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Tamsin

05 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Literary History, Military History, Narrative Methods

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Algernon Blackwood, billyblind, boggart, Captain Blood, cat, Catherine of Braganza, Charles I, Charles II, Dorchester, Dorset, Errol Flynn, George Jeffreys, ghost, Glastonbury Abbey, Glastonbury Tor, James, King Arthur, Lucy Walter, M.R. James, Maiden Castle, Monmouth, Nell Gwynn, Peter Beagle, rebellion, Sedgemoor, Somerset, Tamsin, Two Men in a Trench

If you had never seen a ghost and probably didn’t believe in them, what would convince you?  How about a ghost cat?

image1ghostcat.jpg

In Peter Beagle’s

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Tamsin (1999),

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13-year-old Jenny Gluckstein encounters one and it’s only the beginning of a wonderfully rich and, this being a novel by Peter Beagle, a little melancholy, ghost story.

We don’t do spoilers, but what we’d like to do—oh, and, by the way, Welcome, dear readers, as ever!—is, first, to recommend this novel, which begins in New York City, but is mainly set in Dorset,

image4dorset.jpg

in the southwest of England.  If you’re interested in spooks and spirits of all kinds, England is a wonderful place to explore, and the southwest is especially haunted (if you believe in such things—we’re neutral, ourselves, but love a good ghost story).  Just look at this massive Iron Age hill fort near Dorchester, called locally, “Maiden Castle”—what lives there at night?

image5maidencastle.jpg

[And speaking of good ghost stories, some of our favorites are by M.R. James (1862-1936) and Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951).  Click on the names to access the links so that you can sample their work for yourself, if you don’t know them already.]

Jenny is transplanted from New York to Dorset because her mother’s second husband is an English agricultural specialist who is hired to rebuild a 350-year-old farm in Dorset.  Jenny is, initially, very unhappy with the move—especially when her closest friend, Mr. Cat, must spend 6 months quarantined before being allowed into England.  Things slowly begin to change, however, as she makes friends with her two new stepbrothers and finds that the ancient house holds more than her new family, including a boggart, the billyblind, and four ghosts (including that cat).

The ghosts are ectoplasmic survivors of a tragic period in the history of southwest England which all begins with Charles II (1630-1685).

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After his father, Charles I, had been executed in London in January, 1649,

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his son, Charles, had led an exile’s life until, in 1660, he was invited to return to Britain and reign as Charles II.

image8chas2.jpg

Unfortunately for the country, although Charles was married to the Portuguese princess, Catherine of Braganza (1638-1705),

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they produced no heirs.  Charles also had a long string of mistresses, including the most famous, Nell Gwynn (1650-1687),

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and one of them, Lucy Walter (c1630-1658)

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gave him a son, James (1649-1685),

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whom Charles not only acknowledged, but made, among other things, the Duke of Monmouth.

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This James had somehow come to believe that his father, Charles, had secretly married his mother, thereby making him the legitimate heir to the throne of England.  His uncle, also named James (1633-1701),

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asserting that his older brother, Charles, appeared to have no legitimate heir, claimed the throne for himself upon his brother’s death.  This did not please the Duke of Monmouth, who, believing that he had support in the southwest of England, raised a rebellion there against his uncle.  He had only very limited resources, and much of his little army was armed with improvised weapons, many of them repurposed farm equipment.

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Opposing these was a detachment of the Royal Army,

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trained professional soldiers.  The only battle of this brief campaign occurred not in Dorset, but in the shire to the northwest, Somerset,

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which, in itself is a rather spooky place.  After all, in the 12th century, the monks of Glastonbury Abbey claimed that they had happened upon the grave of King Arthur

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and they had a lead cross (from the coffin) to prove it.

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Even if it’s not spooky, Glastonbury is an impressive place—just look at Glastonbury Tor, with the remains of the 14th-century church of St Michael atop it.

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Monmouth knew that, to have any chance of raising more support, he would have to deal with that detachment of redcoats sent to stop him, but, with his own army’s limitations, the best way to even the odds was to attempt a night attack, one of the most difficult maneuvers possible.  Unfortunately, although the Royal Army was initially surprised, the mist which covered the battlefield, along with an uncertain knowledge of the terrain, and the lack of discipline among Monmouth’s troops,

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as well as the steadiness of the King’s soldiers,

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led to a complete defeat of Monmouth’s army, which immediately disintegrated, while Monmouth and his chief followers fled for their lives.

Monmouth was soon captured and brought before his uncle, James, who was less than avuncular in his reaction

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and, very soon afterward, Monmouth was beheaded.

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Not content with ending the rebellion, James sent a five-man commission of judges to the region to rout out all opposition to his reign.  This commission was headed by the Lord Chief Justice, George Jeffreys, First Baron Jeffreys (1645-1689).

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Jeffreys, from the records, was a very thorough man, but a very biased one, as well, and several hundred people across the region were executed after brief trials,

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others being shipped as virtual slaves to the Caribbean.  (The swashbuckling adventure film, Captain Blood (1935), with Errol Flynn, is about one of the latter—a doctor who helps a wounded escapee from Sedgemoor and suffers for it.)

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Jeffreys then becomes the villain of Tamsin, having developed a passion for Tamsin Willoughby, whose family farm is the one which Jenny’s stepfather is hired to restore, during the period now known as the “Bloody Assizes”.  Tamsin and Jeffreys and Tamsin’s lover, Edric, are trapped in a kind of terrible time warp and it’s Jenny who—but wait—we said no spoilers, and we mean it!

This is a book to read and reread and now, with a little historical background from us, we hope you enjoy it as much as we have.

MTCIDC

CD

ps

If you would like to know more about the Battle of Sedgemoor, the Two Men in a Trench team of Tony Pollard and Neil Oliver have a fun battlefield archaeology program on it.  Here’s the LINK.

 

Who’s There? (1)

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Beowulf, coastguard, Elsinore, footguards, ghost, Great War, Hama, Hamlet, Helsingor, Kronborg, London, Rohan, sentry, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, Watchmen, William Shakespeare

Welcome, dear readers, as always.

We have always been Shakespeare fans, our favorite plays being Macbeth, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, The Winter’s Tale, Henry V—and we guess we’d add a few more, too, as we think about it.  Our first love was Hamlet.

image1hamlet1603

It opens with a nervous sentry on the battlements of Elsinore castle.  (Actually Kronborg—the local town is Helsingor—here’s the castle today), in the kingdom of Denmark.

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Something uncanny appears to be happening and, when his replacement comes, we have the idea that it’s made the watchmen jumpy:

The Tragicall Historie of

HAMLETPrince of Denmarke.

Enter Two Centinels.

  1. STand: who is that?
  2. Tis I.
  3. O you come most carefully vpon your watch,
  4. And if you meete Marcellus and Horatio,

The partners of my watch, bid them make haste.

  1. I will: See who goes there.

Enter Horatio and Marcellus.

Hor. Friends to this ground.

Mar. And leegemen to the Dane,

O farewell honest souldier, who hath releeued you?

  1. Barnardo hath my place, giue you good night.

Mar. Holla, Barnardo.

  1. Say, is Horatio there?

Hor. A peece of him.

  1. Welcome Horatio, welcome good Marcellus.

Mar. What hath this thing appear’d againe to night.

  1. I haue seene nothing.

Mar. Horatio sayes tis but our fantasie,

And wil not let beliefe take hold of him,

Touching this dreaded sight twice seene by vs,

Therefore I haue intreated him a long with vs

To watch the minutes of this night,

That if againe this apparition come,

He may approoue our eyes, and speake to it.

(The Tragicall History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, from its first publication, the First Folio, 1603)

We love the way Shakespeare begins with two minor characters discussing “this thing”—and we won’t learn till deeper in the scene that what they’ve seen was the ghost of Hamlet’s father:  a wonderful, spooky—and intriguing—opening.

This isn’t a Shakepeare posting, however.  What really interested us recently was, in fact, that it’s with two sentries that the play commences. Their job is to watch for anyone who might try to enter the castle for nefarious purposes (and, try as they might, they can’t do that with a ghost) and it got us to thinking about sentries in The Lord of the Rings and just how many there actually are.

From his experience in the Great War, Tolkien would have been very experienced with such people

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and even from simply visiting London.

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(The Queen has five regiments of foot guards, by the way.  The buttons in twos on his tunic—as well as the red plume on his fur cap—tell us that he belongs to the second regiment, the Coldstream Guards—here’s a chart so that you, too, can be able to tell them apart.)

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His scholarly experience would have added to this, particularly in his long-time study of Beowulf,

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in which two such folk appear.  First, Beowulf and his companions encounter a kind of coast guard, when they cross from what is now southern Sweden to Denmark.

Print

On the shore, a Danish watchman

image8coastguard

challenges them:

“From rocks up above them
Hrothgar’s sentinel,
whose task was to guard
and patrol the sea-cliffs,
saw strangers who bore
stout battle-gear
and sturdy war-shields
striding down the gangplank;
he needed to know
who these newcomers were.
Mounting his horse
he made for the beach,
brandished his spear
and bluntly challenged
the foreign sailors
with formal words:
‘Who are you, you unknown
ironclad men,
alien troops
armed in mailcoats,
bringing your boat
from abroad, crossing
the sounding sea?’ “

(This is from Section III of  Dick Ringler’s 2005 translation, intentionally designed for recitation aloud.  Here’s the LINK to the full text.  If this is your first experience of the poem, we very much recommend that you visit the site and have a look—our students like the translation and the introductory material is very helpful.)

Beowulf’s response and the look of him and his men so impresses the coastguard that he not only lets them pass, but even says that he will detach someone to keep an eye on their boat while they’re moving inland to visit the king, Hrothgar.

At Hrothgar’s palace, however, they meet with a second guard:

“An eagle-eyed sentry
who stood in the doorway
studied them closely.
‘What country do you come from
with your curved shields,
your meshed war-shirts
and mask-helmets,
your iron spears?
I am the herald
of noble Hrothgar.
I have never seen
so bold or brave
a band of foreigners,
so it is less likely
that you are landless strays
than valiant adventurers
visiting my king.’ “

(from section V of the Ringler)

Again, the look of Beowulf and his men and Beowulf’s humble address persuades Wulfgar, the herald, to agree to take a message about them to Hrothgar—and Hrothgar tells us that he has had dealings long before with Beowulf’s father and remembers Beowulf, as well.

There are no coastguards in The Lord of the Rings, but Wulfgar bears a strong family resemblance to Hama, the Doorward of Theoden, when Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli come to Meduseld, but we’ll see more of him in the second part of our look at sentries in our next posting.

In the meantime, thanks for reading, as ever.

MTCIDC

CD

 

 

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