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Legend (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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It's a rule here at the Magic Circle that we never reveal how the tricks are done. Except Ishmael. He refuses even to reveal the trick.

PS I don't know where royalty fits into your overall scheme, Wiley, but this may be an opportune moment to remind members that the policy qua The Wedding is, as always in these matters, 'respectful ignoral'.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
I don't know where royalty fits into your overall scheme, Wiley,


I am glad you ask.

Mick Harper wrote:
this may be an opportune moment to remind members that the policy qua The Wedding is, as always in these matters, 'respectful ignoral'.


Quite, I think it's best to leave it to AE's newly appointed "all things Royal" specialist correspondent.

Ahem.....

"AE humbly commends the Prince for marrying Ms Merkel. Love marriages have tended not to work for the Windsors, and these grand strategic alliances are just what we will need in the post Brexit world. It is the most noble personal sacrifice on the part of the young Harry. I hope the nation appreciates him more. Let's now raise a glass, and hang out the bunting."

"To the happy couple."
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
I was thinking it was pretty strange that no one was even looking at Mullah Omar. I eventually came to realise that this was because there was nothing to see.



THERE! AT LAST!!! You finally said something!

Do you not realize that you've never actually shared your thinking with anyone? You do this constantly. Posting the scattered thoughts of an apparent schizophrenic. I gave up on reading your posts ages ago, presuming you mad. But there is something to this madness, if it isn't exactly method.

Why can't you just say what you think? Or at least build to a thesis and reveal it at some point?
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Wile E. Coyote


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Ishmael wrote:

Do you not realize that you've never actually shared your thinking with anyone? You do this constantly. Posting the scattered thoughts of an apparent schizophrenic. I gave up on reading your posts ages ago, presuming you mad. But there is something to this madness, if it isn't exactly method.

Why can't you just say what you think? Or at least build to a thesis and reveal it at some point?


I know where I am heading, maybe to the canyon...maybe not. It will be evidence based, but it will contain a lot of work with fuzzy thinking, and there will be errors and guesswork which folks won't like.

I don't want to go down the route of abolishing all history before the 15th Century (Or should that now be 17th Century!), or abolishing a Dark Age gap (300 years or otherwise) as to my way of thinking there are plenty of knowledgeable folks out there who can do this sort of project with a lot more style, elan and of course accuracy than Wiley.

Godspeed to all those good folks working against orthodoxy.
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Mick Harper
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Midsomer Murders revealed a possible origin of the 'Curse of the Ninth (Legion)'. In music the 'Curse of the Ninth (Symphony)' is the legend that composers always die soon after theirs is first performed. This is presumably a mid to late nineteenth century coining. Does that fit?

And what other 'ninth' legends are out there?
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Hatty
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There is apparently an Anglo-Saxon legend of The Seven Sleepers. It seems to have a Syrian origin, or connection.

Here's what a medievalist wrote about it

The story goes that, when Christians were persecuted under the Emperor Decius, seven men went into a cave to pray, and afterwards fell asleep; on awaking, they sent one of the group down into Ephesus, who found that churches abounded. For two hundred years had now passed, and Christianity was now the official religion of the Roman Empire. It’s sort of like a late antique time-travel narrative. The story spread across the Christian world.

Though the legend is believed to have first been written in Greek, the earliest surviving copies of the legend are Syriac, from the fifth or sixth century. In the late sixth century, Frankish historian Gregory of Tours wrote two Latin versions: at the end of one of them, in his Gloria martyrum, he mentions that he translated the text with the aid of a Syrian. Sebastian Brock speculates that this person may have been one of the Syrian merchants known to have been in the Rhone valley at the time.

She says two versions existed in Anglo-Saxon England, one author is anonymous and the other is our old friend Aelfric (of the Homilies). My interest was piqued by her remark that a twelfth-century addition inserted the Sleepers' names into an eighth-century prayer book. There are other aspects which raise alarm bells, not to her obviously

I have written about the eleventh-century handbook known as Ælfwine’s Prayerbook. Fol. 14r of this manuscript (specifically London, British Library Cotton Titus D. xxvii: it’s now divided into two) appears to have originally been left blank, probably so that the table of Easter dates could begin on a double-page spread. So the scribe wrote this onto it:

    These are the names of the seven sleepers, who slept for 373 years: Maximianus, Malchus, Martinianus, Dionisius, Iohannes, Serapion, Constantinus.

https://forthewynnblog.wordpress.com/2017/08/14/in-the-seven-sleepers-den/

They don't sound like Syrian names but at least they're vaguely legendary. Could the legend be an Anglo-Norman coded reference to four hundred years of missing history?
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Mick Harper
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appears to have originally been left blank, probably so that the table of Easter dates could begin on a double-page spread. So the scribe wrote this onto it:

This is probably the smoking gun. We are always being told that parchment is so valuable they had to re-use it so leaving a blank page is certainly rather luxuriant behaviour on the part of the 'original' scribe. In passing you ought to check what 'dates of Easter' are and why they need a double page spread. If it's a list of years and when Easter occurs in each then lo! it reveals the exact year the manuscript was purportedly written.

The presumption must be that it's the other way round and the Easter date double page spread is for the purpose of creating the blank page. But why the 'seven sleepers' were written on it is something that needs discovering. Since the other sources are the usual drivel, this may actually be their debut on the world stage.
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Hatty
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The seven sleepers has an Arthurian whiff, but anyway it sounds very much like a medieval trope.

Aelfwine's Prayer Book, in two volumes, is said to have been written in the 1030's but it isn't certain the book(s) belonged to him

Ælfwine’s ownership of the prayerbook has been deduced from references to him throughout both manuscripts.

Further on an Aelfwine mention is quoted, of an 'extremely rare' style of prayer

But what really sets Ælfwine’s Prayerbook apart from other Anglo-Saxon manuscripts is one prayer in a group of some which use the first person singular pronoun, ideal for private prayer:

    Deus, qui es iustorum gloria et misericordia peccatorum, pietatem tuam humili prece deposco, ut me, famulum/am tuum/am .ÆLFWINE., benignus respicias.

    God, you who are the glory of the just and the mercy of sinners, I ask your love with a humble prayer, that you may graciously consider me, your servant Ælfwine.


Juxtaposing devotional and scientific material isn't unusual but dates, not to mention names, seem inexplicably jumbled. For instance, the same British Library medievalist tweeted about a
15th-century drawing of St Catherine of Alexandria, added to a 12th/13th-century scientific compilation

The British Library has a description of this 12th-century manuscript which contains several later additions dated 15th century

The manuscript contains a number of later additions:ff. 1v-2v: A list of books added in the fifteeth century. ff. 6v, 103v, 108r, 108v: Inscriptions in an unidentified later hand. Decoration: 10 large decorated initials in green, blue, red and gold (ff. 7r, 16r, 35v, 43v, 56v, 88r, 88v, 95r, 95v, 104r); smaller initials in red, green or blue throughout, sometimes with penwork decoration and pen-flourishing in another colour. Numerous astrological tables and diagrams throughout the manuscript. The manuscript contains a few added drawings: a drawing of St Catherine of Alexandria, added in the 15th century (f. 1r); a faint sketch of a man holding a book

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Arundel_MS_377

Several Arabic names are included as well as a 'Book on the Astrolabe' though, according to Wiki, astrolabes don't appear to feature in the Dark Ages unless you include the Islamic Golden Age as dark.

It was used in classical antiquity, the Islamic Golden Age, the European Middle Ages, and the Renaissance

I don't quite see why a 15th century drawing would be added to a manuscript purportedly written some three hundred years earlier.
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Mick Harper
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The seven sleepers has an Arthurian whiff, but anyway it sounds very much like a medieval trope.

Well. the obvious starting point are the seven names themselves: Maximianus, Malchus, Martinianus, Dionisius, Iohannes, Serapion, Constantinus.
Two of them are straight out 'Megalithic': Martin and Dionysus
Two of them are 'British' emperors: Maximius and Constantine
One is bi-curious: John
and two I leave to you to explore: Malchus and Serapion.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Wiley is currently researching the Great Heathen Army, this brings together many disparate threads.....a lost army, coins, foreign silver, vikings, new methods of carbon dating and a early Anglo Saxon church.

All Help gratefully received.

Let's start at the very beginning, which is normally a great place to start. The only problem with the beginning is that we work backwards, we are working away from the light towards darkness, and in this case we are travelling a long way back. By the time we go back before the 10th century, we can't see at all, so I must take out my torch. That is better.

St Wystan's church, Repton, is the resting place of Mercian kings.

A very informative site talks you sketches out the phases from 700. It is probably the oldest surviving AS church in England.

http://reptonchurch.uk/Buildings.htm
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Hatty
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Every single Anglo-Saxon charter that mentions Repton (or, rather, a spelling variation thereof) is spurious, say historians. The spellings are themselves contentious

The first reference to Repton is questionable and depends upon an interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon form of its name. It is recorded in the later Saxon period and Domesday as Hrepandum but an unlocated place name called Hrepingas occurs in various early charters. Stenton has argued etymologically that Hrepandum and Hrepingas are the same place, although it must be said that this view is not universally accepted. Sawyer, for example, places Hrepingas at Rippingale in Lincolnshire.

Still, Repton's church is supposed to contain an Anglo-Saxon crypt, housing the remains of St Wystan and 'Mercian royalty', so deserves a bit of digging. And digging was done, from 1974 - 1993, leading to the discovery of a drain, provisionally dated 7th century

The first element of the current church is the crypt, the exact dating of which is disputed but a Middle Saxon date is certain.

Clearly the date is not certain since it is “disputed”. What ecclesiastical significance does a drain have? It’s not even within the church precinct anyway!

The excavators identified five distinct areas of burial, the earliest of which dates from the 8th century and lies to the north of the current church, so south of its predecessor. This cemetery had two phases. Later burials associated with the Viking occupation of Repton in 873/4 AD were centred on a stone built structure that appeared to date from this earlier phase

Oh dear, 'appeared to date' is pretty weak. Time to get scientific help for the actual burials

Although numismatic evidence corroborated the belief that these were the remains of the Great Army, radiocarbon results have tended to disagree

Unsurprisingly, science is at odds with the 'historical' record, which in this case is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

The bones were hypothesised to be those of the Viking Great Army that overwintered in Repton in AD 873–874, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. A number of burials were found with distinctly Scandinavian-style grave goods.


Notice the term 'Scandinavian-style'. It's a way of avoiding having to say there are no dateable Scandinavian goods here but stylistically you can infer a Great Heathen Army burial site. But not scientifically

In 1995, a set of 22 samples were AMS 14C dated at the Van de Graaf Laboratorium at the University of Utrecht. Terrestrial calibration of these determinations resulted in dates that, in many cases, were either inconsistent with the archaeological evidence, or yielded imprecise calibrated ranges.
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Hatty
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Regarding the dating of burials at Repton, the archaeologists have resorted to 'marine reservoir effects' or MRE's which we came across in the context of trying to date whale bone (Franks Casket). It calls into question the accuracy of radiocarbon dating when the lab results disagree with historians' conclusions (based on docs) but doesn't appear to matter overmuch with, say, peat bog bodies or preserved timbers in prehistoric sites as at Flag Fen or the Sweet Track.

Another explanation for the apparent disparity between the radiocarbon dates and the archaeological evidence may lie in a lack of MRE corrections. 14C is not equally distributed across the biosphere and marine ecological zones

The 'corrections' can be manipulated to produce a different reading. In view of the uncertainty over the origins of the burials and the lack of archaeology, the buried coins (five) provide the only context.

Grave 529 provides the clearest evidence of the need for marine reservoir corrections at Repton. The sample yielded an uncalibrated 14C date of 1281±27 BP, which provides a terrestrial calibration of AD 670–770 at 95.4% certainty. This individual was buried with five silver pennies, two of Burghred and three of Alfred, dated to no earlier than AD 873 (Biddle et al. 1986). This TPQ date makes the terrestrial calibration at the very least 100 years too early. With an estimated marine dietary input of 15.3±10%, a mixed marine/terrestrial calibration gives a date of AD 690–939 (95.4% certainty), which is consistent with the coin date. Taking the TPQ into account, the grave can be further constrained to AD 873–939.

The coin finds are in fact decisive as the grave cannot have been dug earlier than the exact date required, 873-4, if the numismatists are correct. It is doubly lucky the five coins came to light given how rarely coins are found in Dark Age burials in Britain

With few exceptions, the deposition of grave goods, including coins, had been abandoned by the Anglo-Saxons in the earlier part of the eighth century. The re-appearance of this practice one and a half centuries later in two separate burials on the same site, at precisely the moment when a Viking presence there is reliably documented, must raise the possibility that this was a Scandinavian trait. The custom does indeed appear in the North, for example at Birka, Sweden, where between the mid to late eighth and mid tenth centuries about 10 per cent of the eleven hundred burials were accompanied by one or two coins, and where five graves contained small parcels of coins

https://www.britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital%20BNJ/pdfs/1986_BNJ_56_4.pdf
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Wile E. Coyote


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Thanks Hats, thats a great summary, the evidence for the Great Heathen Army that invaded England in AD 865 is based on the Anglo Saxon Chronicle and areas around St Wystan’s church, Repton in Derbyshire.

Large numbers of burials have been excavated here and an argument has ensued over the interpretation. Were these the remains of the Great Heathen Army?

Although it has been argued numismatic evidence corroborated the belief that these were the remains of the Great Heathen Army, radiocarbon results up to now have tended to disagree. That is until some recent re-dating of the remains, using the marine reservoir correction, have resurrected the idea that the Anglo Saxon Chronicle was right all along.

It's a bold restatement of orthodox invasion theory.

It won't be easy to disprove, but you have started with your posts on the crypt. Thanks.
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Hatty
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Repton, Derbyshire was an Augustinian house "founded c. 1153-9, rebuilt 1172 by Maud, widow of Ranulph, Earl of Chester; remains incorporated into Repton School buildings (founded 1557);". But, originally, in accordance with the ASC, it was —

a double monastery founded before 660 traditionally by St David; destroyed in raids by the Danes 874

Next to nothing can be said about the Anglo-Saxon monastery.

And a charter of 874 is said to have been written in venerabili monasterio at Repton; this charter is a grant to the Worcestershire abbey of Bredon, by Berhtuulf king of Mercia, at the instance of a certain 'Humberht princeps,'

Historians have decided the charter is spurious or at best 'dubious', possibly on grounds of its later interpolations.

As for the earlier monastery, "no firm evidence of the Early Saxon period has been found at Repton itself", according to the archaeologists. Not so much as a posthole.

They equate the possibility of a seventh-century foundation with three phases timber buildings before the stone church was built.


The earliest reference to Repton is in connection to Medeshamstede aka Peterborough Abbey (home of the 'Peterborough' Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) in Cambridgeshire

The infamous charter Sawyer 68 which purports to list all Peterborough’s possessions as a confirmation by Wulfhere of Mercia in AD 664 has Repton on its list. However, this charter is a forgery, and dates from the 10th century when the monks of the refounded institution were attempting to legitimise their holdings by claiming historic precedent.

http://www.reptonvillage.org.uk/history_group/repton_early_history.htm

But copied, i.e. made, in the 12th not 10th, century. Anyway, since the earlier,7th century, foundation can't be found, archaeologists conclude it's 'outside the curtilage of the current church' i.e. somewhere else. The traces of an Anglo-Saxon presence in Repton have to be sought in the cemetery to the north of the church. Here the earliest burials have been dated to the 8th century. No abbesses, no monks or nuns. It's almost as if the preceding two hundred years in Repton never happened.

As we know, stone can't be dated but the so-called Anglo-Saxon crypt, adapted as a royal Mercian burial site, may well be older than eighth century judging by the evidence of Neolithic and Bronze Age habitation in and around Repton.
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Hatty
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Anglo-Saxon Chronicle wrote:
"In this year 873 A.D., the host went from Lindsey to Repton, and there took winter quarters and drove the King Burgred overseas and conquered the entire kingdom."

One in five of the 249 bodies were women. The people are thought to have died of disease in the absence of battle wounds. Either way, one might expect a lot more Viking paraphernalia than is the case.

Some of the speculation has to be stretched beyond credulity. A grave stone is described as 'a partial hog-back tombstone', a class of tombstone that until now has only ever been found in York and somewhere in Cumbria. Fragments of tombstones being categorised as 'Viking' is uncannily similar to fragments of inscribed crosses being described as Anglo-Saxon, an equally unverifiable and untenable claim.

University of Bristol students claimed in November 2017 to have found a Viking camp at Repton which has been known about for almost half a century. Except the evidence is so flaky that nothing more was said about it

A Viking camp that dates back to the 870s has been been unearthed by archeologists in the small village of Repton in Derbyshire. The new discoveries were located at a campsite in the village, which has been known about since the 1970s. Techniques including ground penetrating radar were used to reveal evidence for workshops and ship repairs over a much larger area.

A team from the University of Bristol also discovered structures, dating from the winter of 873-874, such as paths and possible temporary buildings. Excavations showed these to be gravel platforms that may have held temporary timber structures or tents.

There were fragments of Saxon millstones and a cross fragment from the monastery, as well as broken pieces of weaponry including fragments of battle-axes and arrows.

I thought it was supposed to be a Viking camp yet the fragments are said to be 'Saxon'. In fairness, it is sometimes hard to distinguish between Viking, Saxon and, er, Norman.
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