Redheaded Neanderlady

Redheaded Neanderlady
This is a photoshopped version of something I found in National Geographic about the time I started researching

Thursday, July 2, 2009

The medieval year, one version, or maybe many

The blog Got Medieval -- which often has very interesting tidbits about one medieval subject or another, posted a very interesting blog yesterday.  It's called Welcome to July.  The blog informs us that in July, peasants usually had to bind the ripened grain they grew into sheaves.  In July.  Now I don't doubt that medieval peasants did a lot of "scything and sheaving" in July.  The grain had to be laid out to dry so it could be stacked and then made into sheaves.  Usually, the weather was warm enough and dry enough so that this could be done relatively easily, barring the odd rainy day or so.  If that happened, the grain might rot and people might end up hallucinating all sorts of things, due to ergot poisoning(yes, this happened). The other thing that is important to understand about medieval agricultural economy is that June and July were months of relative "scarcity", though in the earlier medieval period, especially from about 900-1300 AD/CE -- In the so-called "Medieval Warm Period", this wasn't too severe a problem anywhere.  Medieval people had other problems at the time, but I won't go into those at the moment.  IN any case, or at least in some cases, the way the months were named in various places, tended to reflect either the kind of activity that was going on at the time, or the weather and climatic conditions.  In some places, the months were not named January, February, March, etc., but something else.

 

Here is a list of "modernized" Old English months.  From the descriptions, the reader can see what people in England, at least, did at any given time of the year

 

January  -- Wolf Month(guess why?)  I've seen paintings of Romanian villages surrounded by wolves in winter,  so it's not just the medieval English that worried about such things

February -- Kale Month  Kale is a very hardy dark green vegetable.  A lot of "foodies" eat kale today, in January and February, when few other green vegetables will grow, even in a relatively "mild" climate like the Pacific Northwest.  It's supposed to be rich in all kinds of things that are "good for you".

March --  Lent Month, and that's where English-speakers get the liturgical season of Lent, since the days are beginning to lengthen.

April  -- Easter Month(and I'll leave to your imagination what liturgical season that has morphed into in the English-speaking world).  There's more to it than that, but again, I won't go into it at this moment.

May  -- Mead Month, probably because flowers really started blooming and bees started producing honey, an important ingredient in the alcoholic drink, mead,which was probably an important source of income for at least some people

June -- Hay Month.  This is when the "scything" or "haying" of grain began, and the weather was probably (mostly) good enough to lay it out for later stacking into sheaves.

July -- Summer Month.  Well, that's pretty obvious.  July is a summer month.  And that's when the "sheaving of grain is in full swing, according to Got Medieval.

August --  "Ern" Month.  I'm not sure what this means, but it was a busy month for medieval peasants, because the grain harvest was probably going on in full swing.

September -- Harvest Month.  Again, this is pretty obvious. This is when agricultural produce was harvested in earnest, and the agricultural season could be assessed as to its relative success.  Other produce was probably also harvested, and preparations made for the coming winter and leaner spring season.  This was also the season of "harvest festivals".  In modern times,it tends to also be the season of things like county and regional fairs.

October  -- Wine Month.  If the modern reader thinks this Old English name for the month is peculiar, think again of the Medieval Warm Period.  In England, wine grapes were grown as far north as the property of Ely Abbey.  Once it cooled off(the Little Ice Age), neither Ely Abbey, nor any other place in England, could grow wine grapes.  Now, I'm told, people are growing wine grapes in parts of England today.  Thank you, global warming(I guess)!

November -- Wind Month.  That's pretty obvious, too.  At least from a "Pacific Northwest" point of view.  It can get pretty blastingly windy in November and December, and we've had some rather awful storms in that month, coming out of the Bering Sea.  Of course blastingly windy winter weather didn't come from the Bering Straits to England, then or now, but  winter winds did, and awful wind and rain storms were noted in certain years, by monastic chroniclers.

December -- Midwinter Month.  Again, pretty obvious.  December is the month winter begins, according to various calendars. Again, interestingly,in modern times,  meteorologists calculate a "meteorological winter" from December 1st. Which makes sense for much of the US, and probably much of Europe, as well.  Although I did read, some years back, in a book called -- get this -- Weather for Dummies -- that the Pacific Northwest has neither winter,nor summer, according to meteorological calculations.  There's no "winter", in most of Texas, either.  But summer starts on or about April 15.  I know this is true, because I lived it.   That, at least, was one problem people in medieval England didn't have to cope with!

Anne G

4 comments:

Anna van Gelderen said...

"Lent Month, and that's where English-speakers get the liturgical season of Lent, since the days are beginning to lengthen."
That's interesting, because the Dutch word for 'spring' is 'lente' and I had no idea that this had do with the verb to lengthen, but my etymological dictionary corroborates this.
Nice to learn something about my own language from an American!

Anne Gilbert said...

Anna:

Wow! What English-speaker woulda thunk it? I'm not surprised, in a way, because both Dutch and English are "Germanic" languages and rather closely related in some ways. For example, I once saw a film in Dutch, and at least half the time, I didn't have to look at the subtitles to figure out what they were talking about. Anyway, it's also interesting that, in German, the season of autumn/fall is "Herbst", which is related to "harvest",for obvious reasons. But get this: Fall/autumn in Russian is "osen'", which sounds a lot like "autumn". Anyway, languages and the origins of some words are,well, interesting.
Anne G

Anna van Gelderen said...

The Dutch for autumn is almost the same as in German: "herfst", without the -b-. But the word for harvest in Dutch is "oogst", which is a corruption of Latin "August" according to my dictionary (another new thing I learned). Funny how all these words are somehow interrelated.
I don't know about the Russian. All I can say in that language is yes, no, thank you and good day. I can't even order a beer in the language. You know Russian, Anne?

Anne Gilbert said...

Anna:

I studied Russian a long time ago(don't ask me how I ended up studying Russian, it's kind of a long, convoluted story. But anyway, I got pretty good at it at one time; now it's decidedly rusty. But I still can recall individual wordslike 'osen'" Interesting that "harvest" in Dutch is "oost", which comes from "August". Again, I'm not surprised. Grains ripen in July and August, and it's probably time to harvest a lot of stuff then(I'm thinking of this lush vegetable garden in my own back yard; all kinds of yummy stuff in it).
Anne G