Kothar the Barbarian Swordsman

I spent a few hours yesterday at the book festival in Edinburgh. This inevitably involves a great deal of sitting around waiting for things to happen, but that's okay, since you won't be at a loss for something to read.

Myself, I used the time to read Gardner Fox's Kothar the Barbarian, part of my ongoing interest in pulp science fiction & fantasy. I'd picked this one up a couple of years back in the Star Books edition shown above. This Australian mass mass market paperback edition was fairly cheap ca.1969 when it came out and is still fairly inexpensive on the second-hand market, so it wasn't a difficult book to acquire.

Gardner Fox was an amazingly proloific writer. As well as working full-time for DC Comics as a writer (amongst the things he created while there was Batman's famous Utility Belt), he published at least one novel a year, and sometimes many more. When DC got rid of him and many of their other veterans in 1968 (so that they didn't have to provide health insurance for their older staff workers), he sought out other markets.

One of these other markets was TSR's games magazine The Dragon, which published his Niall of the Far Travels short stories from the mid-70s onwards. This was where I first encountered his writings as a young Dungeons and Dragons fan. At the time, I was completely unaware of his other work, so it was only much later that I realised how important a writer he had been for the creators of D&D, and the likely reason he had been asked to write for The Dragon to begin with (he also created a boardgame for TSR during this period–he really was a polymath).

I'm not going to claim that these stories about a humongous northern barbarian and his magic sword Frostfire are great art or especially innovative. Indeed, they're filled with the cliches of the genre with seductive witches, rubies the size of pigeons' eggs, low taverns and high body counts. However, what they do have is a tremendous energy as Kothar battles his way from encounter to fabulous encounter and a heavy sprinkling of that elusive 'sense of wonder' that fans so crave. If you're a player of D&D, you'll also notice a few ideas that Gygax & Arneson took straight from the Kothar stories and incorporated in their game.

In short, I enjoyed this and will be looking to read the other four books in the series. None of them seem to be especially cheap, so it may be a while before I find them at a price I like. Wish me luck!

Flodden and the Blue Blanket

A fierce migraine has been afflicting me all week, but I managed (just) to find time to visit the exhibition on "Flodden and the Blue Blanket" at the Trades Maiden Hospital in Edinburgh.

The Blue Blanket in question is the standard granted to the Hammermen of Edinburgh under which the Edinburgh Trades would muster in time of war. It wasn't unique–the Edinburgh Merchants had a Blue Blanket too, and so did the merchants and tradesmen of other Scottish burghs. Over time, the Hammermen themselves have had many Blue Blankets, regularly laying up worn colours and replacing them with fresh ones. This Blue Blanket in the Trades Maiden Hospital is believed to be late 17th century, and the oldest surviving example.

No photography was permitted, quite rightly, but I have posted an image of the flag at the to give an idea of its original appearance. Nowadays, there is almost none of that bright azure colour remaining, and the flag is a ghostly white, but it remains an impressive piece of Edinburgh history.

Much of the exhibition concentrates on Flodden, one of Scotland's greatest debacles, in a country famous for its debacles. The Edinburgh Trades contingent fought under their own banner at the battle and were essentially destroyed during it. The flag, now tattered and torn, was somehow rescued from the battlefield by Randolph Murray, captain and sole survivor of the Edinburgh City Band (the town watch), who carried it back to the capital with the news of Scotland's defeat.

The exhibition collected together several different depictions of Murray's arrival in Edinburgh on his wounded horse (above), carrying with him the Blue Blanket. The event also featured in William Edmondstoune Aytoun's "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers", a phenomenally succesful poetry collection in its day. The poem which you can read here, "Edinburgh After Flodden" while very much a piece of its time still has a little of that blood and thunder to shake the reader.

Lochleven Castle

It seems to be Mary Queen of Scots Year this year, at least for me. Earlier this year, I visited Tutbury Castle down in Staffordshire, one of the places where Mary was imprisoned during her time in England. It was apparently very run-down when the queen was there, and has gone only downhill since. Then in July I went to the National Museum of Scotland's imaginatively named temporary exhibition "Mary, Queen of Scots", which certainly did what it said on the tin. And then, a couple of days after that, I found myself on the way to another castle where the queen had been imprisoned, Lochleven Castle.

Here's a shot of the suviving parts of Tutbury Castle–there was a 1940s living history event being held there over the bank holiday weekend, and you can see some part of that going on in front of the best preserved parts of the structure. The building on the right is now used as a museum and tea shop and it was rather nice to stop there for a coffee and a cake on a bright summer's day.

Lochleven Castle is quite a different kettle of fish. For a start, it's in the middle of Loch Leven. The island is a lot bigger than it was in the 16th century because the loch has been partially drained since then. When Mary was here, the water came up almost to the base of the castle walls. The modern island is much larger and now pleasantly wooded.

It's also only accessible by a tiny ferry from Kinross. It can carry 12 passengers and runs every 15 minutes. Well, supposedly. If you follow Historic Scotland's Twitter feed, you'll have noticed that the service gets cancelled a lot, especially in high winds. There wasn't much in the way of wind on the day I was there, and apart from the wake of the ferry, the surface was as still as a mill-pond.

Looking from the curtain wall over to the tower house where Mary was held prisoner. You can see that the main entrance to the house is rather high, on the second floor rather than the first. Nowadays you can also enter at ground level.

Mary spent nearly a year here, before escaping in  male disguise aboard a boat that had been stolen by some of her supporters. Sadly for the queen, there was no tea-room to welcome her at the loch's edge as there is today, and things continued to get worse from then on, defeated in battle at Langside, forced to flee England, imprisoned by her cousin and then finally executed. When I was a student at the University of Edinburgh, one of the lecturers in Scottish history liked to call the story of the Stuart Dynasty a soap-opera and Mary's episodes are surely among the most dramatic. But as for me, it's time to go back to Kinross for a bite to eat and an ice-cream before my journey home to Livingston.

The Steel Bonnets and the Wild Scots

While the Scots army was very infantry heavy it did have a cavalry arm, the famous Border Horse. As the name suggests, this force was drawn from the counties along the English border, where raiding ones neighbours was a way of life. These Border reivers (raiders) provided the armies of their respective countries with a superb force of light cavalry, admittedly one whose loyalties were often suspect and whose propensity to rob anybody (save their own kin) endeared them to no-one. Mounted on small, fast and hardy ponies, these riders were the cavalry screen of the Scots army. A similar force performed the same duties for the English army, drawn from the counties along the Scots border.

The main weapon of these cavalrymen was a spear, 8 feet in length that served as a short lance. Many would also carry a longbow, or a light crossbow, called a latch. All would also carry a sword and dagger as backup weapons. For protection they were outfitted much the same as the infantry with a targe, a helmet (the steel bonnet) and armour appropriate to their wealth and status.

The Border Horse provided around 5% of the army's strength–compared to the 70% or so who fought as pike or spearmen. Another 15% or so came from the Gaelic-speaking Highlands, clansmen following their chiefs to war in time-honoured fashion.

These highlanders fought as infantry, but not in pike blocks or schiltrons as the lowlanders did.

"From mid-leg to the foot they go uncovered; their dress is, for an over-garment, a loose plaid and a shirt, saffron dyed. They are armed with a bow and arrows, a broadsword and a small halbert. They always carry in their belt a stout dagger, single-edged but of the sharpest. In time of war they cover the whole of their body with a coat of mail, made of iron rings and in it they fight. The common folk amongst the Wild Scots go out into battle with the whole body clad in a linen garment sewed together in patchwork, well daubed with wax or with pitch, and with an overcoat of deerskin."

John Major, History of Greater Britain, both England and Scotland, 1521

Some eschewed even this protection and stripped for combat, perhaps tying the shirt up around their waist for modesty. Note that the plaid mentioned here is not a kilt, but instead a cloak or mantle.

The mail coat would be fairly long, reaching down to the knees and worn over a padded aketon, the cotun. Relatively few warriors could afford mail, and merely wore the padded coat. Most would also have some kind of helmet, many would carry a targe and some would even wear raw-hide brogues.

Again, they armed themselves with what they could afford, and as well as the items John Major noted, they might carry spears (but not pikes) or axes, both large and small.

The wappinschaw

In medieval Scotland, there was no professional army to speak of. Instead, in time of war, the king would summon the communis exercitus, the Scots common army. This was a levy of those able-bodied men between 16 and 60 who were considered wealthy enough to afford arms. They were required to keep and bear arms according to their wealth and rank, to attend regular musters–wappinschaws–to ensure that their arms and armour were fit for service and to serve the king as unpaid soldiers for forty days. There would be fines for those who failed to show up, for those whose equipment didn't pass muster, or those who turned up with borrowed equipment. As an extra inducement to attend, free beer might be provided for the levies.

Traditionally, the core of the Scots common army was the long spear, 8 to 12 feet in length, deployed en masse in a phalanx-like formation called a schiltron (though the name clearly means something like 'shield-troop', for most of the middle ages spearmen went shieldless). In 1471, an ineffective law was passed to replace the long spear with the longer Swiss pike (as much as 18 feet in length). Not until the reign of James IV did the pike truly become standard equipment, and then only thanks to a massive military aid programme funded by the French in the run-up to Flodden.

Some weapons other than spears and pikes were acceptable at the wappinschaw. These varied a little over time, but would include the missile weapons that were always in quite short supply in the Scots army (longbow, crossbow, hand culverin and arquebus), various polearms (halberd, Leith axe, Jeddart stave, the mysterious brogit staff and others), and the two-handed sword. Generally, soldiers would also have a sword or dagger of some kind as a secondary weapon.

From the 1450s on, all but the missile troops were required to be equipped with the targe, a small round shield, though we know that at Flodden the men at the very front of the pike blocks had instead large wooden pavises to provide even more protection against the English longbowmen.

Armour varied with the wealth of the wearer. The richer a levy was, the better armour he would be required to have, and the closer to the front of the schiltron he would be placed. At the front, you might find nobles with white harness from Italy or the Low Countries, or gentlemen in mass-produced half-plate (such as the Almain rivets produced in James IV's harness factory at Stirling), and so on down through brigandine and jack for those further back. All would also wear helmets, sometimes covered with the traditional blue bonnet of the Scottish soldier. We also know that the less well-armoured soldiers would stitch rows of brass chains into the sleeves and thighs of their doublet and hose to ward off sword blows, and that they each would also wear kerchief wrapped three or four times around his throat for added protection, though I don't believe these practices are mentioned in the wappinschaw statutes.

So, our typical Scots soldier of the early 15th century, our Jock Tamson, how would he be equipped?

*doublet and hose, reinforced with brass chain
*a quilted and padded jack
*a simple iron helmet, perhaps under his blue bonnet
*a kerchief wrapped around his neck
*a targe
*boots and gloves, as stout as he could afford
*a cheap sword
*a long spear or a pike (if available)

Some areas of Scotland provided special types of troops that I haven't covered here today–the Highlanders and the Border Horse. I'll write more about them in forthcoming posts.

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