Our objective in this chapter is to analyse the data extracted from the manuscript texts written in English in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Brogyntyn ii.1, since those in Latin cannot provide any linguistic evidence of provenance. We aim to (1) identify the linguistic features of each of the texts in the manuscript; (2) compare them with the features of each of the texts copied by the same scribe to determine what each scribe's individual repertoire might have been; and (3) attempt to localise an assemblage of features for each scribe comparing this information with the localised sources in The Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English by applying the ‘fit’-technique. The ultimate objective is to establish, as far as possible, the likely linguistic provenance of the contributors to Brogyntyn ii.1.

Among the fifty-one entries copied in English, thirty-two are in verse, seventeen are prose, and two contain both verse and prose. For our purposes, the distinction among text types is relevant since poetic texts are more likely to retain linguistic features from earlier copies to preserve the rhyme and rhythm or other prosodic features. Thus, our data need to be analysed considering the type of text in which they occur. The subject matter is less relevant, although some topics provide more diagnostic lexical items than others; likewise, the type of narrative will determine the verb tenses used. In this miscellany, the length of texts varies considerably. The shortest entry in the collection has forty-six words (entry 50), and the longest has c. 10,122 words (entry 33).

In a 2017 post on the popular science website Edge.org, Steven Pinker provides an answer to the question, ‘What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?’ as follows:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in an isolated system (one that is not taking in energy), entropy never decreases… Closed systems inexorably become less structured, less organized, less able to accomplish interesting and useful outcomes, until they slide into an equilibrium of gray, tepid, homogeneous monotony and stay there.

Pinker's acknowledgement of this forbidding state of affairs (one which, on a bad day, might apply to any number of long-term scientific or scholarly enterprises, not excluding musicology in Ireland), is not, however, and end but a beginning, at least insofar as it leads him to a conclusion which is as transcendent and optimistic as it is far-reaching and (proverbially) universal:

The Second Law of Thermodynamics defines the ultimate purpose of life, mind, and human striving: to deploy energy and information to fight back the tide of entropy and carve out refuges of beneficial order.

Human life as a rearguard action against the otherwise overwhelming and inevitable disintegration of the universe may not be to everyone's taste as an implicit principle of behaviour, but the resilience of this principle has a long history, even if it is not often formulated with such lapidary (not to say optimistic) grace, and especially not at the present moment, when the rage for order in human affairs is so violently contested and endangered.

In 1701, probably after the death of the exiled James II in France in September, a serious political conflict broke out in a high church Tory family. The political drama that unfolded between Samuel Wesley (bap. 1662–1735), a parson who recanted his refusal to swear new oaths of allegiance in 1689, and his wife Susanna (1669–1742), a woman educated by her learned father Samuel Annesley and persistently upholding Nonjuring Jacobitism, is in many ways similar to post-1704 Reform Comedy. Like the father and children in Cibber's The Non-Juror, Samuel and Susanna were equally adamant about their own political principles and as eager as each other to reform their spouse’s. One evening at their family prayers, Susanna said ‘Amen’ to all parts except that for King William. Samuel noticed and later questioned her about this in private. Dissatisfied with her response, Samuel ‘immediately kneeled down’ and swore not to sleep with Susanna again before she ‘had begged God's pardon and his, for not saying Amen to the prayer for the K[in]g’. And Samuel prayed for ‘Divine Vengeance upon himself and all his posterity’ if he should break his vow. Fearing that succumbing to her husband's demand might doom her soul to hell, Susanna ‘represented to him the unlawfulness and unreasonableness of his oath’ but to no avail. Since that night, Samuel forsook her bed and, perhaps for this reason, left Epworth for London for more than eight months.

As in The Lady's Last Stake, the collision of the active reform strategies led Samuel and Susanna to consider finding someone to arbitrate their dispute, but they, unlike Lord and Lady Wronglove, could not even agree on this issue.

On the first folio of the only extant manuscript of Hary's Wallace (NLS Adv. MS 19.2.2), a (presumably) sixteenth-century reader has left an enigmatic doodle (Fig. 4). Alongside the opening lines of Hary's poem there exists an image of a tower with what appears to be a ladder leaning against it. We know nothing of the context of the sketch and one explanation is that it represents a scaffold unrelated to the text the manuscript contains. Nevertheless, as I discussed in Chapter 1, the ladder had distinct associations with memory and with the depiction of vices and virtues. It is tempting to speculate that this doodle might demonstrate a direct response to Hary's text. In sketching this ladder alongside Hary's own calls to ‘hald in mynde’ the ‘nobille worthi deid’ of ‘our antecessowris’ (Wall. 1.1–2), did the impromptu illustrator signal their recognition of, or desire to remember, the virtues of the late fourteenth-century Scots and the vices of the ‘ald Ennemys’ (the English) who sought to ‘hald Scotlande at wndyr’ (Wall. 1.7, 13)? That, of course, is an impossible question to answer; however, what I want to consider in this chapter are the ways in which the late fifteenth-century poet known to us as Hary seeks to recollect events of the first Scottish War of Independence at a critical moment of Anglo- Scottish relations during the reign of James III. Hary's Wallace, composed c. 1475 and surviving in a manuscript from 1488, recounts the life and deeds of William Wallace. The poem acts as a commemoration of Wallace as a national hero: a textual memorial to the man whom Hary depicts as the saviour of Scotland.

Three days later, a telegram came: “Arriving on noon steamer. Egon.” And even though the preceding days had been filled with airing and cleaning, shifting and straightening, the zeal of preparation was now redoubled. Countess Judith was to have the rooms next to her brother’s, while for Egon, as on earlier visits, they prepared the small room at the top of the old tower, whose lower part was entirely taken up by a staircase. Egon, when he stayed here, delighted in going up to the observation platform to take in the magnificent prospect of the lake from there. The old count viewed this as “German Romanticism,” and made fun of it, even though he was susceptible to other things which were more romantic yet.

And now the day of their arrival had dawned. Franziska rose early and made one more inspection, ending in the tower room. She was about to return to her quarters through the great dining room when she noticed Hannah, standing on the balcony opposite the old chapel, and looking intently at something happening in the courtyard.

“What is it?” Franziska asked. But Hannah only made a half-mysterious gesture, beckoning her to approach as silently as possible, and when Franziska complied, she saw a pigeon struggling to unwind a large ball of yarn lying in the middle of the courtyard, where one of the maids apparently had forgotten it.

Medievalist Jaques le Goff once pointed out, discussing ideas of empire and its survival throughout time, ‘the world in every age had one heart; the rest of the universe lived according to its rhythm and impulse alone’. This idea of the empire as a living being that evolves, transforms, and even migrates for security and survival was at the core of what King Alfonso X believed to be the main reason for his imperial dream.

The empire, as an institution, had created a sense of continuity throughout the centuries. During the Middle Ages, the notion of empire took the shape of an everlasting and permanent agent that was considered the highest level of temporal power. By changing and adapting to the needs of time, it became an institution always present in the political imagination. The concept, coined during this period, that gave a name to this idea of passing on and continuity is the so-called Translatio Imperii, in which the engine for historical evolution is, precisely, the transfer of the imperium, or imperial power.

The Staufen dynasty made an exemplary use of this concept to legitimise their belonging to the imperial throne, as was discussed in previous pages. By associating themselves with the empire, and therefore with the abstract idea of the Translatio Imperii, the decision of imperial succession was taken out of the hands of the Pope, and the empire became an ‘inherited’ institution, succession to which included the one and only Alfonso X.

INTRODUCTION

This notorious trial arose from the alleged demonic possession of Christian Shaw, daughter of the laird of Bargarran, in 1696–7. A number of witches were accused of afflicting her. The documents edited below are the record of the trial of Katherine Campbell, Margaret Fulton, Margaret Laing, James Lindsay alias Curate, John Lindsay alias Bishop, John Lindsay in Barloch, and Agnes Nasmith. The trial, which was held under the authority of a commission of justiciary granted by the privy council, took place in Paisley between 14 April and 19 May 1697, with some preliminary proceedings in Renfrew on 18 March. All seven were convicted, and they were executed in Paisley on 10 June 1697. An eighth suspect, John Reid, hanged himself in prison on 21 May.

The case has attracted attention from scholars, partly because of the wealth of documentation that it generated, and partly because of the interest attaching to Christian Shaw's bizarre behaviour. It has been the subject of a fictionalised but well-researched book by Isabel Adam, and has been discussed in several other recent studies. Brian Levack has discussed demonic possession in this and other related cases. Michael Wasser has set the case in the broader context of a subsequent, related panic in the Glasgow area in 1699. The trial documents edited below have never been published before, however.

The case formed the subject of two contemporary printed narratives: A Relation of the Diabolical Practices of Above Twenty Wizards and Witches of the Sheriffdom of Renfrew in the Kingdom of Scotland (1697), and A True Narrative of the Sufferings and Relief of a Young Girl (1698).

Looking back now to the early summer of 1977, I see a very young person, only twenty-nine years old. At the time, I felt that I had already been through a lot. Yet in terms of composing, I knew that I was just starting out.

In July, I received a request from the Composers Ensemble to perform the piano part in some songs by Poulenc in a concert of lighter music that they were presenting at Carnegie Recital Hall the following February. The singer would be Joyce Suskind. They also asked me to compose a piece that I could perform with them on the program.

This was an amazing opportunity, and I set to work on what would become an eight-minute piece in three movements for clarinet, violin, cello, and piano, called Cabaret Music. I wrote this in a new way. My first idea simply came to me at the piano: a quiet melody in the low register of the clarinet with a jaunty, march-like accompaniment in B flat minor, vaguely suggestive of Berlin Cabaret.

Instead of ignoring or censoring this idea, I built the first movement out of it. I introduced the tune with harshly dissonant syncopated chords and figures that related to it, embedding it in a chamber-music context, then continued with juxtapositions of both ideas. The language was compressed and full of interest, and combined two seemingly contradictory idioms—the neoclassic and the expressionistic. There was a brief piano outburst that almost recalled Kirchner.

The second movement was slow and again rooted in B flat and derived from the Cabaret tune, but it had a feeling of suspended time, as contrapuntal ideas in different configurations floated over drone-like accompaniments.

This book examines a journey taken through most of my research life as I worked closely with people in Gokwe and Lupane in western Zimbabwe, as well as Dwesa-Cwebe on the Wild Coast of South Africa. Working with people in these three different places began in the early 1990s and has gone on ever since.

I am very grateful to Dr Yemi Katerere, the then General Manager of the Forestry Commission of Zimbabwe, who encouraged me to visit Mafungabusi Forest and broaden my knowledge of social issues within the organisation. This was around 1990; I visited Gokwe and saw the really strange trees that grew on the Mafungabusi Plateau. The visit was also enhanced by the infamous quote of “they have done it again” used by a friend who was the then manager of the Forest to express his exasperation with the ‘occupation’ of the Mafungabusi Forest that had been carried out by displaced people. The friend had been having running battles with some displaced people who kept occupying portions of the forest and would be evicted before too long. The back and forth between the displaced people and forest officials went on for some time – hence I was encouraged to find out what was at the root of these ‘battles’. Thus began my relationship with the Forest and its displaced populations, which is partially captured in chapter 4. So began the journey with Mafungabusi with the chapter I wrote with Jeanette Clarke for the Forestry Conference in 1990. I then went on to do an in-depth ethnography in 1994 for my Masters dissertation which I followed up with research for my DPhil studies between 1996 and 1999. During that period I would spend months between Mafungabusi and Gwayi Forest in Lupane District in Matebeleland North, Province of Zimbabwe.

The greatest human rights activist of the early modern history of the West, Las Casas, started his life on the island as a farmer. His father had been given some land by Columbus, and it is not surprising that the younger Las Casas farmed some of the land to grow provisions to sell to outgoing fleets. What did Las Casas see as he moved around the island on his father's business?

He knew, or was told, that the Taínos were in rebellion, which was good for the settler class wishing to exploit them, since anyone in rebellion was subject to enslavement. Others, those who couldn't escape into mountains, were distributed by the Spanish governors such as Columbus and Ovando to various settlers in an institution called the encomienda. It was a form of servitude resembling slavery but not quite classic slavery.

Taínos were “commended” to individual Spaniards, kind of like serfs in the Middle Ages of Europe, to work in the service of the encomenderos, or those who owned the encomiendas. The work consisted of panning for gold, personal service, or, in the worst instance – looking at it from the perspective of the Taínos – working in the gold mines. The encomienda became the central instrument of Indigenous depopulation and exploitation on the island.

Examining the Evidence

Here we have to stand back a bit and examine not only the primary evidence of what was happening – largely from the writings of Las Casas – but also the modern interpretations, largely the Black Legend, which we define and explore below as one of the principal contributions to Las Casas as an iconic figure.

February 1941

German Listeners!

The most recent address by the German head of state in the Berlin Sportpalast made a particularly repugnant impression in America—not so much through its content, which was of the lowest rank of wretchedness and only proved the incapacity of this defective brain to make any useful contribution to the burning questions of the day, but much more through its mirth, the unhealthy cheerfulness that rang from it, and which was evidently the main reason why in Great Britain, too, the address was perceived as “paranoic,” as insane. “Hitler frequently made jokes,” wrote the American press. “There were more bursts of laughter than there usually are when he delivers an address.” What was the nature of these witty remarks? “A British politician calculated,” said the Conqueror, “that I had made seven mistakes in the year 1940. I made 724 mistakes, but my opponents made four-million-three-hundred-and-eighty-five-thousand.”— Unsurpassable. The centuries will pass on this humoristic treasure from one to the next, along with the other gems that unleashed the howls of delight of the Myrmidons who filled the Sportpalast—provided only that a human sense of shame does not prevent it. For is there not really something excruciatingly offensive to one's sense of shame, something idiotic-obscene about being so funny under the world-circumstances of the present, for which Herr Hitler may understand himself to be blameworthy as their originator?

When the King’s Men took over the residency of the Blackfriars indoor theatre in 1609, they embarked upon a period of conscious reinvention of company identity, combining their existing resources and reputation with a new playing space, audience, financial approach, and performative sensibility. The company made music a key part of this reinvention, drawing on its new assets to increase the presence and variety of original music in its plays. By 1642 they still held a reputation for musical innovation, performing newly written music for both new and older plays in the repertory; their musical settings were still newly circulated in manuscript and print into the 1650s. This chapter explores these musical reinventions, examining dramatic impacts of altered lyrics, melody, harmony, accompaniment, and performance style.

Introduction

Migration has played a pivotal role in shaping the historical experiences of West Africa, with the Yoruba emerging as one of the historically prominent migrant groups in the sub-region. The early migration in West Africa took diverse forms, influenced by factors such as internecine warfare, trade, colonization of new lands, slaving, and evangelism. In this chapter, we delve into the multifaceted nature of Yoruba migration, which has given rise to several diasporas, connecting them with various groups and regional economies. This historical phenomenon of the Yoruba diaspora is a significant subject of study in African migration discourses. Our focus is on exploring the trading routes and commercial activities of the Yoruba people.

The chapter aims to shed light on Yoruba migration to Ghana and northern Nigeria, which underwent significant transformations under British colonial rule. During this period, both commercial and labor migration became prevalent, with men and women actively engaging in mobility within colonial West Africa. Labor migration initially centered around the cocoa-growing and forest regions of Ghana, but eventually expanded to include commercial migration, encompassing diamond mining, trading, and commerce. In northern Nigeria, Yoruba migrants assumed vital roles in the colonial workforce and kola nut trade. Across both Ghana and northern Nigeria, Yoruba migrants exhibited wide dispersal, transcending rural and urban areas, while maintaining strong social connections within their communities and host societies. This chapter will also explore the residential patterns of the Yoruba diaspora.

In April 2024 the Medieval English Theatre conference was held at the University of Newcastle, admirably hosted by James Cummings. The theme was ‘Dramatic Margins’, and the papers covered a stimulating range of topics while exhibiting characteristic METh interest in manuscripts, historical records, and drama in performance. Papers invited us to consider how attention to margins, of various kinds, could illuminate questions about how to define ‘drama’, ‘performance’, and ‘theatre’ – questions which are theoretical but which are also made practical in the activities of collecting records of ‘early drama’ or taking words from page to ‘stage’.

Charlotte Steenbrugge discussed the play-frame of the Dutch Tspel van dOnghelycke Munte (‘The Play of the Fluctuating Currency’), with its creatively disruptive female character, Everyday Chitchat. Sarah Grandage, with Dana Key on Zoom, described a project on the use of marginal playing spaces in modern performance, in which students from the University of Nottingham presented performances of Joseph's Trouble and the Nativity among the medieval alabasters in the Nottingham Castle museum. Pamela King, joined on Zoom by David Parkinson, presented his new edition of Henry Adamson's The Muses Threnodie, a delightfully humorous Scottish seventeenth-century text which through argument and animated reading they persuasively demonstrated should be considered as para-drama. Eleanor Rycroft and Clare Wright led a lively and stimulating panel discussion of the term ‘Pre-Dramatic Theatre’, drawing on their current project with Greg Walker to explore the uses and limitations of terminology in current theatre studies.