The Barsted King of England

One song on my playlist this week on Radio Dé Danann is what is listed on the original CD as "The Barsted King of England".  Whwen I went looking for the lyrics, the title was changed to "Bastard".  According to one site the reputed author is Rudyard Kipling.  If that is so, it would be my guess that he would find the old saw "Do you like Kipling?"  "I don't know.  I have never Kippled." quite hysterical.

The version I play is Derek Lamb's from the album, "She Was Poor but She Was Honest".  In it the King of England sends his minister Zippity-Zap to give the King of France a dose of "clippity clap".

The Bastad King of England

Now the minstrels sing of an English king of many long years ago
He ruled his land with an iron hand though his morals were weak and low
His only other garment was a dirty yeller shirt
With which he tried to hide his hide but he couldn't hide the dirt.

(Chorus Below)

He was dirty and lousy and full of fleas
But he had his women by twos and threes
God bless the Bastard King of England.

Now the Queen of Spain was an amorous Jane
A lascivious wench was she
She longed to play in her loving way with the king across the sea
So she sent a royal message with a royal messenger
To invite the King of England down to spend the night with her.

(Chorus)

Well when Phillip of France he heard it by chance
He declared before his court,
"The Queen prefers my rival just because I'm somewhat short."
So he sent the Count of Zippity-Zap
To give to the Queen a dose of clap
To pass it on to the Bastard King of England.

(Chorus)

When the King of England heard the news
He cursed the Gallic farce
He up and swore by the royal whore he'd have the Frenchman's arse
He offered half the royal purse and a piece of Queen Hortense
To any British subject who'd undo the King of France.

(Chorus)

So the Earl of Sussex jumped on his horse and straightway rode to France
Where he made a pass and he stripped the sash from Phillip's pajama pants
And in front of a throng he slipped on a thong
Leaped on his horse and galloped along
Draggin' the Frenchman back to merry England.

(Chorus)

When the King of England he saw the sight he felt in a faint on the floor
For during the ride his rival's hide was stretched a yard or more
And all the maids of England came down to London town
And shouted 'round the battlements, "To hell with the British crown."
So Phillip of France usurped the throne
His scepter was the royal bone
With which he bitched the Bastard King of England.

(Chorus)

An alternate version:
The Bastard King of England

Oh, the minstrels sing of an English King of many long years ago
Who ruled his land with an iron hand though his mind was weak and low.
He love to shag the royal stag that roamed the royal wood,
But better yet to lie in bed and pull the royal pud.
His only outer garment was a dirty undershirt
That managed to hide the royal pride but couldn't hide the dirt.

Chorus:
He was wild and woolly and full of fleas
And his terrible tool hung down to his knees---
God bless the Bastard king of England.

Oh, the Queen of Spain was an amorous Jane,
And a sprightly dame was she;
Who loved to fool with the royal tool
Of the King across the sea.
So she sent a royal message by a royal messenger
To ask the King to bring his ding and spend a night with her.

(Cho.)

When Philip of France heard this, by chance
He declared, before his court:
"The Queen prefers my rival, because my dong is short."
So he sent the Count of Zippity-Zap to slip the Queen a dose of
the clap
To pass it to the Bastard King of England.

(Cho.)

When the King of England heard of this, he was walking through his halls
And he up and swore by the royal whore that he'd have the Frenchman's balls
He offered up both half his lands and a piece of the Queen Hortense
To any British subject who'd de-nut the King of France.

(Cho.)

Well the Earl of Sussex heard of this and straight-aways went to
France
Where he swore he was a fairy, so the King let down his pants,
He knotted a thong around that prong, and jumped on his horse, and rode along
And dragged him to the bastard king of England. (Cho.)
When the King of England saw this sight, he s*** all over the floor,
For during the ride, his rival's pride had stretched a yard or more
Then the merry maids of England, came down from London town
And shouted 'round the castle walls "To Hell with the British crown!"

And Philip of France usurped the throne, his scepter was the royal bone
By which he'd bitched the bastard King of England!

(Cho.)

Another version:

Do our Characters Inhabit Another Dimension?

Vivid characters can become as real to a reader as the living breathing people in our lives.  Is it any wonder then that many authors who originally believed they made the characters up soon find the characters taking over the story?  I propose  that there is another dimension, besides the ones mentioned in the voiceover of The Twilight Zone, where our characters exist, not only once we release them but before and forevermore? 

I know several authors who either have told me they have actually seen their characters or heard them speak, such as Helen Holick and her pirate Jesamiah Acorne from her Sea Witch series.  She described how she drew him out of his fictional dimension while sitting on a beach, looking up at last to see him there, smiling back at her.  Something makes me quite confident that she did see him.  For one thing, he's a delightful and memrable character!

Laura Vosika, author of The Bluebells of Scotland,  today told me how a minor character whose scene she tried to change simply refused  to let it happen.  If you are an author you know exactly what she means.  I like to write character panels where the heroes and villains of my stories get together to discuss a plot change.  In several that I wrote for An Involuntary King, two of the characters, the king and the mercenary in love with the queen, invariably disrupt the prgress of the discussion, with traded insults and the King blowing his top.  More than either of these examples is the experience I know many authors have that their characters take over, that at most they are channeling the characters, not creating them.  It has happened to me often that I wake up from the writing trance to discover the story has gone a way I did not plan, and several fictional beings are grinning triumphantly in my direction.

Of course, my assertion of another dimension is tongue in cheek.  It is comforting however, as my characters are so real to me that I cannot bear the idea that they don't somehow exist, that they always did and always will in that wonderful dimension crowded with these astonishing, magical creatures.

Authors, share your own experience in the Comments section below.. and readers, tell us how you can tell when an author has released a particularly compelling character from this other dimension.

Making Light of the Dark Ages: A Writer's Afterlife

Thanks to author Helen Hollick for this joke!

A writer died and found himself face to face with Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. Peter consulted his big book and found himself somewhat perplexed as to the final destination of the writer. He therefore proposed to show the writer both Hell and Heaven before deciding the case. They went first down to Hell to the part specially reserved for writers. Here there were rows and rows of writers, chained to desks scribbling away. If any one of them stopped, even for an instant, he or she was immediately flogged until they started writing again.

Next Saint Peter took the writer to the part of Paradise reserved for writers. Here there were rows and rows of writers chained to desks scribbling away. If any one of them stopped, even for an instant, he or she was immediately flogged until they started writing again.

The newcomer was perplexed. "I can't see that there's any difference between here and Hell," he said to Saint Peter.

"Ah," said Saint Peter. "The difference is, here you get published."

Does This Say "Books Outside the Box" To You?

Looking at It Friom Another Direction

I have another question about a picture.  See below.

Let's Try That Again

I should know better than to ask a bunch of authors and heavy readers to come up with captions for a picture. 

I asked you all to look at a graphic I made and tell me what you saw.  You can find both the image and the fabulous and highly creative suggestions you came up with at http://nanhawthorne.blogspot.com/2010/02/what-does-this-picture-say-to-you.html .

One person out of all of you got what I was after.. but that's not a complaint.. it was exactly what I wanted to know. I learned that I make really interesting images... and I need a new one for my new project!

What It Was All About

My husband and I are setting up a new Amazon Associates bookseller site dedicated to books published by authors who have run into a brick wall with the now quite risk adverse publishing industry.  You've heard it called the "vanity press".  We think of it as the "creativity press".   These are folks who saw the wall and went over or around it.  Some of the books coming out of this independent publishing movement are every bit as and often better than what you will find on brick and mortar bookstores.  The trouble is that the usual ways you learn about books largely exhibit a bias against indie books.  They are hanging onto stereotypes that need to go the way of all the others.  These books are well written, well produced, and definitely filling a niche in danger of becoming vacant.  If you have a genre interest or other nonmainstream interesst or approach, you will want to know your type of book is out there.. and know where to find it.

And that is where Books Outside the Box comes in.    Jim and I are setting up business as an Amazon Associates bookseller web site dedicated exclusibvely to indie books.  These will be self published, POD published, and very small press books.  We plan to market the site broadly enough to create awareness of these treasures so that, as we devoutly believe should be the case, readers regain control from the multileveraged corporate world as to what is out there to read.

So that is what that image was supposed to say... but it didn't quite do it.

Your Next Assignment! 

You don't need to pixk up a pencil or crayons.. just tell us, what images should go into a logo for a web site called "Books Outside the Box"?

Leave your comments below.  And thanks again.. and for all the wonderful laughs.

What Does This Picture Say To YOU?

    

What does this image say to you?  

Please provide your caption in the Comments section.

Thanks!   

What Historical Novelists Do

It occurred to me recently that the old sobriquet applied to science fiction, speculative fiction, applies to historical fiction as well. Yes, depending on the story and whether ctual historical figures appear in a novel, the author tries to depict life in  another time as accurately as possible. That's an important factor, but it cannot be the artistry that makes the history meaningful and truly evocative.

I have been reading Morgan Llywelyn's Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas, and both the merits and the demerits of the novel highlighted for me just where the speculative aspect of historical fiction comes into play. The historical novelist starts with facts, whether about the historical personage or the events and setting appropriate to the time. Where we have documented facts about, say, Grania ui Maille's life, the author can record these or choose to skip any particular event. That's the second thing we do: we look at all we know about a person, place, event, or circumstance, and we choose which to represent in a fictional way. That is one thing I think was wrong with this book. So much of Grania's life was repetitive that it seemed to me some of the instances could have been left out. As a pirate and warrior, Grania would attack a merchant ship or make a raid on a town, get caught, suffer imprisonment or lose a loved one instead, then be released, go back home to reflect on what happened, and inevitably go back to what got her in trouble in the first place. In order to justify this the author explained each incident in the same way, that Grania felt responsible for her people, that she loved being free and wild, etc.

This aspect, the repetitive explanation, leads to the third thing historical novelists do, and that is where speculation comes in. I truly believe that this is both why people read historical novels instead of biographies and is also the hardest part of the craft. It is our job to look at the person and the facts and illustrate what we guess is the motivation for what happens. Why did Grania keep risking disaster? In other works, why did Llewellyn the Great forgive his wife Joanna’s infidelity? Why did Raymond of Toulouse desert during the Battle of Merzifon? Why did Elizabeth I stay unmarried? So often history offers us hints, but rarely does it give us definitive answers. Even when a historical figure writes down why s/he did what s/he did, can we trust that person to be honest with him/herself? In this novel the author has a big task. The historical "Grace O'Malley" is a tangle of contradictions. She appears in the historical record to switch loyalties and to betray her own people, coming back to them and fighting for them, only to switch again. One might speculate whether the woman was no more than an opportunist, or, like Llywelyn does in the novel, find other motivations, individual motivations, to ascribe this peripatetic life. That's where the book shines. You do see the speculative character based on a real person grow and you understand better her particular choices.

Those who rail at a historical novelist for an interpretation of events usually miss the point. The point is we don not know for certain. I have long believed that fiction writing is a sort of more humane form of the science of psychology. We write, and others read, a novel to examine the facts, add what we know of the human heart and mind, and we explain, suggest, and illustrate motivations and feelings. It is creative writing, but more than that it is speculative writing. It is storytelling that suggests "Perhaps?"

Making Llight of the Dark Ages: henry and Margaret at Dinner

Fun Medieval Stuff You Can Have

  

medieval-novels.com is now more than just books.. as if that wasn't enough!

  

Now you can find medieval and historical fiction theme imprinted items for men, women, kids.. even pets.

  

Just go to medieval-novels and more at CafePress.

t-shirts

outerwear

mugs

kids' items

notecards

buttons

stickers

mousepads

teddy bear

intimate apparel

clocks

posters

aprons

and more!

Don't forget, we have over 1,200 novels set in the early and later Middle Ages and Renaissance at

medieval-novels.commedieval-novels.com!

The New Digital Talking Book machine

While we are on the subject of How I Read... here is a video about the new digital reading machine I just received from my local Library for the Blind.



It's interesting that they say you can download books from Bookshare.org, the topic of yesterday's post. I'll have to find out what they mean, since I thought the machine could only read audio books. Perhaps they are referrring to first converting text books to audio, and then using them. I will let you know.

About Bookshare.org and Benetech: A Video

By the way, I just noticed that Nan Hawthorne's Booking History hit 400 posts last week!

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This blog's editor is not only an author whose work is on BookShare.org, but is also a patron of the service.