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of the earlier practice of merely drop ping hives on the opponent's heads. And a similar use of military engines for slinging beehives is actually pic tured in a remarkable English MS. preserved at Oxford, written in 1326-27 A. D. This venerable volume, which, Wrapt up in its long and flowing vel vet Cover, looks something like a ba by-book in swaddling clothes, contains —on two pages, fronting each other— towards the right, a picture of a num ber of beehives placed on a row, from one or two of which a few bees are seen to be issuing angrily; towards the left, a mangonel placed ready in position for taking up the beehives on the opposite leaf and hurling them against the enemy. The same MS., it may be noted, contains the earliest Pictorial representation of a cannon known to archaeologists. A Poem of Richard Lion Heart. But it is not from the pages of me diaeval chronicles or on the illuminated leaves of mediaeval MSS, that we gather our fullest and best accounts of the use of beehives in warfare. For this we must turn to mediaeval ro mances—and first of all to the famous English rhyming poem of “Richard Coeur de Lion,” written somewhere in the early years of the fourteenth cen tury,,almost at the very moment when the Christ Church MS. referred to just above was being copied and illuminat ed. In “Richard Coeur de Lion” we read how Richard I., King of England, when starting on the Third Crusade, had besides “Two hundred shippes well intaded (victualed) With force hawkerks, swords, and knives Thirteen shippes i lade with hives of bees.’ These hives, when he got to the Holy Land, Richard caused to be hurled from his mangonels against the city. The result must have surpassed his most Sanguine expectations: “The Saracens them armed all And ran awan unto the wall: In white sheets they gan hem when (wrap themselves) For the biting of his fivends. e., flies— bees.” As the mangonels continued plying their fearsome missiles the Saracens became so more terrified: “And hid them in a deep cellar that none of them might come near. They saw King Richard was full fell when his flyer bit so well.” This passage is curious among other things as indicative of a fresh de velopment in the art of beehive war fare, for in it we find bees used on the offensive by the attacking party, and not merely confined to the defensive. More remarkable still,however, is the account given of the use of bee hives in the enormous fourteenth cen tury norm of ‘Godefroid de Bouillon.” This colossal work by some unknown Belgian poet is about three times as long as ‘Paradise Lost.’’ Towards the conclusion Godfrey of Bouillon and the other Christians are represented as seiging Acre, but to little purpose, till at last Bishop’ Adhemar of Puy—the Aaron of the First Crusade, as God frey was its Moses—tells his comrades he has had a dream. In this dream he received a miraculous indication of the best means to be adopted for captur ing the stubborn fortress. The bees on this occasion were to be collected not merely in their native hives, but—with a skilful allusion on the poet's part to the local industries of his own Low German home at Namur and its neighborhood—we are reminded how at the brewing-season wasps and bees and other stinging ‘‘flies’’ were wont to swarm into the vessels in which the sweet-savored beer of the Middle Ages was brewed. Let them adapt this home truth to the exigencies of foreign war fare, and, trusting not to Nature’s bee hives alone, bottle up the insects which restored their good wives’ in dustry at home for use against the en emy abroad. ‘“‘All around us,’’ urged the Bishop, ‘there is an abundance of bees. Let us take them and hurl them from our engines over the city walls. So shall we keep the Saracens off while we are undermining their fortress.” When the Bishop had thus spoken, the poem continues, “all the noble princes burst out, laughing, with a shout, ‘Hurrah for the good Bishop! He has found it written in his Psalter that we shall take Acre by bees.’ ”’ Twenty-five mangonels accordingly were brought up, and all commenced slinging their bee hives at the same moment. The “‘flies, ’ we are told, went swarming everywhere, buzzing into the Saracens’ ears, stirring them on the eyes, and torturing them so that they fled incontinently from the ramparts. Soon there was neither woman nor child that dared to leave their houses, while the men were, if possible, more terrified, crying out: ‘We cannot en dure it any longer; these bees are eat ing us up. May Mahomet curse the man who hurled them amongst us.” The Sultan, in despair, called for his great galley, and flied away in terror to Ascalon by sea. The Christians broke through the walls, and ‘in this manner was taken and conquered that noble city which is called Acre. Thus, by bees was the city taken and sub dued.” for still, by the skipper himself—may, perhaps, make him sufficiently _ac quainted with a dozen of the attach ments which, under more or less quaint names, are most commonly used on board ship. But, even if he has ex tended his inquiries much further, and has made himself master of a full score of the “bends,” “hitches,” and other knots which the sailor has, literally, at his “finger ends,” he must not imag ine that he has at all finished his edu cation in such matters. For, although knots most needs to be understood, there are other departments both of business and sport in which it must be studied; and in some of these there are mysteries into which the seafaring man never troubles himself to inquire. Thus the fisherman, both amateur and pro fessional, in the use of nets, lines, and casts, employs devices which would puzzle the mere yachtsman, and “‘fal coners’ knots” belong to an art which is now so little practiced that not one in a thousand Europeans would be able to tie one. The peculiarity of the lat ter is that they are used in the manipu lation of leather thongs, and are most ly so devised that they can be tied and untied with one hand, whereas, in the angler’s case, the material to be han dled is sometimes gut, and sometimes fine cord, which lend themselves to a different sort of entanglement from hempen cords. Some Definitions: Lexicographers have been almost as much puzzled to find an apt definition for the knot as Dr. Johnson was to give one for the ‘‘net.’’ Some of them, in their endeavors to display techni cal knowledge, have gone very wide of the mark, as the writer who, in a popular encyclopedia, tells his inno cent readers that a knot is a “knob formed on the extremity of a rope.” One dictionary gives no fewer than twenty-two separate meanings for the word, although the whole category of nautical knots is included under one of these definitions. Most of the authori ties consider as one of the essential qualities of the knot that it should be difficult to untie or “undo.” But none of them appear to have ranged knots in a graduated scale, in accordance with the obstinacy with which they defy solution, varying from the ‘‘Gor dian” to that well-known “bow” in which they are arranged. Regarded from the scientific point of view those “‘complications of strings or cords,’ which are usually said to con stitute a knot have been studied and discussed in a manner which would considerably astonish some of the old fashioned sea captains who supposed that they had nothing to learn on the subject. Such a worthy master of his craft would probably be rather at a loss even to tell the difference between a “paradromic” and an “irreducible” knot, and would be at a loss to say whether it could or could not “exist in a space of four dimensions.”’ Yet these appear to be among the elementary principles admitted in all mathemati cal theories in this department of science. What would the ablest-bodied seamen say to such aphorisms as those which are propounded by a learned authority? “Any front, how ever, complex, can be fully represent ed by three closed plane curves, none of which has double points, and no two of which intersect one another.” “Knots which are ‘amphichemcal can be deformed into their own perver sions.” If a man will play football for a few minutes with an ordinary ball of string, and then pull the ends tight, he will find it difficult to believe that the knots which have formed them selves between those ends can be de scribed by any formula, however in genious. Many Hard Names. Leaving out of question these learn ed expositions, which it requires,some patience to even understand, and much more faith to accept, one may feel reasonably content if one can give an intelligible’ account of the various knots which are still in general use. Of these it is not always the most simple and handy which are the best known, at least by name. What, for instance, can be commoner than the “reef knot?’”” And yet how many peo ple in the inland rural district can ex plain, or even show, how to tie it correctly, and avoid the ridiculous “granny,” which resembles it in the same way as a parody resembles the original which it is intended to bur lesque? As for the “harness hitch,” the “hawser bend,” the “round turn,” and the “double Flemish loop,” it gen erally requires an expert to expound them accurately. Still less familiar are such picturesque creations as the “catspaw” and the “Turk’s head.” Draw knots, slip knots and running knots present less difficulty, but the wale knot, the meshing knot, and the barber’s knot are specialties. Among other nations some of the names given to knots are even more quaint and characteristic than those invented by English sailors. Such are the knots called in French dog’s leg, wolf's snout and lark’s head. The ‘“Capucine knot” is now used by French birdecatchers, and the builders in the same country have a partiality for an attachment of their own called the ‘‘noeud d’artificier.” In Italy an order of merit was started in the four teenth century under the name of the Order of the Knot, and many distin guished families still claim_as_ their own a special intertwinement of cords and ribbons. The true lovers’ knot is apparently known almost all over the world, and chiefly used in pictorial rep resentations of a not too artistic kind. Of knots which have little or no con nection with ropes or cords, the most notable is that which is a synonym for a nautical mile. Many people trav el many miles by sea without finding out the origin of this term, which is, of course, that the speed of a shin was formerly gauged by observing how great a length was paid out in thirty seconds of a line on which knots had been tied at regular intervals. The “top knot” takes’ us back to the time when the European ladies,’ and espe cially the Greeks, were fond of dis posing their hair in a simple fashion, with or without buckles or hairpins on the top of their heads. The “porter’s Knot” soon lost its original shape and size and was metamorphosed into a bird. But all attempts to establish a connection between knots and the bird which is called a “knot” have appar ently failed. The once accepted theory that this delectable fowl was named after King Canute because of his par tiality for it at the table is now rather discredited, although the objectors have no very plausible etymological theory to substitute for the one which has so long done service.
Newspaper Details
Savannah Morning News
Savannah, Georgia, US
Sat, Dec 27, 1902
Page 11
Full Page
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Anonymous
