Early Modern Revelry: That Foxe Has a Lamb on His Back

For my first of this sort of post, I want to share a passage from N. Breton, Gentleman’s Miseries of Mavillia. This, as the title suggests, is the story of “the most unfortunate lady that ever lived,” (language modernized, all citations from the 1599 edition available on Early English Books Online). But the passage I love most is not about one of Mavillia’s miseries, but instead about one of the bright spots.

The Story So Far: As a child, Mavillia is orphaned when her parents are killed by invading soldiers. Then, she’s raised by a laundress who follows the camp of those invading soldiers. AND THEN the town is counter-invaded – and the man leading those troops happens to know Mavillia’s uncle, so he’s sending her along that way. Or, at least, probably it’s her uncle. Maybe it’s actually his uncle. Either way, this guy is supposed to take care of Mavillia.

UNFORTUNATELY, everyone in the company meant to take Mavillia to her new home dies in an ambush, where the ambushers are also killed. Everyone, that is, except the page. Well, and Mavilla. She’s got a lot of misfortune still to go. So the page and Mavillia are now wandering around the countryside. Except that the page, apparently, is sort of accident-prone. Because he manages to shoot himself, or, to quote the text “his leaning on it, made it of itself discharge a bullet into his right hip.” So there you go. Guns shoot people, even in 1599.  (When, yes, that would have been deeply difficult.) And this is where we get to this really amazing passage:

In this misery, as we sat sighing to think how we should do for meat, there came by a fox with a little lamb on his back, whom first the boy espied, and cried, “Mistress, look! Yonder is a fox with a lamb on his back! For God’s sake run to him, and cry ‘now, now,’ and the fox will be afraid, and leave the lamb behind him!”

And as the boy said, it happened. The weight of the lamb was too much for the fox to run with, and so I overtook him, and, frightening him with a loud cry, he let fall the lamb, and away he went! Think how glad I was to have this lamb. Which, when I brought to the boy, “Good Mistress,” he said, “Let me help to slay him.”

And so kindly together we sat, plucking off the skin, and cutting the quarters one from another, which, with the boy’s device of powder and match, and the fire-lock of his pistol, we made a fire and roasted finely.

I’ll be honest, I think it loses a little something when modernized, but I’m pretty sure this is still amazing. Now, I get that what Breton means is that the fox had the lamb slung over his back – which I believe is a thing foxes do, though I’m having trouble seeing even a rather large fox carry a lamb that way. HOWEVER – that is neither here nor there, because that is NOT what Breton actually wrote. No – he wrote that the fox had a lamb on his back. Which I, of course, picture as a lamb just cruising around on the back of a fox – which is even better because those two animals are essentially the same size. And my imagined scenario with the live lamb is reinforced by the fact that the boy asks to be allowed to “help to slay him.”

Further, I LOVE that apparently all you have to do to get a fox to drop his prey is to yell “Now, Now!” And the boy is very specific. He doesn’t say, “Run up and yell loudly.” He says, “Run up and yell ‘now, now!'” This is clearly an important detail. And I love it. Because that’s the most ridiculous thing to yell at a wild animal. Ever.

I don’t want to ruin the ending, even if I also feel fairly confident that no one reading this is planning on reading a moderately successful text from 414 years ago. So I will just tell you that there is a Boar Goring. And a False Accusation. AND SOMEONE GETS HER NOSE BITTEN OFF BY A SPURNED SUITOR.

Just…you know…someone. No one in particular.

A Little Craft: Baby’s Birthday Banner

Banners: probably not the most revolutionary craft. But I’m practically addicted. And in the grand tradition of the huswife book, originality is hardly key. Indeed, the most appropriate thing I could do is exactly this: present my own version of the exact same a thousand other people are already doing. Now if I only could have a man write this post for me, while he pretends that he invented the concept – then this would really be a modern book of huswifery.

But since that’s not an option, I’m just going to share this fun craft from a couple of months ago, requested by a friend who was making a beautiful cake for another friend’s baby’s first birthday. She wanted a tiiiiiny banner. And man, do I love a banner.

1. For any banner, you want strips of paper cut into rectangles cut roughly 2:1 length to width. First, I chose eight coordinated papers – one for each letter of the birthday girl’s name, plus one for each end. For these itsy-bitsies, I cut my strips of paper 1.5 in x 3/4 in.

2. Next, fold your papers in half – what my elementary teachers would have called hamburger style. Now, you have tiny 3/4 x 3/4 inch squares.

3. For your last cutting step, put a dot in the exact middle of the open edge of your square. Then cut from both corners of the folded side down to that dot. Now you should have tiny triangles – the closed side should be 3/4 inch long, then come down to a centered point that’s open.

This is what your pennants will look like once they’re cut. After cutting the pennants, I decided on an order. Also, there’s a crumb in the photo. I don’t know what it is.

4. Next, because this was for a birthday banner, I needed to get the birthday girl’s name printed across these tiny pennants. I can see the appeal of using printables for this sort of thing, but I instead decided to pen and ink it. I found a font style I liked and used their sample for a model. First, I sketched the letters down in pencil. Then, I used a scrapbooking pen to trace the outline and fill in where necessary. I don’t imagine a scrapbooking pen is precisely necessary, but I do recommend making sure it’s a high quality, smoothly flowing pen – unless the scratchy lines are an aesthetic you’re going for. You definitely want to do any writing before you string your pennant, in case something goes awry.

I picked a font based on old calligraphy styles, because the cake was quite posh – I wanted to go crafty, but not too cutesy. Also, yeah, the crumb is still there.

5. Now, you’re ready to string! I used embroidery thread because it was a good thickness for a tiny banner, and I had lots of lovely colors on hand to choose from. I tend to knot on either side of each pennant. So, first, tie a knot. Next, apply glue all over one half of the inside of the pennant – be careful to get it all the way down to the tip and not to clump too much up near the top. I used a gluestick – they’re simple and fairly clean. Seal the pennant together over the string, near to the knot. And finally, tie another knot – and repeat for the next pennant strip.

6. If you’re using the mini-banner for a cake, you’ll need some way to suspend your banner. To do this, I fixed the banner to two kebob sticks – I had originally planned on using chopsticks, but the kebob sticks were longer and I thought the point might make it easier to get the banner set up in the cake.

Here’s the banner, all assembled. I left a little more room on the ends so that I could wind or unwind the ends of the string from around the sticks as necessary to raise or lower the banner.

Now, the banner was all done! Off to the party, where Chef Friend affixed it to her amazing cake:

Here’s the banner in context! Isn’t that cake amazing? Buttercream roses with the most beautiful shading – my baking friend is truly very talented.

I can hardly take credit for the most breathtaking part of this photo, but the cake also highlights when a banner is particularly useful – candles would have wrecked that gorgeous frosting work. Fifteen minutes  or so of work for a slightly more personalized candle alternative.

Leftover Dinner: Kraut and Brats, with Polenta Spaetzle

Since I’m starting from zero here, I decided to begin with something I know. Food! Not, admittedly, food that appears in many of the English huswifery books…or at least, any I’ve run across so far. Instead, this meal is going to go traditional German – kraut and brats – with one twist: polenta spaetzle.

This dinner was, as a “leftover dinner,” a bit of a whats-already-around. It began with some bratwursts that had been accidentally left in the fridge when a friend came for dinner. At about five days stay in the refrigerator, they needed using. Fortunately, there was also a half jar of sauerkraut left in there that needed to be used within the month.

From there, the rest of that half of dinner was simple enough.

Kraut and Brats:

1. Two cheap beers leftover from my Halloween party  started out in a pot set on the stove over medium heat (a medium saucepan, with a lid for use later). If you’re replicating this, I imagine practically any domestic will do – I used two cans of Old Milwaukee. Wooo – big spender. I bought it for beer pong, hush.
2. Half of the jar of sauerkraut immediately joined the beer. The jar was originally 28.5 oz – so a smaller jar might also work, if for some reason you don’t keep half jars of kraut around your place.
3. Next, I stripped two brats of their casings (strictly a manner of preference – I think it makes them easier to cut and I don’t care if they crumble a bit). I cut them into 1/2 inch rounds and then they joined the kraut and beers. My brats were already cooked, but since they had been forgotten in the fridge, I still left them in there for the full cook time – which will be plenty of time for uncooked brats to get safely done.
4. Next, I rinsed four Yukon Gold Potatoes and diced them into 1/2 inch cubes – more or less. I practically never peel Yukon Golds, but again – it’s all a matter of preference. Then, into the pot with them!
5. Then, I rinsed four carrots – each about 3/4 in. in diameter and six inches or so long. I gave them a scrub, but didn’t peel them – then, cut each into 1/4 inch rounds. I added the carrots to the pot with a liberal sprinkle of salt and a grinding of pepper.
6. Finally, I sliced half of one small yellow onion into 1/8 in half moons and added that to the top of the pot. And now I put that lid on.
7. Now, everything simmered in the pot for over an hour – so you can see why it would be perfectly safe for sausages to start out raw at the beginning. To test for doneness, poke a fork through the potatoes and carrots – and cut into a sausage round if you started raw!

Next, things got a bit more creative. I wanted a side dish – and I wanted spaetzle. But I also wanted to use up the polenta leftover from a dinner two days previous. So I decided to try my hand at combining the two.

Polenta Spaetzle:

1. I started from refrigerated (still cold) polenta – very firm, and with fair amount of Swiss cheese added to the original batch. If you’re making polenta just for this use, make it firm – and maybe be a bit conservative with the cheese. Make it far enough in advance that you can first refrigerate the batch. I was working with about 3/4 of a cup of leftover polenta – and I tore through it all by myself, so portion accordingly.
2. I started a tablespoon and  half of butter heating over medium in a skillet. If you’re working with more polenta for more people, adjust accordingly – I’d say about a tablespoon of butter for every half cup of polenta you’re using will work out about right.
3. While the butter was heating, I pulled bits of polenta off – just like I would with spaetzle dough – in one inchish bits, some smaller, some bigger.
4. Once the foam subsided from the butter, I added all of the polenta to the skillet and turned the heat to medium low. Make sure you don’t overcrowd the skillet – it’s fine for the skillet to be full, but the polenta bits need to be all in one layer.
5. I let the polenta spaetzle cook for about ten minutes, turning bits individually occasionally.

Spaetzle simmering away in the butter. The herb bits you’re seeing are dried thyme from the original batch of polenta – I can’t say they’d be necessary for this particular use. But then, thyme never hurts, either. There’s never enough thyme. (Shakespeare loved a pun, you know.)

To serve everything, I just poured the spaetzle out of the skillet onto one half of a plate (yes, with the butter and all – never abandon butter) and heaped up the other side with the kraut and brats. And added beer (a Shiner) in an appropriate, iced stein, obviously.

Lovely vinegary kraut and brats, wonderful buttery spaetzle, and lovely, cool beer in an iced stein.

The kraut and brats made enough for lots of leftovers – I’d say it could serve three to four easily, especially with a side dish added. The spaetzle did not make enough for leftovers – because I ate it all immediately.