One Day Towards the End of Summer

The following is an extract from something I am working on at the moment - an analysis of the killing of Earl Rǫgnvaldr of Orkney, as reported in chapter 103 of Orkneyinga saga, on the 20th of August, in 1158 (all translations my own):

Replica of a statue possibly of Earl Rǫgnvaldr, Kirkwall, Photo © Judith Jesch 

It was one day at áliðnu sumri 'towards the end of summer' that the two joint earls of Orkney, Rǫgnvaldr, originally called Kali Kolsson, and Haraldr Maddaðarson, sailed over to Caithness to go deerhunting. By the end of the following day, the 20th of August, or five nights after Assumption Day as Orkneyinga saga has it (ch. 103), Rǫgnvaldr was dead and Haraldr was in sole charge of the earldom. For Haraldr, this was the beginning of a very long period of rule which is given rather short shrift in the saga. As for Rǫgnvaldr, it was some 34 years before his holy relics were taken up, ostensibly after some miracles and with the Pope's permission, and he was sanctified, though there is no official record of this. In the Icelandic annals, the death of Rǫgnvaldr is dated to 1158 and his translation to 1192. Discussion of this episode has tended to focus on its implications for politics, both ecclesiastical and secular. Whatever the politics of it all, the episode describing the killing of Rǫgnvaldr in chapter 103 deserves some more detailed attention.

Already the first words of chapter 103 are remarkable enough: 'When Rǫgnvaldr had been earl for twenty-two years since Earl Páll was captured...'. This reminds us that Rǫgnvaldr's grip on the Orkney earldom was consolidated when his rival Páll Hákonarson was eliminated through the actions of Sveinn Ásleifarson (chs 74-75). On that occasion, Rǫgnvaldr managed to keep a low profile despite clearly benefiting from Sveinn's actions. This first sentence is a clear signal that this chapter, too, will result in a similar situation: the reduction of two earls to one, with the survivor escaping any real responsibility for the events.

There is another echo of earlier events in the lead-up to the killing. Chapter 100 tells how Rǫgnvaldr and his eventual killer, Þorbjǫrn Cleric, get involved in a feud between their respective followers which turns violent after some drinking in Kirkwall. This feud was never settled and the implication is that this unfinished business contributed to the events that led to Rǫgnvaldr's death. This episode echoes a longer one back in chapter 61 in which there is a similar feud between followers of respectively Rǫgnvaldr and a Norwegian called Jón, also arising during some drinking, but this time in Bergen. This feud is eventually settled by no less than the king of Norway, who also uses the occasion to grant half of the earldom to Kali and to bestow on him the name of Rǫgnvaldr. This echo of an earlier episode at a crucial moment in Rǫgnvaldr's career serves to suggest that his luck has now run out, that what once served him well will no longer do so. This is further emphasised by two ominous events. On the first night in Caithness, Rǫgnvaldr sneezes, and on the next day when he sees Þorbjǫrn and wants to dismount to engage with him, he unfortunately catches his foot in his stirrup. Both of these are typical saga-motifs of omens signalling the death of the person to whom they happen. Other omens have happened before in the saga: in chapter 29, Rǫgnvaldr's namesake Rǫgnvaldr Brúsason anticipates his own death with the fateful misspeaking '"We will be fully old when these fires have burned out." But what he wanted to say was that they would then be fully warmed up'. And in chapter 47 a wave engulfs Magnús Erlendsson's ship as he is approaching Egilsay where he will eventually be martyred.

Rǫgnvaldr however does not come out of his 'martyrdom' quite as well as his uncle Magnús did. Or at least the story of Rǫgnvaldr's killing lacks the hagiographical tinge that one might expect of a future saint and there are some details which suggest that the narratorial sympathy is not entirely with him. Interestingly, it is Rǫgnvaldr's killer who is presented as a heroic figure in this account. Þorbjǫrn Cleric is the one who manages, despite severe injuries, to leap nine ells across a ditch. The extent of his injuries only becomes clear after his death: 'and when Þorbjǫrn’s wounds were inspected, his intestines had slipped out through the wound that Jómarr had given him'. The wound in question was given right at the beginning: 'And at that moment Jómarr thrust a spear into Þorbjǫrn’s thigh and the lunge continued into his intestines'. After receiving that wound, Þorbjǫrn and his men cross a swamp and defend themselves manfully, Þorbjǫrn makes a long impassioned speech to Haraldr and then jumps across the ditch, and he and his men make for some deserted shielings where again they defend themselves manfully, before eventually Þorbjǫrn expires. No one else in this chapter is said to have defended themselves manfully, certainly not Rǫgnvaldr, but the defence of Þorbjǫrn and his men is twice described this way in the chapter.

Þorbjǫrn's speeches are also extraordinary. In asking Haraldr for a truce, his grounds are that the surviving earl is going to benefit from his crime: 'And this deed that I have done is a great crime, and I am responsible, but all the territory has fallen into your power'. It is only at this point, as Haraldr is dithering about what to do, that some of Rǫgnvaldr's followers intervene and put an alternative argument, emphasising Haraldr's potential role in the killing:

...if Þorbjǫrn is given a truce after this deed and also that he dares to tell you to your face in every word that he had done this evil deed for you or to honour you, it will bring everlasting shame and dishonour to you and all the earl’s kinsmen if he is not avenged. I think that Earl Rǫgnvaldr’s friends believe that you will have for some time been advising the killing of Rǫgnvaldr, which has now happened.'

In the end, Haraldr takes the easy way out, refusing to do anything to Þorbjǫrn but tacitly allowing him to be killed.

Stepping in at this late stage to chase Þorbjǫrn and his men are the sons of Hávarðr Gunnason, including one called Magnús, who made that speech, but it is noteworthy that these supporters of Rǫgnvaldr take no part in the earlier encounters. The only followers of Rǫgnvaldr mentioned when he is first attacked are two complete unknowns, a young Norwegian called Ásólfr who gets petulant when he loses a hand in the fight, and Jómarr, said to be a kinsman of the earl. Jómarr could be said proleptically to have carried out the vengeance for Rǫgnvaldr with his spear-thrust to Þorbjǫrn's intestines which was the ultimate cause of his death. It is therefore odd that he is not more celebrated for this, rather the focus is on Þorbjǫrn for heroically persisting despite such a grave injury.

This reading suggests that the narrative of Rǫgnvaldr's death did not come from his camp. He does not cover himself in glory, but then neither does Haraldr. Indeed, Haraldr's prevarications stand in contrast to the way in which Rǫgnvaldr himself managed totally to evade any responsibility for the elimination of his rival Páll Hákonarson twenty-two years earlier. It has been suggested that the narrative derives from the eyewitness account of the sons of Hávarðr, but as already noted these only come into the story at a slightly later stage. Certainly the close attention to landscape and place-names in chapter 103 does suggest origins in an account by someone who knew the area and perhaps even was present at the events. But the real import of the narrative is in the speeches of both Þorbjǫrn himself, and Magnús Hávarðarson, as cited above. These are both deeply political speeches, encapsulating what must have been a matter of much local discussion, at the time or afterwards, about responsibility and benefit in situations where a leader is ousted.

By contrast, the rather glowing obituary for Rǫgnvaldr in chapter 104 presents him as quite the paragon:

Earl Rǫgnvaldr’s death was much lamented, because he was very popular there in the isles and widely elsewhere. He had been of assistance to many people, generous with money, calm and loyal to friends, a man of many skills and a good poet.

This can presumably be seen as official church or court propaganda, especially since it follows the reference to his translation many years later, and so is likely to represent a later, whitewashed picture. There is little sense of this person in the chapter describing his killing and, as already suggested, Haraldr does not necessarily come off much better either. Chapter 103 resonates with a feeling of 'a plague on both their houses', the response of an exasperated population who is not particularly enchanted with the leadership available to them.

Street named after Earl Rǫgnvaldr, Lerwick. He had connections in Shetland. Photo © Judith Jesch

This is for all 'exasperated populations' around the world....

Broch Weddings

One of the highlights of my recent visit to Shetland was an evening trip to Mousa, an island location that, like Eynhallow or Skellig Michael, is often difficult of access because of tides, winds or weather. However, we chugged over a very calm sea on the delightful Solan IV with lovely views in the evening sun of the broch, an Iron Age structure of indeterminate function that has two particular points of interest. One is that, though like all brochs it no longer stands to its full height, it nevertheless stands higher than any of its fellows. The other is that it is mentioned in two of my favourite sagas, in both cases in connection with interesting anecdotes. There is no doubt that this was a major landmark for the Vikings, on the sea route along the east coast of Shetland and thus on the way to all points south.

Egils saga (chs 32-5) tells of a young man from Sogn in western Norway, Björn, described as a great traveller, 'sometimes on Viking raids, and sometimes on trading voyages', and a very capable man. He falls in love at a party, as one does, with a beautiful girl, Þóra Lace-sleeve, and abducts her from her home while her brother is away. His father, who is friends with her brother, ensures that the two live like brother and sister, but does not insist on sending her back home. In the end, with the connivance of Björn's mother, the young couple elope. On their voyage south, they are shipwrecked on Mousa. They get to hear that the king of Norway wants Björn killed, so they quickly get married then and there, and spend the winter in the broch. They then make off to Iceland, where they end up at Borg, at the farm of Egill's father Skalla-Grímr. The story ends happily enough for the young couple, though there are many further ramifications for the plot, which you'll have to read the saga to find out, if you haven't already!

Strangely enough, the other reference to Mousa in saga-literature also involves an elopement. In ch. 93 of Orkneyinga saga the jarl Haraldr Maddaðarson sets off from Caithness to Shetland, intending to kill a certain Erlendr ungi who had proposed to Haraldr's mother Margrét, and been refused by her son. Erlendr takes Margrét to Mousa, where Haraldr attempts to ambush them, but finds it impossible to attack the broch. In the end, the two men are reconciled and become allies, and the couple get married. Having played her part in Northern Isles politics, Margrét is then out of the saga.

Although the Orkneyinga saga anecdote is set in a chronologically later period than the Egils saga story, I can't help wondering if the latter is modelled on the former. Orkneyinga saga is an earlier text than Egils saga, and we know that Snorri Sturluson read it (because it is mentioned in Heimskringla). So if he also wrote Egils saga (a big 'if', but certainly not impossible), then he might well have modelled his story of a romantic young couple on that of the slightly less romantic middle-aged couple. Or is it just that Mousa is such a romantic place that it spawned more than one fanciful tale of people's adventures there?

From Another Place I Take My Name

Once upon a time, when I was an undergraduate, I met a fellow student who rejoiced in the glorious name of Kjartan Poskitt. Kjartan pronounced 'Ka-djartan', by the way, rather than 'Kyartan' (excuse my phonetics). I remember coming fresh from an Old Norse class and somewhat disingenuously asking him where he got his name from; his reply was that his mother had been reading 'some old book' when he was born, and he seemed to know no more about it, and I don't think I enlightened him. I see now that he is a successful author for children (there can only be one of him, surely), and have no doubt whatsoever that his fine name, however pronounced, has contributed to that success.

Why have I suddenly thought of him again after all these years? Well, I read in yesterday's Observer that no. 2 among the top 5 currently popular names for girls is Freya. Now I've been aware that Freya is quite popular, as I know a few myself, and often ask students if they know someone of that name, and many of them do. Most of these though are lasses in their late teens or twenties, so it's interesting that the name has continued to climb the popularity ladder. Of course it has always been around - the bestselling author Freya North is a wee bit older than 30, I believe, and of course there was the redoubtable Dame Freya Stark, explorer and author, who was born in 1893 and lived to be 100. Doubtless they were all named after the Norse goddess Freyja, quite frequently mentioned in this blog, though occasionally I have asked bearers of the name where their name came from and they professed not to know (a sure sign that the name has been fully adopted into the anthroponymicon).

Are Norse names becoming more popular in this country? Orkney and Shetland have had their fair share of Thorfinns, Erlends, Sigurds and Magnuses in the last century or so, the phenomenon interestingly manifesting itself mainly in boys' names. Also, the Victorian fascination with all things Norse and Viking has lived on until the present day and spawned the occasional outlandish name elsewhere in the country, viz. Mr Poskitt, but I do wonder if the trend is increasing? If so, it is quite the opposite in the Scandinavian countries. Statistics of the most popular baby names there show that none of the top names is actually a Scandinavian name, instead they prefer international, often anglicised, names such as Emma and Victor (Denmark), Eva and Lukas (the Faroes), Emelía/Emilía and Aron (Iceland), Nora and Lucas (Norway), and Alice and William (Sweden) (I've taken this information from a splendid Wiki called Nordic Names, by the way, well worth a browse if you are interested).

The history of personal names in Scandinavia has always been very interesting. Many 'pagan' Norse names survived the conversion and lived alongside the Europe-wide 'Christian' names, some of them in continuous use until the present day, often in much changed form. Nationalist movements, e.g. in nineteenth-century Norway, led to a revival of the Old Norse names, which have been pretty popular throughout the twentieth century, too. But new names always creep in. I remember when I lived in Norway in the 1980s and some friends of mine had a baby they called Carina, I was both horrified that they were naming her after a Japanese car, but also reassured that this was really just an updated version of that very popular Scandinavian name Karin (made exotic with that 'c'), ultimately of course from the international name Katherine (and all its variants). In fact, names can often be hard to pin down to a particular language or culture, and often develop peculiar local forms even when originally imported. Thus, we mustn't forget that Kjartan is a Scandinavianisation of a name that was originally Irish. Imported names have a habit of becoming acclimatised (cf. Freya, above) and have curiously different distributions - just compare the top names in the Scandinavian countries cited above - all 'foreign' names, but different ones in each country. I know that my own given name is much more common in the country in which I was born than in any other country with which I am familiar, even though it is an 'international' name with biblical origins.

A little bit of crowd-sourcing here, just for fun: if you are not Scandinavian, but have a name that is linguistically of Scandinavian origin, I'd be interested to hear why you were given that name!

Location, Location, Location

Today's Guardian review of BBC 1's Shetland, based on Ann Cleeves' Red Bones, concludes that 'Sometimes ... a place is as compelling as a plot'. Which is pretty much what I said on this blog some time ago.

I suppose it was the need to establish the place more obviously that led the producers to introduce an Up-Helly-Aa subplot, making it all somewhat incongruous, since the story revolves around an archaeological dig (hardly likely in Shetland in January). Still, let's not get too fussy. This also gives the producers a chance to introduce various Norse mythology references that weren't in the original book. Shetland is, after all, as Viking as they come.

The Sea Which Surrounds Us is Big

A few 'tweets' from a 'tweep' whom I follow (god, the terminology) reminded me that I failed to add a blog about my trip to Shetland, which followed on from the Orkney visit described in my last blog (shamefully over a month ago). Although I've been to Orkney many times, this was my first visit to Shetland in over a decade, and only my second visit ever (about time too). It's always good to be reminded of both how similar and how different the two island groups are. Visually, they are linked by Fair Isle - I could see it both from North Ronaldsay, and then again from the living-room window of the friends I was staying with on Westside in Shetland. The visit was quite a short one, though I managed to see lots of interesting things. Here, I'll just mention a couple of places well-known to me through sagas and poetry, and then another wee couple of things.

Girlsta Loch (pictured left) is quite a gloomy and forbidding place, and it's easy to imagine the death by drowning there of Geirhildr, daughter of Flóki, the víkingr mikill who, according to Landnámabók, was one of the three main discoverers of Iceland. The name is oddly appropriate, though the 'Girl-' in Girlsta has nothing to do with her maidenhood, as the name seems to be the reflex of an original Geirhildarstaðir. This means then, of course, that the story doesn't quite add up, since Geirhildarstaðir implies that she was there long enough to give her name to the farm and not, as Landnámabók suggests, that she just fell into the loch while her father was anchored in Flókavágr, wherever that is. But then the anecdotes of Landnámabók are generally lapidary, and you get a sense that they convey some fundamental truth, even though they don't know all the details. At any rate, it shows that 13th-century Icelanders knew that there was a place of that name in Shetland.

Especially exciting for me was to see Gullberwick (pictured right), where, according to Orkneyinga saga, Earl Rögnvaldr was shipwrecked, probably in the autumn of 1148, and composed several witty stanzas about it and the aftermath - they lost all their goods, but luckily no lives, so he could laugh about it. I particularly like the stanza in which he complains about the deleterious effect of the shipwreck on his clothing, and his promise to be properly dressed next time he arrives somewhere by ship:

Skekk hér skinnfeld hrokkinn;
skrauts mér afar lítit;
stórr, sás stendr of órum,
stafnvöllr yfirhöfnum.
Nærgis enn af úrgum
álvangs mari göngum
- brim rak hest við hamra
húns - skrautligar búnir.

I shake out here a wrinkled leather garment; it provides me with very little finery; the prow-field [sea] which surrounds our outerwear is big. Some day we'll go more finely dressed from a spray-swept horse of the eel plain [sea = ship]; surf drove the stallion of the mast-head [ship] onto cliffs.

Regular readers of my blog will know I like coming over old buses and tractors on my island voyages. This time round, I not only got to see a lovely old bus (pictured left), but to meet the gentleman (Pat Isbister) who used to drive it and own the company. Pat is the husband of my friend's Cousin Betty, who gave us coffee and cakes and, most wonderful of all, a copy of the calendar depicting many of their old buses through the years - heaven! The calendar was made for a worthy cause, the Shetland Stroke Support Group - check them out if you can. And thanks to everyone for their wonderful Shetland hospitality.

One final thing which I hope will raise a smile is this house, built for a well-known fiddler, proclaiming his passion to everyone who passes by:

Lights of the Isles

Like all good teachers (I hope), I don't have any real favourites among my Norse and Viking rambling locations - from Newfoundland to Estonia, I have loved them all. But careful readers of this blog may nevertheless have noticed I have a bit of a soft spot for Orkney. So I am delighted to report that I am here again! The kind folk of the Thing project have invited me to give lectures in both Orkney and Shetland this week. And I wouldn't be me if I didn't tack on a few days extra to make it a proper busman's holiday...

This time I decided the extra in Orkney was to be North Ronaldsay, the northernmost of their isles, a place I visited once before in 2003, and home to some seaweed-eating sheep and the really rather colourful Ragna, about whom Earl Rögnvaldr composed a very strange poem (see ch. 81 of Orkneyinga saga, or my edition in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages vol. 2).

Having arrived in glorious sunshine on Monday evening, my one whole day on North Ron was wiped out by the really rather atrocious weather that pummelled the whole of Orkney pretty much all of Tuesday, necessitating a day spent indoors with some academic work. I cannot complain, since I consider the weather to be an essential part of the authentic Viking experience, but I was disappointed.

Today, I was to leave on the 11 am flight and the weather was of course heart-wrenchingly better. But thanks to two of my fellow-guests at the North Ronaldsay Bird Observatory (an excellent place to stay, by the way), my last few hours were saved and I got a little adventure to boot.

It transpired that my two fellow guests were the engineers who maintain the lighthouses of Orkney and Caithness for the Northern Lighthouse Board. They, too, were leaving on the 11 am flight, but had a few things to clear up at the lighthouse before going, and graciously allowed me to accompany them. So I had a special tour of the highest land-based lighthouse in Britain, managing to climb all 176 steps to the top, where there was a splendid view of the whole island, glinting in the sunshine. There is a webcam, if you want to get an idea, and the two keepers' cottages have now been turned into very nice self-catering accommodation.

So what's all this to do with the Vikings, you ask? They who sailed without benefit of lighthouses (and therefore probably got shipwrecked a lot)? Well, it transpired that one of the lighthouse engineers was none other than Hrolf Douglasson, a Viking re-enactor I had met once before, now leader of the Norðreyjar branch of Regia Anglorum, author of several books about Vikings, and now with this really rather cool job of looking after the lighthouses of Orkney and Caithness. So thanks Hrolf, and your colleague Rob, for the tour!

Fair Islanders

I have to confess I am not terribly fond of twentieth-century novels that are set in the Viking and Norse periods. I'm not sure why, but I think mainly because they are so predictable. I'll refrain from naming and shaming any of those that I have begun but been quite unable to finish. But there was one exception: a few years ago, soon after it came out, I read Margaret Elphinstone's The Sea Road, and found it enjoyable, both as a novel, and as a believable depiction of the world at that time.
I've now been using the Christmas break to catch up on the first novel she ever wrote, Islanders, derived from her own experiences of living in Shetland, which included bird-watching on Fair Isle and doing archaeology at Barbara Crawford's Papa Stour dig. Both of these islands feature in the novel, which is mostly set on Fair Isle in the twelfth century. It's an accomplished novel, introducing a range of likeable and (from a modern point of view) believable characters, and has some good ethnographic descriptions of the daily life and grind on a small island where the diet is definitely not for vegetarians. There is some violence, but much less than you would expect, and overall the picture is rather cosy, despite the harsh living conditions. It's very much a woman's view of the late Viking Age. There is little or no saga pastiche (the downfall of many other 'Viking' novelists), but the author rather skilfully weaves in lots of allusions to both sagas and poetry, some obvious, some less so, showing that she has done her homework, both in reading the literature, and in understanding how it might have worked in that period. It's a satisfyingly, but not excessively, long book, and the end leaves you wanting to know more - unfortunately Elphinstone never wrote the sequel.
So, the overall verdict is a good read with which to while away the long winter evenings, even if you are allergic to 'Viking' novels.

Norn But Not Forgotten

I drew attention to Shetland Forwirds, the group that is encouraging the use of the dialect in a post last April - and repeat that their website is well worth a visit if you're interested. Now I'm writing this while listening to a programme about Shetlandic on Radio 4, and particularly about poets and their use of the Shetland dialect (which is of course a form of English, or rather Scots). The 'Norn' element of this dialect consists mainly of lexical items (or 'words') which have survived from the old Norn language, which died out in about the eighteenth century. Much of this lexicon is to do with the landscape, weather, animals and so on, and such words are perhaps mostly of interest to either farmers or poets. It's interesting that several of the contributors describe finding words that have effectively died out but are, or were, still known to the older generation. Of course quite a lot of words that are strange to South Britons, even in Shetlandic, are just standard Scots words, this is hinted at in the programme, but no real distinction is made between the Scandinavian element and the Scots element. And I feel the programme misses an opportunity to explain the history of language in Shetland in a bit more detail, there is a tendency to present it as just another weird dialect, strange because it is so remote from the centres of culture, even Edinburgh.
But the poems sound great, so well worth listening again on the BBC website if you're in this country. I am pleased to note that the native Shetlanders, in particular, don't yet suffer from that ghastly falling intonation that affects so many modern poets in English when reading their work - that is enough to put you to sleep, or even worse, and certainly would put you off poetry entirely.

Viking Crime

One of the pleasures of liking both Vikings and crime fiction is being able to combine the two. I particularly like thrillers and detective novels set in 'Viking' parts of Britain. They don't necessarily have to have a Viking theme, just being set in Shetland, like Ann Cleeves' excellent Shetland Quartet, is enough (though it wasn't enough for S. J. Bolton's Sacrifice, see my blog of 26 January 2009). But when there is a Viking theme, too, then it is time to wallow, as in Reginald Hill's The Stranger House (pictured), set in Cumbria and featuring a large Viking cross. My heartfelt advice, though, is to read it after you've been to Gosforth, not before. I also like spotting mini-Viking references in other novels where they don't really play a part. Stephen Booth's detective novels, fulfilling the criterion of being set in a picturesque part of the country (the Peak District), often smuggle in some very brief Viking references, probably almost unconsciously.
Funnily enough, the Scandinavians, who do such good detective novels, aren't so good at the Viking genre. I confess I never managed to finish Flateyjargáta by Viktor Arnar Ingólfsson, despite a promising island setting and the saga-links - I just got bored. Arnaldur Indriðason's Konungsbók was much more readable and quite successfully conjured up the Copenhagen of long ago, but the plot was so implausible as to be risible and in general it was not quite the page-turner of his modern novels. I may of course have missed something - if anyone has a good Scandinavian Viking-themed crime novel to recommend, do let me know!

Imbu Da Fremd

Shetland Forwirds, 'a group dedicated to celebrating and promoting Shetland dialect', which, as they say, 'has both Nordic and Scottish roots', has just launched a splendid new website. Here you can both read and listen to examples of dialect texts, look things up in an online version of John Graham's dictionary, and generally wallow in all things Shetlandic. The section on 'Proverbs and Sayings' will explain the title above!

Runic Rescue

A long train journey recently gave me a good excuse to read S.J. Bolton's Sacrifice. It's actually a very readable thriller, and I do recommend it. However, to enjoy it Vikingists will have to forgive the author's rather obvious lack of either knowledge of or love for Shetland, where the book is set. She also needs to do a bit more homework on what she thinks of as 'Viking runes', especially their forms, their names and their functions! I don't particularly mind the New Age-y interest in runes, though I wish those who take an interest would at least inform themselves about the differences between the various alphabets, and find out which ones are 'Viking' and which are something else. Ralph Blum (Bolton's only source) has a lot to answer for...