Samuel Peterson’s Reviews > Life in a Medieval Castle > Status Update

Finished with the book itself, now all that's left is the glossary and geographical guides.

"[Castles] provided grim quarters for generations of prisoners, many political. Enlightenment and prison reform at length did away this inglorious role, and some castles, especially those situated in capitals and large towns, gained a more respectable one in conversion to government archives, record centers, and bureaus."

"To the military obsolescence of the castle was added a domestic obsolescence. The desire for more comfortable and elegant living quarters, which had already modified the castle in the Middle Ages, by the seventeenth century had created a taste for purely residential palaces for the nobility." This is something that is more implied than talked about in school history books.

I mean, both the War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in England were both civil wars.

"The decline in military importance of the castle, apparent in the fourteenth century and rapidly accelerated in the fifteenth, is associated, like that of the armored knight, with the introduction of gunpowder. In the closing stage of the Hundred Years' War (1446-53), the old strongholds of western France that had withstood so many sieges fell with astonishing speed to the ponderous iron bombards..."

The last chapter is "The Decline of the Castle." I'll be finished by the end of the day.

"Lammas (August 1) was the end of the harvest. Lammas — from the Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mass ("loaf mas")— was a feast of first fruits, a day when bread was made from new wheat blessed in church." I wonder if this inspired Tolkien to write lamlas (lemlas?), elvish bread?

"In June, Midsummer...boys collected bones and rubbish and burned them, and carried brands about the fields, to drive away the dragons that were believed to be abroad poisoning the wells. A wheel was set afire and rolled down the hills, to signify that the sun had reached its highest point and was turning back." I love the dragon detail.

Imagine if modern day continued some of these festivities. "Bringing in the May" sometimes meant a couple spending a night in the forest. "Rogation Days" or "Gangdays" were days where sometimes small boys were ducked in brooks and ponds and their buttocks bumped against trees and rocks to help them memorize the village boundaries.

Never heard of a vetch before. Apparently it's some sort of bean.