On Pigs, Sunscreen, and Bad Words
One of my goals in creating the world of The Black Prince Trilogy was to challenge commonly held notions about the middle ages; so much of what we think we know about that time, and its inhabitants, is wrong. I have a degree in medieval history from one of the finest educational institutions in the world and achieving that degree was, rather than what got me interested in the subject, the culmination of a lifetime’s worth of interest. I have, in essence, been studying the middle ages since I was a child.
On reflection, I think part of what’s always captivated me so much is the same thing that captivates so many: how things were so different and yet, so much the same. So much of our forebears’ lives would seem normal to us. And so much, at the same time, horrifying. There can be, at times, almost a post-apocalyptic feel to a world where people compose love poems and argue politics amid rivers–literal rivers–of raw sewage. Skits skewering the president, ladies’ magazines, even Twilight all had their analogs. And yet, even as people were standing in line at the perfume shop checking their horoscopes, their neighbors were being burned as witches.
A strange time, a frightening time, but a relatable time. And a time when people absolutely knew that pigs used mud for sunscreen and told each other to go fuck themselves because these aspects of life were heritages of Roman times. The word fuck, as a slang term originates with the Roman Republic and pigs have been domesticated for at least 9,000 years. And yes, I did read a study conducted at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, on the history of the pig as a domesticated animal before introducing a pig as a character.
Let’s take the first one first: people didn’t walk around declaiming in ye olde renaissance faire-style English. English as we know it didn’t exist at all and much of what we think of as “old English” is a heritage of that fact and dates from the 1600’s anyway. People talked then the same way we talk now: simply, and with purpose. That older writings contain certain anachronisms isn’t a heritage of people somehow having been more stuffy and formal back then but rather stands as testament to our ever-evolving language. Case in point: the progressive tense. The King James Bible, written several hundred years after the time period this book is meant to represent, was translated into English at a time when “modern English” was still really becoming a thing. And, like in German today, in English at that time there was no progressive tense.
via antimoon.com
“He doth go” wasn’t people being fancy, any more than it’s people being fancy in other germanic languages today. But people were speaking Anglo-Norman, Occitan, Latin and Arabic, anyway. And this is where, as a writer, you really have to ask yourself what your goal is: to write a book in Anglo-Norman or to write a book that people can read?
I tend to think of my modern English as a translation; just like one of my favorite novels, Der Schwarm, was translated from German into English. But one term that needs no translation is everyone’s favorite: fuck you.
Back in the good old days when the senate ruled the republic, people used to get together underneath the arches supporting Rome’s famous aqueducts. To score drugs and to score with each other. Because underpasses are good places for criminal enterprise. You know, same as now. The word for arch, in Latin, is fornix. As in, to fornicate. To do it under the arches. Literally, in Latin, to arch.
“Arching” became a verb the way fucking became a verb: an outgrowth of some really rude slang. And, actually, they’re the same verb, just with different spellings and pronunciations. But they mean the same thing, and come from the same place, and, indeed, started out as the same word.
“Fuck you” is pretty common graffiti throughout Rome. Along with suggestions that so-and-so go fuck his mother, or his brother, or his pig. And Romans knew that pigs wore sunscreen.
A great many things were, certainly by the high middle ages but in many cases much earlier, understood if imperfectly through observation. A world that was governed by Hippocrates’ theory of humors also understood that pregnant women needed a diet rich in folic acid to prevent birth defects. They didn’t know the term folic acid, of course; what they knew was that certain foods, like asparagus, were necessary to health. Because, according to medieval physicians, it was shaped like a penis and foods shaped like penises gave women strength to combat birth defects because, since Mesopotamian times, the penis has been a mystical symbol of strength.
Asparagus is high in folic acid.
The ancient Egyptians used extracts of rice, jasmine, and lupine in their sunscreens; the ancient Greeks used olive oil. Zinc oxide was well known as a sun protectant to the Crusaders. People didn’t know why the sun was harmful, but they knew that it was.
They also knew what skin cancer was, and what breast cancer was, and what a whole host of other things were that might surprise you. And, of course, how much one knew depended on how educated one was and where one had traveled. The church’s stranglehold on much of the western world meant that, during the middle ages and for a long time after, medical advances elsewhere vastly outstripped those in places like England and France.
The twin myths of the African witch doctor and the evil black man come to steal white women in the night have their origins, not in the American South but in Inquisition-era France and Spain. Christian doctors weren’t allowed to touch their female patients, and situations like breech births utterly confounded them. So it wasn’t unusual for people to sneak African doctors into their houses, occasionally through such charming points of entry as the garderobes, to provide obstetric care.
The church, obviously, didn’t care for this.
Propaganda was born.
It’s a fascinating world we live in, and always has been. A world that, if you really take the time to examine it, is going to challenge your preconceptions. The books in this house that aren’t our favorite novels are, on the balance, my husband’s books on various Hinduism-related topics and my books on medieval history. Books I visit every day.
Thoughts?
