Web-surfing and a C16th entrepreneur by Elisabeth Storrs

 

As an historical novelist, I encounter both joy and tribulation in researching via the internet. Surfing the web provides a plethora of reference articles with helpful hyperlinks to other pages. Woe betide the novelist who is tempted to click on one of these links! You can be transported down a wonderous rabbit hole but end up in the tarpit of research. Instead of writing your novel, you find yourself whiling away hours on fascinating sidetracks.

One example of this occurred when I was writing The Golden Dice, the second book in my A Tale of Ancient Rome trilogy. One of my central characters is Marcus Furius Camillus (pictured), the famous Roman stateman who came to be known as the ‘Second Founder of Rome’ (the metro train station ‘Furio Camillo’ in Rome is named after him). He initially gained fame as the general who besieged the Etruscan city of Veii for ten years, the legend of which forms the underlying story line in my series.

Researching Camillus involved reading classical sources such as Livy and Plutarch but, inevitably, I also surfed the web for other references to him. One page was illustrated by an image of a woodcut engraving in the form of a medallion depicting Camillus’ head. Underneath was a hyperlink to the source of the portrait…click! Down, down, down I went into the 16th century world of humanist, printer, bookseller and entrepreneur, Guillame Rouille.

Rouille was born in Tours in 1518, moving to Venice to complete his printing apprenticeship before returning to France and residing in Lyon. He is attributed as being the inventor of the pocket book format called sextodecimo with 16 leaves to the folio sheet. He gained prestige for producing iconography books which were popular in the C16th and C17th. Such books featured icons with mottos together with text explaining the connection between the two.

Rouille’s most famous book on iconography was Promptuarii iconum insigniorum à seculo hominum, subiectis eorum vitis, per compendium ex probatissimis autoribus desumptis or Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum for short (roughly translated as ‘a compendium of icons of famous men across time’). Published in 1533, the book featured 828 woodcut engravings of famous people in the form of medallions. In 1577 a further 100 icons were added.

Frontispiece with Rouille's emblem

Promptuarium Iconum Insigniorum consisted of two parts bound into one tome but separately paginated. The first part included figures born before Christ starting from Adam and Eve. The second part featured people born after Christ ending with the French King Henry II. Examples are the biblical Abraham and Noah, the pagan deities, Janus and Vesta, together with heroes such as Romulus and Hercules. Even the minotaur scored a guernsey. Figures in the CE included Christ himself,  Pontius Pilate,  Roman emperors, Attila the Hun, Muhammad, early Ottoman sultans, and the Holy Roman Emperors.

Ever the entrepreneur, Rouillé published different language versions with an eye to courting favour with royalty by dedicating the editions to them: the Latin edition to Henry II of France, the Italian edition to Catherine de' Medici, and the French edition to Marguerite de Navarre.

The legendary characters (such as Camillus) were drawn from Rouille’s imagination based on his ideas about the person’s deeds and personality. As for the real personages, the portraits reflected images on paintings, coins, seals and intaglios. Unfortunately, there were was one glaring error. Rouillé mistook the portrait of the goddess Athena on the obverse side of a Macedonian stater coin as Alexander the Great.

Amazingly, the engraver’s name is, unfairly, not mentioned. Indeed, Wikimedia Commons still lists the images as ‘artist unknown’. Instead, it is Guillame Rouille who stands first and foremost. He saw the book as an entertaining collection of succinct illustrated lessons for a general audience. It became a bestseller in its era outstripping rival iconography books. And because the medallions had the appearance of coins, Rouille quipped in his preface he included fictitious images of individuals before the biblical account of the Flood so as not to be accused of spreading counterfeit money to the public!

Medallions featuring Adam, Dante, Olympias (Alexander's mother), 

Charles II de Orleans, Andromache, King Priam, Clovis, Cornelia Sinna and Camillus

Guillame Rouille may have faded into obscurity but I wonder what he would think about his book still being available at Abebooks for $1,000+ or Amazon for a more affordable prize. I imagine he’s grinning. If you’re interested in seeing more of the medallions, please visit here.

As for being diverted by hyperlinks, I will confess this blog post was supposed to feature Cornelia Cinna Minor, wife of Julius Caesar and daughter of Cinna, but when her Rouille medallion appeared on a search, I knew it was the C16th entrepreneur who beckoned me to tell his story first!

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tales of Ancient Rome series and founder of the Historical Novel SocietyAustralasia. www.elisabethstorrs.com

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, in particular, Jenny Kirby History

The Legend of Tanaquil and the auspicious flight of birds by Elisabeth Storrs

Queen Tanaquil

As can be seen from the tragic stories of Lucretia and Virginia, the women of early regal Rome gained fame when used as exemplars of Roman virtues. In each case their deaths were the catalyst for revolution against oppressive rulers.

Yet one famous woman of early Rome did hold power. Her name was Tanaquil. She was not Roman, but Etruscan. And she did not gain fame for dying but for being a prophetess and a queen.

Tanaquil was an Etruscan noblewoman from the city of Tarquinia. Her husband, Lucumo, was the son of an immigrant Greek. Tanaquil knew Lucumo would not gain power in her city because of this and so she convinced him to travel to Rome to seek his fortune. As their carriage ascended the Janiculum Hill, an eagle swooped down and snatched Lucumo’s cap carrying it aloft before once again replacing it on his head. Skilled as a seer, Tanaquil predicted that, as the bird had flown from the direction of Rome and taken the cap from the crown of Lucumo’s head, her husband was destined for greatness.

On arrival in Rome Lucumo became friend to the king, Ancus Marcius, as well as guardian to his children. When Marcius died before his children were old enough to take the throne, Lucumo was elected to be king by the Romans and changed his name to a Latin one – Lucius Tarquinius Priscus. He was to be the first of three Etruscan kings who ruled Rome before the third, Tarquinius Superbus, was expelled after the rape of Lucretia.

So could the myth of a prophetess such as Tanaquil be based in fact? The Etruscans were indeed skilled in the art of foretelling the future from the flight of birds. And there is evidence from funerary art and tomb inscriptions that Etruscan women may well have been priestesses of high standing. The Roman author, Livy, who tells us Tanaquil’s tale, does not question her ability. In fact he writes that her powers of prophesy proved correct again when she saw a slave boy called Servius Tullius asleep with a blue flame burning above his head. Tanaquil predicted that he would also rule Rome.  When Lucumo was murdered, Tanaquil cemented her own power by supporting Servius Tullius in being appointed the monarch.  He in turn was to become one of the greatest and most just Kings of Rome (but that is another story…)

Vel Saties

As mentioned, the Etruscans observed the flight of birds for the purposes of divination. The process of interpreting the patterns of flight was known as taking the auspices (literally ‘looking at birds’). As was the case with understanding lightning portents, the sector of the sky where a bird flew was a determining factor to interpret the will of the gods based on the quadrant in which the relevant deity resided. The type of bird was also important. Doves transmitted messages from Turan (Aphrodite/Venus) whereas the king of the gods, Tinia (Jupiter/Zeus), used an eagle.

The Romans relied heavily on the act of auspication, too. It was an essential part of the politics of Rome. Before any decision of State was made, omens were observed through the flight of birds. This sometimes involved an augur releasing a flock of birds and watching whether they flew to the right or left. The term ‘sinister’ derives from sinistra the latin word for ‘left’ as it was considered an ill omen if the birds flew in that direction. Negative connotations of being left handed have continued for centuries and may well have stemmed from this concept.

In Rome the different bird calls of ravens, crows, owls and chickens were also used to identify divine will. The flight of eagles, vultures and woodpeckers all had significance too. The eating patterns of chickens were also observed. It was considered ill luck if, once released from a cage, the hens baulked at eating the proffered bread. I presume this form of divination allowed for some human manipulation of results!

The founding of Rome itself was based on auspication. When the two feuding brothers, Romulus and Remus, could not agree on the site upon which the city was to be built, they decided to test their abilities as augurs. Romulus saw twelve vultures settle on the Palatine Hill while Remus saw only six alight upon the Aventine. An interesting way to settle an argument.

What is fascinating about Tanaquil is the fact she was, in every way, a player rather than a victim. As a queen and seer, she was instrumental in establishing and continuing the reigns of the Etruscan kings over the Romans. Her ambitions became those of the men she influenced. Unlike Lucretia and Virginia who were controlled by men and whose fate was to die for Rome, Tanaquil moulded destiny to her purpose. And strangely, whereas Etruscan women were usually criticised as wicked and corrupt by the Romans due to the freedoms afforded to them, Tanaquil was not reviled but revered. There are some who posit that she was later deified as a Roman Goddess of Fire, the Hearth, Healing and Women.

The image of Tanaquil was painted by Domenico Beccafumi, (1486 – May 18, 1551) an Italian Renaissance – Mannerist painter who was a representative of the Sienese school of painting. This is apt as Siena was one of the cities of ancient Etruria.

The image of Vel Saties is from the Francois Tomb in Vulci, Italy (circa 330BCE). It depicts the aristocratic wreathed with laurel and wrapped in a lavish purple cloak bordered with scrolls and embroidered with nude male figures holding shields. The Etruscan is observing a woodpecker in flight while his servant, Arnza, holds a female woodpecker attached by a string to attract the bird back. The woodpecker was sacred to the god of war Laran (Ares/Mars), and it is likely that Vel Saties was consulting the deity before a military encounter. Images are courtesy Wikipedia Commons

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of the A Tale of Ancient Rome saga, and the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia. She has also written a short story based on the Lucretia legend which can be obtained at her website www.elisabethstorrs.com

BEATRIX POTTER and the SAILING SQUIRRELS by Penny Dolan.

There are a large number of characters in the manuscript I’m working on and I tend to differentiate them by giving each a certain quality, a shorthand for me while I’m working on the novel and eventually, and  by then more subtly, for the eleven year old reader. One character is, to me, rather squirrel-like: gingery hair, energetic, always alert for the one thing that matters to him, easily distracted by the new – and so on and so on – and all of which set today’s topic jangling in my mind: squirrels or, more particularly, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. And his new book cover.
 

This July, 150 years after Beatrix Potter's birth, Puffin Books are publishing five of the most popular books with re-designed covers, although I think that Puffin have retained the original illustrations inside. What? Immediately I was huffing and puffing because I usually dislike tampering with original illustrations. (Surely the delicacy of Sheppard’s work compared with that dreadful Disney Eeyore will prove my case?)

Born in London, Potter’s drawings celebrate the rural - the people, the animals and places she saw on holidays in Scotland and in the Lakes - and I feel the pictures are so much a part of the whole experience of those books. 

There is something Victorian in the quality of her observation, such a controlled passion for natural history. Her careful water-colours seem the female art form of the time, requiring no expansive canvasses, taking up not too much space, the skill entirely suitable for well-bred young ladies.

 Yet there is something quietly subversive about her work too. While one admires Potter’s art, knowledge and humour, there is no doubt that her delightfully marketable creatures live in a world that turns cruel in a trice. Death is ever present, whether from Mr McGregor to a cat sleeping casually in the background.

Besides, those various garments – from Peter Rabbit’s famous blue coat to Mrs Tiggy-Winkle bustling around in her full finery –  always carry a hint of those popular if dreadful glass-cased stuffed-kitten tableaux that can still found in “museums” such as Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight. Curious images, indeed.

Potter went to the London Zoological Gardens to find a live model for the character of Old Brown, the owl, and she tried working from live red squirrel specimens for Squirrel Nutkin himself, complaining that:

“I bought two but they weren’t a pair and fought so frightfully that I had to get rid of the handsome and most savage one. The other squirrel is rather a nice little animal but half of one ear has been bitten off, which spoils his appearance.”

“The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin” has a real setting too. “Owl Island,” where Nutkin so naughtily tempts fate, is St Hubert’s Island on Derwentwater, which leads me on to one very memorable image. Potter’s picture of the flotilla of squirrels, going across the water to gather nuts. 

Potter’s perspective seems to be take you across the gently bobbing water all the way to the forbidden wood but I’ve never seen that image without, for a moment, wondering about the truth of that journey.  

 Where did this “flotilla of squirrels ” idea come from?

Then one night, quite recently, and agitated about matters much more important than those uppity art-work covers – and who isn’t at the moment, to be frank?  – I began reading two books by Tove Jansson, best known her Moomin books.

 My three a.m. titles were both for adults, one is more of a memoir and one a collection of short stories. The first, A Summer Book, is all about a grandmother and granddaughter, spending summers on a small island off the Finnish coast. Their relationship changes as one summer follows another.

The second set, A Winter Book, is about an old woman living alone and independently on that tiny island. 

Together, these two short books give a simple but thoughtful glimpse into the life of a proudly independent artist.

 
However, as I began the short story called The Squirrel, Jansson’s words sprang out at me:



“One winter day in November, near sunrise, she saw a squirrel at the landing place. It was sitting motionless near the water, scarcely visible in the half-light, and she knew it was a real squirrel and she hadn’t seem a living thing for a long time. You can’t count gulls: they’re always leaving, they’re like the wind over waves and grass.

She tried to remember everything she knew about squirrels. The wind carries them on pieces of wood from island to island. And then the wind drops, she thought with a touch of cruelty. . .

Why do squirrels go sailing? Are they curious or just hungry? Are they brave? No. Just ordinary and stupid. . . .It was possible the squirrel might stay overnight. It was possible the squirrel might stay the whole winter.”

The squirrel cannot do nothing but stay, making its home in her woodpile. The whole story revolves around the relationship between the wild squirrel and the elderly islander, revealing how physically demanding her solitary island life is becoming. Then, towards the end of the story, she goes down to the jetty and finds:

“The squirrel had gone – there was no doubt there had been seven pieces of board, not six, all the exactly the same distance from the water: sixty five centimetres.”

The story concludes with a further twist that I won’t reveal. 

However, with my head already busy with young Nutkin’s flotilla, I felt that Jansson’s sailing squirrel seemed a remarkably serendipitous coincidence. I went searching and came back with other instances.

Back in 1774, in his “History of Animated Nature”, Oliver Goldsmith reported

“Nothing can be more true than that Lapland squirrels, when they meet lakes or rivers, cross them in an extraordinary fashion.

Perceiving the breadth of the water, they return, as if by common consent, into the neighbouring forest, each in quest of a piece of bark, which answers all the purposes of boats for wafting them over. When the whole company are fitted in this manner, they boldly commit their little fleet to the waves ; every squirrel sitting on its own piece of bark, and fanning the air with its tail, to drive the vessel to its desired port. In this orderly manner they set forward, and often cross lakes several miles broad.

But that is not all. It may be rough in the middle of the lake, and the result then is lamentable. There the slightest additional gust of wind oversets the little sailor and his vessel together. The whole navy, that, but a few minutes before, rode proudly and securely along, is now overturned, and a shipwreck of two or three thousand sail ensues. This, which is so unfortunate for the little animal, is generally the most lucky accident in the world for the Laplander on the shore; who gathers up the dead bodies as they are thrown in by the waves, eats the flesh, and sells the skins for about a shilling the dozen."

All of which is an even sadder squirrel fate than escaping from Old Brown without your fine, feathery tail.

However, I couldn’t help noticing that all these squirrel tales seem to come from Northern lands. Had these clever red squirrels inherited their legendary journeying skills from the busy squirrel Rataskor who, according to Norse Legend, runs up and down Yggdrasil the world tree, carrying messages between the Eagle at the top and the Niddhogg below, while gnawing cunningly and everlastingly as he goes? 

That’s the problem. Once a writing idea, like my squirrellish character, gets into your head,  there are stories about and around them everywhere.

 I’ll end with this moralistic piece, taken from the ”Emblems” of the poet Francis Quarles, written in 1634.

"The squirrel when she must goe seeke her food

 By making passage through the angry flood

And feares to be devoured by the streame

Thus helpes her weakness by a stratagem.

On blocks, or chips, which on the waves doe flote

She nimbly leaps : and making them her boats,

By helpe of winds, of current, and of tide

Is wafted over to the other side.

Thus, that which for the body proves unfit

Must often be acquired by the wit."

Happy sailing, Squirrel Nutkin!

Postscript: While writing this post, I came across a new CBBC cartoon series about Peter Rabbit and his friends. I can offer no comment as I haven't seen it yet. Oh, well.

Perhaps my irritated crossness comes because, in this modern world, when children live lives far more removed from the natural world, I resent the smoothing and softening of these once-realistic anthropomorphic images?

 Penny Dolan

And Today's Saint is . . . By Penny Dolan

I've spent the last five days in bed, struck down by some kind of World Book Day induced bug, and don't think I've felt so bad since. . . when?  No matter, because this morning, I'm beginning to feel better. I woke with that wonderful sense of health pleasantly returning. I know it's not a holy miracle - witness the meds by the bed - but I certainly feel very blessed in my body, and glad to be able to make it downstairs.

Nevertheless, my head's not a sharp as it should be for wrangling a half finished article, so here, as they say is, a post I made somewhat earlier about today's saintly miracle.worker, St Patrick. Please note that Michelle Lovric has many more books out by now! 

Imagine living at a time when the whole year was decorated with different feasts and bright with various holy stories, even if many were a little odd and possibly slightly painful? Once the old church calendar offered a religious tale for almost every day of the year so that - regardless of many less beneficial aspects of the past - there was a rich public pattern that seven-day shopping & the return of the Apprentice may not quite replicate.

Today, the 17th March, is the Feast Day of St Patrick, Patron Saint of Ireland. The web offered images of shamrocked Guinness, stylised leprechauns, fancy dress parades and even – may the man himself help us! - bright green dye for ponds and city pools and waterways. The horror!

To greet Bishop Pat in proper style, one should surely climb up the great hill of Croagh Patrick, barefoot or upon one’s knees. 

However, having just read Michelle Lovric’s The Book of Human Skin, I have met this year’s share of penitents. Today's post comes from a warm, comfortable chair. (Do read that wonderful novel, by the way!)

Briefly, Patrick was captured as a boy in Wales, taken as a slave to Ireland, escaped back home, trained as a priest and then, in his dreams, heard Irish voices begging him to return. 

So he did, standing up to the druids who opposed his new faith, baptising many with the extreme vigour of an upstart and ignoring complaints from other clergy that he was enticing too many rich young maidens into his convents, and presumably not theirs. 

Patrick had such mystic powers that he cleared Ireland of all wicked snakes, even removing all biological evidence that serpents had ever existed there too. Amazing! Christianity with strong, added magic. But what was he like?

St Patrick appears in a story that I had partly heard before, one of the great legends of Ireland and this, again briefly, is it:

Oisin, the son of the great ruler Finn MaCumhail, fell in love with the beautiful Niamh of the Golden Hair and rode away with her to the Land of the Ever Young. After years of great happiness, Oisin remembered his family and friends, and longed to visit his old home, just once. At last Niamh set Oisin off on a white horse, tearfully warning him never to set his foot on the ground during his travels.

Alas! Hundreds of years had passed. Oisin found grass growing where the walls of the royal palace once stood and nothing was left in the land to show what had once been. Turning his horse, he saw three men struggling to lift a large and heavy rock. Beneath this stone, they told him, lay the Three Treasures of the Kingdom.

Without thinking, Oisin dismounted to help. As his foot touched the ground, all his strength and beauty faded, the years fell on him and he became an old, old man.

Well, the version I’d originally read, or heard, ended there. I’d imagined a quick  crumbling into sorrowful dust with a funeral to see the story off. But no - there was someone who would not leave the weak, wrinkled old man in peace.

As recorded by Lady Gregory - who sadly was not there at the exact time - along comes St Patrick, insisting on taking Oisin into his house and hearing the whole of Oisin’s story, maybe as a holy version of a reminiscence workshop, although Patrick doesn’t seem to treat him very kindly.

Our pagan hero is unable to withstand the holy fellow but he does not give in gracefully.  Oisin laments the glories of the past and is unimpressed by Patrick’s continual questioning, debating and chiding.

Here's Oisin’s almost final comment on the mighty man in the big green frock:

Oisin: “O Patrick, it is a pity the way I am now, a spent old man without sway, without quickness, without strength, going to Mass at the altar.

Without the great deer of Slieve Luchra; without the hares of Slieve Cuilinn; without going into fights with Finn; without listening to the poets.

Without battles, without taking of spoils; without playing at nimble feats; without going courting or hunting, two trades that were my delight." 

Patrick. "Leave off, old man, leave your foolishness; let what you have done be enough for you from this out. Think on the pains that are before you; the Fianna are gone, and you yourself will be going." 

Oisin. "If I go, may yourself not be left after me, Patrick of the hindering heart; if Conan, the least of the Fianna, were living, your buzzing would not be left long to you.” 

Too much care in the community, eh?

All of you, Irish or not, enjoy the day, and may St Patrick and all the saints preserve you from any tiresome buzzing!

 www.pennydolan.com

 

Volcano Gods and the Golden Boy - Katherine Langrish

I’ve been reading a remarkable book by Elizabeth Wayland Barber and Paul T Barber, ‘When they Severed Earth from Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth’, Princeton UP, 2005. It’s about the persistence of real physical information in ancient myths, and begins with a Klamath mythical story from Oregon, all about the creation of Crater Lake. The story, recorded in 1865 – even with allowances for European translation, rewording, and bias – describes a battle between ‘the Chief of the Below World’ and ‘the Chief of the Above World’ involving fire, burning ashes and the disappearance of an entire mountain, in such a way as almost certainly to encode an eyewitness account of the eruption of the volcano geologists deduce once stood 14,000 feet high between Mount St Helens and Mount Shasta.

The catastrophic explosion of its magma chamber pulverised the entire mountain and formed the giant crater which now forms Crater Lake. And here’s the thing: the eruption has been ice-dated (from ash layers) to nearly 7,700 years ago. So the Klamath explanation of this event has been handed down for several millennia.

According to the Barbers, this isn’t even unusual. Hawaiian mythical accounts of battles between various of their chiefs and the volcano goddess Pele can be closely correlated to radiocarbon dates for different lava flows. I was absolutely fascinated by their chapter on the massive eruption of Thera in the Mediterranean, in around 1625 BC (four times more powerful than that of Krakatoa): check out this passage from Hesiod’s poem ‘The Birth of the Gods’, about the battle between the gods and the Titans:

…wide heaven groaned, shaking, and great Olympus shook… and heavy quaking reached gloomy Tartarus… And the cry of both sides reached the starry sky as they bellowed and came together with a great battle shout. Nor did Zeus hold back his might, but now indeed…from Olympus he came, hurling lightning continually, and the bolts flew thickly amid thunder and flashing from his powerful hand…and all around the great boundless woods crackled with fire. …The hot blast surrounded the earthborn Titans, and a boundless flame reached to the bright upper air… and it seemed, facing it, as if Earth and wide Heaven above collided, for so huge a boom would roll forth, as if Earth were being hurled up while Sky were falling down from above…

Hesiod was writing about 700 BC, so nine hundred years after the eruption – but most poetry had been oral up to his time, and it’s highly likely his account dates back much, much further.

After all, wouldn’t it be odd if such a cataclysmic eruption hadn’t been talked and wondered and sung about by the peoples ringing the Middle Sea, for centuries and centuries? The Barbers point also to the Exodus account in the Bible, in which Moses leads his people out of Egypt, guided by a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.  ‘For people moving north down the Nile valley to where the Delta opens out, an eruption pillar from Thera would indeed be ahead of them.’  (I've checked this on Google maps, and Thera - modern Santorini - is indeed pretty much in line with the Nile valley and/or the Red Sea, on a north-north-west alignment.) The Barbers go on to caution: ‘whether the Exodus… actually occurred in 1625 BC is another matter. Time often gets foreshortened in the telling of myths… thus Exodus as we have it may contain details from several different time periods.’

In recent years, we've all grown accustomed to the psychological exploration of myths, the discovery (or re-discovery) of their emotional relevance, but it’s refreshing to be reminded that some myths may have sprung from simple matters of fact. Mythologizing is all part of the long struggle of humanity to make sense of the world. A natural calamity requires an explanation, which nowadays is promptly delivered by science, via experts appearing on our television screens, details about plate tectonics and so on. Interesting and accurate as these explanations are, I don't know how much comfort they provide. But without any scientific knowledge of the physical causes, the best way to make sense of the event – to bring it to some kind of proportion – is to inject it with emotion, and by analogy with human passions suppose it to be caused by the anger of gods or of God. And this is consolatory, because understandable. Even today, when the causes of natural disasters are understood by most people, we still struggle to ‘make sense’ of the unbearable loss of innocent lives.

'... human kind
Cannot bear very much reality'.

I recommend the Barbers' book, which is wise and fascinating and wonderful. And here’s an epilogue, not part of the book at all. In the British Museum is an utterly gorgeous golden cape. It dates to somewhere between 1900 – 1600 BC, and was found by workmen in Mold, Wales, in 1833. (They threw away the bones it clothed, tore it to pieces and shared it out, and it had to be painstakingly reconstructed, but that’s another story.) I’ve seen it myself and the gold is as bright and yellow as summer buttercups.

It was one of the 100 objects in BBC Radio 4’s ‘History of the World In 100 Objects’, so you may have heard about it there. The gold is so fragile that it could only have been used ceremoniously: and it’s too small for a man, so must have belonged either to a woman, or a youth. Maybe a teenage king or priest was buried in it.

But the mound those workmen were digging into was in a field called Bryn-yr-Ellyllon, which means ‘the Hill of the Fairies’: and the legend of the hill was that it was haunted by a ghostly boy, all clad in gold. Just think of that for a moment...

Isn't it possible that the sight of a young man being laid to rest in his shimmering golden cape so impressed and touched the onlookers, that for nearly four thousand years, if a child said, ‘Mother, who’s buried in that hill?’ the answer was: ‘A boy all dressed in gold'?




Picture credits: 
Crater Lake, Oregon, Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Zainubrazvi
The Mold gold cape, Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:AndreasPraefcke