Could I have some help with confirmation of a translation please.

My Dad is doing a tapestry version of the ploughmen from the Julius Calendar, style inspired by the Bayeaux tapestry. He would like to put on text from another ploughmen picture he found online.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ploughmen_Fac_simile_of_a_Miniature_in_a_very_ancient_Anglo_Saxon_Manuscript_published_by_Shaw_with_legend_God_Spede_ye_Plough_and_send_us_Korne_enow.png

Is the translation given accurate and out of curiosity does someone know what manuscript it's from?

Many thanks for any help.

Wulfric.

I wouldn’t have thought the size of the deity would matter in oaths. Presumably both parties would be swearing oaths upon their own deity and would assume that the other person’s deity would be as powerful as their own in helping to keep the person from going against their words.

This may well have been the case, yet again the vagueness of details available frustrate us. I suppose the idea of the oath in this sense is less "with God as my witness" and more "on my honour" (and that of my god). I can understand my god punishing me for bringing his name into ill repute.

I may well be getting to "legal" about the hypothetical wording here but I guess it's relevant through my former post. Why would my god care if I betrayed an oath made to someone else if that person doesn't hold any respect in the eyes of my god, i.e. has never prayed or sacrificed to it. Using this odd logic it makes more sense to make an oath before the other guys god cause then you would fear retribution from an unknown who's got someone else's back not yours.

All of this is circumnavigated if there is a common or “big” that both parties recognise and will uphold both ends equally, supposing the god doesn’t have another personal reason to favour one party over the other.

And within the kin-based structure, where everyone has equal responsible for everyone else, the person making the oath would know that their own kin would be as much to blame as themselves with any oathbreaking.

The system of kin based accountability seems to be a perfect example of society being held together by familial bonds and mutual back scratching. While slightly elevated this may actually serve as evidence for a faith based on “smaller”, more local or less concerned gods.

Curiously, on the matter of people behaving better when they perceive themselves to be under the eyes of deities ; The New Scientist article did highlight that in secular societies with atheist majorities, (given example, parts of Scandinavia) The same effect achieved by religious word dropping to improve behaviour and sense of fairness can be brought about with secular words such as “civic, jury and police”. This combined with Kin group accountability becomes an incredibly effective deterrent to breaking laws/oaths.

I guess this falls into the category of quarter benefiting the one giving it.

Depending on the social class of the people in question individuals may have been "saved" by the possible ransom they could be worth to relatives.

As for the Anglo-Danes trying their luck, who knows I suppose that would hang on whether the skein of their fate ended their or not 

I've been doing a lot of revisiting threads.

Peter or Horsa, or both. Could you explain the difference in the processes of making apple wine as opposed to cider.

Our garden in Devon gets a good crop of apples from a range of varieties, I believe largely Katy. My brother and I have experimented a little with cider making, the first time it was quite palatable, just a little yeasty, but the second time it was only really fit for cooking with or as a joke around re-enactment camp fires where the macho factor was quite high, it was more like cider-vinegar. It was strong stuff on both occasions, that's for sure.

We cored and sliced the apples, then through great effort and curious ingenuity managed to squeeze the delicious fresh apple juice out. We didn't add any yeast but left the juice in otherwise clean, loosely lidded buckets and let nature run it's course for a while. I'm sure we made many mistakes, the biggest one being not taking exact notes on what we did either time.

Would this process count as cider or wine making? Due to the result I'm tempted to say neither but which were we closest to? And where did we go wrong?

Morality and Anglo-Saxon Paganism…

I was just reading through “The God Issue” of New Scientist. It makes some interesting points about human’s natural propensity for religion, and the role of religions in society. Along the line of the latter one particular article dealt with the development of religions alongside society. I’ll outline some key points I took from the magazine so as to give background to my own points/questions.

The point is made that in cultures where one rarely meets strangers, e.g. small hunter gatherer communities; religion rarely deals with issues of human morality. The “two types of altruism: cooperation among kin and reciprocal altruism” are enough to make the familiar people living cheek by jowl get along “nicely”. As population size increases however religion changes to suit. A range of scientific studies have demonstrated that anonymity allows people to cheat or be nasty to others in ways they could never be with someone they know. This is where religion comes in. In larger populations “Big gods” dominate. They are the invisible overseers that influence people’s sense of fairness.
My first question is: How “big” were Pagan/Heathen Anglo-Saxon communities and how frequent were encounters with strangers? And by inference, what can this tell us about how “big” their gods were.
Secondly is there any evidence for levels of social justice or trust and whether it was largely inspired through faith or good will to friends and family?

One can take this further and ask; to what extent was the introduction of Christianity a driving force or a result of the development of Anglo-Saxon England? Or was it in fact both? These questions of coarse cannot be totally separated from the political and economic benefits that being a Christian would have brought at this time.

Hello all,

I concur hence my point about Hares being associated with easter symbology and something to do with hares shareing the landscape with a ground laying bird.

As hares would prefer pasture or wild meadow possibly lowland heath habitats they may well have been going through March Madness at the same time and in the same areas as the native (now extinct but being reintroduced) Great Bustard would have been going through their lekking. Great bustard are magnificent birds they look a bit like a metre tall turkey. As great bustards make their nests in small depressions out in the open they may well have competed for optimal nesting sites with hares...

Hi Dacecain,

Welcome to the site and thanks for your contributions, may you make many more.