Squire Throwleigh’s Heir

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Historical novels present some unique problems for the author. A plot may form with great clarity and precision in the author’s head – books often more or less write themselves once the characters have been fleshed out – but what sort of vocabulary should one use to tell a story, set like this one, in the 1300s?

English is an astonishingly rich language, with a fabulous bank of old or ancient words upon which an enterprising novelist can draw to add authenticity. By throwing in references to, for example, a ‘misericord’ – the dagger used by knights to put an enemy out of his misery, or a ‘falchion’ – a heavy-bladed, single-edged sword used by some men-at-arms, and by mentioning trailbastons and shavaldours, crucks and cob… one can delight those readers who enjoy discovering medieval terms.

And yet no one could write an entire story using the same vocabulary which was current in the 1300s.

English in those far-off days was a mixture of Latin, Norman French, German, Saxon, and even some Arabic – utterly incomprehensible to most of us in the late twentieth century. Any person doubting this should get hold of a copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in its original form, unedited and untranslated; I defy anyone to understand a single line.

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