WILD FOODS - Historical Fiction Research

By Elaine Moxon

One of the things you swiftly learn, as a historical fiction author, is that you must become well read in a myriad of subjects. Many of these topics, to external eyes, may seem entirely disconnected with writing a novel. Little do they know, this knowledge is invaluable. Creating a historic and accurate landscape within which your characters can travel and interact is hard work.

I thought I’d share some research I’ve been doing for some travelling characters that may not always be able to pop into the local town for supplies. Living in the 5th Century AD as they do, and also wary of bumping into enemies, they have only what they brought with them for the journey, and what they find along the way.

From Saxon settlement, along ancient roadways, across rivers towards the coast, this is what they might discover.

DANDELION, publicdomainpictures.net

Woodland, Hedgerow, Roadside, Heath & Moorland

In scrubby woodland you’ll find young Elder buds for salads, and hazelnuts rich in protein, fats and minerals. The best dandelions are found on hedge banks and roadsides, and their young leaves are good in salads. Eat them in moderation, however. As suggested by their French name ‘pis-le-lit’ (or more politely, wet-the-bed) they are a diuretic and can have you running for the nearest facilities!

Blackberries ripen in August and are at their sweetest then. Also known as the ‘blessed bramble’ it was so called for the joy its fruit brought to areas where fruit was rare. Its leaves soothe burns and bruises, and a rich dye can be made from the berries, as can also be made from sloes. Sloe berries also make delicious wine, though I doubt my travelling companions have time for that.

Columbines love limestone woods and flower May-July. While most of the plant is poisonous, the 17th Century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper observed that ‘the seed taken in wine causeth a speedy delivery of women in childbirth’. Handy if any of your travelling party are in the later stages of child labour!

Pollen from the Common Mallow has been found in Roman remains in Britain, suggesting it was imported for medicinal purposes. Pliny the Elder declared a daily ‘spoonful of the mallows’ to be preventative of illnesses. A decoction of boiled leaves is said to calm fevers and a lotion of the same alleviates swellings. Mucilage of the roots of the variety known as ‘Marsh Mallow’ once provided a chewy filling to chocolate coated biscuits. Today it is somewhat rare and used only in toiletries and cosmetics.

Another ancient acquaintance is the Crocus, harvested since medieval times for the spice ‘saffron’. Although this doesn’t necessarily constitute a ready food source, I felt it worth a mention as an ingredient. Also within this realm is Lady’s Bedstraw or ‘Galium verum’, once used as a rennet in cheese-making. Thyme can flavour soups, stews, sauces and stuffing and is thought to prevent bad dreams. Ideal for travelling nobility with heavy weights on their minds.

Galium verum

Photo credit: bastus917 via VisualHunt / CC BY-SA 

Coastal

The obvious one here is seaweed, of which two types can be cooked as a spring vegetable - laver and caragon. You can also cook ‘Fat Hen’ and nettle leaves as you would spinach (but wear gloves when picking the latter!). Nettle leaves also make a refreshing drink. Molluscs such as cockles, mussels, and if in Cornwall, pilchards, all make tasty additions to a meal. At the end of summer, enjoy sweet chestnuts, eaten raw or even better roasted. Then in autumn, berries, nuts and fungi can be found, mostly in woodland, but field mushrooms are common in pastures and meadows (particularly where horses graze). Pick early in the morning and fry or add to soups.

By streams, fields and riverbanks you can find water-loving mint, watercress and wild garlic – all great for making soups. Wild garlic, also known as Ramsons, gives its name to several settlements in Britain known for the pervasive smell of this pretty flower, including Ramshope, Ramsbottom, Ramsey and Ramsholt. The name derives not from male sheep, but the Old English word ‘hrmsa’ meaning ‘wild garlic’!

Bogbean can be found in wet soil, mud and water – its bitter trifoliate leaves were used as infusions to alleviate scurvy and rheumatism. Laplanders used the powdered roots to bulk up the meal in their bread, though it leaves a bitter taste. Another lover of moist ground is Common Comfrey. All parts of the plant have a reputation for healing cuts and fractures and reducing swelling. Often going by the name ‘knitbone’, an infusion of the leaves in warm water gives relief to sprained wrists and ankles. My heroine in WULFSUNA uses a comfrey poultice beside a stream to alleviate swollen ankles.

Mentioned by the Greeks as early as the 1st Century AD, ‘seseli’ or as we know it Sweet Cicely, can be added to salads. Its fresh, sweet leaves counteract any bitterness or remove tartness when boiling fruit. With an aniseed flavour, it was used as an aphrodisiac in the 16th Century to ‘increaseth...lust and strength’ (John Gerard’s ‘Herball’).

Photo credit: col&tasha via Visualhunt.com / CC BY

Wild Animals

Some wild animals are predators to be cautious of, others may be sacred and some will be food sources. Wolves, foxes and badgers are main predators. Boar, while a ferocious beast particularly when breeding, makes a large meal, as do deer. Hares were considered sacred by some pagans and eating them was forbidden if not all of the time, then at least during certain symbolic festivals especially around springtime. Others believed them to be witches in animal form and were so avoided. Their later cousins, rabbits, are low in fat and good in a stew, though not widely available. Introduced by the Romans, they died out post-Empire and were not reintroduced until later centuries. Snakes and certain birds were also pagan symbols and so may have had a bearing on whether they were eaten. Poisonous snakes would be avoided for obvious reasons.

With an abundant array of salad leaves and stewing vegetables, my characters’ wild food table will be replete with tasty dishes to serve alongside freshly caught fish, berries and nuts, and maybe even a boar if they’re lucky. However, I must stress it is not suggested nor advised that you go munching on anything you find growing along the roadside. Some plants are highly poisonous. As Ben Law says, if you can’t identify them, ‘don’t eat them!’.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Farmhouse Cookery, Readers’ Digest

Wild flowers, Graham Murphy

The Woodland Way, Ben Law

Blood, betrayal and brotherhood.

An ancient saga is weaving their destiny.

A treacherous rival threatens their fate.

A Seer's magic may be all that can save them.

WULFSUNA

Elaine Moxon writes historical fiction as ‘E S Moxon’. Her debut Wulfsuna was published January 21st, 2015 and is the first in her Wolf Spear Saga series of Saxon adventures, where a Seer and one named ‘Wolf Spear’ are destined to meet. 

She is currently writing her second novel, set once again in the Dark Ages of 5th Century Britain. You can find out more about Book 2 from Elaine’s website where she has a video diary charting her writing progress. She also runs a blog. Elaine lives in the Midlands with her family and their chocolate Labrador.

'Sacred Fire'

by E S Moxon

After publishing Wulfsuna, the first in my Wolf Spear Saga series, in January 2015 I took a break for a few months before embarking on the planning for my next book. Writing often sparks the necessity for research when we happen upon a circumstance and need more detail. However at other times research can spark ideas for writing. For this reason I enjoy researching for my novels, hoping to find something unusual that provides inspiration for part of the current work in progress. My research comes from many places: books on my shelves, libraries, reenactors and the World Wide Web. My gem of a find this time was an article entitled ‘St Anthony’s Fire’ courtesy of Pearson College, CA and a website called ‘iamshaman’ both from 2004.

Known as ‘Sacred Fire’ and ‘Invisible Fire’ the claviceps purpura fungus, or ‘ergot’, germinates on rye in warm, damp conditions but is dormant in severe cold. Growth is therefore more prevalent in a wet summer following a harsh winter. The fungus is poisonous and manifests in several ghastly forms:

• -          Gangrenous
• -          Convulsive
• -          Hallucinogenic

Each of these has particularly vulgar symptoms. For instance the gangrenous strain produces areas of the body that become numb to touch or pain, known in medieval times as ‘witch spots’. Vein and artery walls contract, stemming blood flow and limbs literally break off at the joints! If the central nervous system becomes infected the body is thrown into violent convulsive fits and twitches (the convulsive form) and the ergot component lycergic acid (also in LSD) gives the sufferer hallucinations.

As you can imagine, in medieval times the causes of these symptoms would have been beyond the comprehension of most and assumptions of witchcraft were attributed. Both the afflicted and those attempting to heal (family members or healers) were accused. The sick were either seen as witches themselves who were being punished by god for spell casting, or as the victims at the hands of others’ dark deeds. Other factors that did little to assuage these accusations were the illness of cattle and other animals (falling ill as a result of grazing on infected rye) and that ground infected rye turns red, blood being a further sign that witchcraft was involved.

Consequently, witch trials increased during outbreaks of ergot poisoning and many met their deaths unjustifiably, as a cause of the ergot fungus. As a writer of historical fiction, with elements of magic and fantasy running through my sagas, I could not help but be intrigued by this phenomenon that can exist today where humid, wet summers and poor grain storage create the right conditions. Unable to resist using this newly acquired information, it is now part of a plotline in my next novel!

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Elaine (E S Moxon) is currently writing Book 2 in her Wolf Spear Saga series. Her debut novel Wulfsuna is published by SilverWood Books and is also available from most retail outlets. You can find out more about E S Moxon and her novels from her website here

Gibraltar: The Perks of Location Research

by Jacqueline Reiter

I am very fond of tramping the ground trodden by my characters and research interests. Until now this has meant travelling reasonably locally, mostly to stately homes and towns in the south and south-west of England. Last month, however, I discovered a major perk of studying a man who was a Governor of Gibraltar: the opportunity to visit the Rock itself.

Rock of Gibraltar from the airport

I am about halfway through my biography of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham. Chatham was appointed Governor of Gibraltar in 1820, and was actually on the spot from 1821 to 1825, when he returned to England for his health. I needed to find out what he did while he was in Gibraltar, and there are few resources in England to tell me. My visit, therefore, was primarily to use the Gibraltar National Archives, but I was also curious to visit the place where my research interest had spent four years of his life.

In geographical terms, Gibraltar is stunning. It is, essentially, a large chunk of limestone that attached itself to the Iberian peninsula several million years ago. Even now the "Rock", as it is known, seems entirely separate from the Spanish mainland. The place is tiny, about seven miles long and less than two miles wide: during my five day visit, even though I spent nearly every day from 9 to 5 in the archives, I managed to walk the entire length and breadth of the place.

Tiny it may be, but Gibraltar is full of history and proud of it. Gibraltar's history is closely intertwined with that of Britain. It was taken from the Spanish by siege in 1704, and formally ceded by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Ever since, despite a number of wobbly moments, most notably the "Great Siege" by the Spanish from 1779 to 1783, Gibraltar has been British.

The place is very much a military garrison, and it shows. Recent land reclamation has expanded the size of the territory past the town walls, but the older town is clearly fringed with austere grey-bricked bastions, many of them dating back to the 1700s and beyond. The main part of the town runs along the backbone of Main Street, from the Governor's Residence, the "Convent", at one end to the Grand Casemates Square at the other.

King's Bastion and reclaimed land beyond

Many of the tightly-packed, colourfully-painted houses branching off from this street are painted with numbers to denote barracks. Side streets have a distinctly military flavour: Governor's Parade; Cannon Lane; Glacis Road.

Although the town is clearly old, it largely dates to the post-1783 period. The Gibraltar Museum has several pictures showing the devastation caused to the town by the various bombardments during the Great Siege. By 1783 there was barely a house with a roof on it.

Main Street in 1783 (Wikimedia Commons)

By 1821, the period I was researching, the place was nearly completely rebuilt, but there were ongoing initiatives. The Cathedral of Holy Trinity, the largest Protestant church in Gibraltar, was not begun till 1825. My boy Chatham, indeed, laid the foundation stone shortly before returning home.

Cathedral of the Holy Trinity

The Great Siege is, indeed, everywhere. Monuments to General Elliott, the governor during the siege, are scattered all over the town. Up on the scrub-covered and monkey-infested crest of the Rock itself is a network of tunnels dug by British engineers and artillerists, begun during the siege and completed over the next few decades. A portion of these are open to the public, and they are well worth a visit.

Inside the Great Siege Tunnels

The tunnels stretch for over a mile through the Rock, all man-made. Many advances in military engineering were made during the siege, including the development of a gun carriage designed to fire down a steep slope, invented for the express purpose of defending Gibraltar's siege tunnels against the Spanish.



Standing on one of the viewpoints atop the Rock, it is immediately obvious why Gibraltar has been such a strategic point for British seapower. It commands the enormous Bay on one side and the expanse of the Mediterranean on the other. The coast of Africa is clearly visible, even on a cloudy day.

Africa, from Europa Point

Here was a port where British ships could shelter and reprovision and keep a watchful eye over the activities of Britain's allies and enemies alike. This was the port to which the HMS Victory was taken for repairs after Trafalgar in 1805. The "Trafalgar cemetery" still exists, where many of the sailors who died as a result of the battle are buried.



Gibraltar was a very important military and naval post, and my boy Chatham was lucky to be the Governor of it. Unfortunately he appears to have hated it there, and never struck a rapport with the place. There were circumstances for this, of course, but I cannot help but feel sorry for it. Gibraltar is beautiful and deeply interesting. I was made very welcome there, and everyone I spoke to fell over themselves to assist me in my research. The highlight of my trip, however, was probably taking my laptop up to the top of the Rock and writing, with a view of the Bay spread out before me.

Perhaps the most inspiring place I have ever written

I am so glad my research took me to this marvellous place. I can't wait to go back.

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Jacqueline Reiter has a Phd in 18th century political history. She is currently working on the first ever biography of John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, due to be released by Pen & Sword Books in September 2016. When she finds time she blogs about her historical discoveries at http://alwayswantedtobeareiter.wordpress.com/, and can be found on Twitter as https://twitter.com/latelordchatham.

Bias in Historical Research

by Stephenie Woolterton

As historical fiction authors and historians, we study and create characters, plots, and worlds that transport our readers to the past. Although we cannot actually visit these bygone times (when will they invent that time machine?), we are able to build worlds so powerful that we hope our readers feel as though they are transported to them through their imaginations. Even if we’re writing about people who once lived, we will never be able to actually meet and speak with them. What we can do, however, is use the intensive historical detective skills we’ve gathered to construct stories of distant times and places - periods accessible only through research. An unavoidable part we encounter in this research process is bias.

What exactly is bias?

Simply put, bias is perspective. Perspective is largely the consequence of the author’s background and the current political, social, and economic circumstances of the time in which the author is writing. Bias in historical research refers to the adoption of a particular perspective from which some things become salient and others merge into the background. It is a conscious or unconscious tendency on the part of the writer or researcher to interpret what they research.

For instance, history was once predominately written by powerful white males who assumed that only wealthy white males made history. They determined what history was deemed worth recording, and the role of others (e.g. servants, wives, mothers, etc.) was felt to be insignificant. These days, historians often allow for bias in the evidence they gather, and even explain it when reconstructing what happened in the past. The problems encountered involve matters of the ‘truth’ of historical events, the question of a balance between historical details and fictional elements, and the demand for authenticity and accuracy in the material we write about. In this case, for both the novelist and the historian, meaning lies not in the chain of events themselves, but in the writer's interpretation of what occurred. Pressures to conform to existing norms can be strong. What is taken to be historically ‘true’ by powerful, highly acknowledged historians is not easy to dispute. There can be great difficulty with challenging existing historical authorities or established interpretations of how an event happened or the taken for granted, ingrained ‘facts’ about an historical figure. This can even influence what is published versus what is rejected.

Yet historians and authors do not live their everyday lives in a vacuum: gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religious beliefs, social background, and nationality all mean something. They influence the historian in terms of which topics to focus on, what questions to ask, which sources to consult, and the interpretations they glean. To practice research and to create historical stories of our own is to question and consider interpretations that are different from our own. A way to discern bias in research involves being reflective over your work, and to consider various viewpoints.

Is it possible to overcome bias?

Although complete detachment may not be possible, historians can put commitment to rational standards of historical inquiry ahead of a desire for a certain outcome, thereby significantly reducing the outright bias in their work. Even if historians are fair-minded, the information available to them is often biased. The best way to reconcile bias is to acknowledge it when using quotes or paraphrasing material, and to point out where similar sources agree or disagree. Never forget to interrogate and question your sources. Who wrote it? What was their motivation or intention? What was the context or background behind this document? Did someone have an axe to grind when they wrote it?

Historians have long been aware that the information available to them, be it in historical texts or visual sources, have often been selected for certain purposes: these artifacts reflect the concepts and interests of their creators. The historian’s job is to look at explanations that account for the motivations behind them so they can then look for coherence among various explanations of the same historical period (i.e. The French Revolution). Critical historians should always interpret their evidence cautiously.

Unfortunately, there are occasions where historians cannot get to the ‘facts’ behind biased or missing evidence. The available information may have been so culled as to yield an inaccurate impression of events. For instance, in my own research into the private life of the late eighteenth century British politician William Pitt the Younger, I have found ample evidence to suggest that large swathes of Pitt’s private papers were deliberately destroyed by his executor, Bishop Tomline. What was Tomline’s purpose for systematically destroying Pitt’s papers? His wife was in direct collusion, and together they acted to conceal something about Pitt’s domestic life that they did not approve of and felt did not fit with the posthumous image of the pure, unsullied Minister. Instead, the untarnished image of Pitt was portrayed: the stately politician without any taint or scandal. Here Tomline’s motivation was to set himself up as Pitt’s official biographer by sifting out what did not fit with the interpretation – the image – of Pitt that he intended to portray. After over two centuries, my intention through my biography of Pitt is partly to expose Tomline’s bias of Pitt’s character.

Historical writing as a cooperative endeavor: Historians working together 

A balanced and well-argued account with supporting evidence to assert your claims is central in historical research. It’s important to get your friends and colleagues to look over your work and to discuss your findings. History should be viewed as a cooperative, collective endeavor, with historians working together to arrive at and challenge accounts of the past. The freedom to question your own views, and those of others, in an open-minded way is a great method for reaching fair descriptions of the past.

Image Source: My photo of a framed letter from William Pitt to his friend William Wilberforce (August 8, 1792) announcing his acceptance as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports.

About the Author:

Stephenie Woolterton is currently writing a biography of William Pitt the Younger’s private life, primarily surrounding his female attachments. Her website is www.theprivatelifeofpitt.com and she’s on Twitter @anoondayeclipse.

On Serendipity

by Jacqui Reiter

Depiction of "The Three Princes of Serendip"

I was 17 when I first stumbled on the word “serendipity”. I was undergoing interview at the university I later attended. The Director of Studies asked how much serendipity had gone into the finding of the sources for my high school Extended Essay. I didn't know what he meant, but explained my methodology, which turned into the right answer. As soon as I got within reach of a dictionary I looked the word up.

“Serendipity” is a wonderful word for a phenomenon I have encountered again and again over the course of my historical studies and research. It was coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole, describing a story he had read entitled “The Three Princes of Serendip”, in which the characters kept making accidental discoveries.[1] It's a magnificent word for those kinds of historical discoveries of things you are not necessarily looking for, but which enrich your subject knowledge, open up an aspect of your research you never knew existed, or even change the direction of your investigations completely.

Research has to be based on a system: you can't just start reading and trust to fate to point you in the right (write?) direction. But, while following up research leads, I have encountered serendipity at every turn. It has happened so much that I have even started talking about a Research Fairy who follows me into the archives, tugging at my sweater and pushing certain documents my way, or leads me to just the right historical location, or turns my head in the right direction in the art gallery. It's happened so many times now that it can't possibly be a coincidence … can it?

To give you only three examples from my recent research experience:

1). The time my good friend and research sister, Stephenie Woolterton, and I went to Berry Brothers & Rudd looking for the records of the weight of my main character, John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham. Berry Brothers is a wine merchant but have a famous set of massive coffee scales on which they occasionally weighed wealthier customers in the 18th and 19th centuries.

(Wikimedia Commons)

The employees were slightly thrown to discover that we did not, in fact, want to see the world-famous entries in their ledgers for Lord Byron. They explained to us that Chatham's entry was probably off-site with the majority of their records, but after being pressed they gave us permission to look in the same ledger that contained Byron's entry.

The ledger fell open at Chatham's page.

Photo by Stephenie Woolterton

2.) I spent a while researching the 1799 Helder campaign for a sequence in my novel. While tracking the movements of my main character, I found that he stayed in a house called “Bifrons”, near Canterbury, while waiting to embark for the expedition. The house, alas, no longer stands, but I found enough information about it to be able to set a scene there reasonably confidently.

A few days later I decided to take my toddlers for a trip to Howlett's Zoo in Kent. While driving down I noticed a place name that was familiar to me from the correspondence I had been reading: Harbledown. A few minutes later I turned past a road named Bifrons Hill. Yes: I had casually stumbled on the former location of Bifrons House.

View across Barham Downs near the location of Bifrons (my photo)

3). I could give numerous examples of times in the archives when I have ordered one thing and discovered something much more interesting lurking in the background. On one occasion I called out a volume and looked at a letter I knew existed and which I had meant to consult. Casually, as I often do, I flipped through the volume and found another letter, an undated and unaddressed draft, filed a few items away, but which I immediately spotted was connected with the letter I had originally been reading. The more I read, the more I realised that the two letters added together pointed to a new and fairly major historical discovery.

Over the next few weeks I followed the lead. Everything suddenly fell into place: a whole mass of cryptic references in correspondence that had previously made no sense to me suddenly took on a whole new meaning. After a while it all seemed so obvious to me I wondered how nobody else had spotted it before. And all thanks to that one undated draft, which had been filed as though it were a continuation of another, completely unconnected letter.

So there you have it. Surely these things are not coincidental? And I have so many other examples too of how research has taken me down avenues I never even knew existed. Serendipity for sure (although I'm aware a lot of these examples are not “proper” serendipity, in that a lot of the time I was looking for something specific and merely found it in a serendipitous way).

It's probably coincidence: but it's happened so often that I almost believe in that Research Fairy I mentioned. Historical research does have a spark of magic to it, after all.

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References

[1] Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, 28 Jan 1754, The Letters of Horace Walpole, earl of Orford III (London, 1840), 35

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Jacqui Reiter has a Phd in 18th century political history. She believes she is the world expert on the life of the 2nd Earl of Chatham, and has written a novel about his relationship with his brother Pitt the Younger. She is currently writing Chatham's biography, due to be published in September 2016 by Pen & Sword Books. When she finds time she blogs about her historical discoveries at http://alwayswantedtobeareiter.wordpress.com/.