fallen warriors, or the figure who guarded that loftier route. The famous “rainbow bridge” connected Asgard to Midgard (our Earth), and was guarded by a figure variously known as Heimdall (usually in the Norse) or Geldzehn (literally, “gold teeth”) in Germanic tongues, who made sure that those who died less-than-glorious deaths in battle on Midgard were consigned to the realm of Hel. This last was one of the evil children of Loki, the most mysterious and shifting of the gods and demigods in this tradition, but basically half-brother to Thor, the god of thunder, and himself the god of mischief. Hel had been banished by Wotan (Odin, Wodenez, the Allsveter referred to earlier) to rule the closest thing to a traditional netherworld that appears in the Germanic-Norse pagan faith. The name of that netherworld and of its ruler became one, over time, giving us “Hell,” a place that was said to lie across various rivers (depending on the version of the tales one reads), but which, in each case, seemed to fill roughly the role of the river Styx in Greek mythology, although the reasons why one would be consigned to this dark world in the Northern pagan system were based almost purely, not on the nature of one’s life, but of one’s death, that is, whether one was a warrior (which often included, it should be remembered, women) and died fighting. Hel, therefore, claimed not simply “evil” souls, but the spirits of people who had died of anything from disease to mere accident: an arguably unjust system that reveals much about Germanic and Scandinavian values. —C.C.
† ballistae Gibbon writes, “Here is a either a particularly clear demonstration of the influence of Rome upon Broken, by way of Oxmontrot and his subordinates, or one of the greatest linguistic mysteries of the entire Manuscript. At first suspecting a third answer to the question — simple laziness on the part of the translator — I pressed him particularly hard upon the matter. Had he found a description of something that, in his mind, closely matched the mainstay of Roman offensive war machines, I asked, and simply borrowed the name? [Ballistae were, in effect, close to catapults — which the Broken army also, apparently, possessed — save with greater power: if a catapult resembled a giant slingshot, ballistae could be seen as enormous crossbow, in an era, of course, before crossbows existed. —C.C.] But he was adamant that he had found the word intact, and used it for that very reason. It is therefore possible that many, if not most, Broken troops used the term without knowing anything of its origins, or of the significance of those origins, in terms of cultural transmission.”
† “artillery” The word may surprise some, in this context, but the fact that Gibbon does not even think it worth mentioning shows that, even in his time, “artillery” was still understood to encompass any weapon that hurled what men could not over great distances: for the purposes of the Manuscript, primarily ballistae (sing. ballista) and catapults. The arrival of gunpowder simply added a new dimension to this phenomenon; but the term had been in use since ancient times, and indeed, purely kinetic artillery — especially the high Medieval trebuchet—could hurl heavier shot faster and harder than almost any of its gunpowder-based competitors of the time, though admittedly, the engines themselves were far larger and more difficult to maneuver. —C.C.
† “… a sheet of white silk …” The white flag was already the well-established signal of surrender, as it had been since the early anno Domini period. —C.C.
† “‘… exchanged for molten metal …’” Gibbon writes, “In the ancient and early medieval periods, it was not unusual for patients who suffered the kinds of disease under discussion, here, to suffer from the delusion that their blood had become some kind of ‘molten metal,’ absurd though the notion may seem to us.”
† “plainsong” Obviously, in this case, the word is being used in its most basic sense — that is, to describe a simple, unembellished melody, often heard in the countryside — and not to connote the more formalized and elaborate version developed by the Catholic Church; a distinction understood well enough during Gibbon’s time that he felt no need to explain it. —C.C.
‡ Weda The name of Gerolf Gledgesa’s daughter is of obscure origin, having only a surviving male counterpart, one that is associated with “wood,” although in what sense it is difficult to say. It may have been only a matter of pronunciation, for in German dialects of almost any age, it would have been — indeed, today would still be — pronounced “Vay-da,” an unusually pleasant-sounding (if, again, difficult to define) name for girls and women. —C.C.
† “‘… she feels no pain!’” This is, indeed, a common feature of the last stages of the gangrene that results from ergot poisoning, and one of its most pathetic symptoms, as both humans and animals who lack whole limbs attempt to behave as if they still possess them. —C.C.
II: Fire † “thud” This is another of the words that are often mistakenly considered “modern” and onomatopoeic, but which in fact are medieval in origin; and it is the imagined need, on the part of many writers and translators, to come up with terms more genuinely “old” with an “e” (ye olde) that accounts for much of the stuffiness of modern renderings and/or imitations of what were already, by the eighth century, an athletic set of northern European languages. Indeed, in this case, “thud” is not even thought worthy of comment by Gibbon, familiar as he likely was with Middle English’s thudden and Old English’s thyddan, the parent terms of “thud.” —C.C.
† “‘… if he [Bede] yet lives …’” There is something strangely sad about the fact that Bede (whom, as was noted earlier, Caliphestros knew, from having spent time in Bede’s home, the Monastery of St. Paul near Wearmouth) had almost certainly died by the time that the events described in the Manuscript were taking place. From the many historical, cultural, religious, and scientific references mentioned, it is possible to place those events at circa A.D. 745; whereas “the Venerable Bede,” a man of faith who nevertheless did honest and solid work in the cause of scholarly history (and, it should be said, legend, as well), died some ten years earlier, in 735. Caliphestros evidently had great respect and affection for Bede; and his never learning of his friend’s death seems not only melancholy on its own merits, but a stark underscoring of just how isolated the “sorcerer” had been during his ten years in Davon Wood. —C.C.
† “‘a special beer’” The beverage that we today think of as simple beer could in fact only have started to be made in Europe, at this time, because the turn of the seventh and eighth centuries saw the first domestic cultivation of hops, although most sources say this was for medicinal purposes, and that hops were not used in beer until the eleventh century. Thus, Broken appears to have been ahead of the European world around it yet again; for, while other forms of beer had existed since ancient times, it is the use of such hops (which originally grew wild in the mountains) that gives “modern” beer the capacity — as Keera asserts — to drive young men “mad,” through their undeniably if mildly pseudo-narcotic effect. —C.C.
‡ and †† “woad” and “meadow bells” Woad (Isatis tintoria) is a plant that did indeed produce a popular blue dye (and as a result, is often confused with indigo). But it has recently been learned that, taken as a medicine, woad may contain twenty to thirty times the amount of glucobrassicin (a powerful cancer-preventing agent) that is found in broccoli, the modern vegetable most commonly cited in connection with preventing and fighting cancer. And scoring or bruising the leaves of woad can heighten its powers along these lines many times over (much as scoring opium poppy seed pods intensifies the amount and power of opium produced); thus, Keera’s claim that woad is effective against growths, “especially inside the body,” almost certainly refers to some power to inhibit or shrink tumors. What she calls “meadow bells,” meanwhile (by which informal name modern Germans still know Pulsitilla nigricans) was another herbal wonder drug, used for a long list of purposes and problems, ranging, as Keera says, from menstrual pain to the invigoration of the uterus during pregnancy to, most commonly and importantly, counteracting the causes of what were then simply dismissed as life-threatening “fevers.” It could and can also be used (according to which source one consults) to treat everything from hemorrhoids to tooth- and backaches. Was it a kind of Barbarian Age snake oil? It seems unlikely, since it is still used in various traditional medicines today, with effect; although the complete list of problems it is said to affect is implausible. —C.C.
† “‘Alchemy! … metals to gold … tiny men like vegetables …’” Heldo-Bah speaks of the ancient alchemical “arts,” as they were known by both their practitioners and their detractors: for even the most enlightened of its practitioners did not treat alchemy as a pure science. Like so many areas of learning during the Dark and Middle Ages (and not unlike certain fields of science today), alchemy became more famous — or infamous — for the more extreme and even nonsensical of its practices than it did for its very real, but less dramatic, contributions to science, medicine,
