The Myths of Avalon
26th August 2012
Charlie Stross is Doing Stuff (getting more books out, I hope, since he is one of my Recommended Writers over there on the right – buy and read his books; you’ll be glad you did) and so is having some guests in on his blog. This is one of them:
Let me say it again, louder. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE FOR THIS. The bulk of our extant sources – law codes and chronicles, saints’ lives and charters, prose tales and poems – paint a picture that is almost the exact opposite. Women in early mediaeval Wales and Ireland were far from equal. They remained, lifelong, legal minors, subject to the control of their father, husband or son. Their lives were worth less than those of men. They could not own land, nor could they own much property, and, with a few minor exception (all small personal items, clothing mainly) they could not dispose of their property without the permission and sanction of the man who controlled them. They could not bear witness in court, even to acts of violence against them, because, legally, they were not fully people, their words weren’t valid in law. They could not inherit land (save in very, very unusual circumstances) nor could they inherit offices. They could not choose their own husbands, and, while they could divorce their husbands in some circumstances, their children would remain with the father (whose property they were) and a divorced woman would probably have to return to her birth kin. Once there, she was likely to end up as a servant, unless her father was very powerful and could find a man willing to marry a non-virgin. Women whose kin cast them off had nowhere to go, no options beyond service or prostitution. And, if they left the lands of their husband, father, son or overlord, they could be enslaved without sanction. (This latter could befall men, too: outside your homeland, your legal status became much lower.) Women did not rule, did not become warriors, did not make laws or participate in public society. They were, by and large, property. Irish law codes make this explicit: the two units of currency recognised under them are cattle and slave girls. Women were commodities, not full legal people.
Very refreshing. Even more refreshing would be one of these fine folks casting the cold light of reality on the New Age socialist claptrap that Charlie pushes whenever he gets off of the Writing Reservation. But I suppose that would be too much to expect. Pity.
August 26th, 2012 at 20:35
Tim, have you looked at your list of Recommended Writers? No Charlie Stross.
Alex Bledsoe
Andrew Grant
C. S. Friedman
Carrie Vaughn
David J Williams
Dennis Lehane
Elizabeth Moon
Eric Flint
Harry Connolly
Holly Lisle
Jeff Somers
Jerry Pournelle
Jim Butcher
Joe Abercrombie
John Birmingham
John Ringo
John Scalzi
Josh Bazell
Ken Scholes
Kim Harrison
Lynn Flewelling
Marie Brennan
Matthew Woodring Stover
Michael A. Stackpole
Nancy Kress
Naomi Novik
Neal Asher
Neil Gaiman
Nicolás Gómez Dávila (“Don Colacho”)
Patricia Briggs
Patricia C. Wrede
Patrick Rothfuss
Richard K. Morgan
S. M. Stirling
Sarah Zettel
Scott Westerfeld
Sir Terry Pratchett
Steven R Boyett
Walter Jon Williams
August 27th, 2012 at 05:54
An inexplicable oversight, which I have now corrected.
August 27th, 2012 at 06:00
So essentially the Celts were the Taliban of their day.
August 27th, 2012 at 06:54
Everyone was the Taliban of their day. The Taliban are Standard Primitive People, and Islam attempts to enforce that primitivism universally. The Left ignores this fly in their Worship The Primitive ointment, thinking that, like tourists in a safari park, they can point and ooo and ahhh and take pictures from the safety of their Land Rovers and then go home at night.
I am reminded of a story from the book THE DEVIL’S TEETH, which is about the Farallon Islands west of San Francisco, well-known as a shark and seal hangout. Some do-gooders found an orphan baby seal, raised it tenderly, then ‘released it into the wild’ from a boat near the Farallons, presumably expecting it to rejoin its mates on the beaches. The seal made one lap around the boat and then was gobbled up by a local shark, to the shock and dismay of the enviro-tourists. I’m sure none of them learned anything useful about nature from the incident, but went on hugging trees and saving the smelt.
August 27th, 2012 at 09:49
“The Left ignores this fly in their Worship The Primitive ointment”
That’s funny, I don’t know a single person on the Left–and I know quite a few of them–who ‘Worships the Primitive’, whatever that means.
On the other hand I know quite a few conservatives who worship the Way Things Were, though the Golden Age they long never existed except in their imaginations.