Flight of the Heron read-along: Part I chapters 5-6

[regshoe]

What is right and what is wrang, a short sword and a lang, a weak arm and a strang for to draw...

Welcome back to the read-along! This week's chapters are getting a bit more serious, historically and for our characters...

Next week we'll read the first two chapters of Part II.

Comments

[tei]

Well, the epithets certainly are getting colourful. “His civilized young barbarian”? “My warrior”? “My own young Achilles”? (One wonders whom Keith is imagining himself to be in this metaphor?)

Keith finally gets a change of clothes for his escape! He’s been wearing the same uniform for— around a week now? Also the wig, he’s been wearing a WIG the whole time he’s been held captive?! I’m assuming regular laundry wasn’t a feature of daily life even when not a prisoner, but… did they have changes of underclothes, at least? The contents of Ewen’s luggage seem to indicate yes. But maybe I don’t want to know.

…I like how much meaner they are too each other in these chapters. They should continue being mean, in my humble opinion.

Some very successful acting on Ewan’s part at the end, there. He very conveniently forgot that Keith’s parole was expiring, and just happened to leave him alone in a room with everything he would need to escape undetected… how very unfortunate!

[luzula]

did they have changes of underclothes, at least?

They are not wearing any underwear. : D I mean, obviously Ewen has nothing on underneath his kilt, but Keith doesn't have underwear in the modern sense, either.

That is, they have quite long and billowy shirts which they tuck round the groin under the breeches, and that function sort of as underwear. This video shows an 18th century gentleman getting dressed, and Keith's uniform is on the same basic pattern.

And women are also not wearing any underwear. I tried to do research on what they did when they got their period, and the answer is apparently mostly "bleed on their shifts"? They had lots of skirt layers. But I suppose most of the population was kind of underfed and thus bled less?

[tei]

D: I wonder if they used some kind of tampon-like idea, and just didn't write/talk much about it? Apparently the general idea was present in ancient Egypt, and... it's a fairly intuitive thing to do, I would think, if you don't have underwear?

[luzula]

Here is an article I found about it. It seems that mostly upper-class women used menstrual clouts that they fastened by girdles around their waists? But lower-class women probably often bled on their shifts. Also apparently it was considered very unhealthy to stop the flow of blood, so the author thinks tampons were not used? Except that it seems there is evidence that sometimes prostitutes used them so that men would not notice they were having their period (menstrual blood was considered dangerous)?

Also, what a quote: "Thy righteousness is but a menstrual clout!"

[tei]

Ooh, thank you for that! THY RIGHTEOUSNESS.

[regshoe]

Hehehe, I love the colourful epithets :D My classical knowledge is not good enough to speculate about the significance of Achilles, although him being half of a very well-known m/m couple does seem suggestive.

I get the impression that it was the usual thing to wear outer clothes for a long time and change your underclothes more often (i.e. shirts, although I don't know how many changes of shirt Keith would actually have got here). And yes, wigs are essential fashion item for the eighteenth-century gentleman!

Do you think Ewen deliberately gave Keith the opportunity to escape? I thought his reaction at the end was genuine (Keith's theory that Ewen's military naivety accounts for him forgetting seems plausible).

[tei]

Heh, as convenient as it would be to cast Keith as Patroclus, it doesn't really make much sense with what I've read so far-- assuming this will all end in tears, which seems like a very reasonable assumption even from my viewpoint of having read only these chapter, I suppose Hector, if anyone-- a fated foe, "the gods have lured me to my destruction!" etc.?

OK, the shirt functioning as underwear makes the theft of a clean shirt make more sense!

I ASSUMED that was what happened when it all worked out so very nicely for Keith but I stopped at the end of this chapter and haven't read anything beyond that might show Ewan's private reaction, so maybe I was wrong! It made sense to me that he was upset about the money, since Allison already speculated to herself privately that Kieth offering Ewan money would be a great insult, and Kieth failed to specify in his letter that the money was his best guess at the value of the stolen clothes.

So maybe Ewan really did have no idea that was going to happen! In which case *cackles* I hope he's SO MAD the next time they meet.

[tei]

sjdffsdjhfsdj sorry for spelling Keith's name multiple times within a single comment, but I might as well just state now that I have never remembered how to spell any words containing an i and an e in some sort of sequence and don't expect to be able to at this late date so the remainder of my FotH comments will likely be more of the same

[regshoe]

I suppose Hector, if anyone-- a fated foe, "the gods have lured me to my destruction!" etc.?

Sounds good :D Hmm, 'Hector' is an interesting name—it turns up in Scotland because it's used as the Anglicised form of the Gaelic name Eachann (at least one Hector/Eachann appears in FotH, in fact), but Eachann is not etymologically related to the Greek Hector at all.

Ah, I see. Yeah, I also don't think that Ewen would be dishonest like that, especially in front of Lochiel (though that's based on stuff about their relationship from later on in the book, so we shall see...).

Haha, no worries about the spelling—'Keith' is actually one of the words that breaks the (otherwise reasonably consistent) 'I before E except after C, when the IE sounds like E' rule. I don't know what etymology is responsible for that...!