LL-L "History" 2009.03.12 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 12 March 2009 - Volume 01
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From: Andrys Onsman <Andrys.Onsman at calt.monash.edu.au>
Subject: LL-L "Geography"

To: Luc Hellinckx
From: Andrys Onsman
Subject: LL-L "Geography"

> Coming full circle: A couple of days ago, a Spanish historian claimed
> Christopher Columbus was actually...a Scotsman...named Pedro Scotto
>
> http://tinyurl.com/c7foyn

The link to "Columbus was a Scot, Jimmie - Whaur's yer Walter Raleigh noo?"
is worth reading too - and LLL related to boot!

Thanks Luc!
Andrys



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From: Paul Finlow-Bates <wolf_thunder51 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Geography" 2009.03.11 (03) [E]

Luc wrote:


Coming full circle: A couple of days ago, a Spanish historian claimed
Christopher Columbus was actually...a Scotsman...named Pedro Scotto

 That seems entirely feasible.  But mariners at that time, be they
explorers, pirates, traders or fishermen (the boundaries were fuzzy) were a
bit of a community in their own right.  They had a mobility and freedom
unheard of amongst most mediaeval people, even those at the top of the
social order. "Columbus", whoever he was, certainly visited Bristol in
England, and quite probably Iceland.



They all seem to have shared information that wasn't accessible
to land-based society.  Columbus clearly knew he would find land within
about 4,000 miles, when any sailor worth his salt knew China or the Indies
had to be, at the very least, 16,000 miles across the Great Ocean. (It's a
modern myth that they thought the world was flat; all navigators knew it is
round, and they knew its size to within a few percent of the real value).



It would be interesting to know how they communicated; my guess would be
some sort of Latin-based pidjin, interspersed with Lowlands and Scandinavian
technical terms. And probably some Basque; they were the business when it
came to open Ocean sailing.   Guess we'll never know.



Paul



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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: History

Hi, Paul!

What you wrote pretty much matches the impression I got from casual reading.

Seafaring folks made up societies of their own, international societies with
knowledge, customs, rules, and often penal codes of their own. In some ways
they seem to have been like trade guilds. They tended to be international
and to frequent the same taverns all over the world, where they would
exchange information, make deals and pacts, sign on to different ships,
shanghaied crew, exchange contraband, and so forth.

I am using the plural here: societies, because I don't think there was a
single one. I think they differed depending on their geographical reaches
and the types of ships they sailed on. There were those that for instance
sailed only on Hanseatic ships, and the reach of those was rather limited:
the Baltic Sea and a few North Sea ports – with no destinations that we
would consider "overseas" nowadays. Then there were those that sailed mostly
around the Mediterranean and Black Seas. And then there were the ones that
went much farther afield, such as along the shores of African and/or Asia,
and there were the really rugged ones that braved the North Atlantic. I
believe that these "circles" or "societies" had different "cultures"
and *linguae
francae*.

As we know, the Hanseatics used Middle Saxon ("Middle Low German")
internationally. Many of those on the Mediterranean used Lingua Franca
(which gave us the name), also known as Sabir, based mostly on Italian and
Occitan with admixtures from languages around the Mediterranean, including
Arabic.* In other parts of the world there were *linguae francae* based on
Arabic (Middle-Eastern- and North-African-based seafaring), and Malay
(Southeast-Asian-based seafaring). Unfortunately, we don't know a lot about
the linguistics of those that sailed the Atlantic.

It is my impression that "legitimate" seafaring, privateering and piracy
were not strictly divided, that they largely overlapped and had similar
geographical reaches. Many men were both sailors (even on royal missions) as
well as pirates during their careers, depending on opportunities and
situations. We only get cursory glimpses of "legitimate" sailors' lives and
cultures in older literature because those men were considered too lowly to
bother about. The cultures of pirates – and they included women as well --
got a lot more coverage, although most of it is probably fiction. I believe
that reports about them also gives us information about other types of
sailors.

The crews led by the Liekedeeler pirates (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Likedeeler) Klaus Störtebeker (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_St%C3%B6rtebeker), Gödeke Michels (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6deke_Michels), Henning Wichmann (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hennig_Wichmann), Master Wigbold (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magister_Wigbold) and others had a limited
reach and clearly spoke Middle Saxon, though there seem to have been
Frisians among them (and Störtebeker's wife was Frisian).

Those that sailed across the Atlantic probably used varieties of English,
Dutch, French, Spanish or Portuguese depending on the origin of their ships
and majority among their crews.


Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

* Example of Lingua Franca ("Frankish Language"), a.k.a. Sabir:

  Se ti sabir,
Ti respondir;
Se non sabir,
Tazir, tazir!
Mi star Mufti.
Ti qui star ti?
Non intender,
Tazir, tazir!

If you know (Lingua Franca),
You respond;
If you know (Lingua Franca),
Be silent! Be silent!
I am Mufti.
Who might you be?
(If you) don't understand,
Be silent! Be silent!

Another one:

  Chiribirida, ouch alla!
Mi ti non comprara,
Ma ti bastonara,
Si ti non andara.
Andara, andara,
O ti bastonara!

Chiribida, may it be so!
I won't buy you,
But I'll beat you up
If you don't go away.
Go! Go,
Or I'll beat you up!

•

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