Medieval Lanterns 1

There are a lot of medieval lanterns depicted in illuminated manuscripts, paintings, and sculpture.  There are even a few surviving examples.  The best places to look for these references are Karen Larsdatter's webpage and The Dragon (the magazine of the Company of Saint George).  Since I live West of the Mississippi River open flame fire bans are the norm during camping season.  So I wanted a lantern that looked like a medieval lantern, was easy to make, inexpensive, and could be used with an electric light source.  Cian of Storvik has an excellent example of how to convert a fluorescent lantern into a very nice Mary Rose style lantern.  It's too complicated and expensive for me.  Yeah, yeah: dumb and cheap, I know.

The Mary Rose style is an excellent choice for the 14th and 15th centuries, however, so with a little re-design I came up with this.

As you can see it uses the basic shape of the Mary Rose lantern, but the design has been super-simplified.  The base and the top are made from 5" wooden plaque bases.  The very top is made from a 4" plaque base.  The top base was cut with a 3" disk cutter and the interior edges were sanded.  The 3" disk was glued to the very top plaque base with wood glue.  The vertical posts are 1/4" round dowel cut to 7 and 3/4" lengths.  I sanded the ends (a little like shapening a pencil) to reduce their diameter.  I used a drill press with a 1/4" bit to drill the holes.  They go all the way through the bottom plaque and halfway through the top plaque.  The dowels go into the holes in the bottom and go all the way through.  Then I put a drop of wood glue in the top holes and the dowels go into those.  The top plaque is prone to splitting at this point; be gentle.  Wipe off excess wood glue.  Turn the whole thing over and put some wood glue into the bottom holes and wipe off any excess.  Let it dry overnight and you're good.

The central light column, in this case, is parchment paper (fake parchment paper).  I cut it using a laser (because I have access to one) and put trefoil holes around it.  I definitely recommend cutting quatrefoils, trefoils or some other pattern as it causes the light to cast these really cool light patterns on the ceiling.  I wrapped the paper around the cutout disk glued to the top of the very top plaque, marked the join, and then glued the tube.  I used a ruler and some weights to hold the two ends together for about 15 minutes.  After that I used wood glue to attach the tube to the cutout disk. Best way to do this is turn the very top plaque upside down, put the tube in place, and then reach down with the wood glue to fill the gap between the tube and the cutout disk.  Ten minutes drying time and it's safe to handle.  Once it dries overnight you're done.

The taplight is a standard taplight using three LEDs.  It works moderately well.  It would work better with some sort of light diffuser.  I'm experimenting.  It doesn't cast a lot of light, but it definitely makes a dent in the darkness.

Future enhancements include: oiling the paper cylinder to increase translucency, some sort of light diffuser (a scratched up piece of clear plastic, an inverted reflective cone at the top of the lantern), cutting a 1" central hole through the very top plaque and the cutout disk, adding a handle, cutting a shallow depression slightly more than 3" in diameter in the bottom plaque, replacing the parchment (fake) cylinder with parchment/rawhide, replacing the parchment cylinder with glass (my wife found a really good and inexpensive way to do this).

The taplight cost $6, the parts for the lantern cost $10, it took me about six hours to make three of these while I was working out the bugs.  And this lantern still has bugs as you can see from the photos.  Lifting the light column rather than using a door that opens is obviously the most glaring departure from genuine medieval design and it actually reduces the utility of the lantern (many medieval lanterns are supposed to use the open door to cast light in a single direction) but the simplicity of the design really makes this accessible to anyone.  I will be tweaking the design as I go to make it possible for people to put more labor and materials into the effort and more closely approach medieval examples.  The door issue, for instance, is just waiting for me to find some workshop time to implement it.

I'm happy with the results thus far.

Medieval Backgammon - Todas Tablas

All hail Alfonso X el Sabio!  Because the King of Castille took an interest in games we have a record of the three big games of his day: Chess, Dice, and Tables.  In the case of Tables we're talking about backgammon and the many variants thereof.  And what we find is that one variant, Todas Tablas, was virtually identical to the modern game of backgammon.  I say virtually because they didn't use a doubling cube and there appears to be an error in the illustration accompanying the description of the game.  The description is pretty much modern backgammon.  The illustration appears to have the positions of the black and white pieces partially incorrect.

Figure 1 - Todas Tablas

Here you see the players set for a game of Todas Tablas.  Note the white/yellow pieces are all on one side and the black/brown pieces are all on the other side.  In modern backgammon the pieces should be staggered and that's how the text describing the game places them.

Figure 2 - Modern Backgammon

While it's possible the illustration is showing a variation on the game, that's unlikely.  But a player in the 14th Century (or later) having seen the book, might be forgiven for thinking the illustration shows an alternate starting position.  It changes the dynamic of the game and, for that alone, the medieval man would likely have been grateful.

The rules for Todas Tablas, less the doubling cube, are identical to modern backgammon.  It is referenced throughout the middle ages.  The English called it Irish (I'm not sure I want to understand that).  The French called it Touts Tables or Tric Trac.  For 14th Century Spain this game would be perfectly ok.

Translation in progress.  The fun of translating:  I need a larger sample to confirm that I'm translating this correctly so I need to translate the five or six entries prior to this one.  I find this both fun and frustrating.  I think that says something about my character.
The text describing the game of Todas Tablas:

Este iuego llaman todas tablas.
Otro iuego a y que llaman todas tablas porque se entabla derramadamientre en todas las
quatro quadras del tablero E en las dos quadras que son derecho la una de la otra; ponen en
la una en el seys cinco tablas de una color. & dessa misma ponen dos al as en la otra
quadra que esta en derecho della & en misma quadra contralla ponen otrossi las tablas
como en esta que auemos dicha. E en las otras dos quadras que son cabo dessas en la casa
dell as ponen cinco tablas de la color que pusieron las otras cinco en la casa del seys. E en
las del cinco ponen tres tablas en cadauna dessas colores. E iueganse {CB2} assi. el que
ouiere la mano iogara a qual parte quisiere trayendo dos tablas dell as contra la casa del
seys o tienen las cinco tablas. Pero si algunas tablas se tomaren; anlas de tornar a la quadra
do estan las dos tablas en ell as. E dalli leuarlas a la quadra do estan las cinco tablas en la
casa del seys. & dende leuarlas. E este iuego se iuega con dos dados.

This game is called all tables.
Another game and it is called all tables because _____ in all four quadrants of the table.  In the two quadrants in which one is to the right of the other put on the six [using a standard numbering system] of the quadrant on the right  five pieces of one color.  And in the other quadrant put two on the ace [one] of the other quadrant which is on the right....
And play like this....

Nut Allergies or A Substitute for Almonds in Medieval Recipes

People have them.  Until one of my children was diagnosed with them, however, I was pretty.... callous about the issue.  Can't eat nuts?  Tough.  Next issue?

Then I read the Livre de Sent Sovi.   This is a cook book dealing with food in 14th Century Iberia.  And damn near every recipe in the book starts with something like 'take almond milk made with chicken broth'.  I'll talk about chicken broth later, let's try to stay on target here.  It's difficult to make a lot of these recipes unless you've got almond milk or a reasonable substitute

My initial thought was that rice milk would fit the bill.  Probably.  Maybe.  But I couldn't find a single reference to rice milk in any documents from the Middle Ages.  Or the Roman era.  Which is not to say there aren't references, but I haven't found any.  I'll be honest, that wouldn't prevent me from trying it and, if it was moderately useful, using it.  There are recipes for barley water, of course, but if you've tasted barely water it doesn't taste the same as almond milk and it lacks the fatty mouth-feel almond milk gets from the almond oil.

In researching this issue, however, I came across horchata.  You know horchata, right?  It's the yummy Mexican rice milk heavily flavored with cinnamon and sugar.  And sugar.  But rice wasn't an original ingredient (sugar was, though).  In Iberia, where the drink was 'invented' the original ingredient was the chufa nut.  (Which leaves aside the fact that barely water, oat water, and other concoctions pre-date horchata/orxata/llet de xufes/leche de chufas by quite a bit.)

The chufa nut has been cultivated for thousands of years and can be found in the Egyptian record and archaeological finds.  We know it was used in 14th Century Iberia because it appears in a contemporary herbal.  It appears to have been used as a vegetable or dried and ground into a flour for use in sweets.  The Spanish popularly claim that the drink originated in the 13th Century.  As they tell the tale, James I of Aragon was offered a drink by a little girl as he was passing by and exclaimed "Aco es or, xata!"  That's gold, darling.  (Alternative translation: That's money, honey.)

That sounds ridiculous, of course, and it's probably completely untrue but I'm not going to argue with the chufa mafia or the dozens of bloggers who cut and paste the unsubstantiated work of other bloggers.  I did manage to find a Spanish reference which makes reference to documents found in 18th Century municipal records which indicate horchata vendors were in business at that time.  Another source claims that llet de xufes can be documented in 13th Century al-Andalus, but it fails to document this claim.  This claim is repeated by several sources, including one that moves the date to the 10th Century but, the lack of documentation is also repeated.  One of the physicians of James II of Aragon is alleged to have prescribed eating the roots of "xufles" to treat hemorrhoids.  This in the late 13th Century.  There is a prescription for leche de chufas from 1824 as well.  In the 1607 "Libro de Cozina" written by  Domingo Hernández de Maceras there is apparently a recipe for Torrija (french toast - more properly bread soaked and then fried) which apparently makes reference to using horchata de chufas.  But I haven't been able to confirm that.

For me the presence of the chufa in medieval Spain, the fact that it was known to and used by them (in medicine, note, not food, but the line there is not as clearly drawn as it is today) is enough to make it plausible.  And, frankly, the convenience of being able to substitute a non-allergenic ingredient that's pretty close to the allergenic ingredient is just too tempting to ignore.  I feel comfortable using these as a substitute for almonds in recipes.  I would not feel comfortable presenting horchata as a documented beverage at a medieval event.  That said, I'll probably have it on hand to drink because I enjoy it.  But where to get chufas?

After searching specialty food stores, importers, and just about every other source I could think of I finally found a source for chufa nuts: the local hunting store.  It turns out chufa nuts are used to create bait patches to lure turkey.  You can buy chufa nuts by the 5 pound bag.  And, according to those who've tried it, horchata made with chufa nuts tastes very similar to horchata made with almonds.

I said I'd talk about chicken broth.  The Livre de Sent Sovi uses two kinds of almond milk.  One is the familiar sweetened almond milk we know and tolerate.  The other is a savory almond milk made using chicken broth instead of water.  That's a subject for an entirely different post, however.

An Explanation and Introduction

A commonplace book, also known as a zibaldone, is rather like a combination of a diary and a sketchbook. See Wikipedia for more detailed information.  They can contain anything that interests the person writing them.  In this regard they should be considered a notebook/reference for a specific person and not an attempt to communicate ideas to a wider audience.  I'm going to use this as justification for the mediocre quality of the writing that should follow in subsequent posts: it's meant to be a reference for me.  But y'all are welcome to find whatever information you can in my notes.

I am inspired in this action (i.e. I'm totally ripping off) Will McLean.  His Commonplace Book introduced me to the idea and has been a constant source of inspiration.  If you are at all interested in the 14th Century in general and Deeds of Arms in particular, you really should take a look at his work.  Plan on spending a weekend or visiting multiple times.

Another interesting commonplace book can be found here.  The pictures are interesting even if you can't read Spanish.