Since relocating from England and returning to my hometown in Colorado somewhat unexpectedly, I’ve been spending a lot of time soaking up the sunshine by the Arkansas river, and when a bighorn sheep approached the bank to drink the other day, it was not only a sure sign of spring but also a reminder of how medieval symbolism and modern day animals create connections across time and space, even entire continents.
Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep, one of seven subspecies native to North America, occupy mountainous areas in the United States and Canada. They are named for the male’s large, curved horns, a pair of which can weigh up to 30 pounds – the equivalent of the weight of all the bones in the male’s body. They are powerful, steadfast creatures with males weighing upward of 500 pounds.
Male bighorn sheet. Photo courtesy of The National Wildlife Federation Blog.
During rutting season, which runs from October to January, rams battle for dominance and breeding rights with ewes. After descending from steep, treacherous terrain to lower territory, males can be observed rearing and smashing their horns together in a violent collision, producing sounds that can be heard up to 40 miles away.
Indeed, we are in the season of the Ram, just as the Western medieval world would have been at this time of year. The sun entered the constellation Aries, the ram, on March 20th in line with the spring, or vernal, equinox in the northern hemisphere and will remain in this astrological sign until approximately the same date in April before transitioning into Taurus, the bull.
The spring equinox marks the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator, bringing nearly equal day and night lengths and signifying the start of spring. When the sun passes through Aries, it also marks the astrological new year. As the first sign of the zodiac, Aries season symbolizes a reset after a long winter and a sense of reemergence, both in modern and medieval times.
In the medieval world, the season was perfect for pilgrimage. The characters of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, of course, begin their journey to Canterbury in mid-April as described by the first several lines of the General Prologue:
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, an the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne… (Chaucer 1-8).
When April with its sweet-smelling showers Has pierced the drought of March to the root, And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid By which power the flower is created; When the West Wind also with its sweet breath, In every wood and field has breathed life into The tender new leaves, and the young sun Has run half its course in Aries… (Translation from Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website)
Sheep have maintained a strong presence in the English landscape since their domestication during the Neolithic era. Although they were not initially valued as highly as other livestock, they were integral in the early medieval period as providers of milk, wool, and manure. Their bodies were also harvested for meat, skin, fat, bones, and horns. They were hardy animals, able to thrive on rough grazing and survive during harsh winters.
They were also used for ecclesiastical purposes. The best vellum was produced from either calf or lamb skin, and regular parchment was procured from the skin of sheep and goats. Additionally, rams were some of the first animals to be sacrificed on altars in the ancient world. Isidore of Seville, in his 7th-century Etymologies, writes, “The ram [aries] is either named after the word aris, that is, after ‘Mars’ whence we call the males in a flock ‘males’ [mas, maris] – or because this animal was the first to be sacrificed on altars [ara, aris] by pagans.”
Further to the etymological origins of the word, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a “ram” simply as an adult male sheep, and the word has remained relatively unchanged since it first appearance in English during the Anglo Saxon period, wherein rams appear as sacrifices in Biblical stories, notably that of Abraham, and other Christian contexts.
Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac with ram behind. Morgan Library & Museum, Bible historiale MS M.322 I, fol. 032r.
The term ram, however, also appeared in the context of battle, describing both a weapon of war (later renamed the “battering ram”) and the action of ramming as with the weapon itself, just as two rams would collide in conflict. Circa 1470, Thomas Malory in Morte Darthur describes how knights “hurteled togydirs lyke too rammes,” emphasizing the brute strength and blunt impact of the men as their bodies meet in battle.
At this time of year, bighorn sheep are less interested in fighting and more focused on lambing. Females typically give birth between late April and June, during which time they find steep, secluded habitats to protect their newborn babies from predators like mountain lions, coyotes, and bears. Males, during this time, live apart from females, maintaining a hierarchy of dominance amongst themselves. The separation during the springtime season creates an apt juxtaposition of violence and renewal from an ecological perspective, as well as a personal one: the hardest part has passed, and rebirth is possible.
The sighting of a bighorn sheep in early spring — powerfully yet gracefully poised on a rocky mountainside — poignantly connects my Colorado roots with my medieval interests and my previous home in England. It also reminds me that I am on the precipice of a new life after a difficult struggle, that this season symbolizes the beauty of living after a battle.
Emily McLemore, Ph.D. Alumni Contributor, Department of English
Since moving to England, I’ve become very fond of gin, and the medievalist in me was thrilled when I was recently gifted a bottle of Ad Gefrin Distillery’s Thirlings Dry Gin. The gin is inspired by Northumbria’s Anglo-Saxon roots, what Ad Gefrin describes as “a time of welcome, celebration, and hospitality,” and it has been crafted with “a Northumbrian heart and Anglo-Saxon soul.”[1]
The gin is gorgeous, both in its presentation and its finish. The bottle itself embodies the location’s Anglo-Saxon heritage: “Far from just being a vessel for the spirit, the bottle tells its own authentic story. The stepped punt reflects the 7th Century wooden Grandstand discovered on the ancient site and the holes/dimples in the glass represent the post holes which identified where the royal complex of buildings were and enabled archaeologists to calculate their size and height.”[2] Its botanical profile is comprised of “flavours inspired by Northumberland, heather and pine from the Cheviot hills, elderberry and dill from the hedgerows, and Irish moss and sea buckthorn from the coast.”[3] But the base of all gins, of course, is juniper.
In addition to its distillery that produces both gin and whisky, Ad Gefrin offers an impressive collection of Anglo-Saxon artefacts and an immersive experience of Northumberland’s Golden Age, including the richness and hospitality of the medieval hall. Photo courtesy of Ad Gefrin.
Juniper, a type of coniferous evergreen, is native to various parts of the northern hemisphere. There are approximately 30 species, but the common European species, Juniperus communis, is described as “a hardy spreading shrub or low tree, having awl-shaped prickly leaves and bluish-black or purple berries, with a pungent taste.”[4] These berries form the base of gin’s distinctive botanical flavor, which the Craft Gin Club aptly describes as “[r]esinous, piney and fresh on the palate and nose.”[5]
Juniper berries begin green but adopt a deeper blue to purple-black color as they mature. Common juniper is native to most of the northern hemisphere, including the United Kingdom. According to the Woodland Trust, the plant “thrives on chalk lowland, moorland, in rocky areas and old native-pine woodland” and functions as a source of food and shelter for a variety of birds.
The Anglo-Saxons recognized juniper primarily for its medicinal properties. Its Old English name was cwic-beam, which literally translates to “life-tree.”[6] In the Old English Herbarium, a popular medieval treatise dedicated to the identification and application of plants, juniper is listed as sabine or savine in accordance with its Latin name, Juniperus sabina. As a compilation and translation of originally separate Latin treatises, the Herbarium employs Latin alongside English, much in the same way modern medical textbooks maintain Latin terminology for conditions that are then described in English.
The treatise indicates that juniper can be used to treat “painful joints and foot swelling,” “headache,” and “carbuncles.”[7] In the first instance, the treatise advises that the plant be concocted into a drink; the entry reads: “For the king’s disease, which is called aurignem in Latin and means painful joints and foot swelling in our language, take this plant, which is called sabinam, and by another name like it, savine, give it to drink with honey. It will relieve the pain. It does the same thing mixed with wine.”[8] Here, the king’s disease – in Old English, “wiþ þa cynelican adle”– likely refers to jaundice related to gout.[9] For the treatment of headache, the plant was to be mixed into a kind of poultice and applied to the head and temples.[10] In the case of carbuncles, which refer to a cluster of boils, the plant would be made into a honey-based salve and applied to the infected area.[11]
Entries for chamomile and heart clover in the only surviving illustrated Old English herbal, a book that primarily describes plants and their applications. As the British Library notes, “Remedies for poisonous bites were marked out with drawings of snakes and scorpions.” The manuscript, produced in England and dated 1000-1025, also contains information on animals and their medicinal properties, though not all of its contents are reliable. (British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. 29v).
While juniper was available to the Anglo-Saxons, even in drinking form, distilling was not. In fact, distilled liquors were virtually unknown in medieval England.[12] Rather than spirits, the early medieval English drank beer and mead.
According to John Burnett, “Beer was probably the first drink deliberately made by man.”[13] In his book, Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain, Burnett explains that beer brewed from fermented barley has been recorded as far back as the third millennium B.C. in the Bronze Age civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and beer production became common across Europe during the Celtic Iron Age.[14] In its earliest use, the Old English beor, “beer,” likely referred to any type of alcohol produced through fermentation, though it appears have been distinct from the less frequently used ealu, “ale.”[15]Beor may have referred to drinks brewed from malt, while ealu may have been a sweeter and stronger drink.[16] These terms may also have been used interchangeably until hops were introduced much later in the medieval period.[17]
The introduction of hops to the brewing process distinguished ale from beer; it also displaced women as the primary producers of the beverage. As A. Lynn Martin explains, “In England ale brewing was a domestic industry dominated by alewives. Their brew was usually sweet, sometimes flavored with herbs and spices, and spoiled if not consumed within several days. The addition of hops created a bitter drink that was stronger and lasted longer than ale.”[18]
Mead, however, was the predominant drink of the Anglo-Saxons and was made by fermenting a mixture of honey and water. The Old English word for “mead” is the same for “meadow”: medu, effectively evoking the beverage’s connection to the flowers and bees essential for the production of honey and, in turn, mead. The plant now known as meadowsweet, or medu-wyrt in Old English, was also sometimes used to flavor the drink.[19]
Additionally, the Anglo-Saxon hall was commonly called the medu-hall, or “mead hall,” indicating not only a primary attribute of the hall but also the centrality of the drink to Anglo-Saxon culture. The hall was an integral part of early medieval English society and functioned as a space for social and political discourse, as well as communal gatherings and feasting celebrations. Indeed, the speaker of the Old English elegy known as The Seafarer describes his loneliness in relation to the absent sounds of the hall, which function as a synecdoche for the communal bonds he craves: “A seagull singing instead of men laughing, / A mew’s music instead of meadhall drinking.”[20]
Dated to the 5th century, this glass Anglo-Saxon drinking vessel, known as the Castle Eden Claw Beaker, was found at Castle Eden in Durham, England. The object is currently on display at Ad Gefrin’s Wooler Museum, on loan from the British Museum, and returned to the North East after more than 30 years. Photo credit Sally Ann Norman, courtesy of Ad Gefrin.
Because honey was used for a variety of purposes, including the making of both mead and medicine, beekeeping was also an important part of Anglo-Saxon society. In fact, sugar was not produced in medieval England, so honey was the primary sweetener, which is why it appears so frequently in culinary and medical recipes alike. The Old English “Charm for a Swarm of Bees,” a metrical incantation, serves as evidence of honey’s necessity. Essentially, the charm is a magic spell meant to entice a swarm of bees to a keeper and encourage them to remain:
Charm for a Swarm of Bees
For a swarm of bees, take earth and throw it down with your right hand under your right foot, saying:
I catch it under foot—under foot I find it. Look! Earth has power over all creatures, Over grudges, over malice, over evil rites, Over even the mighty, slanderous tongue of man.
Afterwards as they swarm, throw earth over them, saying:
Settle down, little victory-women, down on earth— Stay home, never fly wild to the woods. Be wise and mindful of my benefit, As every man remembers his hearth and home, His life and land, his meat and drink.[21]
Eventually, mead went by the wayside, and wine became the more popular drink near the end of the Anglo-Saxon period – at least among the wealthy. As Burnett points out, while the consumption of wine was relatively high throughout the Middle Ages, “it never rivalled beer as the drink of the masses.”[22]
By the 16th century, distilled drinks were “beginning to be served together with sweetmeats at the end of banquets as pleasurable, stimulating aids to digestion.”[23] Distillation describes the process of heating a liquid into a vapor, which is then condensed into a pure essence, and the procedure may have been known to the Chinese as early as 1,000 B.C.[24] Burnett explains that the “the requisite knowledge was brought to the West either by the Cathars or by returning Crusaders, who had seen distillation practised by Arab alchemists. A coded recipe for ‘aqua ardens’ appeared in a French monastic tract about 1190 alongside one for artificial gold, and through the medieval world spirits were regarded as mysterious, even magical, substances, used only medicinally for their stimulating, reviving qualities.”[25]
He continues: “English records of ‘aqua vitae’ distilled from wine appear in the fourteenth century, when it was made by monks and apothecaries, and became more widely known during the Black Death (1348-9) as a warming prophylactic. Spirits were also redistilled with herbs and flowers from the physic gardens of monasteries to make a variety of liqueurs with therapeutic properties, while in private households spirit-based ‘cordials’ were recommended for the treatment of palsey, the plague, smallpox, apoplexy, ague and other diseases.”[26]
Gin, from the Dutch genever, or “juniper,” because it was distilled with the plant’s berries, started being imported into England from the Netherlands during the late 16th century. The original product was “a highly flavoured, aromatic drink” that is still produced in the Netherlands and typically enjoyed neat.[27] By the mid-18th century, however, England had begun producing its own version in London, which was “less coarse and more subtly flavoured.”[28] By this time, spirits were being consumed largely for pleasurable, rather than medicinal, purposes.
While gin and distillation were not known to the Anglo-Saxons, juniper certainly was, and in this way, the spirit’s botanical roots are intertwined with medieval English history.
Emily McLemore, Ph.D. Alumni Contributor, Department of English Lecturer, Bishop Grosseteste University (U.K.)
[1] Ad Gefrin, https://adgefrin.co.uk/spirits/gin. Special thanks to Chris Ferguson and Claire Byers from Ad Gefrin for supplying additional information and wonderful photos.
When more than a dozen undergraduates successfully banded together last year to petition the administration for me to teach the first ever course in Old Norse language and literature at my (now former) institution, I vowed not to disappoint them.[1] Knowing that these students would likely never have another opportunity to spend a semester learning and reading Norse in a formal setting, I soon realized that in two one-hour meetings per week over a single semester we could hope for little more than a forced march through any standard textbook, yielding some sense of the rules of the language but no real experience reading it.
A portrait of Guðbrandur Vigfússon (13 March 1827 – 31 January 1889) by Sigurður málari.
Broadening my search, I came across Guðbrandur Vigfusson’s 1879 Icelandic Prose Reader. Vigfusson recommends jumping right into reading, ideally beginning by muddling through the Gospel of Matthew, with which he assumes students will be familiar, before moving on to a shorter saga—he recommends Eirik the Red. He offers this advice:
The beginner should at first trouble himself as little as possible with grammatical details, but try the while to get hold of the chief particles, the pronouns, and a few important nouns and verbs—the staple words of the language…The inflexive forms are of less import; they will be more easily learnt and better remembered, if they are allowed to grow bit by bit on the mind, as they occur in the reading. Grammar is, after all, but the means to an end, and much of one’s freshness and power of appreciation is lost, if it is incessantly diverted from the subject before one, to the ungrateful study of dry forms.[2]
Though the reader does come equipped with a brief grammar consisting primarily of tables and charts, Vigfusson underscores his grammar-deemphasized, reading-first method by featuring the texts first in the volume, grammar second.
The grammar portion makes up only fifty pages of 560.
Though Vigfusson gave very little concrete advice for teaching besides a general idea to dump students in and let them swim, it got me thinking about how else we might teach and learn old north germanic languages. How did medieval students and teachers approach language learning?
The Anglo-Saxons (despite or perhaps due to King Alfred’s lamentations about the state of Latin learning in his realm) were particularly accomplished language learners, as anyone considered truly literate had to read and write a completely foreign language—Latin. This literacy included many skills besides grammatical analysis. To quote R.W. Chambers, “their aim was to read Latin, write Latin, and dispute in Latin.”[3] Recalling Vigfusson’s suggestion to start with the Gospel of Matthew, the youngest students of written Latin would begin with the Psalms, which they had previously learned by heart, along with the letters of the alphabet and various Latin prayers.[4] The upshot is, medieval students had a lot of the target language in their ears and memorized by heart before they ever began a program of study directly aimed at mastering grammar, learning to read, and creating in the language.
Then they’d move on to the Latin colloquy, question-and-answer dialogues meant to be memorized, acted out, and expanded through creative variation. One of the best-known colloquies, written for young scholars by prolific homilist and grammarian Ælfric of Eynsham at the turn into the eleventh century, was paired close to the time of Ælfric himself with an interlinear Old English gloss. I’d like to suggest a way of using this text in class in a way that goes beyond reading or translating the Old English (or the Latin, for that matter).[5]
The early part of the colloquy is set up as a question-and-answer between the teacher and a classfull of students, who take the parts of people working diverse jobs, a ploughman, a monk, a hunter, a cook, etc.
Facsimile of a Miniature in a mediaeval manuscript published by Shaw, with legend “God Spede þe plough, and send us korne enow.” Image in the Public Domain.
Here the teacher (perhaps played by one of the students) introduces us to the ploughman.
Hwæt sæᵹest þu, yrþlinᵹc? Hu beᵹæst þu weorc þin?
Eala, leof hlaford, þearle ic deorfe. Ic ᵹa ut on dæᵹræd þywende oxon to felda, and iuᵹie hiᵹ to syl; nys hit swa stearc winter þæt ic durre lutian æt ham for eᵹe hlafordes mines, ac ᵹeiukodan oxan, and ᵹefæstnodon sceare and cultre mit þære syl, ælce dæᵹ ic sceal erian fulne æcer oþþe mare.
A passage like this gives ample opportunity for working in the target language even beyond memorizing and acting out the dialogue (both excellent for building vocabulary and familiarity with grammatical structures). It also allows for imitation and creative response to a series of questions based on the text.
One question is already built into the dialogue.
Eala yrþlinᵹc, hu beᵹæst þu weorc þin?
Ic ᵹa ut on dæᵹræd þywende oxon to felda, and iuᵹie hiᵹ to syl.
But we can ask other questions that test comprehension and encourage active imitation.
For example:
Hwæt þēoweþ sē yrþlinᵹc ut to felda?
Sē yrþlinᵹc þēoweþ to felda þæs oxon.
Even without knowing exactly how to conjugate the verb, the student gets to employ the correct form in context through recognition and imitation. I say “þēoweþ,” and the student recognizes it as the form needed in the response.
I can drill conjugation, though, if I want:
Eala yrþlinᵹc, hwæt þēowstþu to felda? (Exaggeratedly pointing a finger at the student to emphasize the second person singular pronoun)
Ic þēowe þæs oxon.
The student will quickly begin to recognize that “þēowst þu” needs “ic þēowe” as a response. If a student says “ic þēowst” or similar, I might repeat back “þu þēowst, ic þēowe” (with approriate finger pointing) and move right along.
We can work with different verbs:
Eala yrþlinᵹc, hwæt iugast þu to syl?
Ic iugie þæs oxonto syl.
And play with conjugation:
Hwæt iugiaþ sē yrþlinᵹc to syl?
Sē yrþlinᵹc iugiaþ þæs oxon to syl.
But there are plenty of other questions we could ask about the same bit of dialogue.
Eala yrþlinᵹc, hwaenne gæst þu ut to felda?
Ic gā on dæᵹræd to felda.
Hwon gæþ sē yrþlinᵹc ut to felda?
Sē yrþlinᵹc gæþ ut to felda for eᵹe his hlafordes.
Students might start out with one- or two-word responses. “Yea.” “Oxon.” “On dægræd.” But with encouragement and practice with mirroring back much of the content of the question, they will start to put together more complex utterances.
I might ask:
Hwæþer sē yrþlinᵹc gæþ ut to felda nihtes?
Se yrþlinᵹc ne gæþ ut to felda nihtes. Sē yrþlinᵹc gæþ ut to felda on dæᵹræd.
or
Hwæþer sē yrþlinᵹc willaþ gan ut to felda?
Se yrþlinᵹc ne willaþ gan ut to felda. Sē yrþlinᵹc gæð ut to felda for eᵹe his hlafordes.
These examples give some idea of the approach I’ve used, alongside extensive reading of accessible texts, to great result in my Old Norse and Latin classes. The method can be applied to other readings, even if you spend most of the class translating. Pull out a few sentences you’d like to drill down into and ask questions about in the target language.
As a postscript, we did read the gospel of Matthew and the saga of Eirik the Red, and my former students have kept up a Norse reading group, without further help or interference from me.
Rebecca M. West, Ph.D. The Center for Thomas More Studies Hillsdale College
[1] An earlier version of this material was presented at ICMS 2024.
[5] I took inspiration from the Latin colloquy in developing new materials for my Old Norse class, but the teacher of Old English is saved this laborious step.
