North British Warrior

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Alan,

Where's Robert on this one. I thought he was back from "vacation."

Yuhu.
Well, actually you were doing quite well, so...

Amazingly, it may be the songs themselves that can tell us a little something about the North British warrior. They were composed in the north and then went south into Wales along the "western corridor." The Institutional Triads, mentioned above, are also nearly pure. True, the oldest ms we have of both-- the songs and social triads-- are the surviving medieval copies... but they are helpful.

Ah, the songs.. Well, the poetry is.. poetry. It's like using Claudian as a source for the battle-plans of Stilicho in Britain. And amazingly, some have done just that.

What do you mean that the Triads are 'pure'? Pure of what?

Yet many classicists balk at using them.

Surprised? It's known these days through research of the work of the last known oral poets (ask Jona) that, opposite to what was thought for a long time, the contents of oral poetry varies with each performance, however slight. That means that Homer did not write down the contents of songs that had changed little troughout centuries, but merely the last of many many versions.
The same goes for medieval songs that are passed on orally. each performer adds his own stuff, so we cannot possibly rely on this material as conveying actual details. And if they do, it's coincidental.

A new thread? Dark Age Post-Roman? We'll have Barber, Pykitt, Wilson, Blackett, Manfredi, Franzoni, and Guinevere in a leather bikini. hock:

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo [..] oooooooooooooo :twisted:

Britain had no Tacitus, no Pliny, no Ammianus. How sad.

Well, come to think of it, neither had Gaul, Spain, Africa, Greece, Syria... the list is long.

Combrogi! Right on. That's the old old word in itself! And we see a common ethnos that welded a culture. Chieftains/kings had no property, it was "in common" with the extended Combrogi.

I REALLY hope you were being sarcastic here, and not painting a picture of Early Communist Britain. :mrgreen:

They don't even contain a Christian pollution, although written down in the medieval era.

Christian pollution? Explain?