New & Noteworthy: March 20

• Blythe Gifford has a cover for WHISPERS AT COURT, her June 2015 release from Harlequin Historical in the US and UK. The second Royal Wedding story, it is set at the English court of Edward III, where noble French hostages are being held as prisoners of war. 

Lady Cecily scorns the French hostages, who are treated as honored guests. The men play at love games and Cecily fears her mistress, the princess, could be disgraced. War-weary chevalier Marc de Marcel wants only to return home. Uncertain whether his ransom will ever be paid, he makes an unlikely alliance with enticing, fire-and-ice Cecily. He'll help her keep the princess safe from ruin if she'll help him escape. A pact which could lead them into a scandal all their own…

• Ian Lipke has begun a new project: a history of the University of the Third Age in Brisbane Australia, to be released in 2016 when the movement in Brisbane will be thirty years old. There will be sections by scholars of international renown such as Dr. Rick Swindell, Ainslie Lamb, Ron Browne, and Barrie Brennan. More information to come as the project progresses.

• Heather Domin is partnering with a new indie publisher, Sidh Press, to translate her books into French. The French editions of SOLDIER OF RAETIA and ALLEGIANCE will go on sale within the year, with translations of HEIRS OF FORTUNE and future works to come at a later date. 

New & Noteworthy: January 16

Happy New Year to all our readers!

• Ian Lipke announces four novels now available through amazon.com. NARGUN and NATHAN tell the story of two Australian aborigines (father and son) in nineteenth century Australia; LEST EVIL PREVAIL and A KILLER CALLS are crime novels set in twentieth century Australia. To learn more about Ian and his writing, visit astutewriting-today.com.

• Jennifer Mueller has reprinted several more titles, including stories set in the Byzantine age and Medici Italy. Visit jennifermuellerbooks.com to see the full list of titles.

• Kim Rendfeld's latest release THE ASHES OF HEAVEN'S PILLAR was recently given a glowing review at BookStopCorner. You can read the full review here.

• Unusual Historicals contributors Lisa J. Yarde, Judith Starkston, and Kim Rendfeld, along with author Sam Thomas, will present the panel "Midwifery: Magic or Medicine?" during the Historical Novel Society North American Conference, June 26-28 in Denver. The panelists will discuss the practice of midwifery as a reflection of individual societies during the ancient world, the early and late medieval periods, and the mid-seventeenth century. For more information about the 2015 HNS Conference, see hns-conference.org.

The Writings of Samuel Daniel (1562 - 1619) - Musophilus

By Ian Lipke

The Writings of Samuel Daniel (1562 - 1619) - Musophilus

Samuel Daniel's signature work, Musophilus, is written in the form of a dialogue between Musophilus ('lover of culture') and Philocosmus (lover of the status quo'). This article takes a passing glance at the views of Philocosmus but promotes the thoughts of Musophilus in greater depth since they reflect Daniel's own philosophies. Musophilus details Daniel’s view that history and culture reinforce one another in a complex definition of what makes one’s heritage. The poet argues for the importance of cultural memory as a way not just of retrieving the past, but of shaping the present. He imagines a space containing humanist exemplars of learning, and humanist supporters of real scholarship. Although the poet is subject to the public world and dependent on its patrons, he can counter that by imagining a space in which poetry and the classical humanist past shapes experience and reward.

Philocosmus warns that to be different from your fellows, to pursue a different course, is to live without the warming sustenance of a patron who provides for the material needs of the practising poet. All light and warmth in the hope of patronage are then withdrawn and the rebel poet cast into the icy cold of courtly exile. Learning is bounded by what tradition has taught and men have accepted. To attempt to extend or go beyond the boundaries that patrons expect, to fail “to compose our parts / Vnto the frame of men” (lines 80 – 81) is to “make our artes / Rebles to Nature and societie” (lines 82 – 83). Running a counter-course is suggestive of a sailor navigating his way through troubled waters and this image makes way for the more powerful picture of burial in an obscure grave. Philocosmus proposes a Stoic acceptance of conventional values, one that stresses adherence to society’s rules, and by projection, promotes self-governance and self-control. The essayist, Michel de Montaigne, while writing on an unrelated matter, argues that constancy is “courageous endurance of the inevitable, and control (not eradication) of human emotions” (Miles 87), a position closely akin to Philocosmus’s view. When defining Justus Lipsius’s understanding of what it means for a man to practise self-control, Miles asserts that “to be constant is to be stable in convictions, unmoved by emotion, ‘neither lifted up nor pressed down’ [as Lipsius notes in his De Constantia 79] by external events, and, hence, steadfast and immovable in adversity” (72). Philocosmus’s argument is that, since opinion is changeable, it is the source of all human ills. It is, therefore, the arch-enemy of constancy, which is, after all, the prime virtue. Further, Philocosmus’s “Rebles to Nature” infers a rejection of the accepted Christian religion and a transgression of Guillaume du Vair’s association of Stoic constancy with the Christian heaven. “Du Vair (like Lipsius) uses the image of the soul as a divine fire (De la constance 149) whose sparks aspire to rise upwards” (Miles 73). Hence, “audaciously, Du Vair fuses Christian salvation with the Senecan ideal of self-perfection through Stoic virtue” (Miles 74), and, hence in Philocosmus’s view, through adherence to convention.

Surprisingly, Musophilus agrees with Philocosmus on this point, but with a subtle distinction which qualifies his rival’s assertion. He repeats Philocosmus’s language of measurement and puns on it. The “frame of men” (line 81) is now determined “by that wrong measure of confusion / The vulgar foote: that neuer takes his ways / By reason, but by imitation” (lines 94 – 96). Here, in recalling “th’obscure graue of singularitie” (line 85) Daniel engages the language of physical measurement to re-assert a mental state viz. the humanist support for constancy. It is by the way people measure, through imitation of, and/or the judgments of others, that “ignorance will liue / By others square” (lines 100 – 01). The poet’s argument speaks out against men who follow historic precedent (example) instead of thinking for themselves (outside the square of other peoples’ judgement). The poet is at one with Lipsius who asserts that a constant man is a man who faces adversity with conviction and resolve and is never swayed by unsubstantiated opinion. Musophilus’s argument utilises emblems of vanitas to affirm his position in the references to the “proude aspiring pallaces” of line 123 and in the lines,

Then where is that proude title of thy name,
Written in yce of melting vanitie?                                                           (lines 129 – 30)

where a pessimistic outlook is portrayed in part as a decaying physical object and, on the other hand, a significantly important virtuous state, highly regarded by the poet himself and jealously guarded throughout his lifetime. That his name should disappear in the way of melting ice is unconscionable.

Daniel uses the language of Stoic wisdom as a means of evoking rational thought when arguing the case against remaining unmoved. Inaction is paradoxically revealed as a negative form of action by nature of the fact that it destroys virtue. Musophilus argues:

For what poore bounds haue they whom but th’earth bounds,
What is their end whereto their care attaines,
When the thing got relieues not, but confounds,
Hauing but trauaile to succeed their paines?
What ioy hath he of liuing that propounds
Affliction but his end, and griefe his gaines?                                         (lines 105 – 10)

The continued use of images evoked by such terms as “poore bounds” and “th’earth bounds” suggests the Stoic conception of the virtuous man who remains constant to himself. It also suggests Christian humility as distinct from stoic constancy, potentially nodding to Lipsius’s attempt to reconcile stoicism with Christianity in De Constantia. In this passage, Musophilus is arguing the negative; in living as he is man will not achieve a favourable outcome. He has “but trauaile” as the reward for his efforts, “affliction but his end, and griefe his gaines” (line 110). The metaphor is the reversal of the Stoic understanding that, whatever the burden, if the activity is right, the effort of remaining unmoved will be worthwhile. The poet accepts the rationality of stoic constancy but employs it in a way that Seneca and his followers never intended. In early essays Montaigne (Essais, I. 12) “defines constancy in moderate terms as courageous endurance of the inevitable, and control (not eradication) of human emotions” (Miles 87). Like Montaigne, Daniel is attracted to “the ‘beauty’ of the ideal of Stoic heroism” (Miles 88). However, unlike in Montaigne’s essays, there is little evidence in the Musophilus passage under discussion of inconsistency in the world and in human nature as such would have been anathema to Stoic beliefs.

Daniel now develops his metaphor through a body-spirit dichotomy. “Gath’ring, incroching, wresting” and the like are strong and troubled links to man’s actions on earth, his “bodies trauailing” (line 114). Yet they link also to “his soules toyle” (line 114), indicating there is a continual struggle between the soul and the body. In these verses Daniel describes a hurried process of vain labour using the metaphors of building rather than describing a metaphorical building per se. His point is more to do with the fact that wise men should be labouring more wisely to obtain spiritual rather than worldly rewards in virtue.

 Gath'ring, incroching, wresting, ioining to,
Destroying, building, decking, furnishing,
Repairing, altring, and so much a do,
To his soules toyle, and bodies trauailing:
And all this doth he little knowing who
Fortune ordaines to haue th'inheriting.                                                            (lines 111 – 16)

When Musophilus mentions “his faire house’ (line117) that has been constructed “on blood and wrong” (line 118), Daniel reminds us of the massive building projects of the 1590s but also asks the question whether so much energy is being put into projects that will, in the end, be quite transient. An attitude of transparent and virtuous humanism, a mental construct, is projected by the physical nature of a building programme, one where “the profanest piles of sinne” (line 122) suggest that the buildings may, after all, be just for show. Here Daniel, the self-confessed “remnant of another age” attacks newness and expresses his preference for older and traditional forms.

And his faire house rais'd hie in enuies eie,
Whose pillars rear'd perhaps on blood and wrong,
The spoyles and pillage of iniquitie,
Who can assure it to continue long?
If rage spar'd not the walls of pietie,
Shal the profanest piles of sinne keepe strong?                                                (lines 117 – 22)

In the persona of Musophilus, but in a voice that becomes the poet’s own as the poem proceeds, Daniel invokes the physical destruction of the monasteries during an earlier reign as a link to the issue that he is really addressing, that of a just transmission of ownership or power. Through the spatial metaphor of physicality, the destruction and subsequent re-making of the churches – the palaces have been “leuell’d with th’earth” (line 125) - to represent an issue of powerful mental significance to Daniel himself, “an orderles / Order pretending change” (lines 127 – 28) - the poet continues to answer his opponent’s concerns.

How manie proude aspiring pallaces
Haue we known made the pray of wrath and pride,
Leuell'd with th'earth, left to forgetfulnes,
Whilst titlers their pretended rights decide,
Or ciuill tumults, or an orderles
Order pretending change of some stronge side?                                   (lines 123 – 28)

Daniel emphasises the role of the text in the creation of memory; through the poet’s work “wrested from time”, men can understand past civilizations. The mind will “speak”; it will become a place that witnesses the defeat of time, a page upon which is recorded the memories and the knowledge of this and other civilizations. In this picture lie the thoughts of those who have laboured to understand the human condition. Commenting on the outstanding contribution that Chaucer made to English letters, his having “wrested from time, / And won vpon the mighty waste of daies”, Daniel directs us to “the speaking picture of the minde” (line 178) and “The extract of the soule that laboured how / To leaue the image of her selfe behind” (lines 179 - 80).

Since Chaucer liu'd, who yet liues and yet shall,
Though (which I grieue to say) but in his last.
Yet what a time hath he wrested from time,
And won vpon the mighty waste of daies,
Vnto th'immortall honor of our clime!                                      (lines 151 – 55)

Aristotle had claimed that poetry will enable virtue. History can only instruct men to virtuous action if it is bolstered by memory. History will record facts but memory will record sensation through poetry. When the feelings that cultural memory releases are added to the factual history man absorbs, virtuous action is demonstrated.

The concept of a literary work as a ‘speaking picture of the mind’ is based on the understanding that to make a poem ‘the extract of the soule’ a poet must hone his powers of expression to such an edge that he can achieve close communion with the great minds of the past.  This implies devoted effort – not just any verse will do. Musophilus constructs a metaphor of literary fame as a reasoned dialogue between learned individuals and, in so doing, suggests a new understanding of the alleged ‘singularitie’ of scholar and poet. We accept that literary fame is sufficient recompense for isolating the laureate poet from his contemporaries, as Musophilus has argued from the beginning. More important now is the intrinsic value of being able to commune with the great minds of the past.

When as perhaps the words thou scornest now
May liue, the speaking picture of the minde,
The extract of the soule that laboured how
To leaue the image of her selfe behind,                          (lines 177 –80)

But, in lines 179 – 80, the soul is described as leaving the body behind. Throughout the poem Musophilus has been deploying Stoic language to present a humanist argument. But in these lines he finds an argument that is unsettling. An element of psychic anxiety creeps into his verse. Poetry (the speaking picture of the mind) will live on in his manuscript, but also now in print. Verse is an integral part of the poet, the extract of his soul, and his labours have revealed his inner secrets to the world. His world, a coterie audience of his friends and patrons, has changed to become the wide world of anyone who can read or be read to. The poet is, at least outwardly, opposed to the public and market-driven world of print since print devalued literature and knowledge by dispersing it in the world and opening it up to the judgment of the masses. This unsettles the poet.

The implications we draw from traditional thought allow us to build a bridge between nature, which is immutable and uniform, and change which is subject to the knowledge that man himself defines. “If it [i.e. knowledge] was obviously cumulative and potentially beneficial, it could also be a sinister force when misapplied and especially when untempered by a respect for historical continuity” (Ferguson 201). Musophilus asserts that knowledge untempered with a respect for historical continuity was responsible for overthrowing “that holy reuerent bound / That parted learning and the laiety” and took away the honour and respect that had traditionally been the due of the clergy:

For since our fathers sinnes puld first to ground
The pale of their disseuered dignitie,
And ouerthrew that holy reuerent bound
That parted learning and the laiety,
And laid all flat in common to confound
The honor and respect of pietie:                                       (lines 689 – 94)

Daniel is interested in the poet’s role in preserving the lessons of history. “Posteritie” is of great significance to him.

Wherein posteritie that loue to know
The iust proportion of our spirits may find.                  (lines 181 – 82)

The poet animates history and creates a memorial to it. Animating history’s lessons for a didactic purpose requires him to clarify precisely what he wishes to make known and he does this by employing images related to the human body. His lines become “the vaines, the Arteries, / And vndecaying life-strings of those harts (183 – 84) that still seek after knowledge, and so poetry becomes the means through which man utilizes memory for the benefit of posterity, and thereby acquires truth. The veins and arteries are the texts – the verse, thoughts, and philosophies - that learned men before him have introduced into a community of scholars. Such a community is bounded, just as the physical human body is enclosed, but within the boundary are networks communicating with the separate parts. The lines in this extract speak in metaphorical terms of Daniel’s ‘proper frame of men’ that conforms to both nature and society. That frame is exclusionary in that membership is available only to those humanists that men of virtuous action consider worthy:

For these lines are the vaines, the Arteries,
And vndecaying life-strings of those harts
That still shall pant, and still shall exercise
The motion spirit and nature both imparts,
And shall, with those aliue so sympathize
As nourisht with their powers inioy their parts.                      (lines 183 – 88)

Daniel saw “blessed letters” as the medium through which history itself spoke to successive generations.

Like Aristotle and Sidney before him, Daniel argues that it is through poetry that history comes alive, its events can be told in metaphors that derive energy and substance from the recorded actions of great men, and reasons for what history records they did can be expressed through the power of verse.

O blessed letters that combine in one,
All ages past, and make one liue with all,
By you we do confer with who are gone,
And the dead liuing vnto councell call:
By you, th'vnborne shall haue communion
Of what we feele, and what doth vs befall.
Soule of the world, knowledge, without thee,
What hath the earth that truly glorious is?
Why should our pride make such a stir to be,
To be forgot? what good is like to this,
To do worthy the writing, and to write
Worthy the reading, and the worlds delight?
And let th'vnnaturall and waiward race
Borne of one wombe with vs, but to our shame,
That neuer read t'obserue, but to disgrace,
Raise all the tempest of their powre to blame;
That puffe of follie neuer can deface,
The worke a happy Genius tooke to frame.                    (lines 189 – 206)

The “blessed letters” metaphor is used to describe the humanist project of learning from the past. It makes no distinction between the dead and the living since the “blessed letters” combine all ages into one.  The dead can call the living, the living can speak to the yet unborn, and understanding of the emotional depths of the living and the thoughts of the ancients can be felt truly and understood fully. Past and future now commune in a perpetual present. While Montaigne would argue that the world is neither in a state of decrepitude nor in a state of progress; it is as it always has been, and nature has neither lost its power nor suddenly produced men of outstanding qualities (Essais III 115 – 16), the assumption about the course of human history which was most widely held in the Renaissance is the cyclical or tide theory. According to this point of view, men and nations and the arts have their origin, rise, flourishing, and decay; when the process is once completed, it does not stop but repeats itself over and over again.

Cyclic alteration is one of Samuel Daniel’s standard themes as in his invocation to his “blessed letters”. His purpose is to celebrate the ‘knowledge’ which instructs and civilizes men through example and design, which sensitizes man to his history through cultural memory. We have “communion” with one another because knowledge is the medium through which all ages are united. Knowledge is the soul of the world and without it there is nothing about the Earth that is glorious. We have nothing to be proud of if all we have is destined to be forgotten,

what good is like to this,
To do worthy the writing, and to write
Worthy the reading, and the world’s delight?               (lines 197 – 200).

It does not matter if some choose to blame since
That puffe of follie neuer can deface,
The worke a happy Genius tooke to frame”                   (lines 205 – 06).

As man grows in experience and knowledge he begins to make decisions that are distinctively his own. If the judgements he makes are sound, he creates a mature and enriched life. In Renaissance times, history’s position was about progress, about seeking to generate old forms such as classical learning; it was about returning in order to progress. Daniel intersects these ideas with the argument that if cultural memory sensitizes history through poetry there will be no need to return since men will have learned virtuous action. Mankind, by these means, obviates the need for always having to go back in time since he will no longer be called upon to repeat his actions. These are not new ideas; their origins are deep in classical culture and some of them have, for the most part, a vigorous history through the Middle Ages. The clue for historical research is not so much to seek original ideas as to discover the cumulative flow of old ideas, and to analyse what new combinations have been made and under the impetus of what new needs and forces. What changes as a result of new demands are the forms of recombination of old ideas.

Ian Lipke became a teacher of primary children in 1958, transferring to secondary schools in 1964. He has taught in schools in remote and metropolitan areas of Queensland, Australia. He left school teaching in 1977 to lecture at the University of Queensland and at Queensland University of Technology. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, he was a deputy principal at several high schools, before retiring to manage his own tutoring business. In 2006, he returned to postgraduate studies through research at the University of Queensland. His whole life has been devoted to academic studies, which he very much enjoys. He is the author of NARGUN.    

Legendary Heroes and Feats: Caradog Freichfras

By Ian Lipke

Caradog Freichfras: A Cymric Arthurian Hero, also known as Caradawc Vreichfras and Caradawc mab Llŷr Marini: Beloved Strong-arm

Caradog Freichfras' name is derived from the Cymric components car- (love), braich, and bras giving 'Beloved Strong-arm' as a translation. Caradog Freichfras is not the only character in Cymric history and mythos to bear this name. There is also Caradog mab Brân and the two characters may well have been confused especially as both, according to the genealogies at least, are descended from Llŷr (Caradog Freichfras being the son of Llŷr Marini and Caradog mab Brân being Llŷr's grandson. Whether these characters were once one and the same or became linked due to the similarities in their names may never be entangled from the extant sources (http://www.celtnet.org.uk/gods_c/caradog_llyr.html).

Much of the legend associated with this hero is to be found in the Trioedd Ynys Prydein where he features in four of the Triads. Some scholars argue that he is a true fifth century historical figure who founded the Morgannwg dynasty but this seems unlikely. The genealogies themselves are full of invented or mythological characters and often they borrow their material from the Trioedd Ynys Prydein. All that is certain is that anything recorded in legend can only be regarded as speculative but, in its own way, informative.

Caradog Feichfras has been named son of Llŷ Marini as one of Arthur's chief counsellors. The Life of St Collen gives the saint's descent as deriving from: Gwynoc ap Kydeboc ap Kowrda ap Kyriadoc Vyraichvyras. There is also a Karadawg in the ancestry of St Tatheus and they may well be the same person, based on the need for descent from an heroic ancestral figure. Another hagiography, the Life of St Padarn associates Caradog Freichfras with the colonization of Brittany, and there is speculation in the literature that a text, though written in French shows many Celtic properties and may well be based on a Breton version of the original Cymric mythos of Caradog.

So much for the tangled web that tell us snippets about this fellow, Caradog. There is a literature surrounding Caradog that is rich in myth. Following http://www.celtnet.org.uk/gods_c/caradog_llyr.html, the first part of a tale involves the 'beheading gamne' which occurs in the tale of Sir Gawain and the Greene Knight as well as the Irish tale of Bricriu's feast.

In Arthur's court, a knight on a grey horse gallops into the great hall and asks Arthur for the gift of a blow on the neck in exchange for another. The knight places his head on a table and stretches out his neck. Only Caradog steps forwards and, raising his sword, severs the knight's head from his body. But the body rises and, retrieving the head, places it back on his shoulders. Then he turns to the king and says that after receiving such a blow it is his turn to deliver another; though it would only be done a year hence. A year hence and the court gathers once again and Caradog prepares himself for the fateful blow. The knight raises his sword and halts. Caradog berates him for delaying and the queen comes in and asks the knight to spare Caradog. The knight brings his sword down but strikes Caradog's neck with the flat of his blade and announces that he is Caradog's father. Caradog does not believe him and wants to fight with him, for his mother would never have slept with a stranger.

But the knight insists that he is Caradog's father though the tale of his begetting would be far too tedious to relate. Yet, tedious or not, the tale is told.

Caradog, King of Vannes, came to Arthur's court at Quinilli and asked the king for a wife. The king gave him Ysave of Carahés, his niece. Unfortunately, a knight who was also the enchanter, Eliavrés, was at court and developed a passion for Ysave.  Eliavrés contrived it that he slept with her for the first three nights of her marriage, while his enchantments ensured that King Caradog slept successively with a greyhound, a sow and a mare, believing each to be his wife. From the liaison of Ysave and Eliavrés, Caradog was conceived. Again Caradog denies that the knight is his father and the knight turns on his heel and rides away. Caradog the Younger embarks on a number of adventures before he returns to Caradog the Elder's court where he reveals his father's cuckoldry. Humiliating vengeance is visited on Eliavrés. He is forced to lie down with farm animals. Thus is Eliavrés locked away from his mistress, Ysave.

Unfortunately, the wizard attempts escape and when Caradog attempts to stop him Eliavrés summons a serpent that entwines itself around Caradog's arm, crippling it and draining his life energy away. Thus was he called Caradog Breifbras (The epithet means 'Short-arm' in French and is an obvious corruption of the original Cymric Breichfras 'Strong-arm'). Nobody can remove the serpent until Caradog's friends, Sir Cador and his sister Guinier, come up with an answer. Caradog is to sit in a tub of vinegar whilst Guinier sits in a tub of milk with her breasts exposed. As the serpent loathes vinegar, it leaps towards Guinier and attaches itself to her breast. Cador kills it with a single blow from his sword but unfortunately, Guinier's nipple is sliced off in the process [this is later replaced with a magical gold one]. Thus is Caradog freed from the serpent though his arm is permanently damaged from that day forth. Caradog plans to marry Guinier and so, King Mangoun of Moraine sends him a drinking horn to expose any infidelity on the part of the wife of he who drinks from it. Caradog takes a draught from the horn and it shows Guinier to be faithful. In some of the stories the horn is replaced by a mantle.

As Wikipedia tells us:

Several versions of the Mantle of Chastity test involving Caradog's wife were translated into Norse during the reign of King Hakon Hakonarson, and a version of the chastity test from The Book of Caradog in the First Continuation of the Old French Perceval is found in the Norse Mottuls Saga. The story survives in the traditional English folk ballad The Boy and the Mantle, collected by Bishop Thomas Percy in Percy's Reliques. The chastity test involving the drinking horn was narrated in the Lai du Cor (1160) by the jongleur Robert Biket, who said that Cirencester was awarded to Caradog for winning the drinking horn through the fidelity of his wife, and that the horn was on display there.

The tales of Caradog are many and it is not too large a leap to suggest that there must have existed a much expanded canon written about Caradog Freichfras than has come down to us. A fascinating tale in any case.

Ian Lipke became a teacher of primary children in 1958, transferring to secondary schools in 1964. He has taught in schools in remote and metropolitan areas of Queensland, Australia. He left school teaching in 1977 to lecture at the University of Queensland and at Queensland University of Technology. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, he was a deputy principal at several high schools, before retiring to manage his own tutoring business. In 2006, he returned to postgraduate studies through research at the University of Queensland. His whole life has been devoted to academic studies, which he very much enjoys. He is the author of NARGUN.    

Curses and Cures: Superstitions

By Ian Lipke

One of the most powerful superstitions among the indigenous people of Australia is the concept of ‘pointing the bone’, often called ‘singing a person to death’. To grasp this concept requires an understanding of the traditional aboriginal mindset. This is most important because of its isolation from that of modern Western thought. We need to realise that religion and the Dreamtime myths are at the core of traditional aboriginal society.

The fact that tribes interacted for trading or ceremonial purposes meant that a common set of religious beliefs about the Dreamtime came into being. The aborigines have lived in Australia for at least 60 000 years, that huge time span allowing the uninterrupted belief in an essential harmony between human beings, the land and the Dreamtime. Ellis (1984), Flood (1983) and Stanner (1979), in important studies explain that the Dreamtime is a number of things unified in one. It is a sacred, heroic time long ago when spirit beings began all phenomena. They set the stars in their courses, created the earth, and all material and spiritual life. They created laws (or rituals) to provide meaning to, and to perpetuate this way of living. They stored spirit power in animals, plants and sacred sites. The Dreaming refers to an aborigine’s awareness and knowledge of the Dreamtime, and is a metaphor suggesting that this awareness is enhanced by dreamy, quiet, vague and visionary fantasy or trance states. The land and rituals serve as reminders.

There is “a oneness of person, body, spirit, ghost, shadow, name, spirit site and totem” (Stanner) in aboriginal beliefs. The Dreamtime is not an historic event but corresponds to the whole of reality. It is eternal. It is “a vertical line in which the past underlies and is within the present” (Elkin, 93). Corroborees are the most common means by which an aborigine acts as, and becomes, a spiritual being or totem.

It is clear that the power of belief is much more deeply rooted in the traditional aboriginal mind than it is in that of Westerners. Messing with that mind is a serious dislocation of traditional beliefs. Rituals involving fear, isolation and suggestion are the province of senior men like the medicine man or sorcerer. (One term is distinguished from the other by his attitude to evil; the medicine man heals, the sorcerer destroys). His power is drawn from faith, ritual and special knowledge of the Dreaming. He is the individual who can examine the mind of the dead to determine whether foul play was involved in a death, and he is the one who can cast spells.

Where a society’s understanding of itself relies pretty much on belief and the mysterious knowledge of a medicine man there is only a small step to accepting that a man can be cursed through the casting of spells by a sorcerer or healed through the powers accepted as the province of the medicine man. Just how this change – from sickness to health or from a state of fitness and joie de vivre to depression and death – can be brought about is not important. What is the central focus here is that a mind that believes that some other man has the power to heal or destroy will respond according to that belief system. One that does not believe is perfectly safe. (In 2004 Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, upset some aboriginal elders to the point that a ‘bone’ was pointed at him. He is still very much alive in 2014).

So what is the process? John Godwin (163 – 76) and Ronald Rose (30 – 36) describe, in separate publications, one case that they have researched. What is detailed here varies little from other accounts. The gist of what they have to say is repeated here in my words. "Bone pointing" is a method of execution that, if prepared carefully, never fails to kill its victim. It consists of a powerful curse and a method of application. The so-called ‘bone’ may be human, kangaroo, emu or even wood. The shape of the killing-bone, or kundela, varies from tribe to tribe. It can be anything from six to nine inches in length and looks like a long needle. At the rounded end, a piece of hair is attached through the hole, and glued into place with a gummy resin from the spinifex bush. Before it can be used, the kundela is charged with a powerful psychic energy in a ritual that is kept secret from women and from those who are not tribe members. To be effective, the ritual must be performed faultlessly, the victim must know he has been boned - gossip, rumour or just a whisper can start the sometimes fatal process of autosuggestion, and he must be born into aboriginal culture and believe absolutely the lore and consequences of being boned.

The bone is then given to the kurdaitcha, who are the tribe's ritual killers.

The name, kurdaitcha, has been used by Europeans to mean the slippers the killers wear while on the hunt. The indigenous name for the slippers in Northern Australia is interlinia, while in Southern Australia the term is intathurta. The slippers are made of cockatoo (or emu) feathers and human hair—they leave no footprints. The killers’ bodies are coated in human blood and kangaroo fur, which is stuck to their bodies. Masks of emu feathers complete the ritualised costume. Kurdaitcha hunt in pairs or threes and are relentless in the pursuit of their quarry.

Once the man is caught, one of the kurdaitcha goes down onto one knee and points the kundela. The victim is said to be frozen with fear and stays to hear the curse, which takes the form of a brief piercing chant. Then, task completed, the kurdaitcha return to their home village and the kundela is ritually burned.

The condemned man may live for several days or even weeks. But, he believes so strongly in the curse, that he will surely die. It is said that the ritual loading of the kundela creates a "spear of thought" which pierces the victim when the bone is pointed at him. It is as if an actual spear has been thrust at him.

The ‘enlightened’ Westerner may have some sympathy for another point of view. From 1969 to 1980, H.D. Eastwell, a psychiatrist, studied aboriginal men in Arnhem Land. Sorcery syndrome (gross fear of death) was common. Symptoms were agitation, sleeplessness, visions, and protruding eyeballs. Fear was precipitated by trauma, for example, death or serious illness of a close relative, or a dispute over wives. A few victims died. Eastwell (1982) concluded that since the victim was outcast and deprived of water, dehydration rather than fright may have caused death (5 – 18).

A sorceror’s curse can be a deadly weapon. It works because a deeply-entrenched belief system is violated by an inimical intruder. Making and using the bone is said to be dangerous knowledge and unless the incantations and movements are precise according to ritual the curse can rebound with devastating results. The only ways to effect a cure are the retraction of the curse by the sorcerer who laid it, or the effects nullified by one at least equally well versed in the lore. Without this intervention, the victim’s future is grim.

References

Eastwell, H.D. (1982). Voodoo death and the mechanism for dispatch of the dying in East Arnhem. American Anthropologist, 84, 5-18.

Elkin, A P (1969). Elements of Australian Aboriginal philosophy. Oceania, 40, 85-98.

Ellis, R (1984). Aboriginal Australia; Past and present. Sydney: Shakespeare Head/Golden Press.

Flood, J. (1983). Archeology of the Dreamtime. Sydney: Collins.

Godwin, John. Unsolved: The World of the Unknown, pp. 163–76 Rose, Ronald. Living Magic, pp. 30–36

Stanner, W (1979). The Dreaming. In, White man go no dreaming, 23-40. Canberra: ANU Press.

Ian Lipke became a teacher of primary children in 1958, transferring to secondary schools in 1964. He has taught in schools in remote and metropolitan areas of Queensland, Australia. He left school teaching in 1977 to lecture at the University of Queensland and at Queensland University of Technology. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, he was a deputy principal at several high schools, before retiring to manage his own tutoring business. In 2006, he returned to postgraduate studies through research at the University of Queensland. His whole life has been devoted to academic studies, which he very much enjoys. He is the author of NARGUN.                       

The Battlefield: Culloden 16 February 1746

By Donald Lawie and Ian Lipke

The last pitched battle to be fought on British soil was a sorry affair. The Jacobite army of Prince Charles Edward Stuart had fought a successful campaign but now they were tired, unfed and unpaid. On the other hand the Hanoverian army commanded by Prince William, Duke of Cumberland and second son of German King George of Great Britain, was rested, well-supplied and their morale was high.

            The Jacobites had scattered in search of food – not in plentiful supply in northwest Scotland after a hard winter but William’s men were abundantly supplied by the British Navy. Charles had a sharp argument with Lord George Murray, the Jacobites’ general, and was determined to make a stand against the Hanoverians on a ground of his choosing. Murray pointed out that the chosen site – Drummossie Moor at Culloden – was unsuitable for the traditional Highland Charge, but Charles would not be swayed. The chosen ground sloped slightly upwards so that the Highlanders had to run uphill; melting snow had turned much of it into a bog. The ground was covered by heather with a few trees. Such a field was suitable for a cavalry charge but Charles’s cavalry were pitifully few.

            Culloden is about ten kilometres north-west of Inverness, the Capital of the Highlands, situated at the northern end of Loch Ness. The area was still in winter in February and the Jacobite/Highlanders had no suitable accommodation.

 They could only muster about 5,000 men against William’s 9,400 – a third of them veteran dragoons. William’s artillery were experienced regulars, Charles’s a scratch team of inexperienced volunteers.

            The standard Highland battle tactic was the Charge : each kilted man was armed with a musket (which he fired and dropped as the charge began), a pistol, a dirk (long dagger) in the left hand which supported a hide-covered oak shield (a targe) and in the raised right hand the razor-sharp, metre long broadsword made from German steel. The men ran, screaming, in packed ranks at the opposing lines; the descending broadsword could sever the shoulder or arm of the unfortunate opposing soldier.

            The two armies faced off in the classical manner – lines of infantry, with guns interspersed in the front line and cavalry as a backup. The Jacobite artillery opened the battle with some wild shooting but soon ran out of ammunition. Their opposition replied coolly with repeated discharges of deadly round shot into the closed ranks of Jacobites. The one-sided duel persisted for twenty minutes until the clansmen, led by the Atholls and Camerons, surged forward in the charge. This normally unstoppable tactic was blunted by the length of their run, boggy ground, the opposition artillery changing to grapeshot, and finally a new bayonet drill devised to counter the Highland raised sword and protecting targe. Cumberland had trained his infantry, armed with musket and triangle- shaped bayonet, to not face the Highlander charging at him but to turn half right and present his bayonet to the unprotected right armpit of the one beside him. This entailed absolute confidence in the soldier to his left, who had to bayonet the Highlander to his front. The newly-devised drill worked well, to the discomfiture of the Highlanders.

            Casualties were light in the Hanoverian army but over 1,000 Jacobites fell on the field. Many more were killed in the days and months to follow as William relentlessly pursued a policy of extermination, determined to eliminate all followers of the Jacobite cause.

            Two hundred and fifty plus years later, feelings in Highland Scotland still run hot at the mention of the Butcher of Cumberland and there is a lingering, romantic dream that one day history may be reversed.  I visited Culloden Moor in 1997, walked the clearly delineated lines, and played a Lament on my bagpipes while standing on the spot from where Charles misdirected the battle.  The site has changed little; a modern highway runs along one side, there is an interpretive centre with a video (which I did not watch) and the usual gimcrack souvenirs. A small forest covers part of the battlefield, there are markers showing where the different clans fought and fell, and flags fly to mark the front line of each army. It is easy to reconstruct the battle in one’s mind.

Culloden put an end to the aspirations of the House of Stuart to regain the British throne, which they had lost through overweening pride and stubbornness – just as Charles lost the last battle for similar reasons. Charles lived out his life in Rome, devising ineffectual schemes and steadily drank himself to death.

Donald Lawie is a freelance military historian who writes on his favourite theme, warfare.  His work has been published in such publications as the Australian War Memorial’s “Wartime” and the Australian Military History Society’s “Sabretache”.

He says, "There is a family tradition that our ancestors fought for Charles and the name “Charles” was my father’s; it is my and my son’s second name. I trust that this small tribute to the House of Stuart will endure for generations to come."

Ian Lipke became a teacher of primary children in 1958, transferring to secondary schools in 1964. He has taught in schools in remote and metropolitan areas of Queensland, Australia. He left school teaching in 1977 to lecture at the University of Queensland and at Queensland University of Technology. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, he was a deputy principal at several high schools, before retiring to manage his own tutoring business. In 2006, he returned to postgraduate studies through research at the University of Queensland. His whole life has been devoted to academic studies, which he very much enjoys. He is the author of NARGUN.                          

Author Interview & Book Giveaway: Ian Lipke on NARGUN

This week, we're pleased to welcome author Ian Lipke with his latest novel, NARGUN. Join us again on Sunday for an author interview, with more details about the story behind the story. The author will offer a free print copy of Nargun to a lucky blog visitor from Australia.  Be sure to leave your email address in the comments of today's author interview for a chance to win. Winner(s) are contacted privately by email. Here's the blurb.

For many the turbulent history that shaped early Australia has been forgotten. The victorious wrote the history books, and the voices of the vanquished were silenced. The invasion and conquest of the land and the near genocide of the indigenous people were events that rarely receive mention.

Ellie Matthews' academic research drew her to the culture and history of the first inhabitants of Southeast Queensland. One day she receives a poorly written letter that causes her to drive over rough roads to meet with an old aboriginal man who tells her the story of Nargun, a man of the forgotten Galanga people, one of the greatest aboriginal warriors of his day, a war chief caught up in the collision between two cultures and two worlds. In Garunna's tale, we hear of an almost forgotten race…the awful clash of white and black cultures…the story of the spirited leader and his fight for his people. We hear about the women who loved him and the men who followed him.

In Garunna’s story, Nargun, a prince among men, once more leads his people into battle while, at the same time, revealing the path of forbidden love that rewrites Ellie’s own history. 

**Q & A with Ian Lipke**

What was your motivation for writing this story?

It all began as a short story that friends overseas thought should be turned into a novel. Very little has been written that delves into the vast knowledge of our country which the indigenous aborigines possessed. Certainly no novel before mine tries to tell a story based on their lives as nomads. Their culture goes back 40 000 years but its richness has been sidelined by white Australians.

At what period of time and in what geographical area is this story set. Why there?

The location needed to be a dramatic one that I could exploit for story-telling purposes. I chose the Glasshouse Mountains area of South East Queensland, Australia for that reason and because I lived in the area as a boy.

The time was fixed by the years when white settlers moved into that area viz. the 1820s to 1830s. My book is set at the very beginning of the period. I tied the story to the cruel Captain Logan (killed by convicts in 1824).

What made you feel you could write a novel about these people?

Having grown up in the country I have always admired the aboriginal respect for the land and, as a teacher, I realized that all history books and novels are written from a white perspective. When I wrote this book, no white person in my part of Queensland showed the slightest interest in aboriginal culture. I wanted a more inclusive Australia and I wanted to stir up debate.

What response have you had from readers of your book?

I’ve actually been very pleased. No matter how often or how loudly I protest that my story is fiction, readers congratulate me on the apparent authenticity of the aboriginal customs and events described within the covers. I published the book late last year and have already sold more copies than I ever thought possible. What’s more, none of the anticipated criticism has surfaced. People who have bought Nargun include university academics, teachers, administrators in adult education institutions in Queensland and overseas. The book has been reviewed positively at the following addresses:

http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5851

http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=5692

Is there any dispute among authorities about the facts of your story?

Yes. Martin Knox alludes to a different interpretation in his review. He says that most authorities believe that the Australian aborigines as a race were a peace-loving people, very different from my warriors. There is some support for my view in academic circles, and in all fairness, Knox brings this support to the fore. However, I maintain in a prominent spot at the front of the book that I set out to tell a story. The needs of the tale-telling would always be what is important.

Why did you select that particular passage from your book for blog readers and other participants to read?

I could have selected a passage that featured a large number of skills at which the aborigines excelled. That would have run the risk of blurring the detail. I chose this particular passage because of its narrow focus on a specific skill, that of tracking. This has always been perceived as a particularly aboriginal skill.

Have you published any other works?

Yes. Back in the 1970s I co-wrote two history textbooks for junior high school students. Since Nargun, I have self-published a crime novel called Lest Evil Prevail, also set on the Sunshine Coast, and I am working on another crime novel at present which is set in Brisbane.

Nargun may be purchased at www.booklocker.com/books/7462.html

Lest Evil Prevail at www.booklocker.com/books/7512.html as print books for $USD22.99 or as eBooks for $USD2.99.

About the Author

Ian Lipke became a teacher of primary children in 1958, transferring to secondary schools in 1964. He has taught in schools in remote and metropolitan areas of Queensland, Australia. He left school teaching in 1977 to lecture at the University of Queensland and at Queensland University of Technology. Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, he was a deputy principal at several high schools, before retiring to manage his own tutoring business. In 2006, he returned to postgraduate studies through research at the University of Queensland. His whole life has been devoted to academic studies, which he very much enjoys.

He has co-written two textbooks for older school children, a novel called Nargun that depicts aboriginal-white confrontation in early nineteenth century Queensland, and at the time of writing was president of the University of the Third Age, Brisbane. While carrying out his administrative duties, he has written and published a crime novel called Lest Evil Prevail. A third novel, Family Matters, has been accepted for publication. His books are available for purchase at www.booklocker.com.

In addition to his administrative responsibilities he coordinates the ‘words’ section of M/C Reviews, a highly commended online journal that is the brain-child of Dr Axel Bruns of Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. In 2014, he conducted a seminar on the self-publishing industry, an area that he has made his own.

Ian has a wife, two children, and two grandchildren.