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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Readers of ME will know that birds are talking signposts in the Ancient world.....
Orthodoxy, on the other hand, (is that a falconry expression?) has interpreted the significance of the birds of prey in terms of the medieval love for hunting. It appears that both Anglo Saxons and Normans had a love of falconry.
Many of the panels feature hawks and falcons....In one of the panels a hawk is sitting on King Harold’s arm. However, towards the end after William takes control, the bird is transferred over to the Bastard......Geddit.......it's showing who's boss...there has been a transfer of power.
There again, this might have actually happened, that is, if the Bayeux is indeed a newsreel, and if both Anglo Saxons and Normans loved hunting......perhaps the hawk on each of the pretenders' wrist in different panels is a simple coincidence?...
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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There is some agreement that stitched into the tapestry are some fables.
We think of these as belonging to Aesop, although there is no record of a historical Aesop.
| aesop wrote: |
A Crow having stolen a bit of cheese, perched in a tree and held it in her beak. A Fox, seeing this, longed to possess the cheese himself, and by a wily stratagem succeeded. "How handsome is the Crow," he exclaimed, in the beauty of her shape and in the fairness of her complexion! Oh, if her voice were only equal to her beauty, she would deservedly be considered the Queen of Birds!" This he said deceitfully; but the Crow, anxious to refute the reflection cast upon her voice, set up a loud caw and dropped the cheese. The Fox quickly picked it up, and thus addressed the Crow: "My good Crow, your voice is right enough, but your wit is wanting.†|
The fox and the crow appears three times. You would think that the crow would learn.......
http://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/aesops-fables-and-bayeux-tapestry.html
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Re Mr Fox, are there any scenes of hunting in the tapestry?
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Harold travels around with the apparatus of hunting.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The symbolism of the Hawks on the regents wrist, within the Harold story is quite persuasive.
Perhaps it hold a key?
The Egyptians worshiped many gods, one was revered as both protector and ruler, known as the "One far above", Horus had the head of a hawk.
The Egyptians believed that the pharaoh was the 'living Horus'. They marched behind the hawk standard.
Read through the Horus story and see if it sounds familiar
| wiki wrote: |
Arguably the most important part of the Chester Beatty Papyrus I is the mythological story of The Contendings of Horus and Seth which deals with the battles between Horus and Set to see who will be the successor to the throne of Osiris. The specific time of the Contendings is a period during which the fighting has temporarily stopped and Seth and Horus have brought their case before the Ennead. Throughout the story, Horus and Seth have various competitions to see who will be king. Horus beats Seth each time. The beginning of the story is a sort of a trial when both Set and Horus plead their cases and the deities of the Ennead state their opinions. Later in the story, the combat starts up again between Horus and Seth and finally, the situation is resolved when Horus is determined to be rightful king of Egypt. |
Is it just me?
Postscript.
In this battle, Horus lost one of his eyes. The eye was later restored to him and became a symbol of protection....
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I recently posted that I thought that the various "Harold" stories were redivivus. Ish came a up with an interesting response.
| Ishmael wrote: | | Wile E. Coyote wrote: | | The story is definitely redivivus, think about the meeting with Hood and Little John by the river. It's really a replay of Jesus and John the Baptist. |
Yes. It is! The wholes story is the Christ myth.But Robyin Hood, as I have shown elsewhere, is actually the King in disguise. The story is as follows:
A king has two sons. The second, evil son usurps the throne while the other is away. The second son will gain legitimacy only by marrying the wife of the legitimate brother. She refuses. Many years go by until finally she is threatened into agreeing to a marriage.
In the meantime, a mysterious outlaw returns to the kingdom. He gains entry to the wedding where, just before the ceremony is complete, he reveals himself and kills his brother and his supporters.
The two sons are Christ and Lucifer. Lucifer has usurped control of the Earth but his brother has already returned in secret. The battle has begun but, on the day of Armageddon, Christ will reveal himself and destroy his brother forever. |
Does Christ=Horus? Does Seth = Satan ?
A bit of whirring later from my silicon friend, found 100s of websites all denying the (c)hrist horus link.
Clearly your good christian folk, are a bit unhappy with all of this.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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The first proponent of the Horus=Christ link/myth was a little known poet and spiritualist called Gerald Massey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Massey
Suffice it to say that Gerald makes an excellent disreputable source, wildly overstating his case using traditional evidence based approaches ........without seeing what is simple and obvious.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Just received Axis of Heaven (ordered in August!) by Paul Broadhurst who's been investigating the Greenwich Meridian, and found a paragraph on Harold. According to Broadhurst, Harold's grave is but a few yards from the meridian which runs through Waltham Abbey, and he muses on the parallel with Odin who, in Norse mythology, exchanged an eye in order to gain wisdom.
He also makes a connection with Wal and Val as in Valhalla, resting place of fallen warriors ... it's possible but unconvincing since there are other non-Valhalla Walthams (two of which are just off the A4 in Berkshire, Waltham St Lawrence and White Waltham, villages formerly owned by Waltham Abbey).
The story of Harold being buried at Waltham Abbey appears to have originated with a Benedictine monk, William of Malmesbury (1095 - c. 1143), who, like 'Gerald of Wales', was half-Norman, half-English and travelled around writing histories of abbeys and monasteries. His Deeds of the English Bishops (1125) covers the period 597 to the time he was writing. Rather oddly, he's considered the finest English historian of the twelfth century (or so Milton thought) despite severe 'shortcomings', e.g. (from Wiki):
| Much of William's work on Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, is thought to derive from a first-hand account from Coleman, a contemporary of Wulfstan. William merely translated the document from Old English into Latin. William's works are still considered invaluable and, despite these shortcomings, he remains one of the most celebrated English chroniclers of the twelfth century. |
The story goes that Harold didn't just lose an eye. His head and a thigh bone were severed from his body, allegedly, body parts that, as we know, are highly symbolic. So did William of Malmesbury make these details up? He's obviously a somewhat unreliable source as Wiki makes clear in its summary of the Deeds of the English Bishops
| For this vivid descriptive history of abbeys and bishoprics, dwelling upon the lives of the English prelates saints, notably the learned wonder-working Aldhelm, abbot of Malmesbury, William travelled widely in England. He stayed at Glastonbury Abbey for a time, composing a work on its antiquity for his friend, the abbot Henry of Blois who was also the Bishop of Winchester. (Among the first works to mention SS Fagan and Deruvian, its present form is notably marred by anachronistic forgeries and additions.) |
The Deeds seem to have been made up to some extent, or at least 'interesting' details were added:
| Although William's concurrent work, the Chronicle of the Kings of England, drew heavily on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for both structure and content, in the History of the English Bishops the author had no ready guide and had to set up a new structure for the work. This he did by arranging his material by diocese and grouping the dioceses by the ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdoms they had belonged to. Within the description and history of each diocese, William wrote about the bishops and monasteries, plus any additional interesting information |
The work was divided into five books, at least there's a MS with Book Five belonging to Magdalen College, Oxford that's miraculously well preserved and indeed autographed by William
| This is the only medieval manuscript in which Book Five survives in full although there are a handful of later copies |
Strangely though, when the work was printed, in 1596, it contained only four books
| The first printed edition of the History of the English Bishops was produced by Sir Henry Savile in 1596. He used Cambridge University Library's MS Ff.1.25.1 as his source and so it contains only the first four books.[14] The source manuscript itself was a descendant of British Library Royal 13 D V, itself a copy of Magdalen College, Oxford MS lat. 172 |
Book Five is devoted to Malmesbury Abbey and its founding abbot. Checking monastic charters is usually laborious but the Malmesbury page immediately listed fifty pre-Norman charters, between 675 and 1065, which would be a staggering number even for a larger religious house than Malmesbury. Malmesbury was however famous in the eleventh century for its library; unsurprisingly, the library 'fell into decline' and not many books have survived.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Hatty wrote: | | Just received Axis of Heaven (ordered in August!) by Paul Broadhurst who's been investigating the Greenwich Meridian, ... |
All good things come to those that wait?
Maybe he's been distracted by setting up his website?
http://axisofheaven.com/
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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If Harold = Odin , what wisdom did Harold gain?
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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William of Malmesbury, rather oddly, is considered a rubbish historian by the Welsh, just because they refused him a job and then he said nasty things about them.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Hatty wrote: | | Much of William's work on Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, is thought to derive from a first-hand account from Coleman, a contemporary of Wulfstan. William merely translated the document from Old English into Latin. William's works are still considered invaluable and, despite these shortcomings, he remains one of the most celebrated English chroniclers of the twelfth century. |
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Who did the underlining?
But I too find that odd. I have an irrational suspicion of this. If it existed, why would it need translating into Latin?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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My underlining, sorry.
I didn't know the Welsh disliked William. Perhaps they felt left out, his major works being 'Deeds of the English Kings' and 'Deeds of the English Bishops'....reason enough for getting the hump?
William's Deeds of the Kings of England purported to cover the entire Dark Ages, from 449 to 1127. So what happened to Anglo-Welsh history? According to Welsh chronicles and annals compiled or disseminated at St David's as 'Annales Cambriae', there was quite a lot going on (mainly battles, devastation and death), if they are to be believed. As usual the originals are no longer extant.
| The earliest is a 12th-century presumed copy of a mid-10th century original; later editions were compiled in the 13th century. Despite the name, the Annales Cambriae record not only events in Wales, but also events in Ireland, Cornwall, England, Scotland and sometimes further afield, though the focus of the events recorded especially in the later two-thirds of the text is Wales. | |
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Hatty wrote: | | I didn't know the Welsh disliked William. |
Err, well, that's my interpretation, as per our TME thread
http://www.themegalithicempire.nl/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1695&start=220
Except that others say that Geoffrey was a Bishop of St Asaph
| On 21 February 1152, at Lambeth Archbishop Theobald consecrated Geoffrey as Bishop of St Asaph, having ordained him a priest at Westminster 10 days before. "There is no evidence that he ever visited his see," writes Lewis Thorpe, "and indeed the wars of Owain Gwynedd make this most unlikely." He appears to have died between 25 December 1154 and 24 December 1155, in 1155 according to Welsh chronicles, when his apparent successor, Richard, took office. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_of_Monmouth
Theophilus Evans :
| He is best known for his work Drych y Prif Oesoedd (Mirror of the Early Centuries) (1716) where with some literary talent but with an absence of critical method (mixing history with legend) he endeavours to justify the independent origins of British Christianity. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theophilus_Evans
| He published a number of books on history and religion . Two prime objects are to be found in all his work — the glorification of the nobility and antiquity of the Welsh nation and the upholding of the Church of England form of Protestanism as the true Christian religion. His most celebrated works are Drych y Prif Oesoedd , 1716 , 2nd ed. 1740 (many subsequent editions), a prejudiced and uncritical but very entertaining version of the early history of Wales , and A History of Modern Enthusiasm , 1752 , 2nd ed. 1757 , where he seeks to prove that all who turn their backs on the Church of England are secret Papists . Because of its lively style and its wealth of incisive phrases and striking metaphors, the Drych is regarded as one of the classics of Welsh prose. |
http://wbo.llgc.org.uk/en/s-EVAN-THE-1693.html
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Just started on William of Newburgh, from the 1190s he is pretty critical of Geoffrey of Monmouth, for making things up.....
"only a person ignorant of ancient history would have any doubt about how shamelessly and impudently he lies in almost everything." |
William on the other hand was more of a stickler for accuracy.
"It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally (I know not by what agency) from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living, and again return to the tomb, which of its own accord spontaneously opened to receive them, did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact, to the truth of which there is abundant testimony." |
William proceeds to outline a number of cases. One concerns a scoundrel on the run, who makes a choice to get married and then, becomes suspicious about his wife. Our outlaw, hatches a plan and hides in the rafters of his bedroom and waits.Human nature being what it is, he caught her in an act of infidelity with a local young man. Unfortunately at this point (was he getting excited?) he accidentally fell to the floor mortally wounding himself, and died a few days later.
This might have been construed "ill fortune" but matters now really take a turn for the worst.
As William describes it.
| A Christian burial, indeed, he received, though unworthy of it; but it did not much benefit him: for issuing, by the handiwork of Satan, from his grave at night-time, and pursued by a pack of dogs with horrible barkings, he wandered through the courts and around the houses while all men made fast their doors, and did not dare to go abroad on any errand whatever from the beginning of the night until the sunrise, for fear of meeting and being beaten black and blue by this vagrant monster. |
A few dead townsfolk later......
Thereupon snatching up a spade of but indifferent sharpness of edge, and hastening to the cemetery, they began to dig; and whilst they were thinking that they would have to dig to a greater depth, they suddenly, before much of the earth had been removed, laid bare the corpse, swollen to an enormous corpulence, with its countenance beyond measure turgid and suffused with blood; while the napkin in which it had been wrapped appeared nearly torn to pieces. The young men, however, spurred on by wrath, feared not, and inflicted a wound upon the senseless carcass, out of which incontinently flowed such a stream of blood, that it might have been taken for a leech filled with the blood of many persons. Then, dragging it beyond the village, they speedily constructed a funeral pile; and upon one of them saying that the pestilential body would not burn unless its heart were torn out, the other laid open its side by repeated blows of the blunted spade, and, thrusting in his hand, dragged out the accursed heart. This being torn piecemeal, and the body now consigned to the flames...
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