The Essay - Anglo-Saxons

[Historian]

Hmmmm...

So, at least someone at Radio 3 reads these message boards. Well done.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

True, but wasn't it Bede (and Geoffrey of Monmouth?) who claimed Vortigern invited the Angles and Saxons to, um, just a moment .... yes , invited them to Britain to protect the Britons from the barbarians (Picts and Scots?)

Bede took the story from Gildas who wrote the story 200 years earlier in his On the Ruin and Conquest of the Britons: a work held in the excellent library of Wearmouth & Jarrow Monastry where Bede lived most of his life.

Geoffery of Monmouth repeated the story 350 years after Bede's death.

(Anyone who watched Andrew Marr's A Flawed History of the World last night might have noticed similarities with the story behind the Viking (the Russi) takeover of the territories now known as Kiev, thus giving the land its modern name, Russia.)

[Flosshilde]

I heard tonight's by accident, as I was doing the washing up. Fascinating, but I was astonished that Barry Cunliffe is still on the go - I'm sure I reda some of his (more populist) books in my late teens (a very long time ago).

[gingerjon]

I'm ashamed to say that sleep got the better of me just as it was starting. Off to the iPlayer I go ...

[french frank]

I heard tonight's by accident, as I was doing the washing up. Fascinating, but I was astonished that Barry Cunliffe is still on the go - I'm sure I reda some of his (more populist) books in my late teens (a very long time ago).

I thought it was a solid, scholarly start, but it did illustrate how little you can include in a 15-minute talk when the subject needs quite a bit of background information. That said, there isn't a lot to be said about the 'historical' Vortigern, but many early sources mention him.

I've never heard the name pronounced with a soft 'g' before ... The *tigernos element is also at the root of Kentigern. I shall continue to pronounce it with a hard, Celtic, g - as Cunliffe used for Gildas (and the Saxon Hengist).

[My listening to the second part was wrecked by this morning's spammer.]

[Frances_iom]

[My listening to the second part was wrecked by this morning's spammer.]

my sympathies - having moderated another M/B I found that once you had one spammer you were visited by the rest of the Chinese army over next week or so - possibly today moved onto lower wage countries tho - we just block whole sections of IP4 space where the Latin alphabet was not native

[french frank]

About time the test question was changed again

The second essay seemed to me to go a bit off-focus, though I suppose it can be whatever the author wants it to be. I'd like to have heard how the peasant farmer fitted into the social hierarchy, for example. What was said was interesting but maybe more detail on the farming itself would have been useful. Perhaps not much is known? I looked up Alphege (Ælfheah) who was mentioned, but now can't remember what he had to do with peasant farmers

On reflection, I'm slightly surprised that Barry Cunliffe gave the talk on Vortigern. I would have thought a historian, rather than an archaeologist, would have been expected since the sources of information are written ones. (Or even a literary medievalist!)

[aeolium]

I actually enjoyed Tuesday's essay more than the other two, though it was good to hear Rowan Williams again last night (and with his imminent retirement from his current job hopefully we shall hear him more often). The essay on St Augustine did not actually deal that much with his time in Britain or the impact he had in different areas, and the Vortigern essay seemed a bit nebulous, perhaps like its subject - and in the cases of both men the portraits were not really of Ango-Saxons but of a Roman prior and a British chieftain respectively. The essay on the Anglo-Saxon farmer did I think provide quite a good insight into their lives and developments such as co-operative farming, feudal taxation, wider European trade, the village and the open strip field system which became such a feature of the medieval landscape. Yes, it would have been good to have had a clearer idea of the social positions within the hierarchy of the different types of farmer (she did touch on the difference between the free and unfree farmer) but I think the presenter was more interested in the details of farmers' lives and how these changed over time.

Looking forward to tonight's essay on three Anglo-Saxon women....

[french frank]

I think perhaps the problem is the idea that these are 'portraits' of individuals when really not a lot is known about them. I found last night's talk very interesting (and, as usual with RW, elegantly written and delivered), but I came away with more of an idea of Gregory than Augustine. Maybe 'The Anglo-Saxon World' would have been more accurate?

[french frank]

The programme about the three 'Alpha females' was not quite what I expected (I thought it would be more history based), but it was quite illuminating to hear the descriptions and what archaeologists could infer about the long deceased.

A bit more about the Bidford on Avon 'cunning woman' here.

[Lateralthinking1]

This project is very welcome. It gives shape and substance to the concept of "The Essay". It will also help to answer questions about the purpose of R3 and the BBC. I have listened to three episodes but hope in time to hear them all. Once any worries about excessive dryness are overcome, the series draws the listener in. It is extraordinary just how little most of us know about long periods of our history. This is an ideal way of broadening knowledge and making the most of future holiday destinations.

I have wanted to visit the Holy Island for many years. The tribute to Cuthbert by Tony Morris showed just what can be achieved by a shepherd with determination, a dislike of formal responsibility and a sense of discomfort when in very large crowds. There is much to be said for his being in touch with nature, unhindered by light pollution. He is also the ultimate antidote to Warhol's version of fame. While a miracle worker in terms of local pastoral care, his principal significance appears to have been in drawing the diverging traditions of Christianity closely together. As anyone who has ever listened to a news bulletin in the 21st century could testify, that was probably beyond miraculous. If anyone knows the word for "beyond miraculous", please let me know.

I know Whitby well. I have often climbed the steep steps from the gift shops to the Abbey. Always enjoyably bracing, it is not the most spiritual of experiences, particularly by the caravan site. Barbara Yorke's essay on the peace weaver Hild of Whitby has helped to make sense of it as the Synod of Streonshalh. This "mother" who was an "honorary man" was unusually focussed on the dates of Easter. However, she provided a strong steer to the course of Christianity, managing proceedings with wisdom and grace. She was also a trailblazer. The responsibilities she held weren't equalled in the Church by any woman in the next 1300 years.

By contrast, if Rowan Williams is to be believed, Augustine might never have summoned up enough courage to reach Canterbury. Williams, a natural broadcaster, described how the guy was of an anxious disposition and approached the cold lands with huge trepidation. Once here, he turned to Gregory for advice whenever problems arose. Somehow he managed to assist in the beginnings of an England we can recognise. By the time he died, there was more unity in the Church from the south to the north, at least in the east. He was also arguably the father of globalisation in the way policy was shaped from beyond the British Isles.

All in all, then, a very good start - and after these ten, there are twenty more to go.

[Stephen Smith]

Lots to do in Northumbria and the Cheviots. On one of our trips to the Cheviots, we were lucky enough to go to a Northumbrian Pipes and Fiddle concert in the church on Holy Island. A magical end to the visit. Presumably Andrew and Margaret Watchorn will post their 2013 schedule at some point in the New Year.

[Lateralthinking1]

Lots to do in Northumbria and the Cheviots. On one of our trips to the Cheviots, we were lucky enough to go to a Northumbrian Pipes and Fiddle concert in the church on Holy Island. A magical end to the visit. Presumably Andrew and Margaret Watchorn will post their 2013 schedule at some point in the New Year.

Stephen Smith - Thank you for your recommendation. I am very keen to go there. Andrew and Margaret are saying that they are taking bookings for 2013 but the diary is still showing the 2012 events. I will have another look around Christmas.

http://www.pipesandfiddle.co.uk/index.htm

[Sir Velo]

At the risk of coming across as a curmudgeon, I'm afraid Tony Morris' portrayal of the life of Cuthbert was marred for me by his unrelenting use of the present historical tense, which had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. For example, "Cuthbert is thinking this"; "the people are doing that". The use of this tense is a rhetorical device increasingly adopted by historians, and historical novelists (e.g. Hilary Mantel) presumably to "involve" the listener and make the past more immediate. However, all it does is show a lack of respect for the attention span of the audience. Fine for schoolkids; unacceptable for a R3 listenership.

We know Cuthbert lived 1300 years ago and talking about him in the present tense does not change this fact. Unfortunately, the problem with this technique is that it leads the narrator up a cul-de-sac. There is no way to leave the historical present and use other tenses without all this appearing in the light of a banal strategem. This was obvious at the end of the talk when Morris suddently switched to the conditional perfect: "what would (Cuthbert) have thought (at later historiography)?". Having presented Cuthbert's thoughts in the present tense it was a total stylistic failure to then leap as it were one and a half millenia forward to consider Cuthbert from a later vantage point.

[Pabmusic]

...2. The peasant-farmer: Helena Hamerow, Professor of Early Medieval Archaeology at the University of Oxford, on the voiceless millions of peasant-farmers who shaped the landscape of lowland rural England as we see it today...

Slight exaggeration here. The Domesday Book from the 1040s suggests a population of 1.5-1.9 million, which was presumably 50% female (at least approximately), so a century or two earlier there could hardly have been "millions" of voiceless peasant-farmers. Not that this detracts one jot from the point, of course.