People of the Puszta

When you come from a family of the ultimate not-haves, just how cool is it to be able to hold up a book and say: “This has been written about us.”?

And a good book at that?

People of the Puszta by Gyula Illyés (English translation)

Well, you can take it from me: it is cool. Precious, in fact. So much so that I wanted to make sure to pass this book on to my children.

Gyula Illyés

Gyula Illyés came from a piss-poor family in a puszta in the middle of Transdanubia, within a few kilometres of where my family comes from. By talent and hard work, he somehow managed to rise from the world of the puszta to become a famous writer and intellectual. He was only a few years older than my great-grandfather – who too was from a piss-poor family. The childhood Illyés describes was still pretty much the childhood my grandmother had; she remembered some of the events described in the book. I myself spent the long summer vacations of my childhood right there where many of these events happened; my grandparents, aunts and uncles speak with the same accent Illyés did. I used to drop into the same accent within days of arriving to my grandma’s house, every time.

The Puszta & its People

To understand where Illyés and my family come from, you have to understand the concept of the puszta as it then was in Transdanubia, Western-Hungary, because  generally in Hungarian and in the world this word is better known to mean big sweeping plains (like the steppes of Russia, say). A Transdanubian puszta on the other hand was a kind of a hamlet (if you can call the handful of buildings a hamlet) on the big farm estate.

In the beginning of the 20th century, when this book is set, most land in Transdanubia was held by a few big families who hardly ever even went near their estates but employed a farm manager or agent, who then managed the work force. This work force was invariably composed of the landless peasantry of which there was ample supply (despite of high rates of emigration to America). The peasants were hired as day labourers and if they managed to get a more permanent position, such as a coachman or a wheelwright, they were given some huts to live in right there on the puszta. Their life was very much like the life of a medieaval serf; their prospects to better themselves practically non-existent.

My great-grandfather was one of the lucky people: he had a permanent position. Moreover, he was employed as a coachman by the local landowner at a time when he couldn’t get any other work. He had come back from a Russian POW camp in the aftermath of World War I and as such he was ‘tainted’ by communist ideas and nobody would employ him. Thankfully the local land manager knew the family well and was not worried that my great-grandfather would want to start a communist agitation on the estate! (Nor did he.)

The people, my family included, lived in low single story houses which consisted of two rooms and a kitchen. These were strung out in a row:

room 1 – shared kitchen – room 2

Each family had a room to themselves, that sometimes meant twenty people in the same room: several generations. The families decorated their room as best as they could which was nothing much. They were often short of having enough furniture even. The floor was a dirt floor, ie. just the ground trampled solidly underfoot. This was the same in the kitchen which was shared with the neighbouring family. Each family had its side of the kitchen, so to speak, where they kept their pots and pans and their meagre supplies – having to borrow a spoonful of sugar or a few potatoes from the fellow kitchen user or the neighbours in the next building was common. No bathrooms of course; outhouses were built instead well away from the living spaces.

… I can remember only the house with its two tiny rooms adn the earth-floored kitchen in between. The yard stretched as far as the eye could see. When I first struggled over the well-worn threshold, the infinite world lay at my faltering feet. The house stood on a hill. Beneath it in the valley lay the puszta, which conformed to the usual pattern. To the right lived the steward, the farm foreman, the mason and the wheelwright; in the same block of buildings were the forge and the wheel-shop. To the left were three or four rows of long farm servants’ quarters, then there ws the manor-house among its age old trees, the the famr manager’s dwelling. Immediately opposite was a large cart-shed in Empire style, behind which on a little rise stood the granary and the ox-stables. All around lay the endless fields, speckled with the white smudges of distant villages.

The puszta families lived in a sort of timelessness. It’s not that area had no history (it has plenty and varied, all the way back to the Romans) but they themselves, being uneducated knew nothing much about it. Their life was ordained by the seasons.

It was something of a disgrace to be a puszta-dweller; it implied having no roots, no native land and no fixed above – which of course is true.

…If you want to know where a puszta-dweller comes from, you do not ask him where he lives or even less where he was born, but who his master is. My own family served mostly the Apponyis, then the Zichys, Wurms, Strassers and Königs and their relations – for the landed gentry were apt to exchange their servants for with their relatives: thus a clever cowman, a good-looking coachman or a deft-fingered gelder would be transferred or even presented to one of the relations, this being regarded by the servants themselves as a mark of special disctinction.

The lives of the families were mostly directed by the local landowner or his agent: it mattered little which puszta a child was born since the administrative arrangements kept changing (ie. which nearby village the puszta happened to be belonging) and the families could be uprooted from one day to another and transferred to another estate owned by the same land owner.

So we wandered from place to place, sometimes taking all our odds and ends, our collapsible hen-houses, our hens and the cow; sometimes it was only to visit relatives, a brother or sister-in-law who had suddenly been snatched away after living nearby for five or six years. Sometimes we drove all night and all morning in the wagon, but we were never away from a puszta, and felt at home everywhere. The house were I was born did not belong to my father, bu in the land of my birth, I received an unrivalled inheritance. I can call half a county my own.

The Gentle Back of Beyond

The Sió near Simontornya [Photo by blatniczky via Wikimedia Commons CC 3.0]

If the lives of the puszta people sounds bleak, it is because it was. But that’s not to say that there wasn’t beauty or joy in it. Families were tightly knit and supported each other. The landscape was gentle and is captured by Illyés in a beautiful, lyrical manner.

It’s a landscape of gently rolling hills, covered in wheat and corn fields, or sunflowers bowing heavily with full heads. Rows and clumps of trees break up the fields here and there, together with streams and small ponds in clearings, where nothing stirs the surface of the water and the vegetation around is lush and fresh green even in the hight of summer. The smell of hay and manure wafts across the roads which lead to the villages. The roads are edged with rows of poplars and acacias, and in their shade in August you often see camping tables set out piled high with fresh watermelons for sale. A large number of the puszta hamlets had a name prefixed with mud (as in Sárszentlőrinc, Mud St Lawrence); not so surprising perhaps because the the nearby Sió (a river and canal in one which connects Lake Balaton to the River Danube) supplies abundant water in the area. There is even the odd castle or castle ruin: for example Simontornya castle (hardly more than a keep) still has cannon balls embedded in the walls; whether fired by the Turks or the Labanc (Austrians during the Rákóczi War of Independence) the locals no longer remember; it was just another siege they withstood.

Everybody knew everybody among the puszta folk in Illyés’s time, and that still applies a hundred years later. When I walk down the street in the village (there are hardly any pusztas that still exist), sooner or later I’m bound to be hailed “You, my child! Are you not the daughter of So-and-so?… How does it go with you?” And you find yourself answering deferentially to an old birdlike hag whose name you don’t know, and who is dressed in full black from the hand-embroidered kerchief tied around her head to the buttons on her sensible shoes. Because however far you have risen out of the puszta, you are still one of them. In the end, I’m only the second generation, the second person of the family to have let. I might not remember the old people are, but they sure remember me and this provides me with a strange reassurance that I, as an individual, matter.

Conclusion

All this and more Gyula Illyés writes about in his wonderful book. People of the puszta is a part an auto-biography, part sociography (of a society that has now mostly disappeared), part a description a landscape, meshed with bits of the cultural heritage of the people who inhabit that landscape. Overall, it’s a wonderful concoction of a book and I can only recommend it, even if you have zero interest in the topic as such. I leave you with this recommendation:

A beautifully written, moving work of art.

(The Times Literary Supplement)

The Story of My Life in n Books

When I first thought of this post, I knew I was dying but time was still on my side; in consequence, I didn’t even get past the first sentence before I pushed it aside. Time was too precious to be writing something this final; I preferred to concentrate on living.

That’s been last summer and early autumn. It is winter now, and time is no longer on my side. I frittered it away, living it up, doing rather than writing, enjoying rather than philosophising. I took my moments in the sun, I plunged into the waves of the sea, I sipped golden margaritas at sunset savouring the taste of tequila over the salt, bit into lavishly buttered freshly baked bread in the morning. The miles still melted away under my walking boots and the horizons were still open although I knew I would never now reach them. And I had the company of my loved ones.

It’s winter now and my strength is spent; my horizons have closed. And I’m no longer well enough to write a good post perhaps. Merely sitting up tires me so much;  typing is a physical effort. Yet I before I die, I’d like to leave this summary of my life in books behind. I hope you’ll find some good books among them to consider and if you’ve ever enjoyed my blog, you can learn a little bit about me.

But it’s not chiefly for you, the casual reader. I dedicate…

My Life in n Books: The Books That Made Me

To Sophisticated Young Lady & Young Friend of the Elephants

Both of whom inherited my love of good books

I hope you’ll find it interesting.

I. In the Land of Magic

• The Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm
• The Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen
• Seventy-seven Hungarian Folk Tales by Gyula Illyés

I don’t know how much you remember about the books you read – or rather, were read to you – before you reached school age. In my case it’s easy. I’ve still got them on the shelf.

From toddlerhood to age 6, when I entered primary school, I lived in a magical land of iron-nosed witches and gingerbread houses. In the land of dark forests, where princesses turned into ravens, frogs had to be kissed, valiant tailors won the hand of the king’s only daughter for saving his kingdom and animals talked. Sounds familiar? These are the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm. Their enchantment never wore off although I haven’t picked them up for a few years now. 🙂

The Brothers Grimm were ably accompanied by the heartbreakingly beautiful tales of Hans Christian Andersen – the Little Mermaid and the Snow Queen were my particular favourites – and by a totally different read: down-to-earth Hungarian folk tales, full of worldly wisdom. These were tales about smart farm yard animals, beginning with the one about the little cockerel who outwitted the Turkish emperor, all the way to the dog that got bested by the cat, about smart peasants outwitting the devil, and many tales of of the type of ‘one good turn deserves another’.

The story of the three golden hairs of the devil, for example, anyone? 🙂

II. The Years of Innocence & Wonder

• Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
• Mondák könyve (Book of Legends) by István Komjáthy

When you go to school, the world opens up. Like most children in Hungary, between age three and six, I attended kindergarten (a type of nursery school) all day, so being in a community and having to conform to rules was not the big change. The change came in that in big school we sat in pairs in benches, facing forward towards the teachers, with textbooks and exercise books crowding our heavy school bags and instead of playing, we now had formal lessons. Silence ruled in the classroom from day one of year one, the teacher alone spoke. Kindergarten was small – a couple of classes in each year group; big school was big: four classes in each year group, and multiply that by eight year groups, thirty-two classes. The oldest kids were fourteen, and we were more scared of them than we were of the teachers. The headteacher was higher than god; I didn’t got to see him until I was in year eight and even then his mere physical presence scared the living daylight out of us.

I remember getting repeatedly lost in the building while trying to find my way across paved courtyards from the dining hall back to class; I remember walking down endless white-washed corridors with closed doors on both sides from behind which came the quiet hum of the lesson going on, I remember everything being so big and mysterious and full of promise. Because in big school we were introduced to the mysterious world of letters and numbers which spoke a secret language which you had to decipher and master, for some not quite clear reason – and then when you did…

When you did, the world opened up as a completely different place. It was as if you just saw the world for the first time ever. On the way home from school I was endlessly fascinated by all the things I could now read: shop signs, street names, the number on the trolleybus, the price of the ice-cream. Instead of a jumble of confusing pavements, Budapest was becoming a city with structure, with a transport network, with places of entertainment… Mastering reading and counting meant pocket money, which in turn meant ice-cream and cake-shops and buying books and toys that I chose – not my mum.

Winnie-the-Pooh, with its simple beautiful philosophy, was my particular favourite that accompanied me to adulthood and to which I can still turn for comfort and peace; while the the enchanting Book of Legends about the origins of the Huns and the Hungarians stretched my imagination and formed my identity, leaving such an impact on me that thirty years later I took the trouble to translate it, albeit in an abbreviated form, for my own children.

III. Life Is An Adventure

• Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransom
• Karl May and his ilk
• The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
• Two Years Vacation by Jules Verne
• The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl

By the time I hit age ten, I was living in books. The real world – school, home, parents, what friends I had – was just an illusion, a figment of my imagination. I passed through it unscathed, unaffected, uninterested even. Inside the cover of whichever book I chose was the real life which I wished to live and did live. A life of adventure. I walked the book landscape talking to book characters and played my part in their adventures as myself or as taking on one of their characters. I was sensible Susan cooking breakfast over the campfire on Swallow Island; I was Wah-ta-Wah fleeing from the Hurons; I was Jim in the apple barrel overhearing the plans of the mutineers on board the Hispaniola… I rode into battle behind Crazy Horse at Little Bighorn, I sailed under the seas in the Nautilus with Captain Nemo, and Athos, Porthos and Aramis (not to mention D’Artagnan) gave me my first fencing lessons.

Life as an adventure was good – it made the difficulties in real life less important. I was in a new school which I hated: but school bullies, complicated maths problems, scary teachers and being forced to eat spinach sauce with boiled egg for lunch could be survived. Even my dad being away for a whole year working abroad and my mother’s illness… I coped with it all, hardly noticing.

IV. Life Lessons

• Lassie Come-Home by Eric Knight
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Of course, eventually I had to return from inside the pages of my books and start taking part in real life.

Lassie Come-Home and The Little Prince were both compulsory reading in year 5; and were the only ones I liked. They are also the books, together with Winnie-the-Pooh, which helped me form my first notions on what is right and what is wrong, what is important and what is not. They served as my first compasses in the complicated situations that real life threw up.

Lassie’s story taught me two things: that love and loyalty mattered above all and that honesty was something non-negotiable. When Joe’s dad explained to his son that he couldn’t have the dog anymore because they sold it to buy food, that was that. No matter how many times Lassie returned home, she had to be given back to the new owner. Keeping her would have been dishonest. When you’re poor, and have nothing, not even enough food, you still can have honesty. Nobody can take that away from you. This simple concept defined my moral stance for the rest of my life. (It helped that my grandmother taught me the same life lesson.)

The Little Prince taught me slightly different life lessons but they too stayed with me to this day. To be open-hearted and kind, to begin with. To look for good in others. To understand that you have to dedicate time and effort to achieve something. To believe in the power of love and in friendship. To understand that you have to nurture love and friendship otherwise they might wither. That it’s important to savour the moment… And to understand that what’s really important is inside, in our thoughts and our hearts.

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: The Little Prince)

Every child should read The Little Prince – one of the most beautiful books on love and friendship – written by a French pilot who was playing a deadly hide-and-seek among the clouds against the Germans in World War II even as he wrote this tale of humanity.

V. Cinderella & the Wicked Stepmother

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

My mum died when I was thirteen, after a long illness. I didn’t know it at the time but it was a genetic illness and it’s the same that’s killing me now. My father, who loved her very much, went to pieces, and within months, brought another woman home to live with us, soon marrying her. I never found out why the new wife hated me but for the next five years I lived the life of Cinderella, minus the protective fairy god mother, while she alternated in the roles of various wicked fairy tale stepmothers, depending on the mood she was in. She stopped short of acting out Snow White’s stepmum but that’s about all the good I can say of her. Perhaps this is why I was reading the rather disturbing stories of the Brontë sisters over and over during those years.

VI. On the Road towards Adulthood

• Catcher in the Rye by D. J. Salinger
• Antigone by Sophocles
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• Hamlet by William Shakespeare
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
• The Day of the Dolphin by Robert Merle
• The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene

Modern day Cinderellas still go to school and my great place of safety in my teenage years was, in fact, my grammar school, where I made some life-long friends and where my teachers attempted to make a creditable human being out of me, despite of the terrible situation I had at home.

I had a great literature teacher and even if I hadn’t, I’d have read a tremendous amount. The list above shows the books which made the deepest impression on me in the four years of grammar school while I was trying to learn to make sense of growing up and the adult world around me. They helped to form my political opinions, my artistic opinions and my literary taste in general.

In every book I was reading during these years, I was also, invariably, looking for an answer to my wicked stepmother problem. I had particularly high hopes when I embarked on Hamlet – can you imagine my total disappointment then, when I found that Shakespeare’s solution to the problem was to massacre everybody at the end? Couldn’t see how I could benefit from that! I just had to soldier on, until I managed to grow up and move away.

VII. Out Of This World

• The Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett
• The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
• The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
• The Tales of Pirx the Pilot by Stanislaw Lem

The years of growing up under the proverbial wicked stepmother were hard, as you can understand. I needed escape and frequently. Books remained my friends and I immersed myself in fantasy and sci-fi.

VIII. Long Summers in the Country

• War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
• People of the Puszta by Gyula Illyés
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

My physical escape was the summer holidays, when I was often sent down to my grandmother’s house in the countryside for a few weeks. Life there was quiet, with nothing much to do (at least for me). My grandmother was not well educated but she liked to read, especially in winter and had an interesting collection of books, mostly given to her by other family members. I worked my way through them all.

Repeatedly.

The most noteworthy among them is People of the Puszta: a part sociography, part autobiography by the Hungarian poet and writer, Gyula Illyés. Illyés was roughly contemporary with my great-grandfather and he was brought up in the same tiny area of Transdanubia where my family lived and still lives. The people of the puszta are Illyés’s people; and my people. My grandma spoke the same accent, lived in exactly the same way as Illyés has described in his book. The events that took place in this tiny area (a few square kilometres, no more) of Transdanubia, in the first half of the 20th century are all true as described by Illyés; my grandma bore testimony to it to the last letter, including the crucifixion of the unpopular local policeman on the pub door of Ozora by the drunken peasants one Easter Sunday…

When I consider how poor a family I come from, a family of real not-haves, to be able to hold up a book and a good book at that, and be able to say: “this has been written about us!” is a wonderful piece of good fortune.

IX. The World is Your Oyster

As we know, Cinderella escaped in the end. I turned 18, moved out, went to university, took a degree in literature and started to learn English. My reading horizons became very wide open indeed… as they remain ever since. Can’t possibly list all my favourite readings and authors over the years but here are some of the very best:

• The Honour and the Glory by Graham Greene
• Persuasion by Jane Austen
• La morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard
• Captain Alatriste by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
• The Empire of the Sun by J. G. Ballard
• No One Writes to the Colonel by Gabriel García Márquez
• Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
• Kim by Rudyard Kipling
• Death in the Andes by Mario Vargas Llosa
• The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
• 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
• A Passage to India by E. M. Forester
• Ransom by David Malouf
• The Samurai by Shusaku Endo
• The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

X. Whenever It Got Too Much

Adult life of course was not without its vicissitudes. And whenever things got too much, I had a trusty band of prolific writers to turn to:

• Pigs Have Wings by P.G. Wodehouse
• The Golden Rendezvous by Alistair Maclean
• Sindzse szeme (The Eye of Sinje) Leslie L. Lawrence
• The Last Place God Made by Jack Higgins
• The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan
• Piece of Cake by Derek Robinson
• Happy Return by C. S. Forester
• Master & Commander by Patrick O’Brian
• On Basilisk Station by David Weber

I took Pigs Have Wings into the hospital with me when I gave birth to Sophisticated Young Lady, since it’s such an entertaining book and hospitals are gloomy places even if you’re only there for childbirth. But Sophisticated Young Lady was born by emergency caesarean, and when I tried to read my book during my recovery, it made me laugh so much, it hurt. I had to send it home and get my husband bring me something a lot more boring… Can’t remember what he found.

XI. Nothing New Under the Sun

As I became older, I turned away from novels a little bit and started to read more history. Travel narratives, from ages long bygone, can be particularly fascinating. I discovered a couple of historians who can spin a good tale (and discarded by the wayside others who might have an encyclopaedic knowledge but they would bore the hind legs off a donkey with their narrative). Most of this reading seeped into Waterblogged – the blog I only started because I got fed up with my family pulling faces at me at the dinner table whenever I got overenthusiastic about Herodotus…

• The Great Siege: Malta 1565 by Ernle Bradford
• Historical travel diaries (Felix Fabri, Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Francis Drake…)
• The Histories by Herodotus
• Anabasis (The March of the Ten Thousand) by Xenophon
• The Adventures of Captain Alonso de Contreras
• City of Fortune by Roger Crowley

La historia de Hungría en doce mapas

Read this in English

Después de las historias de Inglaterra y España, aquí viene la historia de unos de los estados nacionales más antiguos de Europa que existen continuamente – Hungría. Ya sabes: uno de esos países de los que nadie ha oído hablar nunca.

La poca gente que sí que ha oído de Hungría puede dar fe de que Hungría destaca en el mundo por tres cosas: 

1. Hablamos un idioma insoportable (uno que ningún extranjero sabe dominar)
2. El emperador Solimán, conocido por algunas almas equivocadas como el Magnífico, ha sido, literalmente, fastidiado hasta la muerte por los húngaros¹
3. El cubo de Rubik

Por supuesto, hay otras cosas de las que Hungría puede estar orgullosa: como ser el país con la peor hiperinflación del mundo (1946), o, para ser más positivo, tener más premios Nobel, campeones olímpicos, e incluso Gran Maestros de ajedrez per cápita que la mayoría de los otros países… ²

Pero pasemos a las mapas!

Brother Julianus: The Quest for the Lost Homeland

Or the How the Window on the Origins of the Hungarians Slammed Shut in the 13th Century

I have recently finished a post, The History of Hungary in a Dozen Maps, and while writing it I’ve done a bit of research on the travels of a Dominican friar, Brother Julianus in the 13th century. Originally I was going to include it all in the post but I quickly realised that it was going to be long enough without this kind of detail. And yet, the story of Brother Julianus is worth to be told – it’s the story of setting off into the unknown, of encountering great hardships and coming back with great discoveries. A little bit like the story of Marco Polo, who only fifty years later went all the way to China. Marco Polo was a merchant; Brother Julianus was… a historian? a dreamer? a missionary? or perhaps a Papal spy? We don’t really know. What we do know is that Julianus set out to look for the ancient Hungarian homeland, found it and came back with the news of the rising Mongol Empire. 

Note: If you're not familiar with early Hungarian history, you might want to read A History of Hungary in a Dozen Maps, at least the part which relates to the migration of the Hungarians towards the Carpathian Basin, before reading on.

Brother Julianus’s Quest for the Ancient Hungarian Homeland (1235-1237 A.D.)

Brother Julianus (with Brother Gerhardus) points towards the ancient Hungarian homeland, statue in Budapest [Photo via Wikipedia]

We don’t know much about Brother Julianus, apart from his travels. We don’t know where he was born, or how old he was when he went travelling. We have no picture of him to show us what he looked like. He was a Dominican friar, and he set out from Hungary in 1235 in search of the Hungarians who according to the historical knowledge of the time had been left behind during the wanderings at one of the earlier homelands. 

Julianus was actually not the first Dominican friar setting out from Hungary towards the east. The Dominican order in Hungary sent out missionaries beyond the Carpathians in the east to work among the neighbouring Cumans during the 1220s. The Cumans, originally not keen on the foreign missionaries, changed their minds after a Mongol attack, coming even to accept Hungarian suzerainty. Perhaps this was the moment when King Béla and the Dominicans started to contemplate seriously to start a search for their Hungarian kindred, further east. The old chronicles rather vaguely put the old Hungarian homeland somewhere called Meótisz, an area north of the Sea of Azov. King Béla sent out Brother Ottó with three companions towards the east, probably in 1231 or around. Three years later Ottó returned alone, in the guise of a merchant and terminally ill. He died within eight days of arriving home and if he said anything about where he’d been, no records survived.

The First Journey of Brother Julianus (1235-1236)

In 1235, possibly only after a year of Brother Ottó’s return, four more Dominican friars set off from Hungary: Brother Julianus, Brother Gerhardus and two other friars whose names we do not know. Searching, like Brother Ottó must have been, for the ancient homeland and their kindred folk living there.

Julianus and his companions made their way to Constantinople where they took passage on a ship crossing the Black Sea. From here they went on towards east and arriving in the lands of the Alans, around the northern shores of the Caspian Sea, where they stayed for about half a year. They found no Hungarians and their situation was difficult; the decision was made for two of the friars to turn back from here while Julianus and Gerhardus set off north.

Julianus and Gerhardus, ill equipped and uncertain of the way, crossed a desert area, only just about managing to reach the Muslim town of Bunda on the other side. They walked through the desert for thirty-seven days; by the time they arrived in Bunda, Gerhardus was very ill. Exhausted by the journey, he died within days. Still Julianus did not give up: he took service with a travelling Muslim priest in order to continue his journey. He finally arrived to Volga Bulgaria where…

In one of the towns of that country, which – as they say – can mobilise fifty thousand warriors, the friar found a Hungarian woman who had been given in marriage into this town from just that land which he was seeking. This [woman] explained to the friar which road to take and stated that at the distance of two days’ walking he would certainly find the Hungarians…

The first journey of Brother Julianus. [Photo credit unknown, retrieved via Google Search from tortenelmiportre.blog.hu, now inaccessible]

Incredibly, Brother Julianus found the descendants of those Hungarians who chose to stay behind some four or more centuries earlier – and they could still speak to each other without needing an interpreter! He named their land Magna Hungaria, Great Hungary.

[These Hungarians] Are pagans. They have no idea of God, although neither do they worship idols; they live like wild animals. They do not till the land, they eat horse, wolf and similar meats, they drink mare’s milk and blood. They rich in horses and weapons and very brave in warfare. From the traditions of old they know that the other Hungarians are their descendants but they don’t know where they live now.

Julianus only stayed with the Hungarians in Magna Hungaria for a month; being alone, he feared that should anything befall him, his discovery would be lost. He left Magna Hungaria on 21 June 1236 and instead of returning via Constantinople, he followed a northern trade route recommended to him by his fellow Hungarians; a trade route of the merchants of Kiev. He arrived safely back to Hungary on 27 December 1236.

In addition to bringing news of of our Hungarian kinsfolk in Magna Hungaria, he also brought news of the rising Mongol Empire:

The Tatar [Mongol] nation is their neighbour. When these Tatars attacked them, they could not overcome them in battle, in fact, in the first battle [the Hungarians] defeated them. Therefore they offered them to become their allies and so together they destroyed fifteen countries completely.

This named friar met some Tatars on the land of the Hungarians, and including the envoy of the ruling prince of the Tatars. This could speak in Hungarian, Russian, Cuman, German, Bulgarian and Tatar, and this same man said that the Tatar army, which was then at the distance of five days’ walking, wanted to march against Germany and that they were only waiting for another army which had been sent by the ruling prince to destroy the Persians. This same man also said that on the land of the Tatars there was a large nation which was bigger and taller than all other people and they had such large heads that their heads were out of proportion to their bodies. This nation wanted to break out of his country and intended to wage war on all who dared to resist, and they wanted to destroy every country that they could conquer. 

(Relatio fratris Ricardi,
the report of Father Ricardus to the Papal Court about Julianus’s first journey)  

Julianus’s first journey was written down by Father Ricardus after his return to Hungary, who reported on the journey to the Papal Court.

The Second Journey of Brother Julianus (1237)

A year later, in 1237, Brother Julianus tried to return to Magna Hungaria but was unable to reach it – it had already been overrun and destroyed by the Tatars (Mongols) and of the Hungarians who had lived there no trace remains.

That’s how we lost the opportunity to ever learn more about our origins…

Julianus recounted this second journey himself in a letter to Salvius de Salvis, the Bishop of Perugia, a Papal legate. The story he told included relatively little information about the Hungarians of the east, and none of them really new; which is not surprising as on this second journey he never reached Magna Hungaria, only heard about its destruction. So the letter mostly talked about how the Tatars rose to power and what wars they fought, including their campaign against Persia, their defeat of the Cumans, their fifteen years of war with the Hungarians of the east… As his source Julianus cited Pagan Hungarians, Bulgarians and others, who fleeing the Tatars had told him these things ‘in their own words’. 

The letter also includes an entertaining description of the Khan’s palace, clearly based on hearsay, which, frankly, could have come straight out of the tales of the One Thousand and One Nights: 

He [the Khan] has such a huge palace that a thousand horsemen can enter through one gate, and having bowed to him, the horsemen can also leave, staying on horseback. The aforementioned leader had himself made a huge and high bed, resting on golden pillars, a golden bed, I say, with the costliest ceiling; on which he sits proudly and glorified, covered in expensive clothes. The gates of the palace too are all made of gold, and his horsemen pass through it safe and sound. But if foreign envoys, whether they enter through the gate on horseback or on foot, if they touch the threshold with their feet, are cut down by sword on the spot; all foreigners have to enter with showing the greatest respect.

Julianus’s most valuable information, and one that history proved reasonably accurate, however, was his description of the Tatar campaign plan against Europe – how the Tatar army had been divided into different parts and sent against different countries, and what was the Tatar mode of fighting:

… it is said that they fire their arrows for longer distances than other nations. At the first encounter, it looks as if they were not merely firing arrows but as if a rain of arrows was falling from the sky. With their swords and their lances they are less skilful in combat. They organise their army so that every ten man is led by a Tatar, and every hundred by a captain…

The kings, princes and nobles of every conquered country, who are likely to organise resistance, are killed without delay. Then they send the soldiers and strong peasants into battle in front of themselves, giving them weapons and forcing them to fight. They leave other peasants, less fit to fight, to till the land, and they distribute the wives, daughters and female relatives of all the men forced into battle or killed among the peasants left to work the land…

Those soldiers who are forced to fight get little reward if they fight well and win – but if they fall in battle, they are no longer a problem. If, however, they retreat in battle, the Tatars kill them immediately; and so the fighters prefer to die in battle, rather than be massacred by the Tatars… 

They do not besiege strong castles; they first destroy the land and rob the people, then collecting these people, they drive them into battle and to the siege of their own castles. I cannot write anything else of the multitude of this army but that the soldiers of all conquered countries are driven in the front and are forced to fight.

The Khan’s Ultimatum to Hungary

Julianus finished his letter with describing the plans of the Tatars against Europe and quoting the text of the Tatar ultimatum to Béla IV, King of Hungary. 

It said by many, as a certain thing, and the Prince of Susdal had sent a message through me to the king of Hungary, that the Tatars are holding council night and day over how to defeat and conquer Christian Hungary. They are alleged to have decided to march on afterwards, to conquer Rome and the lands beyond Rome.

Therefore they [the Tatars] sent envoys to the king of Hungary, whom – as they crossed the country of Susdal – the prince of Susdal captured, and the prince took from the letter addressed to the king [of Hungary].

I and my companions saw these envoys. The prince of Susdal gave me the aforesaid letter, which I carried to the king of Hungary. The letter was written in Pagan characters but in the Tatar language. Therefore the king found many who could read it but none who could understand it. But as we travelled through Kerman, a big Pagan town, we found a man who translated it for us. 

And the translation is the following:

“I, the Khan, the envoy of the Heavenly King, to whom power was given on earth to raise those who submit to me and to oppress those who resist me, am much surprised about you, king of Hungary; that when I have already sent envoys to you for the thirtieth time, why are you not sending any of them back; nor do you send me your own envoy and a letter in reply.

I know that you are a rich and powerful king, that you have many soldiers and you rule a big country alone. For this reason you find it difficult to submit yourself to me out of your own will; yet it would be better and more beneficial to you if you submitted to me willingly. I have found out also that you are protecting my Cuman servants. Therefore I order you not to keep these [the Cumans] with you in the future, and do not oppose me on their behalf. They find it easier to flee than you do, as they have no houses, and wandering with their tents perhaps they can escape me; but you, who dwell in houses, who have your castles and your towns, how will you escape from my hands?”

 

 

 

The Aftermath: The Tatar [Mongol] Invasion of Hungary in 1241

You would have thought that King Béla IV, having been amply forewarned by the Tatar ultimatum, had as good a chance to defend his kingdom against the Tatars as anybody could wish for. The Tatar manner of fighting too wasn’t that different from that of the Hungarians of some three centuries earlier. Nevertheless, when the Tatars broke into Hungary in 1241, in the battle of Muhi by the River Sajó, the king’s knights suffered a devastating defeat. Béla IV managed to escape with his life but he was pursued all the way to the Adriatic Sea; the Tatars then devastated the country, killing and capturing the population. The Tatar rule in Hungary only lasted a year but the loss of life and the material damage was tremendous. 

Further Reading (sorry but not in English):
⇒ Relatio Fratris Ricardi, the report of Father Ricardus, held in the Vatican Library
⇒ The letter of Brother Julianus about his second journey to the Bishop of Perugia (Hungarian translation available here)
⇒ The chronicle of Bishop Rogerius, survivor of the Battle of Muhi, who escaped from captivity as the Mongols left the country

The History of Hungary in a Dozen Maps

Leer esto en castellano

After histories of England and Spain, here comes the history of one of the oldest continuously existing European nation states – Hungary. You know: one of these countries nobody has ever heard of.

The few who have heard of Hungary can attest that she has three claims to international fame:

1. We speak an unspeakable language (one that no foreigner can master)
2. The Ottoman emperor Suleiman, known to some misguided souls as the Magnificent, has been literally annoyed to death by the Hungarians¹
3. Rubik’s cube

There are of course other things that Hungary can boast of: such as being the country with the worst ever hyperinflation in the world (1946), or, on a more positive note, having more Nobel prize winners, Olympic champions and even  chess grand masters per capita than most other countries… ²

But let us instead proceed to the maps!

Lockdown Diaries II, Day 2: Written Like A Ship’s Log

Today’s lockdown diary entry takes a ship’s log as inspiration. (We’ve got to have some variety!)

Date: Fri, 6 November 2020
Location: 51°30’35” N, 0°7’5” W
Course: Uncertain, subject to wind direction
Speed: Drifting without power
Weather Conditions: Major depression over the British Isles

0900 Underway. Visiting heads. 0915 Crew exercise (daily walk on deck). 0940 Changing course to galley. 1000 Changing course to captain’s cabin, attending to paperwork. 1120 Taking call from friendly ship, anchored in nearby waters under a quarantine flag (epidemic on board). Offered to help with logistics and distance training, which was gratefully accepted. 1300 working lunch, followed by galley duty in the absence of lower ranked crew (participating in training off ship).

Empty shelves in Sainsbury’s 6 November 2020 (London)

1400 Underway to the nearby island of Sainsbury’s to procure some luxury provisions (Coke) which was not delivered by our supply ship this morning.  1425 Landed at Sainsbury’s. Island already stripped of most things edible or useful. 1430 Suffered a surprise physical attack by an uncivilised and hostile native; escaped without injuries but with a bruised spirit. 1435 Successfully evacuated Sainsbury’s in the company of one 6-pack Coke cans without further incidents. Arriving on board ship at 1500, informing crew that local natives are now on the war path.

1530 Contacting admiralty to investigate whether Admiral B. Johnson has the slightest idea where we’re supposed to be heading. All information classified; much gossip from the admiralty offices but no facts. Suspect admiral hasn’t got the slightest f***ing clue. The admiralty is not aware of any supply  shortages, nor that this has resulted in local middle class tribes becoming aggressive…  

And now we’re handing over to Christopher Columbus whose encounter with the natives on this day in 1492 was much more peaceful…

Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)

Tuesday 6 November [1492]

Yesterday evening, says the Admiral, the two men he had sent out to investigate the interior returned and described how they had walked the 12 leagues to a village of 50 houses, where he says that there must have been 1000 people because many live together in one house. These houses are like very large tents. They said that they had been received with great solemnity after their custom, and they all, men and women alike, came to see them and put them up in the best houses. The people touched them and kissed their hands and feet and marvelled at them, believing that they had come from heaven and that is what they gave them to understand. They gave them things to eat from what they had. They said that when they arrived, the most honourable men of the village carried them on their shoulders to the main house and gave them two seats on which to sit, and they all sat on the floor around them. The Indian who accompanied them told them how the Christians lived and how they were good people. Then the men went out and the women came in and sat around them in the same way, kissing their hands and feet, touching them to see if they were of flesh and blood like them. They asked them to stay there with them for at least five days.

They showed them the cinnamon and the pepper and other spices which the Admiral had given them, and the people said in sign language that there was a lot of it nearby to the SE, but that they did not know if there was any thereabouts. When they found no indication of any city, they returned, and if they had allowed all those who wanted to do so, more than 500 men and women would have come with them, because they thought that they were returning to heaven. However, one of the elders of the village came with them with his son and a manservant.

The Admiral spoke with them, paid them many courtesies, and he pointed out many lands and islands which there were in that region. The Admiral thought about bringing him back to the Monarchs, and says that he did not know what came over him but apparently out of fear and the dark night he wanted to go ashore. And the Admiral says that because the flagship was on dry land, not wishing to upset him he let him go. The Indian said that in the morning he would return; but he never came back.

The two Christians found many people, men and women, on their journey who were on their way to their villages carrying a smouldering brand of herbs which they are accustomed to smoke. They found no village on the way with more than five houses, and all treated them with the same respect. They saw many kinds of trees and plants and fragrant flowers. They saw birds of many kinds, different from those of Spain, except partridges and nightingales which sang, and geese, of which there are a great many. They saw no four-legged animals except dogs which did not bark. The land was very fertile and cultivated with those ‘niames’ and kidney beans and broad beans all very unlike our own; likewise, Indian corn and a great quantity of cotton, picked and spun and woven; in a single house they had seen more than 500 arrobas, and 4000 quintales a year could be obtained there.

The Admiral says that it seemed to him that they did not cultivate it and that it fruits all year round. It is very fine and produces large bolls. He says that everything those people had they gave for a very low price, and that they would give a great basket of cotton for the end of a leather thong or whatever else they are given. They are people, says the Admiral, completely without evil or aggression, naked every one of them, men and women, as the day they were born. It is true that the women wear only a cotton garment, large enough to cover their genitals, but no more. They are very good looking, not very black, rather less so than the Canary Islanders.

Most Serene Princes (says the Admiral at this point), I hold that once dedicated and religious people knew their language and put it to use, they would all become Christians. And so I hope in Our Lord that Your Highnesses will determine with all speed to bring such great peoples to the Church and convert them, just as you have destroyed those who refused to confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost; and at the end of your days, for we are all mortal, you will leave your kingdoms in tranquillity, free from heresy and evil, and will be well received before the Eternal Creator, whom it may please to grant you long life and great increase of your many kingdoms and possessions, and the will and the inclination to spread the holy Christian religion as you have done hitherto. Amen.

Today I will refloat the flagship and I am readying myself to set out on Thursday in the name of God to go SE and seek the gold and spices and discover land. These are all the words of the Admiral, who planned to leave on Thursday, but because the wind was against him, could not depart until the twelfth day of November.

(Diary of Christopher Columbus, First Voyage)

Further Reading / Lectura recomendada:
⇒ Diary of Christopher Columbus (First Voyage)
⇒ Los cuatro viajes del almirante y su testamento (Cristóbal Colón) 
⇒ More about ships' watches!

Rivers of Gold

• Columbus nailing a gold coin to the mast for the first man to glimpse land…
• Diego de Ordaz climbing the erupting Popocatépetl to become the first European to see Tenochtitlán…
• Cortés burning his ships on the beach of Veracruz…
• Vasco Núñez de Balboa hacking his way through the jungle of Panama to claim the legendary South Sea for his king…
• Pizarro offering the Bible to the Inca on the great plaza of Cajamarca…

These are just some of the stories from the era of the Spanish discovery and conquest of America. Stories that are capable to fire the imagination: stories about a handful men daring to sail into the unknown, of a handful of men having the nerve to show up on some distant shore and take on entire empires.

And win.

Even if you despise the conquistadors for their greed, cruelty and ignorance, you have to appreciate their audacity and their supreme belief in themselves and in their God; the story of the Spanish conquest of America is one hell of a good story. A story that you want to know more about.

This is why I picked up Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire by Hugh Thomas, a history on the Spanish conquest of America. I was looking for the facts behind the legends, I wanted to understand who the conquistadors were and what motivated them. I hoped to learn more about the lands they conquered, the cultures they came into conflict with. And finally, I expected to read about how all this changed Spain and the world.

Well, you won’t really learn any of that from Rivers of Gold.

Without doubt, Hugh Thomas has an encyclopaedic knowledge of his subject. Unfortunately, however, he is unable to rise above this encyclopaedic knowledge to give his readers the full picture, let alone an analysis. As for the cracking stories? Forget it. Rivers of Gold is a somewhat tedious litany of names, ships coming and going between the Caribbean and Spain, and minor skirmishes between the conquistadors and the local Indians.

We start of with the conquest of the Caribbean in great detail: we learn the  names of many Spaniards who took part in some form or other in the conquering and populating of the Caribbean islands and we are told what happened to their converso (converted Jew) grandfather thirty years ago; they all seemed to have had one. Every minor skirmish and every doomed Indian chief is listed, as are all the changes to the laws governing the islands. We get ship names and cargo lists; the number of Indian slaves brought back to Spain and the number of black slaves taken to the Caribbean. We learn about the disagreements between individual conquistadors or indeed the priests who accompanied them and follow Bartolomé de las Casas in his self appointed role as saviour of the Indians. Much of this (although not all) is of course perfectly valid and useful information. The problem is Thomas provides us with so many list like details that we get completely lost in them and never understand the full picture. The reader simply can’t see the forest for the trees.

Not content with getting his readers lost in details, in the second half of the book Thomas himself completely loses sight of what he set out to write about. His book becomes a narrative of what happened in Spain; we follow the Spanish court around in the wake of Isabella’s death, learn about Ferdinand’s concerns in the Mediterranean, learn about Queen Juana the Mad (although she never did anything with respect to America), become embroiled in Charles I’s efforts to become the Holy Roman Emperor…

What we don’t get? Well… to begin with, we don’t really get the rise of the Spanish Empire as advertised in the subtitle. The conquest of Mexico and Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world are dismissed in a few dozen pages at the end, and we never get to the Incas at all. Among others.

What a wasted opportunity.

El catolicismo explicado a las ovejas (Catholicism Explained to the Sheep)

O, una reseña irregular de un libro que todavía no he leído

Y lo que, además, no han traducido al inglés, así que la mayoría de los lectores de este blog no podrían leer. Hoy, vosotros los hispanohablantes tenéis la ventaja. 🙂

Or an Irregular Book Review about a Book I Haven’t Yet Read

And which is not translated into English anyway so most of you will be unable to read it!

El título: El catolicismo explicado a las ovejas

Pues, el título es alucinante, ¿no?

Todavía no lo sé si el autor es católico o no; o si es católico, que parece probable, si es de hecho un creyente o no. (Ya que ser católico y ser creyente son dos cosas muy distintas.) De todos modos, lo de las ovejas se puede interpretar en dos maneras:

• la religiosa: Jesús es el Buen Pastor y sus cristianos son las ovejas – como es bien conocido
• la agrícola: las ovejas son famosos por ser animales estúpidas (también tímidas, pero eso nos importa un pepino aquí)

Total que es un título entretenido que me gusta mucho. (Y también lo gustaba a mi hermanita quien me regaló el libro para mi cumpleaños.)

Si eres un autor no publicado, toma nota: un buen título ayuda mucho en vender tu libro.

The Title: Catholicism Explained to the Sheep

Well, it’s a fantastic title, don’t you agree?

At the moment I still don’t know whether the author is Catholic or not; or if he’s Catholic, which seems probable, whether he is a believer or not. (Since the two is no way the same.) At any rate, the titular sheep can be interpreted in two ways:

• the religious: Jesus is the Good Shepherd and the Christians are the sheep – as is well known
• the agricultural: sheep are famous for being stupid (and for being shy as well but we don’t give a toss about that here)

In summary, it’s an entertaining title, and I like it a lot. (So did my sister who gave me the book for my birthday.) 

If you're an unpublished author, take note: a good title goes a long way to sell your book.

El autor: Juan Eslava Galán

Juan Eslava Galán es un autor español, que escribe sobre la historia – ficción y no ficción. El catolicismo explicado a las ovejas no es el primer libro de Juan Eslava Galán que tengo. He leído cuatro y intento leer más, empezando, por supuesto, con El catolicismo… 🙂

Juan Eslava Galán (1948-)

The Author: Juan Eslava Galán

Juan Eslava Galán is a Spanish author of historical books – fiction and non-fiction. Catolicism Explained to the Sheep is not Juan Eslava Galán’s first book that I’ve got. I’ve read four so far, and mean to read more, starting, obviously, with the Catolicism… 🙂

La propaganda en la contraportada

Que dice:

Un libro valiente que responde a muchas cuestiones que atormentan hoy el alma del creyente:

¿Es Dios psicópata? ¿Por qué aconseja el robo y el asesinato?

¿Por qué instaló a los judíos, su Pueblo Elegido, en la única parcela de Oriente donde no hay petróleo?

¿Por qué el Ángel de la Guarda anota en su Libro Mayor los orgasmos de cada católico?

¿Por qué el Espíritu Santo es una paloma en lugar de un ornitorrinco, como sería más lógico?

¿Era puta la Magdalena o todo se debe a una confusión?…

Pues yo no soy una creyente, pero si quiero las respuestas… 🙂

The Blurb

Which says:

A brave book which answers many of the questions that torment the soul of today’s believers:

Is God a psychopath? Why does He advise robbery and murder?

Why did He settle the Jews, his Chosen People, in the only corner of the Middle East without oil?

Why does the Guardian Angel note down in his big book the orgasms of the Catholics?

Why is the Holy Spirit a dove instead of a duck-billed platypus, which would be more logical?

Was Mary Magdalene a whore or is this just a misunderstanding?…

Well, I’m not a believer, but I would like to know the answers! 🙂

A Short History of Sicily

I know we’ve already been to Sicily recently (the lockdown has a lot to answer for)…

…but that was with a 19th century female traveller, Frances Elliot, whose romantic flights of fancy are quite different from what I’m proposing today. 🙂

I don’t remember when exactly I got John Julius Norwich’s book, Sicily: A Short History from the Ancient Greeks to the Cosa Nostra, but I had it on the mantelpiece (where I keep the books I haven’t got round to reading yet) for at least a couple of years. All this extra time in lockdown finally gave me the chance to read it…

Lockdown Diaries: Day 60 (Running Away to Sea)

Virtual Escape: Running Away to Sea

It’s such a beautiful day today where I am – blue skies, glorious sunshine… we’re only missing the sea, the sand and the palm trees to make everything perfect.

So I thought today we’re escaping to the sea with a few books…  The first of which absolutely has to be:

Lockdown Diaries: Day 52 (Francis Drake Captures the Cacafuego)

Locked Down in London, Day 52: We’ve Got an Exit Strategy!

Well… sort of.

We’re going to live the rest of our lives like this:

Melodrama

In 1827, in the small village of Polstead in Suffolk, England, a local farmer called William Corder killed his lover, Maria Marten, the daughter of the village mole catcher.

So what? A common place tale, of interest to nobody apart from the killer, the victim and their respective families and friends. Yet for some reason the story caught the imagination of the public and the press to such a degree that it immediately spawned ballads (one supposedly by the very murderer) and plays (still performed on stage). In fact, the first play was penned before the trial was even held!

Come all you thoughtless young men, a warning take by me,
And think upon my unhappy fate to be hanged upon a tree;
My name is William Corder, to you I do declare,
I courted Maria Marten, most beautiful and fair.

(The Murder of Maria Marten by W. Corder)

There are various macabre details to the story, some of which concerns a book I saw this weekend in the town museum of Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk – occasioning this post. Do you know what anthropodermic bibliopegy is? If not, I dare you to read on!

Spot the Towns: Answer (Adivina las ciudades: Solución)

The Roman province of Hispania in 125 A.D. [Public domain via Wikipedia]

As promised in The History of Spain in a Dozen Maps last week, here come the answers to the game of Spot the Towns:

Como he prometido en La historia de España en doce mapas la semana pasada,  aquí son las respuestas al juego de Adivina las ciudades:

Beginners / Nivel inicial:

• Cordóba = Corduba
• Toledo = Toletum
• Valencia = Valentia

Intermediate / Intermedio:

• Cádiz = Gades
• Cartagena = Nova Carthago
• Tarragona = Tarraco

Advanced / Avanzado:

• Zaragoza = Caesaraugusta
• Mérida = Augusta Emerita
• León = Castra Legionis

And the bonus city / Y la ciudad extra:

• Brigantium = La Coruña

La historia de España en doce mapas

Read this in English

1. La prehistoria, 30 000 a.C.

En la edad prehistórica, la Península Ibérica fue, claramente, el lugar donde vivir – como se puede ver en este mapa:

Sitios prehistóricos en España [Gracias a Jesús del blog La Mar de Historias]

Bueno. Hace un año tenía una vacación estupenda en Ribadesella en Asturias – uno de esos lugares, donde sólo los españoles (y surfistas americanos) viajan para veranear y donde es, de hecho, es muy útil ser capaz de hablar español. Puedes encontrarlo en el mapa arriba, donde dice Tito Bustillo.

La Cueva Tito Bustillo, que está unos diez o quince minutos de distancia del centro de Ribadesella andando, es un patriomonio de la humanidad de la UNESCO (como la mejor conocida Altamira). Fue descubierto solo en los años 1960 por unos jovenes, quienes, evidentemente, tenían nada mejor que hacer, y le pusieron el nombre de unos de ellos, quien murió en un accidente de espeleología un poco más tarde. En la cueva descubrieron pinturas y herramientas de la Edad de Piedra; las pinturas más antiguos tienen unos 30 mil años. En un rincón hay unas pinturas de… eh… genitales femeninos, que fueron descubiertos, muy apropriadamente, por una miembro del grupo buscando un poco de privacidad para orinar. O, por le menos, eso dice el guía de turismo. 🙂

The History of Spain in a Dozen Maps

Leer esto en castellano

1. Prehistory, 30 000 B.C.

In prehistoric times, the Iberian Peninsula was clearly the place to be – as attested by this map:

Prehistoric sites in Spain / Sitios prehistóricos en España [Courtesy of Jesús of the blog La Mar de Historias]

Now a year ago I had a great holiday in Ribadesella in Asturias – one of those places where only the Spanish (and American surfers) go on holiday to and it’s very useful to be actually able speak Spanish. You can find it on the map above where it says Tito Bustillo.

The Tito Bustillo Cave, some ten-fifteen minutes walk from the centre of Ribadesella, is a UNESCO World Heritage site (like the much better known Altamira). It was only discovered in the 1960s by a group of young people who evidently had nothing better to do and it’s named after one of them who died young in a caving accident. Cave paintings and stone age tools were found in the cave, the oldest paintings being about 30 thousand years old. In a hidden corner there are some paintings of… er… female genitalia which were, appropriately enough, discovered by a female member of the caving party who looked for some privacy to relieve herself. Or at least, so the tour guide says. 🙂

Twelve Books in Twelve Months (2019)

About a year ago I looked back at 2018, admitted it had been a real struggle to keep the blog going and hoped for things to go better in 2019. Well, I can tell you this: they didn’t (if you didn’t work this out already for yourselves by the scarcity of the posts). What can I say? May 2020 be better than 2019 and may I write some good posts this year! 🙂

But while you’re waiting for those posts, let’s have a quick review at some of the books of 2019: books you might enjoy – or you’ll want to avoid! 🙂

By the way, if you ever want to know what I’m reading, you can always take a look at the Reading Log (which I do try to keep reasonably up-to-date).

Who’s Who: Obscure Authors

I had to write a Who’s Who page for the blog as Mr Anglo-Saxonist heard on the radio that in America an Anglo-Saxonist is not merely a person obsessed by Anglo-Saxon history but some species of unsavoury character… and requested that I make it clear that he’s merely the first but not the latter!

Since I was going to write a Who’s Who, I felt I might as well include the more obscure authors and historical figures that populate these pages.

It is a work in progress…

…but I thought I’d share the first instalment with you.

By way of kicking off the new year. Happy New Year to you all, by the way! 🙂

Obscure Authors

Anonymous [Photo by Alex Proimos via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0]

George Borrow

An enterprising employee of the Bible Society of London who went to  to peddle a forbidden book up and down the land of civil war torn, Catholic Spain in the 19th century. A gifted linguist and a born adventurer, Borrow wrote his highly entertaining story up in… The Bible in Spain. (I don’t have to spell out what book he was selling, do I?)

Ernle Bradford

An English sailor and historian who fell in love with the Mediterranean during World War II. He wrote histories and travel books in an entertaining, relaxed style, eminently suited for holiday reading. If you only ever read one book about the Battle of Thermopylae, read his. More about him in Sailing into History.

Bernal Díaz del Castillo

A Spanish conquistador who took part in the conquest of Mexico with Hernán Cortez. He described his experiences in the The Conquest of New Spain.

Alonso de Contreras

A Spanish soldier of fortune in the 17th century. Contreras mostly served in the Mediterranean against the Turks although he also visited the Indias where he fought against Sir Walter Raleigh. A hot head and a womaniser, he often got into trouble for killing when not on the battle field; he was imprisoned several times and even lived as a hermit for a while. He wrote his life’s story up in The Adventures of Captain Alonso de Contreras.

Felix Fabri

A German monk with the gift of the gab who twice went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the Red Sea and Egypt in the 1480s and then wrote a detailed account of his travels. He can be a bit boring on occasion – when he describes every stone and tree stump in Jerusalem and the number of indulgences he received for kissing them – but he had an open and enquiring mind and he did go on pilgrimage in a then enemy country. Well worth persevering with. (Or take him in small (tasty) bites here on Waterblogged.)

Antonio de Nebrija

The man who wrote the first grammar of a ‘vulgar’ tongue in Europe; he dedicated his grammar of the Castilian language to Queen Isabella and his foreword continues to be quoted to this day.

Arthur Ransome

Who is only obscure outside England…!

An English children’s author (and supposed spy) who wrote the Swallows and Amazons series about the outdoor adventures of some enterprising children. Unlike Enid Blyton, Ransome wrote well enough to be an entertaining read even for adults.

Venedikt Yerofeev

A dissident Russian author in the second half of the 20th century. He was kicked out of university for not taking the compulsory military training seriously enough (he cheeked the major in charge). Best known for his highly subversive novel, Moscow Stations – wickedly funny.

Asturias Is Spain…

…And The Rest Is Conquered Land

There’s a popular saying in Spain, principally in Asturias, a province on the Bay of Biscay in Northern Spain, which goes:

Asturias es España, y lo demás tierra conquistada.

Asturias is Spain, and the rest is conquered land.

It makes reference to the Battle of Covadonga, 722 A.D. when the troops of Don Pelayo, king of Asturias, defeated the invading Moors. The battle is considered the starting point of the reconquista, the reconquest of Spain from the Moors (a long process of wars which ended with the taking of Granada in 1492). Legend would have it that Pelayo and his 300 defeated an army of 180,000 Moors. Historically speaking, it’s more likely that the Moors were not quite so numerous, nor Pelayo’s lot so few but – why spoil the legend? It’s still a famous victory for those defending their homeland.

Don Pelayo in Covadonga by Luis de Madrazo y Kuntz, 1855. Courtesy of the Museum of Prado

As a consequence of Don Pelayo’s victory, Asturias has never been conquered by the Moors which explains the above saying.

Las verdaderas historias de… (The True Stories of…)

Hace unas semanas he escrito unas líneas sobre Alonso de Contreras, un soldado español del siglo XVI, cuyas memorias inspiraron la vida del capitán Alatriste, el conocido héroe de Arturo Pérez-Reverte.  Cosa que al parecer no le gustó a casi nadie (pero a mí sí que me gustó escribirlo). Si no lo has leído, puedes encontrarlo aquí:

⇒ Capitán y español (Las vidas de aquellos capitanes)

A few weeks ago I wrote some lines about Alonso de Contreras, a Spanish soldier from the 16^th century, whose memoirs inspired the life of Captain Alatriste, the well-known hero of Arturo Pérez-Reverte. A piece that apparently almost nobody liked (but I did like writing it). If you haven’t read it, you can find it here:

⇒ The Three (Spanish) Musketeers

Bueno. Como mencioné en ese post, Alonso de Contreras no fue el único soldado español que escribió sobre su vida. Hoy os voy a recomendar dos libros más; porque, creed me, la historia es mejor que la ficción.

Anyway. As I mentioned in that post, Alonso de Contreras wasn’t the only Spanish soldier who wrote about his life. Today I’m going to recommend you two more books; because, believe me, history is indeed better than fiction.

The Three (Spanish) Musketeers

Leer esto en español

A murderer at the the age of thirteen, exiled from Madrid… what future would have had a boy like that?

Well, it seems that he had a pretty interesting future. So interesting that later he considered it worthwhile to write his memoirs. So interesting in fact that these memoirs gave life to a character in a well-known – at least in Spain – novel. And this character, in turn, gave life to a character in a TV series…

Do you know who they are?

The Surrender of Breda by Diego Velázquez [Courtesy of the Museum of Prado, Madrid]

If you have seen the original Spanish version of this post, you may have noted that it contains several quotes by Eduardo Marquina. They are from his play En Flandes se ha puesto el sol, The Sun Has Set in Flanders. Unfortunately, I was unable to find an English translation of this work, and I most definitely draw the line at trying to translate poetry. My apologies, but apart from a brief excerpt, you'll just have to do without.