Well, hi ya’ll!
Can you believe it’s the middle of February already? Here in the Blue Ridge Mountains, we can expect cold weather, ice, sleet, maybe snow, and lots of rain. But the good news is: it only lasts a couple of days and we’re back in the 50s-60s again with lovely sunshine and blue skies. And we’ve got central heating and fireplaces, chimneys, electric blankets, warm clothes, and generators if the electricity goes out. We can usually cope.
Not so in the Middle Ages.
Meg of St. Michael’s Mead, my main character in my first book The Solitary Sparrow, was born in 1308, when winter was at its most brutal. It was cold inside and out. Meg’s mother swaddled her and held her near the fire—essentially a fire pit in the center of a simple one-room cottage with no insulation. Smoke rose to the hole in the roof. Chimneys had been invented but they didn’t become common in houses until the 16th and 17th centuries. Glass was far too expensive for peasants so the windows were covered by shutters. The floor was dirt and layered with rushes, and the roof was thatched. If the family wanted to stay warm, they layered their wool clothes and slept with a night cap on.
The beautiful illustration below is from the February calendar page of the Tres Riches Heures of the Duc du Berry (attributed to Paul Limbourg, or the "Rustic painter", Musée Condé). It shows a snow-covered landscape with a village in the background. In the foreground, a farm enclosure holds a sheep pen, four beehives, and a dovecote. Inside the house, a woman and a young man and woman warm themselves in front of the fire. I love the way they have lifted up their clothes to warm their legs. Outside, a man chops down a tree with an axe, while another man drives a donkey loaded with wood towards the village. Another man struggles against the wind while blowing on his hands to warm them. The page is so beautifully rendered, you can feel the chilblains and the ache of cold in your hands.
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Maybe we shouldn't complain so much about the next electric bill?
Winters were brutal in the early part of the 14th century. At the time Meg was born, 1308, her village in Warwickshire would have experienced the beginnings of what has been called “The Little Ice Age.” a climate change that stretched to the early 19th century. It was deeply cold for days on end with intense snowfalls. Rivers froze over, including the Thames. In 1307 the Baltic Sea froze over. Soon famine set in. Thousands of people died. This section from the prequel bonus (which I’m going to upload to the website at the end of the month) explains what Meg’s village experienced:
To the right of the forest road, the morning sun spread across what remained of the wheat fields. Until the end of May, cold winds had blown in from the east, always a bad sign her father had said, and much of the early crop was frozen. Then the winds shifted to the southwest and the rain began. It rained steadily, day and night, until harvest time. Just when it seemed the downpour would never end, a miracle happened. The sun came out, the crops began to dry and everyone hurried to sharpen the scythes. Then on harvest morning, Sir Henry demanded his boon service as liege lord. Everyone was to leave their own fields and give Sir Henry the week’s harvest work they owed him. The men grumbled but it was useless. They were born to the blood, the blood of their service and there was no way to undo it. Their fathers and grandfathers and their grandfathers’ fathers had labored for the lords of Little Caldecot Manor. They gathered their tools and began the walk to Sir Henry’s demesne. All of them, man, woman and child who were not freeborn, toiled in Sir Henry’s fields for a week. They worked from sunup to sundown, stopping only for a brief meal, falling into bed each night after a drink of hot broth, sometimes too tired to take off their overtunic. After they finished the boon work, Sir Henry’s wife, Lady Elisabeth ordered her cooks to reward them with a harvest celebration. It was a feast of such wondrous food and drink, it nearly made the boon work worthwhile, though Meg would never have said such a thing aloud. When they had eaten almost to sickness, they returned to their own fields. But they were too late. Sir Henry’s barns were full, but their own crops were rotten.
Having enough food to make it through the winter was always a challenge. Pigs were slaughtered and processed in November and December when meat was cured and salted for preservation. Blood sausage or black puddings were made from pig’s blood. This was also time for planting of winter crops, usually wheat, in fields that had lain fallow the previous season. In February peasants spread manure to fertilize the fields, pruned vines and trees, repaired fences and tools, and fed the farm animals.
Peasants in the 14th century, in addition to keeping warm, had trouble keeping their stomachs full. In the winter food supplies of food were low. Meg and her family would eat dried food, salted meat, wheat, porridge, root vegetables, and cheese.
Frumenty
Max Miller, whose love of history led him to replicate historical dishes, re-created a medieval favorite called frumenty which he features on his YouTube channel. During the harsh medieval winter, frumenty was guaranteed to fill the tummy of royals or peasants. Everyone ate it. It’s a wheat or barley porridge mixed with egg or milk. More spices and/or sugar appear in the royal version. It should be nice and thick to stick to your ribs. I think the recipe would be good with raisins or dried fruit pieces and sugar. Frumenty could also be fixed as a savory dish. A favorite frumenty dish for the royals was frumenty with porpoise. Hmmm, I’ll pass, thank you.
Meg’s mother makes frumenty as a treat during the feast day of St. Martin (Martinmas, November 11) in the prequel bonus to The Solitary Sparrow. The villagers get up early at the bust of dawn to butcher the pigs then they take a break. Here’s what Meg says:
They worked from early light to midday, after which they stopped to eat and rest before returning to the butchering tables. The Martinmas feast, set up in the churchyard, was not as abundant as in years past, but a goodly showing nonetheless. The table was stocked with offerings from each family: bread and cheese, dried apples, cabbages, porridge, a flitch of salt bacon, a brace of partridge—courtesy of Sir Henry’s sharp-eyed falcons and a gift from the manor house—frumenty and sweet buns. And, of course, pork. Now they were lolling in the churchyard enjoying a brief respite. The wind had stopped and the sun was out, providing a warmth that broke the chill. With the slaughter well underway, they could have a bit of fun before returning to sausages and pudding. Alice’s son Tim pounded a strong beat on his drum and in a deep voice, so startling from someone so thin, he began to sing the first verse to “The Juggler and the Baron’s Daughter.” “Draw me near, ye jolly jugglers, draw me near . . .” Meg licked her lips, hoping for a last taste of frumenty. It had been especially good, one of her mother’s best batches. She stretched out on the grass and enjoyed the comfort of sun on her face. It felt so wonderful to be warm and still, free from walking hill to hill, tree to tree in search of food for the pigs.
Winter Fun
Even though winter was a challenge, it could be fun too with snowball fights and ice skating.
Bone ice skates were made from the shin-bone of either cattle or horses. The skate was strapped to the feet with pieces of leather that were threaded through holes in the back and front of the bone. The earliest mention of ice skating was discovered in the twelfth century writing of an English monk, William Fitzstephen (c.1191). In his work, Descriptio Nobilissimi Civitatis Londiniae he mentioned children in London attaching bones to their ankles and ‘flying like birds across the ice’.
Medieval Doodle: Dog Duck Chicken? Chicken Duck Dog?
A drollerie, also called a grotesque, is a small decorative image in the margin of an illuminated manuscript. In the drollerie below, I imagine a scribe who is bored out of his mind who absentmindedly starts to doodle on the side of the text. Oops. Not having a nifty modern eraser handy and not wanting to scrape away the parchment with his knife blade, he decides to add on a dog’s head with big ears and duck (?) feet. If you look closely at the drawing, you’ll see a dark shadow behind it. That’s where the monk has scraped away his previous attempt.
Send me a funny caption for the drollerie below and I’ll mail you a handcrafted wooden bookmark of The Solitary Sparrow!
The Last Word: Get Out of the Way
Thanks for reading. As always I love to hear from you.
Lorraine
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Such a delicious blog post, Lorraine! I don't know that I'd like frumenty, but I enjoyed the images and the excerpts from The Sparrow. I finally have a copy and am dying to dig into it!