[Regia-NA] The Black Death and or the Plague and Rings of Roses

[J. Kim Siddorn]

Fascinating as ever mate - thanks ;o))

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

"Spring in the air?"
"Spring in the air yerself !"


----- Original Message -----
From: "Yolli" <>
To: <list-regia-na@lig.net>
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2003 3:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Regia-NA] The Black Death and or the Plague and Rings of Roses


This goes on a bit - so get a cup of coffee.

I was bored at work one day in 1986 by the way....and after a lively
discussion regarding the Black Death at Hearth Night back in Bristol I
thought we could clear up one or two aspects regarding the disease.

All this was apropos of some Plague pits that had been discovered in Bristol
near where British Telecom had an office block - although I don't know
whether they were 1300's or 1665 pits.

Not soon after there was a programme on the box in addition to the gossip
that people were worried if the Plague pits were still contagious.

Well, firstly I spoke to the local hospital ( the Bristol Royal Infirmary )
who passed me onto their specialist isolation section at the now defunct
section near Ham Green. After a bit of sweet talking I got him to pass me
onto PortenDown in Wiltshire which is a Government place where 'we' store
and make our own gases and chemical weapons etc, etc.

I spoke to a Professor there who was soon to retire. I mustn't have seemed
too suspicious as we had a nice conversation. I add here something from the
web that fills out the stats etc of the Black Death:

"In the early 1330s an outbreak of deadly bubonic plague occurred in China.
Plague mainly affects rodents, but fleas can transmit the disease to people.
Once people are infected, they infect others very rapidly. Plague causes
fever and a painful swelling of the lymph glands called buboes, which is how
it gets its name. The disease also causes spots on the skin that are red at
first and then turn black.

Since China was one of the busiest of the world's trading nations, it was
only a matter of time before the outbreak of plague in China spread to
western Asia and Europe. In October of 1347, several Italian merchant ships
returned from a trip to the Black Sea, one of the key links in trade with
China. When the ships docked in Sicily, many of those on board were already
dying of plague. Within days the disease spread to the city and the
surrounding countryside. An eyewitness tells what happened:

  "Realizing what a deadly disaster had come to them, the people quickly
drove the Italians from their city. But the disease remained, and soon death
was everywhere. Fathers abandoned their sick sons. Lawyers refused to come
and make out wills for the dying. Friars and nuns were left to care for the
sick, and monasteries and convents were soon deserted, as they were
stricken, too. Bodies were left in empty houses, and there was no one to
give them a Christian burial."
The disease struck and killed people with terrible speed. The Italian writer
Boccaccio said its victims often

  "ate lunch with their friends and dinner with their ancestors in
paradise."
By the following August, the plague had spread as far north as England,
where people called it "The Black Death" because of the black spots it
produced on the skin. A terrible killer was loose across Europe, and
Medieval medicine had nothing to combat it.

In winter the disease seemed to disappear, but only because fleas--which
were now helping to carry it from person to person--are dormant then. Each
spring, the plague attacked again, killing new victims. After five years 25
million people were dead--one-third of Europe's people.

Even when the worst was over, smaller outbreaks continued, not just for
years, but for centuries. The survivors lived in constant fear of the
plague's return, and the disease did not disappear until the 1600s.

Medieval society never recovered from the results of the plague. So many
people had died that there were serious labour shortages all over Europe.
This led workers to demand higher wages, but landlords refused those
demands. By the end of the 1300s peasant revolts broke out in England,
France, Belgium and Italy.

The disease took its toll on the church as well. People throughout
Christendom had prayed devoutly for deliverance from the plague. Why hadn't
those prayers been answered? A new period of political turmoil and
philosophical questioning lay ahead.


DISASTER STRIKES
Estimated population of Europe from 1000 to 1352.
  a.. 1000 38 million
  b.. 1100 48 million
  c.. 1200 59 million
  d.. 1300 70 million
  e.. 1347 75 million
  f.. 1352 50 million
25 million people died in just under five years between 1347 and 1352."

However, the programme on the box posed the idea that the 1347 Black Death
was Anthrax because the bodies bled from all orifices when they popped their
clogs. The Prof I spoke to disagreed strongly with this as he had only seen
one example of Anthrax being passed from one human to another via a baby
being breast fed. And having seen what latent Anthrax in the soil in China
today can do ( dished out to them by the Japanese in WWII along with other
things that they had to hand ) - rotting flesh via small cuts in the skin  -
yeuch!

This inspired him to seek out a horses carcass in Norfolk that he had
witnessed that had been buried with lime - as he wanted to see if he could
culture any spores from it.

Gruinard Island in Scotland had an Anthrax device exploded on it in the late
40's or early 50's. It did kill all the sheep and other livestock they
placed there - but it is swarming with Seagulls and rabbits today. I don't
know if it's considered clear though - and the Chinese problem suggests it
won't be....unless it was just Black Death.

However, the Plague or Black Death does still occur on a regular basis in
Inner and Outer Mongolia. It also crops up in the States from what I'm
told..... Anyway, in China who run Inner Mongolia, they call it Marmot
Disease - Ground Hog. They hunt these guys for food, and they stay well away
from any that are too easy to catch or shoot. It would seem too that some
aspect of whether the doors to their Gers/Yurts ( Mongolian name and Khazak
name ) is closed or open denotes whether or not they have Plague in the
tent. I can't remember which is which ( see Tim Severin's book on his ride
with the Mongols ).

He suggests that as the Great Khan instituted a postal service using strings
of horses to get from one end of his empire to the other. The habit was to
use one man per message and just to change the horse. It was an astounding
system that eclipses the Pony Express. The pony express changed both the man
and horse at each station. Gengis's mail service lasted for over 200 years -
but Tim Severin thinks that the incubation time for Black Death could have
lasted the time it took for a rider to get from Mongolia to Eastern Europe
and in doing so deliver the Plague with it.

Ring-a-ring a roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo, a-tishoo,
We all fall down.

The Germans also have a version of this children's rhyme - and it is
recorded from about the same period. But, the last two lines are quite
different and are just as nonsensical and they too fall over at the end. So
does it mean that it's a Plague rhyme or just a silly childs game?

Roll.




----- Original Message -----
From: "Schuster, Robert L." <SchusterRL@umsystem.edu>
To: <list-regia-na@lig.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2003 8:11 PM
Subject: RE: [Regia-NA] False: The four kings in a deck of playing cards
represent Charlemagne, David, Caesar, and Alexander




This is fairly well known, actually, at least amongst the historical
groups. :-)  It goes right along with the myth about ring-around-the-rosy
and the Black Death, or that stupid stupid list of 'well known phrases'
that describes the medieval origins of stuff like 'raining cats and dogs'
or the thing about the train tracks being determined by the width of a
horses arse.

-- Brett

--i was pretty sure the list of phrases thing was a hoax but i thought Ring
Around the Rossies was a song about the Plague, is it not?

Halvgrimr

Sing a Song of Six Pence was used by who to recruit?