This week’s* image can be found in a decorated border in the lower margin of a 14th-century missal:

I’m not 100% sure on this one, but I believe this is an illustration of an old medieval folk-tale. It goes thus:

If you give a cat a necklace, he’ll want to throw a party.

If the cat throws a party, he’ll want to invite over all the dogs who used to chase him to lord it over them.

If he wants to lord his necklace and party-throwing panache over those dogs, he’ll have to hire some entertainment to play music to set the mood.

If he hires entertainment to play mood-setting music, he’ll have to go with the bagpipe playing fox, who is the only one available on such short notice.

If he goes with the bagpipe playing fox, his groupies the geese will come too. They go everywhere with him.

If the geese come, the owl will follow behind, but he’ll mostly keep to himself at a table alone.

If the owl stays at a table by himself, they’ll probably call up the flute-playing monkey in hopes of cheering him up.

If they tell the monkey who plays the flute, he’ll come, but he’ll be totally disinterested in the cat’s party and only make things more awkward–for the owl and for everyone else.

If the monkey acts like he’s above the party, the cat will be filled with an impotent self-loathing.

If the cat is filled with an impotent self-loathing, he will forget he is anthropomorphic, throw his necklace away, and feast on the tender flesh of a mouse who just came to the party to get a cookie…

Why, heartless, foolish world, why did you give the cat a necklace? Now a poor defenseless mouse is dead and the king of the cats has forgotten how to sit at the table and use a knife and fork. And all because you gave a cat a necklace.

It’s either that, or we’ve got a medieval-version of the Goofy/Pluto problem on our hands here. While all the other characters are anthropomorphized animals, the King of Cats’ pet cat is still a non-anthropomorphic cat. Perhaps this is why the monkey looks so pensive. If there are non-anthropomorphic cats in his marginal world, is it possible that he is just a normal monkey, and not an anthropomorphic one?

—

*Yeah, yeah, I know I’m a week behind again. Sue me.

Those WoW gold sellers are everywhere. Last night, they invaded the comments section here at the voice of the people, Got Medieval. I’ve destroyed their links, but I find my thoughts returning to their strange pathos. I mean, this one

In English class, one girl Cheap WoW Gold said never buy WoW Gold give up when discussing. It just reminded me wow goldsomething about myself.WoW Gold Maybe it is wow power leveling something about love.WoW Gold My love, which began on July 3rd of WoW Gold 2005 and finished on August wow leveling 23rd of 2008, taught me many things. wow leveling It is not a pleasant world of warcraft power leveling thing to look back on world of warcraft power leveling that. But I know I world of warcraft power leveling must learn something from it,world of warcraft leveling no matter what it is, world of warcraft leveling happiness or sorrow.Our wow gold love did not go on so smoothly and we went through many things.

is almost movie of the week material, the story of a sensitive girl who falls for the wrong boy, a boy who’s addicted to World of Warcraft. Soon, she develops Tourettes Syndrome by Proxy and her dreams of becoming a writer are shattered by the world of warcraft powerleveling that peppers her speech. Lifetime would be all over it, if Judith Light would sign on the play the mother who fights her way to Washington to raise awareness of her daughter’s condition. They could call it, “In the Autumn of our Wow Gold Love”.

And then there’s this, which is a beautiful life philosophy, I think:

Joy in warcraft leveling living comes wow lvl from having wow lvl fine emotions,wow power level trusting them,power leveling giving them power leveling the freedom of wrath of the lich king power leveling a bird in the open.wlk power leveling Joy in living can age of conan gold never be assumed as a pose,or put on from guildwars gold the outside as a mask. People who have this joy don not need maple story mesos to talk about it; they radiate it. wow gold They just live out their joy and let wow power leveling it splash its sunlight and glow into other lives as naturally as bird sings.

Or perhaps it’s meant to be parsed as blank verse:

Joy in warcraft leveling living,
comes wow lvl–from having wow
lvl fine emotions, wow power level
trusting them, power leveling
giving them power leveling,
the freedom of wrath of the lich king.
Power leveling a bird in the open.
Wlk power leveling Joy
in living can age of conan gold never be assumed
as a pose,
or put on from guildwars gold
the outside as a mask.
People who have this joy
don not need maple story mesos to talk about it;
they radiate it.
Wow gold!
They just live out their joy
and let (wow power leveling)
it splash its sunlight and glow
into other lives as naturally as bird sings.

I do not know who (or what?) “Butt Johnson” is, but he has a special place in my heart for creating this:

It’s Mario and Bowser locked in mortal combat ala St. George slaying the dragon. Among the details I like the most:

the heraldically posed Koopa Paratroopas;

Toad hiding in Princess Peach’s skirt (a reference to her neutral-B move in Super Smash Brothers, no doubt);

and, predictably, the gratuitous Star Wars reference.

Bravo, Sir Butt.

Here’s an interesting tidbit I came across today. According to Bob Kane, he and collaborator Bill Finger gave Batman the first name “Bruce” after medieval Scottish king Robert the Bruce.* As reported in Kane’s autobiography, Batman and Me:

Bruce Wayne’s first name came from Robert Bruce, the Scottish patriot. Wayne, being a playboy, was a man of gentry. [Then,] I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism. I tried Adams, Hancock … then I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne.

I’m always skeptical of such after-the-fact pedigrees for pop culture artifacts, and this one, to me, has all the hallmarks of retroactive aggrandizement. But I’ll take it as a handy fact to have in reserve for cocktail parties. Then I’ll launch into my Tarantino-esque riff on how the batarang was likewise inspired by the story of how after Robert Bruce’s death, his buddy the Black Douglas took his (the Bruce’s) heart on crusade with him and threw it at the infidels shouting, “Fly, brave heart, fly!”***

Now, if I could only figure out the secret hidden medieval story behind DC’s Green Arrow, I’d be golden.

—

*You know, the guy from Braveheart that wasn’t Mel Gibson or the guy from The Prisoner.
**Giving rise to the title for the movie mentioned in footnote *, above.

Well, another month is once again upon us. How can the year be 1/12 over already? Ah, yes, now I remember–the relentless passage of time.

According to medieval calendars, February is the time to trim back the dead bits on your trees and to gather up your firewood, two not unrelated tasks. So hop up from that fire where you’ve been pondering the suggestively shaped sausages for the last month and get to it. It’s hard labor until next January.

Notable medieval dates in February include:

• February 2nd, 962 — The pope crowns Otto I Holy Roman Emperor, officially translatio-ing that imperii from the Franks to the Saxons.
• February 3rd, 1377 — The pope’s armies massacre 2,000 or so Italians in the Cesena Bloodbath, part of the War of the Eight Saints. Popes are fickle. One day, they’re crowning you Holy Roman Emperor. Then, without warning, 415 years and one day later, they’re all massacring your city states’ armies.
• February 10th, 1355 — The St. Scholastica’s Day Riot in Oxford. According to legend, the riot, which left nearly a hundred dead, was set off when a party of drunk students hit a “saucy” wine-merchant on the head with a flagon. For 470 years after, Oxford pays reparations for the students killed.
• February 12th, 1429 — The Battle of the Herrings is fought–disappointingly, no herrings are involved in the actual melee.
• February 14th, 1349 — The Jews are expelled from Strasbourg, Germany, those that aren’t burnt before they get the chance to flee.
• February 23rd, 1455 — The Gutenberg Bible is printed. At long last, movable type. The entire Middle Ages closes up shop and waits for the Renaissance.

The mystery of the Life archive is a mystery no more (thanks to Jen‘s search fu). Turns out that the images of those college-aged kids and their medieval hijinks are mistagged. They actually belong to the Life feature article on a big day out put on by Bethany College in West Virginia called “The College Joust,” which appeared in the May 19, 1952 issue (pictured left).  

Other feature articles that week included a story on American prisoners in Communist China, a photo essay on the poverty-striken peoples of Peru and Bolivia, and a feature on the fashion craze that was sweeping the nation, “Powedered Streaks,” a way of adding temporary highlights to your hair by dusting yourself with tinted talcum powder.

Poking around the Bethany College website, it looks like the Joust was a tradition that did not last the fifties.

As for the mysterious smiling lady, she is still a mystery.  The photographer clearly liked her; there’s a good two dozen or so pictures of her in the archive, but none appear to have made it to print.

For once, the question in this post’s title is neither rhetorical nor a setup for a joke, though I suppose the answer is obvious. She’s having her picture taken. But this leads me to the next question: Why did this lady dress like a medieval princess to have her picture taken?

If you do a search for “King Arthur” in Google’s nifty archive of images produced for Life Magazine, you bring up a whole slew of images tagged only by date, “May 1952”, photographer, “George Skadding”, and subject, “King Arthur”.  This is one of those hits.

Filed along with our Truman-era Guenevere are pictures of men and women, mostly college-aged, all dressed like extras on an Errol Flynn movie.  Festivities of this mystery day in May of ’52 include an archery contest, a mock naval battle, a sock-hop, and a feast attended by jongleurs.  My first thought is an early Renaissance Faire, but it seems several shades more awesome than any faire I’ve ever seen, and it’s tagged under “King Arthur,” not “Renaissance Faire.”  There was a Connecticut Yankee movie made in 1952–the one for “Studio One” that starred Boris Karloff, but this event has no obvious connection to it.  Certainly, there’s no Karloff to be seen anywhere.

So, does anyone out there know why Life would be sending a famous photographer to a rockin’ King Arthur-themed medieval party in May, 1952?

Hey, remember that thing I used to do, where I would pay Google back for misdirecting a wayward searcher to my blog by answering after the fact the question that led them here in the first place?  Yeah, Google Penance is so 2007*, but for old time’s sake, I thought I’d dash off a quicky.  To the poor Googler who made the oddly specific search for “a sequence of events for the Middle ages a flow chart that tells about the events that happend during the Middle ages such as the famous people and famous inventions that they made“, here’s the best medieval timeline on the web that I know of.  I’m sorry that Google brought you to my archive for articles from September of 2008, oh anonymous Googler.

Oh, and though I’ve not done any Google Penances lately, while we’re on the subject, there’s a much cooler iteration of the idea now going on over at my friends’ blog, Satisfactory Comics.  Mike and Isaac do me one better by creating Doodle Penances,” wherein they take turns sketching their misdirected Google searches.  This is my favorite so far, made by Isaac in response to a search for “werewolf the apocalypse comics panels”: 

According to the Satisfactory Ones, this panel is composed of three luminaries:

First, our former Yale colleague Matthew Giancarlo, whose lycanthropy was in full evidence because of the phase of the moon; second, Obsidian 20-Jaguar, the physical embodiment of the looming Aztec apocalypse of 2012; third and finally, the cartoon version of Scott McCloud. (The real Scott McCloud was unavailable.)

That’s exactly the sort of Scott McCloud joke that I wish I’d written. Sadly, he doesn’t come up much here, and I couldn’t draw him if he did, anyway.

—

*The real reason I don’t do these as often is that as this blog has become more popular, they have gotten a lot harder to do, since the interesting incoming links in my sitemeter cycle out more quickly.  I’ll have to upgrade to a professional meter solution, if I want to catch all the weird stuff that brings people here.

This week’s marginalia comes from a manuscript that has become a frequent visitor to our studios here at Got Medieval, Pierpont Morgan Library’s MS G24:

I’m beginning to feel bad for the poor souls who have to tag the scans of medieval manuscripts for online collections. How can you be sure you’ve accurately captured every point of interest a potential search might be after, especially with a manuscript illuminator as mind-bogglingly weird as the one responsible for MS G24? This particular image bears the catalogue description

In left margin, hybrid animal, with crowned human head and serpentine body, plays bagpipe through anus.

That’s a pretty good start, but it fails to mention that 1) the man’s anus is wearing a hood and 2) the entire creature is growing out of a foliate border, making it not an animal at all, but rather some sort of strange fruit. We can’t even be sure that the crown and bagpipe aren’t themselves part of this weird plant-creature, like the sea-horse knight in the Knight of the Parrot.*

Of course, given the way files tend to be named in my own personal archives of marginal images, I shouldn’t complain.  If I were in charge, there’d be no tags, just a file name like  “weird_ass_dude_27.jpg”. And when I came across it later, I’d sit there scratching my head, wondering if I had meant that this was a weird ass-dude or a weird-ass dude.

By the way, the image above is 320×480 pixels, making it exactly the right size for medieval iPod touch or iPhone wallpaper, if you’re inclined to put such a thing on your mobile device.**

—

*In which King Arthur fights a knight riding a sea-horse and kills it only to find that what looked like a man riding a sea-horse was actually a creature with a man’s torso and a sea-horse’s body. The knight’s shield and spear, too, are parts of its body, not implements. Hmmm, come to think of it, I should go re-read that bit now and see if there’s any other hint there that the sea-horse knight is a parody of bizarre marginal figures…
**Me, I’ll probably stick with Buffy.