The Plague Charmer
Page 47
Janiveer – Old dialect word meaning January, and used in a number of weather-lore sayings. The month of January was named after the Roman god Janus, whose name means doorway or gateway. He is the god of beginnings and transitions. His image is often found on ancient gateways and bridges, with two heads facing in opposite directions, one to where the traveller has come from and the other to where he is going – the past and the future.
Jory – A West Country diminutive of George.
Knee holly – Ruscus aculeatus, a short prickly shrub, also known as knee-holme and pettigree. The stems and leaves made a tough scouring brush for cleaning cooking pots. The seeds inside the scarlet berries were ground with the leaves to make a poultice for broken bones. The roots, ground in wine, were used to treat headaches, menstrual pain, jaundice, and bowel and kidney ailments. In later centuries the plant was known as Butcher’s Broom because it was used to scrub butchers’ slabs and to encircle or cover any meat on display to prevent mice getting on to it.
Lady Day – Vernal or spring equinox.
Lymer – See ‘Harbour’.
Minor Orders – From the age of seven, freeborn children could be received into the Minor Orders of the Church, and as a sign that they were now in Holy Orders, they were tonsured. Many boys and young men took Minor Orders without any intention of becoming a priest, simply to get an education. Many also did it to gain ‘Benefit of Clergy’, which meant that if they had been accused of a crime, such as theft or murder, they could demand the right to be tried by the far more lenient ecclesiastical courts that did not impose the death penalty.
There were four Minor Orders. The lowest was the ostiarius, sometimes called a porter, whose duties were similar to a modern verger. Then came the lector or reader, whose task was to sing the lessons. Next was the exorcist, who had to drive out demons from the mad and exorcise babies at the church door before they were baptised. The highest was the acolyte. In small churches, the acolyte’s duties often encompassed all four of the roles of Minor Orders.
Unlike clergy in Major Orders, who were committed to Holy Orders for life, if anyone wanted to resign from Minor Orders and become a layman again in order to marry or pursue another occupation, all he had to do was let his tonsure grow out.
Mud-horse – A long wooden sledge, with runners that lay flat on the ground at the back and were curved high at the front, with a waist-high wooden frame set on top of the runners. These were built so that a fisherman could travel over soft mud and wet sand at low tide, to retrieve fish and shellfish from nets, weirs or wicker traps that might be set a mile or more out in the bays.
The fisherman would stand at the back of the sledge and bend forward over the frame so that the top half of his body was lying along it, distributing his weight, then propel himself forward with a skating motion of his feet. He would suspend baskets or sacks from the wooden frame to hold his catch, which ranged from shrimps to conger eels. He could also safely sit a child on the frame in front of him to help harvest the catch.
Mud-horses have been in continuous use in Britain since Saxon or even Roman times up to the present day. Before the Second World War, twenty or thirty mud-horses would have been seen out in some of the bays along the coasts of Somerset and Devon. Now only a couple of families still work the nets in this way.
Mynedun – Known today as the seaside resort of Minehead, built beside the hills known as East and West Myne. The name may be a corruption of the Welsh mynydd, meaning ‘mountain’.
Nisseler – Old dialect word meaning small and weak. Nissel-dredge or nissel-tripe were also used in different parts of the West Country for the runt or the smallest of a litter.
Nug-head – Dialect word for a blockhead or stupid person. A nug was a formless lump of wood before it was carved or shaped.
Pied hose – Men wore thigh-length stockings with pairs of eyelet holes around the top so they could be laced to strings, known as herlots, that dangled from the underside of the gypon. It was fashionable in this period to wear a hose of a different colour on each leg or alternatively a pair of pied hose, meaning multi-coloured.
Pollax – The medieval name used by the English for the long-handled war hammer, from which we get the modern expression ‘he was poleaxed’, meaning the news or an event stunned him. The pollax was a heavily weighted hammer on a long shaft that could be swung or thrown, with a slim axe-blade on the opposite side to the hammer face. The weapon was principally designed to deliver a crushing blow, while the axe-blade could be used to slash the tendons of the enemy’s arms or legs to cause a man or a horse to fall to the ground.
Polypus-fish – Octopus. The term octopus wasn’t used in science until the sixteenth century and didn’t become a word in common usage until a century or so later. In earlier centuries, these creatures were called polypus-fish, poulp, preke, poor-cuttle and devilfish, but today devilfish usually refers to one of the species of giant ray.
Praeco – Latin for a messenger, a herald, a crier or a prophet.
Pumpes – Pork meatballs, in which ground pork was mixed with cloves, mace and raisins, moistened with almond milk and stock and rolled into balls known as pellettys. They were then fried. A runny sauce of thickened almond milk or meat stock was added and the dish finished by sprinkling it with sugar and mace, and decorating it with edible flowers, such as those of wild marjoram, ramsons, chives or thyme, which would have added to the flavour.
Rampin – A Somerset dialect word meaning furious or raving mad, possibly a corruption of rampant.
Red herring – A term that can be traced back to at least the thirteenth century, and is probably from much earlier. It refers to a herring that has been gutted, split in two and smoked, causing the flesh to turn a dark ruddy brown. Today it is more commonly known as a kipper but a true red herring was more heavily cured than a modern smoked fish.
Spirit boxes – It was a common belief that if you wanted to rid yourself of an evil spirit you lured it into a box, which was then often buried under moving water, as spirits were thought unable to pass through that. But if you just wanted to rid yourself of an illness or a run of misfortune, you would place some token of it in a little box, such as a stone or a snippet of cloth that had been touched to the affected part of the body. You then left the box on a road or under a tree where a passer-by would find it. If they were inquisitive enough to open the box, the illness or bad luck would leave you and attach itself to them.
Tabor – A small hand or snare drum, consisting of a round wooden frame and two skins, which could be tightened by rope tension. It was usually fastened by a strap to the forearm and beaten with a stick held in the opposite hand. The tabor would be played vertically, allowing the hand of the arm to which the tabor was strapped to be raised to the mouth, so that the musician could play pipes at the same time. ‘Pipes and tabor’ were generally used together, with the musician operating as a one-person band.
Twibill – Also spelled twybill, from the Old English twibile. It was a T-shaped tool with two long blades and a short wooden handle forming the leg of the T. The top was made of iron, and sharpened into chisel-like blades at both ends. The two ends were of different widths or shapes. At one end of the iron crosspiece, the flat of the blade ran parallel to the handle, like an axe, while at the other end of the cross piece it was at right angles to the handle. The twibill was an important medieval tool used in woodworking, both on land and by ships’ carpenters, to roughly shape wood and to gouge out deep mortise joints – it was quicker to scrape out the shaved material using this than with a straight chisel and mallet.
Viperfish – Echiichthys vipera, now known as Lesser Weever or Sting-fish. Weever is thought to be a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon wivre meaning viper. It feeds on shrimp so often lies concealed in very shallow water under silt or sand. It has a set of dorsal spines linked to poison sacs. If trodden on or threatened, it stings.
The sting is agonisingly painful, and produces swelling, stiffness and numbness, which can last for days. It caus
es a fast pulse rate and breathing difficulties and can result in temporary paralysis. The sting of a single fish is not usually fatal, unless the victim has a pre-existing heart or lung condition or goes into anaphylactic shock, but if the poison of several fish is extracted, a lethal dose can be produced.
Whispering and pistering – Old Exmoor expression meaning to gossip or tell tales in secret, especially spreading the kind of stories that would cause harm.
Widdershins – Turning or circling anticlockwise, against the sun, as opposed to deiseil, which was turning clockwise or with the sun. Deiseil was believed to bring a blessing or good luck, but widdershins – going against nature and the heavens – was thought to bring bad luck, misfortune, even death. It was used in spells intended to curse or to summon demons. Medieval housewives were careful to perform even insignificant tasks, such as stirring a pot, clockwise, or deiseil. Millstones in mills were made to turn deiseil. We retain vestiges of this belief today – port is passed clockwise round the table, even though most people are right-handed, and beating the bounds of a parish is done on a clockwise circuit.
Lincoln, 1380. A raven-haired widow is newly arrived in John of Gaunt’s city, with her two unnaturally beautiful children in tow.
The widow Catlin seems kind, helping wool merchant Robert of Bassingham care for his ill wife. Surely it makes sense for Catlin and her family to move into Robert’s home?
But when first Robert’s wife – and then others – start dying unnatural deaths, the whispers turn to witchcraft. The reign of Richard II brings bloody revolution, but does it also give shelter to the black arts?
And which is more deadly for the innocents of Lincoln?
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1224. Langley Manor, Norfolk. Lord Sylvain has been practicing alchemy in hiding for years and now only the Apothecary’s niece can help him with final preparations to forge the Philosopher’s Stone.
Alchemy calls for symbols – and victims – and when a man in possession of an intricately carved raven’s head arrives at the Manor in a clumsy attempt at blackmail, Sylvain has both symbol and victim within easy reach.
But the White Canons in nearby Langley Abbey are concealing a crucial, missing ingredient . . . Regulus, a small boy with a large destiny.
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