My response to the discussion on Orlanthi food, drink and famine was to spend a few nights in the library, muse a bit, summon an old notebook I thought was permanently lost on the Other Side, and fire off a couple of divinations. The divinations were answered, though one of the replies threw me (bloody typical that). As a result I spent yesterday adding some new sections and further editing my Far Point essay on flora, fauna, food, drink and land use, trying to balance mythic texture, historical reality and game interest. The focus is Upland Far Point, but a hope there's a general applicability to most of Heortling culture.
At nearly ten thousand words, it's too long to post in its entirety to the Digest. I've clipped some of the new material below, but for those interested you can read it all in context at
http://home.primus.com.au/pipnjim/nysalor/ff1.htm
and succeeding pages. Please note that this is my Questlines Orlanthi website, which won't be officially on-line for a little time yet: links to other parts of the site won't work, just those linking together the essay. Alternatively, e-mail me for a text copy.
The essay includes sections on
* the Geography of Far Point
The essay is an eternal draft. Comments, criticisms and additions most welcome.
I hope to engage some of the discussion directly a bit later in the week. Here are some bits of the new bits...
LIVING OFF THE LAND
How do we live ? - 'Hard work, bent over the plow and treading its furrows,
then reaping the bounty of the Mother is our life. Every man plows, or
wishes to, or works for those that do. Even Orlanth plows. And we hunt,
fish the rivers, tend the sheep in the hills, and trade for special goods.
Our food is barley, wheat, and rye -- Ernalda's bread is our staple, eaten
in porridge, breads, and ale; only the poor, like your no-good cousins at
the Rotroot place, eat only root vegetables; "More cabbage, less bread,"
they say. We are well off, so we eat pig, chicken, cow, and the wild game
of the good red deer.'
- - What My Father Told Me. The Genertela Book.
Rural life is far from idyllic, despite a long tradition of romanticised poetic falsehood beginning with Theocritus. In Heortling lands, farm life is one of constant pressure and tension, an ongoing battle against weather, scarce resources, raiders, pests, disease, and capricious magical forces, balancing the demands of the present against the needs of the future Starvation and famine are very real possibilities, and even a good year may have food shortages and periods of hunger. Heroes of Ernalda, Barntar, Eiritha, Elmal and Harst constantly battle against the forces of want, fate and elemental indifference.
The cycle of farm labour is difficult and constant, and periods of both feast and famine are part of the yearly cycle. The abundance of wilderness resources protects Upland Far Walkers somewhat from the threat of crop failure, but even so periods of famine do occur and are greatly feared....
High dry areas of the tula are used for grazing sheep. Pigs run semi-wild in woodland, which also provide the occasional deer, and wild fruits in season. Hens and geese are kept by the bloodline lodge, and must be gathered in at night to protect them from foxes and other predators. (Stead alynx are also a constant threat). Rivers and lakes provide fish and wild fowl.
Feeding animals through Dark Season (magically chill, with Ice, Snow and Night Demons abroad) is the key limiting factor in animal husbandry. Upland winters are fierce, but winter survival is testing even in the relatively mild climates of southern Sartar. Upland lodges are split in two: one half for humans and the other for the wintering of cattle. On the milder Sharl Plains, byrnes are kept separate from human lodgings. (Yelmalions have a highly developed sense of purity and taboo, and fear 'mixing' in any shape or form).
Sheep are kept for wool, meat milk and sacrifice, cattle for prestige, wealth, milk, sacrifice, meat, manure, horn, sinews and hides. A bull's hide is as valuable as its meat. Horn is used for fastenings, drinking vessels and many other uses. Bone is used for belt-ends, handles, needles, pins and skates. Horses are important sacrificial animals and though their meat is consumed, it is usually done so in a ritual context. Pigs are raised for meat, and favoured because of their quick breeding. Fowl provide eggs in Sea Season, meat and hollow bones used for musical pipes. Kuks are bred for love and fighting. Rabbits are regularly trapped. Deer are hunted for meat, skin and antler. Boar are hunted for meat and tusk.
Cattle have great cultural value, and are the prime sign of wealth, but in Far Point as elsewhere the Orlanthi are primarily a sheep-herding people. (In European history, the more rural a society, the more important sheep are to its prosperity).
In terms of food value, 1 cow = 2 calves = 5 hogs = 10 young pigs = 7 sheep = 14 lambs = 100 laying hens.
Cattle
Cattle calve in early Sea Season, and are usually weaned by late Earth. Gestation is ([283]*294/365 - a Stafford equation) 228 days to produce a single calf. Estrus is 21 days.
(Cattle gestation is similar to Gloranthan human pregnancy, which is 280*294/365 = 225, which I'd shorten to 224 days or 4 seasons, giving the same day and week to both conception and birth, (barring Sacred Time complications ).
In natural breeding, one bull will service up to 25 cows. In controlled (pasture) conditions, this can be expanded to 50 cows.
Maned cattle are fierce, smelly and dangerous! They tend to be smaller on average than modern breeds, and well-adapted to thriving in relatively poor pasture under challenging conditions. Both bulls and cows are horned, which leads to difficulties in winter housing. Animals trained to the yoke for ploughing are kept separate, fed and watered by hand and are relatively tame.
Cows mature at about two and a half years, at which time they can be put in calf and subsequently provide milk. The gestation period is similar to humans, and cows can be managed to calve annually.
Orlanthi regard cattle to be at their prime at seven years of age. Most adult cattle are female.
Cattle have a limited grazing range compared to sheep, are slower to breed, more aggressive, and are afflicted by disease spirits such as milk fever and bloat. Oh but they're beautiful. Cattle, as an Upland cottar has been heard to proclaim, are better than women.
Grazing cattle in forest will quickly destroy young copses.
Pigs
Pigs are easy to slaughter, and are good converters of feed to food. They are most important to the poorer farmer, as they can be turned out to forage on less tractable forest, scrub or moorland. Gestation is 92 days, and estrus 21 days. A boar can mate with 15-45 sows per year. There are an average 1.5 litters per year, with 7 pigs per litter.
Pigs are an especially important source of food in Dark Season. They are allowed to scavenge freely, existing on pannage of acorns and beech-mast, and sometimes mate with wild boars. Children are often sent into the forest equipped with long sticks to dislodge acorns for the pigs.
When not running free, pigs are kept in sties apart from the stead, usually in marsh or woodland.
Parasites are a major problem in keeping pigs.
Sheep
Sheep will count for at least 50% of a clan's livestock, they are hardy creatures that can graze on land unsuitable for cattle and pigs. They are also highly mobile, and during transhumance can be grazed up to 300 miles from the stead (though no Heortlander would travel anything like this distance with a herd). Even pregnant ewes can move swiftly and constantly if required.
Gestation is 118 days. Sheep produce an average of 91 lambs per 100 ewes per annum, in early Sea Season, and lambs can weigh up to 40 kilos by Earth Season.
A high proportion of sheep are killed when young. Most adult sheep are wethers (castrated rams), valued for their wool.
Sheep breeds are small but athletic, both male and female usually being horned. Wool, which ranges from in colour from brown to oatmeal to occasional white, is shawn, plucked or rooed (depending on the breed) in early Fire Season.
Sheep, especially the Fat-Tail variety, are milked in Sea and Fire Season. Ewes' milk is the most common source of cheese and butter. A Fat-Tail will produce only a tenth the milk of a dairy cow.
Sheep can subsist on sparse forage and limited water. A small group of shepherds (supported by guard alynx) can care for between 1,000 and 4,000 sheep in lowlands and between 1,000-1,500 in hilly country. (Though few Heortling flocks would ever approach this size). The prime difficulties are with (some particularly nasty) worms and footroot, and so they must be kept away from too-wet ground. (Lagerwater, a rain-soaked wilderness stead in the shadow of Skyfall, is extremely atypical in having very few sheep, and these demanding extraordinary ritual protection).
Transhumance is practiced for both sheep and cattle. Both pigs and cattle feed themselves for part of the year in woodland. Cattle will also often be summered in marshlands. Young beasts are raised in hay meadows after the summer harvest. Semi-wild horses fend for themselves in woodland and are rounded up once a year. The most prized Elmali sacred horses are carefully tended at the stead itself.
Shadowcats are 'stead-friends'. Despite their domesticity however, they actually run semi-wild. And despite the strong totemic relationship to the Orlanthi, they are sometimes skinned - though only after careful ritual preparation. An alynx's liver painfully swells under a full red moon, causing pain and anger. It can see spirits and penetrate the darkness with its glowing eyes. There exists an ancient animosity between shadow cats and trollkin.
Dogs are rare and expensive to keep. Though culturally disliked by the Heortlings, they are used in war, as spectacular gifting animals between chiefs, and occasionally in herding. Herd dogs have spiked collars for protection against wolves. Their tongues have extraordinary healing powers.
FOOD
Small game, fish and grain porridge (frumenty or pottage) are the staple foods. Meat is a prestige food, (beef especially so) and is usually eaten in relatively small quantities to add flavour. Tubers, gourds, apples, plums, cherries, berries and nuts are plentiful. Cabbage and turnips are the staple potherbs; other staple vegetables include peas, beans, leeks, onions, garlic and chebny, a wild mountain lettuce.
Meat is most common in Fire and Earth Season, when herd culling takes place
and game is most plentiful. Killing also takes place during Dark Season,
depending on the depletion of winter fodder. Many kills also take place
before the Orlanthi High Holy Day and Sacred Time, times of Celebration in
seasons of scarcity and hunger. A clan carefully lays aside precious
resources to celebrate these events.
- -...
Meat is generally preserved by drying, salting or smoking. Deliberate fattening for the table is very rare. In Dark Season, pickled pork, bacon and other salted meats are often the only meat available.
Spit roast joints of beef are a special treat. Mutton and pork are more
common, but not highly thought of. ('Mutton is thrall-food!', records one
Anglo-Saxon document.)
- -...
Cheers
John
nysalor_at_primus.com.au John Hughesnysalor_at_yahoo.com
I will make incursions / throught the fertile land of Ireland
my battalions all in arms / my amazons beside me
(not just to steal a bull / not over beasts this battle -
but for an honour price / a thousand times more precious -
my dignity!)
I will make fierce incursions.
"Medb Speaks", Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill.
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #461
Powered by hypermail