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Denny Bradbury Books

Denny Bradbury Books

Monthly Archives: October 2015

Pagan Influences.

31 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by dennybradburybooks in Misc

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Christian, deity, goddess, Paganism, survival

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

With Borvo’s family being outsiders with the gift of healing, his Gramma and his mother Elvina were firmly rooted in their pagan past and although Borvo is taken up by the Christian King in “Borvo” and sent to be a monk to try to rid him of his pagan past, there are still certain customs that are in evidence in England today that have come from pagan festivals which Borvo himself would have been party to.

Pagans worshipped many different gods, with each pagan god controlling a particular part of everyday life, be it the family, love, healing, wisdom, war, the growing of crops, the weather or the changing from day to night.

Woden was known as the Chief God, yet there were many other such as Eostre, Frigg and Hel the Goddesses of Birth, Love and Death respectively; Thunor and Tiw, the Gods of Thunder and War; Balder the God of Immortality; Loki the God of Cunning; Wade the God of the Sea and Saxnot, God of the Family – something that remains very dear to Borvo’s heart throughout his travels and is almost like the compass that keeps bringing him home to help his nearest and dearest.

Pagans often used religion as a means of ensuring success in material things such as praying to a particular goddess or god for a successful harvest, the health of your family, or the winning of a battle.

The names of our months and days of the week also have their roots in paganism: Sunday, being the first day, was named after the Sun God; Monday named after the Moon Goddess; Tuesday named after the God Tyr, the Norse God of War; Wednesday named after the God Odin or Woden; Thursday named after the God Thor, the God of Thunder; Friday after the Goddess of Love, Frigga, wife of Odin and Saturday after the God Saturn

For our months, January was named for the Roman Janus, a man with a face either side of his head; February derived from Februa, a Roman festival of purification; March, named for Mars, the Roman God of War; April from the Latin Aprilis, indicating a time of fertility; May for Maia, the Roman female deity of growth; June, named for June the wife of Jupiter in Roman mythology; July for the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar; August for the Roman Emperor Octavius Augustus Caesar; September derived from the Latin “septum” meaning seven; October from the Latin root octo, meaning eight; November from the Latin novem meaning eight and December from the Latin decem meaning ten.

With Borvo II following the life of a healer who finds his pagan past at odds with the Christian trend of the 9th century in the Kingdom of the West Saxons, it is his family that is both his destination and his difficulty; his survival and his struggle.

As Borvo himself comments in Chapter Fifteen – ‘Borvo finds solace from the past’ – “ Lately he had been lost because he was trying to please everyone, now he knew he had to be true to his chosen path and if he managed to please his family and friends and benefactors at the same time then all was to the good.  Borvo was back on track, the healer, the man from two worlds, the son and grandson who had found his gifts and used them for others.”

The Power of Friendship

30 Friday Oct 2015

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community, Denny Bradbury, family, friendship, healer

friendFor Borvo, the bonds of family and friendship are the unbreakable ties that bring him back to his home, ten years after he left, and it is his families’ needs and his own sense of wanting to keep his family and friends safe and well that spurs him on to become the respected and revered healer within his community.

Friendship can weather many storms, and as the Lebanese-American poet, artist and writer, Kahlil Gibran, writes in his poem ‘Friendship:Ixx’:

“And a youth said, “Speak to us of Friendship.”

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.

If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”

Despite Borvo’s friendship with Seofen being terribly strained when they were in Wales as Denny Bradbury writes in Chapter Twenty Three – Mercy – of Borvo II, their friendship “was only now regaining some of its camaraderie and, more importantly, its trust…..Their friendship had endured through the disagreement and the partings”.

Pagan Healing

30 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by dennybradburybooks in Misc

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antiseptic, concoction, digestion, infestations, treatment

mossIn Chapter One of Denny Bradbury’s “Borvo II”, Borvo, Seofon – Borvo’s good friend and a travelling storyteller – and Cedric, the freed slave and companion to Borvo  encounter on their journey through Wales five vagabonds at night who are seeking their prey.  The ensuing fight leaves Cedric with multiple knife wounds, one of which on his arm is deep, plus a dislocated shoulder which Borvo wrenches back into its socket whilst Cedric is still unconscious.

Borvo then sets about helping to ease Cedric’s other wounds by applying a salve of agrimony – a low growing plant that thrives in hedges, fields and by ditches that as well as being a particularly good herb for the digestive system and urinary tract is also particularly useful for inflamed, weepy conditions of the body.  Cedric’s deeper cut is bound with moss as bogmoss acts like a sponge and can soak up as much as 20 times its own weight in water and is therefore often been used to dress wounds. Being naturally sterile, the use of moss to dress a wound aids the healing process.

Comfrey leaves are then used to help prevent too much loss of blood as the chemicals in the comfrey plant have a healing effect that reduces inflammation when applied to the skin.  The plant contains the small organic molecule allantoin which is thought to stimulate cell growth and repair.

To help Seofen’s cut on his head, Borvo applies a moss poultice without any other treatment as this would draw the dirt from the wound and help it to seal.

Some of the mediations and herbs used centuries ago are no longer so popular but certain herbs and plants are still used today by modern herbalists, thousands of years later.

A few to mention are honey, which is an excellent antiseptic that is still used to treat wounds by the British Military today; Willow, a concoction of which was used to treat toothache, with willow bark forming the basis of modern aspirin; Mint, still used today to treat gastric ailments and is often found as an aid to digestion and Pomegrante which was used to treat infestations of parasite worms and whose high tannin content has actually been found to paralyse worms.

 

Sad November

30 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by dennybradburybooks in Denny's Diary, Poetry

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November poem

As November is nearly upon us I remembered a short poem I wrote for my first collection – Denagerie of Poems. The thoughts I had in my head when I wrote it have come flooding back to me today:

The journey of the writer at the dullest time of year,
An empty page, an empty head and sad November’s here.
If only gay December were to enter dancing sprightly
The happiness and jollity would come with muses, brightly.

But no! The dull and wet and dank bring on the dread and gloom;
What a prize a thought would be, just anyone would do.
I will give up this worsening state; I shall dispel this fog,
I’ll don my coat and hat and boots and go and walk the dog.

Very best wishes for a happy November kicking at leaves and dodging the rain – Denny Bradbury

A Sign of those Anglo Saxon times..

11 Sunday Oct 2015

Posted by dennybradburybooks in History

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9th century, anglo saxon, Borvo, Roman, society

Alfred the Great image

With the launch of Denny Bradbury’s highly anticipated second novel, Borvo II, it is worth taking the time to reflect back on what the ninth century was actually like for the people who lived during it.
Society was divided into three classes, with the top being the Thanes, the Anglo Saxon upper class who enjoyed feasting and hunting and was expected to give their followers gifts of weapons. Beneath them were the Churls of whom some were reasonably well-off and in the bottom tier were the Thralls for whom life was very hard. Some Churls were lucky enough to own their own land but many rented land from a thane. By renting it meant that they worked on the thane’s land for a part of the week and by also giving him a portion of their crops.
Unlike today where England is full of cars, houses, and buildings, Anglo Saxon England was covered by forest that was occupied by wolves that were a constant danger to domestic animals. The human population was also very small with roughly a million people in England at that time. Almost all of the population lived in tiny villages, each with less than 100 inhabitants, and was mainly self-sufficient with the villagers needing only a few things from outside like salt and iron as they grew their own food and made their own clothes.
By the 11th century this had begun to change and whilst a vast majority of the population still lived in the countryside, 10% – a significant minority – were living in towns. New towns had been created and trade was flourishing. Unlike the unrest of the 9th century when Britain experienced a great deal of unrest due to the influx of Viking people resulting in the invasion of East Anglia by the Danish army in 865, followed by the city of York and the kingdom of Northumbria and the western part of Mercia, leaving just the kingdom of Wessex to be safeguarded by Alfred the Great who also re-established his Anglo-Saxon rule over the western half of Mercia, in the 11th century England had grown into a civilised, stable state with an efficient system of local government, whilst learning and the arts flourished in the monasteries.
The Anglo Saxons also provided us with most of the English place names we have today, with Saxon place name endings including those such as ham, a village or estate, tun – which was usually changed to ton over time – , a farm or estate, hurst, a wooden hill and bury, derived from the Saxon word burh meaning fortress. The Anglo Saxons also called groups of Roman buildings a caster which in time would evolve into the place name ending in chester, caster or cester.
Family ties were very important in Anglo Saxon society; if you were killed, your relatives would avenge you and vice versa if it was one of your relatives that met a grisly end. However, the law did provide an alternative which meant if you did kill or injure somebody you could pay them or their family compensation a currency called wergild and varied in amount according to the person’s rank ie the wergild for killing a thane was much higher than that for killing a churl. Thralls and slaves had no wergild and if the wergild was not paid then the relatives were entitled to seek revenge.
Whilst at first Anglo Saxon society was relatively free, with the basis of society being the free peasant, over time the Anglo Saxon churls began to lose their freedom and became increasingly dependent on their Lords who wielded the control.
As the old Roman towns fell into decay and the Roman roads became overgrown, travel in Anglo Saxon times was slow and dangerous, with most people travelling only if it was unavoidable. For Borvo, it was just that. After ten years away from home, it was now time to go back and help his family….

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