Trade Secrets

[hvered]

Whole books were written on the lives of saints, at least some parts of which are assumed to be apocryphal.

The connection between William of Marshall and Eleanor of Aquitaine, portrayed as his patron, seems significant since Aquitaine is often seen as the homeland of the 'troubadour movement'.

Eleanor's coat of arms looks familiar

[Boreades]

Re William Marshall, sounds like most of TME's production team had tuned into that.

A few things struck me, while I was watching, like:

How strange that yet another highly-revered "Englishman" spent a lot of his life outside England. Like Richard The Lionheart.

How strange that we still call these ruling elite "English" when that ruling elite was just one branch of squabbling families of ruling elites from France, with "England" as a vassal state. Centuries before we swapped them for a ruling elite from Germany, which instantly became "English" as well.

[macausland]

Boreades, you missed out the French Welsh, the French Scots and the little Dutchman. Not counting the man called Williams who called himself Cromwell.

[Boreades]

French Welsh? Who they? Do tell.

I'm guessing the little Dutchman = William of Orange?

French Scots? Yes, got a fair few in my family tree. But they certainly didn't want to be English. Or so they claim ;-)

[spiral]

Whole books were written on the lives of saints, at least some parts of which are assumed to be apocryphal.

The connection between William of Marshall and Eleanor of Aquitaine, portrayed as his patron, seems significant since Aquitaine is often seen as the homeland of the 'troubadour movement'.

I like the bit where Will is shot by an arrow in the thigh, and captured, whilst defending Eleanor. She then pays a mighty ransom to release him, and she becomes his patron.

[macausland]

French Welsh? Who they? Do tell.

Tudors and then Stuarts. Of course the latter day Stuart was also a Polish plumber who lived in Italy.

[hvered]

More Welsh lizardry I'm afraid. The Great Orme copper mine, Llandudno is due north of Burgh Island in Bigbury Bay, Devon.



Burgh Island like St Michael's Mount is a causewayed tidal island. Its Mermaid Pool, as with other 'Venus Pools', is an inaccessible but deep rock pool (it now belongs to the island's hotel which uses it as an outdoor swimming pool).

The island's location alone may not be concrete proof that it's completely un-natural but there are altogether too many 'coincidences' now to simply accept that causewayed tidal islands just 'happen' to be situated on major trade routes.

[hvered]

On the map it looks as if the north-south line passes near, not through, Burgh Island but on Google Earth a straight line from Burgh Island goes to Penmaenmawr Beach just west of the Great Orme mountain. Penmaenmawr is a long sandy stretch, not unlike Rhossili Bay, an ideal landing place sheltered by Anglesey to the north-west and by Great Orme to the north-east. The name Penmaenmawr is said to mean 'great headland of stone'.

Why maps differ from Google Earth is perplexing... I keep double-checking and find the alignment is accurate.

[Mick Harper]

I suppose it may be a Mercator error ie even on this scale the projection of northerly places becomes stretched compared to places nearer the equator. This is different from Great Circle errors since north-south lines aren't affected by them. But perhaps surveyors and sailors and cartographers and other such technical pedants might correct me on this.

By the way, we are currently discussing some Bristol Channel geometry over on the AEL site (Megalithic section, Mega-talk thread). I assume everyone here is signed up there so we don't have to duplicate too much.
http://applied-epistemology.com/messageboard.htm

[hvered]

Over on AEL, Mick has 'discovered' l'Ile Carn, a tidal causewayed island on the north-west tip of Brittany.

Looking at the map, Ile Carn is just to the north of Portsall.



This bit of the Breton coast is known as Les Abers, i.e. rias or estuaries in French.

Portsall is 'salt port', unsurprisingly since Brittany was and is a specialist salt-making region. As with other causewayed islands, Ile Carn looks to be almost entirely man-made (the stone cairns were thought to be the remains of a medieval castle). Certainly its position, close to a bay with a 'port', is remarkably convenient.