, is consistent with the coarse building technique and the change in materials, as the engineering skills of the Roman military may well have been partially or wholly lost when Constantine III took most of the army stationed in Britannia to Europe in his (unsuccessful) bid for the top job in 408. There is no reason to assume that Roman York was instantly deserted when Roman government ended in Britain. Quite the reverse; Honorius’ letter in 410 telling the civitas capitals to ‘look to their own defences’ implies that there was still a layer of local or regional government in place. York would be a logical centre, since it had defences and was at the hub of road and river transport networks. It probably also took a while – perhaps several decades – for people to decide that the Empire was not going to come back this time, and during this period the city authorities may well have tried to maintain Roman political and material structures for as long as possible. The Anglian Tower could be regarded as a direct response to Honorius’ command by whoever was in control of post-Roman York, perhaps using a civilian building contractor in the absence of a military engineer. A post-Roman date could also be consistent with the lack of re-used stone. If whoever was in charge in York when the Anglian Tower was built derived their authority – or claimed to derive it – from the preceding Roman military or civil administration, that might contribute to a reluctance to rob stone from Roman buildings, either through respect for Roman structures or through a fear of getting reprimanded for it if/when Roman government was later restored. It’s worth remembering that Britain had been part of breakaway Empires several times in the preceding century or two and that central Imperial control had always been restored sooner or later, frequently to the detriment of those who had been, or were perceived to have been, on the opposing side. In the early to mid fifth century there may well have been no obvious reason to expect it to be any different this time.

A date in the Anglian period, say from the late sixth or early seventh century onwards, is also possible. We know from Bede that York was under the control of the Anglian kings of Deira in 627 when Eadwine of Deira chose to have himself and his court baptised there (Bede Book II Ch. 14). Whether York was a regularly used royal centre or whether the baptism was a one-off visit to a prestigious but little-used ruin is not known. If York was a significant royal centre, repairing the defences would be a logical thing to do. The primary building material in early (‘Anglo-Saxon’) England was timber (which does not mean that buildings were necessarily unsophisticated, as discussed in an earlier post on timber architecture), which at first sight might appear inconsistent with a stone-built tower. However, Bede tells us that Eadwine began to build a stone church in York at some date after 627, and that the church was later completed by his nephew Oswald at some date between 634 and 642 (Book II Ch. 14). So the Anglian kings of the early seventh century in York had access to masonry technology for building churches, and could presumably have used the same technology in other applications, such as repairing the defences. The use of oolitic limestone would also be consistent with this, as the sources for oolitic limestone in the North York Moors and the Yorkshire Wolds are in Deiran territory and may therefore have been familiar to the Deiran kings or their officials – although I wouldn’t read too much into this as the oolitic limestone was also familiar in Roman York. The lack of re-used stone may be an argument against an Anglian date, as there must surely have been at least some derelict buildings in the city by then. However, Bede tells us that Eadwine used a Roman-style standard (Book II Ch. 16). If Roman heritage was seen as a source of authority or legitimacy, there may have been a reluctance to show disrespect by using Roman buildings, however dilapidated, as a stone quarry. There may also have been a reluctance to disturb the ruins either on grounds of superstition (who wants to risk annoying a vengeful ghost?) or practicality (collapsing arches and unstable foundations can make demolition a risky business).

On the basis of the available evidence, the Anglian Tower could have been constructed at any time between the late Roman period and the ninth-century Viking conquest. A reasonable case can be made for late Roman, post-Roman or Anglian construction. All are plausible, none is definitive. You can take your pick.


References
Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.
Ottaway P. Roman York. Tempus, 2004. ISBN 0-7524-2916-7.
Tweddle D, Moulden J, Logan E. Anglian York: a survey of the evidence. Council for British Archaeology/York Archaeological Trust, 1999. ISBN 1-902771-06-0.


Map links
York
Tadcaster
North York Moors

August recipe: Plum and almond tart

Late summer is the season for plums. I’ve previously posted recipes for plum cake and baked plums with blackberries. Here’s another plum recipe, this time for a plum and almond tart.








Plum and almond tart

For the pastry:
8 oz (approx 250 g) plain flour
3 oz (approx 100 g) icing sugar
4 oz (approx 125 g) butter
1 egg
Or you can use ready-made pastry if you prefer

For the filling:
2 oz (approx 50 g) butter
2 oz (approx 50 g) caster sugar
1 egg
2 oz (approx 50 g) ground almonds
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) plain flour
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) dark rum (optional)
About 6 plums (more if they are very small, fewer if they are very large)

To make the pastry:

Sieve the icing sugar.

Cream the butter and icing sugar until pale and fluffy.

Beat in the egg.

Beat in the flour to form a dough.

This quantity of pastry is enough for three 7-inch tart cases, so divide the dough into three and freeze what you don’t need immediately. (It’s the same pastry that I use for strawberry cheesecake and Seville orange tart, if you want suggestions for what to do with the rest).

Wrap one portion in cling film or foil and refrigerate for about an hour. (If you are in a hurry, you can roll the pastry out straight away, but it will be quite soft if it’s at room temperature so handle it gently).

Roll out the pastry on a floured work surface, and line a greased tart tin about 7 inches (approximately 18 cm) in diameter. Don’t try to roll it out too thin. If the pastry breaks or tears when you lift it into the tin, don’t worry too much. Press the broken edges back together like Plasticene and you’ll probably get away with it.

To make the filling:

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat in the egg.

Stir in the ground almonds and flour. Stir in the rum (if using)

Put the almond mixture into the tart case and level the surface.

Halve the plums and remove the stones.

Arrange the halved plums in a pattern of your choice on top of the tart, cut side up.

Bake at about 180 C for about 30 minutes until the filling is set and golden.

Serve hot or cold, with whipped cream if liked.

I generally expect to get about 6 slices out of this recipe, but it depends how large a slice you like.

The cooked tart will keep for 2-3 days at room temperature, if it gets the chance.

Afterglow and Nightfall, by Edith Pargeter. Book review

First published 1977. Edition reviewed: The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet, Sourcebooks 2010, ISBN 978-1402237607. This edition includes all four of the Brothers of Gwynedd novels in one binding. Afterglow and Nightfall, 199 pages. Complete quartet, 782 pages. Uncorrected advance review copy kindly supplied by publisher.

The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet covers the following four novels:

• Sunrise in the West


• The Dragon at Noonday


• The Hounds of Sunset


• Afterglow and Nightfall

Afterglow and Nightfall is the final instalment in the Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet, set in 1278–1283. It completes the story of Llewelyn ap Griffith and his brother David. Most of the main characters are historical figures, including Llewelyn and David, Llewelyn’s wife Eleanor de Montfort and King Edward I of England. The narrator Samson, Llewelyn’s friend and confidential clerk is fictional, as is his beloved Cristin and her husband Godred.

After his brother David’s third and worst betrayal, and the consequent disastrous defeat by Edward I, Llewelyn is left as prince of a much-reduced Gwynedd and forced to swear fealty to Edward as the price of peace (events told in The Hounds of Sunset.) The bitterness of Llewelyn’s defeat is at least partly compensated by the happiness of his marriage to the beautiful and heroic Eleanor, daughter of Simon de Montfort. But no-one with Edward I for a neighbour, or David for a brother, can expect to live peacefully for long. Edward and his officials relentlessly undermine the terms of the peace with injustice after injustice. As Welsh grievances against Edward mount, David is goaded into action. His loyalty may prove more fatal to Llewelyn than his treachery, as he strikes the blow that unleashes Edward’s wrath against the princes of Gwynedd.

With a title like Afterglow and Nightfall, you can probably guess that the history on which the novel is based is not the sunniest of subject matter. If Hounds of Sunset was full of a sense of gathering clouds, in Afterglow and Nightfall the storm breaks with a vengeance. The novel is a beautifully written elegy on tragedy and loss. The lyrical prose that is one of the great beauties of this quartet of novels if, if anything, even more poetic in this final act. It has the rich detail and brilliant colour of a stained glass window.

Narrated throughout by Samson, Llewelyn’s friend and clerk, the story is told entirely from the Welsh viewpoint. Whether Llewelyn was in reality quite as heroic a figure as portrayed here is open to debate, but there is no doubt which side the reader is expected to be on (and will be on, unless you have a heart of stone). Nevertheless, the novel doesn’t slip into one-sided sentimentality. Llewelyn may be remarkably free of flaws, but he is clear-eyed about the limits to Welsh patriotism:

“What they want now is what they wanted then, to preserve their own small rights. […] These are still only a thousand little divided souls clinging desperately to their own privileges and their own lands, and seeing nothing beyond. As they turned from me to Edward, when he seemed best to offer them security, so now they will turn from Edward to me, now they are looking for another saviour. […] There is no salvation there.”

The political and legal machinations that led up to the war of 1282-1283 are clearly set out. For example the Arwystli lawsuit, which can seem an incomprehensible legal quagmire of the sort described by Dickens in Bleak House, emerges here in its full political significance. Its tortuous progress is used as an indicator of Llewelyn’s gradual (and, as presented in the novel, justified) loss of faith in Edward’s honesty. If you have ever been puzzled as to how the war and its disasters came about, this quartet (especially Books 3 and 4) is a good place to start. What is especially impressive is that the political and legal events – which might sound rather dry stuff, on the face of it – are key to the emotional drama. It is these events that force Llewelyn and David to their final agonising choice, and in this novel the reader understands how that was brought about.

Although Llewelyn is the peerless hero of the novel, as throughout the quartet, it is David who is the pivot of the story. Brilliant, ambitious, vibrant and dangerous as ever, it is David’s action that triggers the final act in the drama. His treachery in Hounds of Sunset set the destruction of Llewelyn’s work in train; now that he and Llewelyn are finally reconciled his loyalty proves no less perilous. David has grown in stature over the quartet and is at least as memorable a character as Llewelyn himself – possibly more so because of his contradictions and complexities.

Samson’s star-crossed love for the beautiful and noble Cristin, which has been a constant backdrop throughout the series, is finally resolved in Afterglow and Nightfall. Very cleverly, too, in circumstances that raise intriguing parallels with the greater storyline. ‘Brothers of Gwynedd’ can be taken in more than one way. It also allows the book to end on an uplifting note – a small light amidst the great shadow, as Samson says at the end.

A family tree at the beginning helps to keep the characters straight, though I found the text sufficiently clear that I never needed to refer to it, and a glossary of Welsh terms at the back may be helpful to readers unfamiliar with the period. Readers who like to trace the campaigns and journeys on a map may like to have an atlas to hand, as there is no map in the book (at least, not in the advance reading copy).

Hauntingly beautiful final instalment in the story of Llewelyn and David ap Griffith, the last princes of independent Wales.

Old English gods and myths: Eotens

The most famous monster in Old English poetry must be Grendel, the man-eating enemy in the poem Beowulf. The poem mainly refers to Grendel by name as an individual. Grendel is also called an ‘eoten’, e.g. at the climax of the fight with Beowulf when Grendel is struggling to break loose from Beowulf’s grip:

The monster strained away

--Beowulf, line 761, translated by Michael Alexander

Eoten was utweard

--Beowulf, line 761

Eotens in general are also referred to in the poem, sometimes in association with ‘cyn’, meaning something like tribe or kindred:

eotenas

--Beowulf, line 112

eotena cyn

--Beowulf, line 421

eotena cynnes

--Beowulf, line 884

So eotens were a particular type – the modern term might be something like species – of monster, and Grendel could be described as an eoten. What sort of creatures were eotens thought to be?

Origin

From Cain came down all kinds misbegotten
- ogres and elves and evil shades -
as also the Giants, who joined in long
wars with God.

--Beowulf, lines 111-114, translated by Michael Alexander

eotenas ond ylfe ond orcneas,
swylce gigantas

--Beowulf, line 112-113

In this list of monsters ‘eotenas’ (here translated as ‘ogres’) are considered by the Beowulf poet to be descendants of Cain, the first murderer. They are clearly seen as one among several types of evil creatures – “all kinds misbegotten”.

Habitat

The fell and fen his fastness was
The march his haunt

--Beowulf, lines 102-103

... walked nightlong
The misty moorland

--Beowulf, lines 161-162

...up steep screes, by scant tracks
Where only one might walk, by wall-faced cliffs,
Through haunted fens – uninhabitable country

--Beowulf, lines 1410-1411

So Grendel (and presumably other eotens) lived in wilderness and wasteland, including mountains (fells), moorlands and marshes or fens. The kind of country where humans cannot, or at any rate do not, live.

Grendel’s particular home is in an underground cave reached by swimming down through a mountain lake in a swallow hole:

Mysterious is the region
They live in – of wolf-fells, wind-picked moors
And treacherous fen-paths: a torrent of water
Pours down dark cliffs and plunges into the earth
An underground flood

--Beowulf line 1357-1361

Appearance and behaviour

Grendel and his mother are described in Beowulf:

...a pair
Of huge wayfarers haunting the moors,
Otherworldly ones: and one of them,
So far as they might make it out,
Was in woman’s shape: but the shape of a man,
Though twisted, trod also the tracks of exile –
Save that he was more huge than any human being

--Beowulf, lines 1347-1353

There’s no more detailed description in the poem, but this shows clearly that eotens were considered to be approximately humanoid in form but larger than a human.

Beowulf’s wrestling matches with Grendel and then with Grendel’s mother show that eotens were considered to be immensely strong.

Both Grendel and Grendel’s mother only ever come to Heorot by night. During the day they lie up in the cave under the lake. So eotens were considered nocturnal.*

The eotens’ diet consists of human flesh in prodigious quantities, as the Beowulf poet describes in grisly detail:

Grim and greedy, he grasped on their pallets
Thirty warriors, and away he was out of there,
Thrilled with his catch

--Beowulf, lines 122-124

...He set his hands on
A sleeping soldier, savagely tore at him,
Gnashed at his bone-joints, bolted huge gobbets,
Sucked at his veins, and had soon eaten
All of the dead man, even down to his
Hands and feet

--Beowulf, lines 741-745

There is no indication that eotens are superior to humans in cunning, intellect, technology or magic. Grendel and Grendel’s mother do not lay traps or cast spells, they just grab people and eat them. They are formidable because their physical strength is superior to that of the average human warrior. Beowulf is possessed of superhuman strength and overcomes them by physical might, aided by a sword in the case of Grendel’s mother.

Interpretation

This gives a fairly clear picture of eotens – assuming that Grendel and Grendel’s mother are typical of the species – as large, strong, malevolent, nocturnal, roughly humanoid creatures that live in wastelands and like to eat human flesh. They do not appear to make use of technology or magic, nor are they shown as cunning or devious. I don’t think we can tell whether they are thought of as stupid compared with humans, because neither Grendel nor Beowulf tries to outwit the other.

Terminology
So, what word to use for these creatures (or, more precisely, characters’ beliefs about these creatures) in fiction? I could use the Old English word ‘eoten’ from the Beowulf poem. However, it is no longer in common use in modern English, so not many modern readers are likely to recognise it. I could modernise the spelling to something like ‘ettin’ or ‘etten’, as Tolkien did in Lord of the Rings (“...the Ettenmoors, the troll-fells north of Rivendell…”, as Aragorn says in Book I Ch. 12). But that’s not much more recognisable to a modern reader, except perhaps to Tolkien geeks. The Oxford English Dictionary categorises ‘ettin, eten, eoten’ as obsolete, so the word can’t even be looked up easily unless one has access to a specialist dictionary.

‘Eoten’ is cognate with the Old Norse ‘jotun’, which occurs frequently in the Norse legends and is usually translated into modern English as ‘giant’. However, the Beowulf poet seems to have thought of ‘eotens’ as somehow different from the creatures called by the Latin-derived name ‘gigantas’, since they are given separately in the same list. That could just be elegant variation to fit the metre, or it could indicate that they were considered different types of monster. Another objection is that the Norse jotuns appear to have been thought of as a group of creatures on a par with the gods. In the stories in the Prose Edda, the jotuns fought with the gods, intermarried with the gods, and lived in a world that was either not part of the human world or was separated from it by a major barrier (see post on the Norse worlds). The Beowulf poet may have been familiar with this sort of concept, since the ‘gigantas’ are described as having fought against God. Eotens, on the other had, seem to be a much more earthbound sort of creature, living in unpleasant corners of the same world that humans live in. Grendel’s lair is less than a day’s ride from Heorot, with no major obstacle in the way. So eotens seem to be a sort of step down the supernatural hierarchy from giants.

Grendel is referred to once in Beowulf as ‘thyrse’, line 426. The Old English word ‘thyrse’ or ‘thurse’ is obsolete in modern English but occasionally appears in place names, e.g. Thirlspot in Cumbria. It’s usually translated as ‘giant’ or ‘demon’. Michael Alexander translates ‘thyrse’ as ‘troll’ in Beowulf for the alliteration – “a trial against this troll”. I could use ‘thyrse’ or a modernised version thereof, but that’s no more easily recognisable than ‘eoten’.

I could use ‘ogre’, as Michael Alexander occasionally does in his translation. However, I don’t personally like the word, partly because it conjures up a more fearsome image than I had in mind and partly because it doesn’t have a particularly Old English or Norse feel about it. ‘Ogre’ doesn’t appear to be directly derived from the Old English ‘orcneas’, by the way – the Oxford English Dictionary says its derivation is from Old French in the late twelfth or thirteenth century, and gives its first recorded use in English as 1713, in a translation of The Arabian Nights. I suppose ‘orcneas’ could have lain dormant for several centuries and resurfaced as ‘ogre’ in 1713 without any recorded trace in the intervening period, but this seems rather unlikely.

In the end I settled on the Norse-derived word ‘troll’. ‘Troll’ occasionally appears in place names in areas in Britain with a strong Norse influence, such as Trollers Gill in Yorkshire (Yorkshire was part of the ninth-century Danelaw and later part of the Anglo-Norse kingdom of York), and especially in northern and western Scotland, such as Trollaval on the island of Rum, and Trolla Vatn in Orkney (a name that could have come straight off a modern Norwegian map; it translates as ‘troll water’ or ‘troll lake’). The ‘Troll’ place names presumably came to Britain with the Norse incursions in the ninth century or so. If cultural links with Scandinavia were also strong in earlier centuries there may be a possibility that ‘troll’ could have been present as a regional dialect word in some regions prior to the ninth century, but there is no evidence for this. The Oxford English Dictionary has no record of ‘troll’ in use in English, except as the regional dialect word ‘trow’ in Orkney and Shetland, until it was (re?)adopted into modern English from Scandinavia in the middle of the nineteenth century. Because of this (re)introduction, ‘troll’ is in use in modern English and is reasonably familiar to a modern reader, if only from the Tale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff, Terry Pratchett, or from Tolkien and/or Peter Jackson’s films.

‘Troll’ has roughly the right image to do duty as a translation for Old English ‘eoten’: large, strong, malevolent, roughly humanoid, not conspicuously bright or devious, wilderness-dwelling, nocturnal creatures who eat human flesh. The modern image of trolls perhaps has a more specifically mountainous or rocky association than the eotens in Beowulf, which may be partly derived from Tolkien’s tale in The Hobbit of three trolls turned to stone by sunlight (a fate that befell a dwarf in the Poetic Edda*). That happens to fit quite well in the context of Exile, much of which is set on the moorland of the Peak District where the strange rock formations play on the beliefs held by some of the characters.


References
Beowulf Old English text, available online
Beowulf, translated by Michael Alexander. Penguin Classics, 1973, ISBN 0-14-044268-5.
Poetic Edda, Alvissmal, available online


Map links
Thirlspot
Trollers Gill
Trollaval
Trolla Vatn


*There’s no indication in Beowulf that Grendel or Grendel’s mother would have turned to stone if exposed to sunlight. A story on those lines is told about a dwarf called Alvis in the Poetic Edda who was tricked by Thor into talking until sunrise and then turned to stone. That story may have been what Tolkien had in mind when he created the scene in The Hobbit of the three trolls turned to stone while they were arguing over the best way to cook thirteen dwarves and one hobbit. (Note that Tolkien’s dwarves don’t have a problem with sunlight.)

Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls, by Ruth Downie. Book review

Penguin, 2006. ISBN 978-0-141-02725-8. 465 pages.

Also published as Medicus and the Disappearing Dancing Girls, and the excessively portentous-sounding Medicus: A Novel of the Roman Empire. Sometimes the author’s name appears as Ruth Downie, sometimes as RS Downie.

This historical mystery is set at the Roman Army base of Deva (modern Chester) in Britain in 117 AD. All the characters are fictional.

Gaius Petreius Ruso is a surgeon in the Roman Army medical corps. Recently divorced and with an indebted family in southern Gaul to support, he takes up a posting with the Twentieth Legion Valeria Victrix in distant Britain in the hope of earning some money. He finds Britannia damp, cheerless and unwelcoming, partly because of the climate and partly because lack of funds means he is sharing a condemned house with a tribe of mice, a litter of boisterous puppies and the untidiest medic in the Army. When the body of a local barmaid turns up strangled in the river, Ruso really does not want to investigate. It isn’t his job, and he has far too many other things to do, what with chasing the mice out of the bread-bin, coping with an interfering administrator and a lovesick hospital porter, and treating an injured slave girl he bought against his better judgement and who is turning out to be disturbingly attractive. But no-one else is trying to solve the mystery, and when a second girl from the same bar also turns up dead Ruso feels he has to get to the bottom of it – especially as it seems someone is now trying to kill him too...

A Roman historical mystery investigated by an army surgeon with a complicated personal life, chaotic living arrangements, a wry sense of humour and a slowly developing realisation that he has fallen in love with a tough young woman from a different cultural background – you could be forgiven for chalking this up as a Lindsey Davis clone with a bit of M*A*S*H thrown in. Especially with a tag on the cover proclaiming “As good as Lindsey Davis or your sestercii back!”. Much as I like Lindsey Davis’ Falco novels (see review of The Silver Pigs, I find this sort of blatant association less than helpful, as it sets up an immediate preconception that risks getting in the way of the story. Is this a Roman-set mystery? Yes. Is it a Falco clone? No.

Although the novel is billed as a mystery, the whodunit plot is only one of many things going on in Ruso’s complicated personal life. He has to manage not only his duties at the military hospital, which are more onerous than usual because he and his friend and colleague Valens are covering for the absent Chief Medical Officer, but also his many other responsibilities. Ruso’s father has recently died leaving his two sons to inherit a spendthrift stepmother, a mountain of not-very-well-concealed debts and a farm in Gaul mortgaged well beyond the hilt and under constant threat of repossession. Ruso’s main preoccupation is finding the money to keep the creditors at bay while he earns enough to pay them off, by means of his salary and any other method he can think of. As a result, much of the story revolves around Ruso’s money worries, compounded by a control freak of a hospital administrator who is obsessed with charging for absolutely everything he can think of and apparently determined to channel all the hospital’s resources into expensive schemes for cutting corners and saving money. (Readers may insert the modern parallel of their choice.) On top of this, Ruso also has to find his feet in his new environment, which provides a convenient way for the reader to learn about everyday life in a Roman legionary fortress and its associated vicus*. And there is the developing relationship between Ruso and Tilla, the injured British slave he bought to rescue from an abusive master. With all this competition for Ruso’s attention – and, perforce, the reader’s – the mystery itself is rather on the slight side, though it’s resolved neatly enough in the end.

The best features of the novel, for me, were the characters and the delightfully wry humour of the writing style. Ruso, the central character, is long-suffering, rather put-upon, professional, honest, decent, serious and likeable. Much of the comedy comes from Ruso’s bemusement as he tries to make sense of his chaotic new environment and the baffling behaviour of those around him. His irresponsible, attractive, self-centred colleague Valens is the opposite, always managing to fall on his feet while deflecting any trouble onto Ruso. The amiable and lazy Regional Control Officer – “Show them we take it very seriously but whatever you do, don’t promise we’ll do anything about it” – will be familiar to anyone who’s ever had dealings with an inefficient bureaucracy. Tilla is an enigmatic character, to the reader (at least to me) as much as to Ruso. Her history and the chain of events that led to her becoming a maltreated slave in Deva is only hinted at, leaving plenty of questions that will no doubt be resolved in later books in the series. She distrusts all Romans on principle and at first is inclined to make use of Ruso as an opportunity to escape back to her home, just as she expects Ruso to make use of her by selling her to clear some of his debts. Their relationship develops slowly over the course of the novel, and still has scope for further development by the end.

Delightful historical mystery set in second-century Roman Britain, told with wit and wry humour.

*A vicus is a civilian settlement outside a military base, a sort of cross between a suburb and a shanty town.