crew of road buddies, you'd have had the blind leading the blind, the deaf leading the Welsh, the thieves leading them all into a big hole covered over with branches. All those brave but clueless millions, tramping blithely through foreign field and forest seven hours or more a day.
What they needed was a travel guide, and in 1137 they got one — no less than the world's first. 'Thanking you, sire,' breathed a humbly awed pilgrim as he weighed the Liber Sancti Jacobi in his filthy hands. 'Um, now can you read it out for us please?'
Also known as the Codex Calixtinus in honour of the Pope to whom it was dedicated, the LSJ — or at least its pertinent practical chapters — is widely supposed the work of a French monk, Aimery Picaud. As a good holiday-brochure copywriter, Picaud's aim would have been to maximise interest in his destination by talking up its positives and glossing over any downsides. Regrettably for his readers, but rewardingly for us, Picaud was not a good holiday-brochure copywriter. After the magnificent deceits of a first paragraph in which he confidently decrees the 500-mile, trans-Iberian trek to Santiago as a thirteen-day walk, Picaud allows his quill to scratch and twitch to the darkest whim of xenophobic scaremongering.
Having saluted at onerous length the qualities of his regional brethren — 'handsome, brave... vital and giving... these are the people of Poitou' — he vaults the Pyrenees with racial malice aforethought. You know what they say about Spanish food: eat beef, pork or even a tiny fish and 'you will no doubt die shortly after'. Most rivers were poisoned, their inviting waters instantly fatal to horses. And then there were the natives. Ferrymen invariably pushed their passengers out midstream; 'having laid their hands upon the spoils of the dead, they wickedly rejoice'. Crossing from France you'd meet the Basques, who 'dress poorly and eat disgustingly, from a single bowl', spoke in a language like 'the barking of dogs', and were 'ugly, corrupt, drunken, savage, impious and uncouth'.
A Basque 'would kill a Frenchman for no more than a coin', perhaps a fate to be preferred to that awaiting any survivor encountering the residents of Navarre: 'Here they not merely rob pilgrims going to St James, but ride them as if they were asses.' Doubts as to the implications of this statement are laid to rest two pages on. 'It is told that the Navarrese affixes a lock to the behind of his mule or horse, so that no one else but he may have access to them. He also kisses lasciviously the vulva of mules.' One imagines St Francis of Assisi, who walked to Santiago in 1214, entering a darkened Navarrese barn with a rueful cough and a raised finger: 'Um... Listen, chaps, that isn't quite what I had in mind.' The translator of my edition of the LSJ, a Professor of Medieval Studies at Syracuse, adds in a startling footnote: 'Mutually gratifying erotic liaison between master and his or her pets or domestic animals is widely practiced to our own day.' Put those burning torches down, common-human-decency fans — he died in 1995. 'Cock-a-doodle-don't!' quipped the coroner at an inquest I just made up.)
Too late now to have Shinto measured for a chastity belt.
The night before, sitting round the map with Hanno, I'd been faced with the full scale of my geographical ignorance: mountain ranges were long as well as high, and St Jean Pied-de-Port was right down the other end of the Pyrenees. A good 250 kilometres away, indeed, which at horse trailer speeds warranted setting off at dawn, or rather 9.30 a.m. once the three of us had wrestled a furiously unyielding Shinto into the back. Poor little sod, I thought, watching his ears swivel about in trepidation above the trailer's side walls. Was this sympathy? Well, it was a start.
Marie-Christine and her daughter wept to see their fourlegged friend thus dispatched, which didn't do much for my confidence, and may explain why my normally competent map reading badly let
What they needed was a travel guide, and in 1137 they got one — no less than the world's first. 'Thanking you, sire,' breathed a humbly awed pilgrim as he weighed the Liber Sancti Jacobi in his filthy hands. 'Um, now can you read it out for us please?'
Also known as the Codex Calixtinus in honour of the Pope to whom it was dedicated, the LSJ — or at least its pertinent practical chapters — is widely supposed the work of a French monk, Aimery Picaud. As a good holiday-brochure copywriter, Picaud's aim would have been to maximise interest in his destination by talking up its positives and glossing over any downsides. Regrettably for his readers, but rewardingly for us, Picaud was not a good holiday-brochure copywriter. After the magnificent deceits of a first paragraph in which he confidently decrees the 500-mile, trans-Iberian trek to Santiago as a thirteen-day walk, Picaud allows his quill to scratch and twitch to the darkest whim of xenophobic scaremongering.
Having saluted at onerous length the qualities of his regional brethren — 'handsome, brave... vital and giving... these are the people of Poitou' — he vaults the Pyrenees with racial malice aforethought. You know what they say about Spanish food: eat beef, pork or even a tiny fish and 'you will no doubt die shortly after'. Most rivers were poisoned, their inviting waters instantly fatal to horses. And then there were the natives. Ferrymen invariably pushed their passengers out midstream; 'having laid their hands upon the spoils of the dead, they wickedly rejoice'. Crossing from France you'd meet the Basques, who 'dress poorly and eat disgustingly, from a single bowl', spoke in a language like 'the barking of dogs', and were 'ugly, corrupt, drunken, savage, impious and uncouth'.
A Basque 'would kill a Frenchman for no more than a coin', perhaps a fate to be preferred to that awaiting any survivor encountering the residents of Navarre: 'Here they not merely rob pilgrims going to St James, but ride them as if they were asses.' Doubts as to the implications of this statement are laid to rest two pages on. 'It is told that the Navarrese affixes a lock to the behind of his mule or horse, so that no one else but he may have access to them. He also kisses lasciviously the vulva of mules.' One imagines St Francis of Assisi, who walked to Santiago in 1214, entering a darkened Navarrese barn with a rueful cough and a raised finger: 'Um... Listen, chaps, that isn't quite what I had in mind.' The translator of my edition of the LSJ, a Professor of Medieval Studies at Syracuse, adds in a startling footnote: 'Mutually gratifying erotic liaison between master and his or her pets or domestic animals is widely practiced to our own day.' Put those burning torches down, common-human-decency fans — he died in 1995. 'Cock-a-doodle-don't!' quipped the coroner at an inquest I just made up.)
Too late now to have Shinto measured for a chastity belt.
The night before, sitting round the map with Hanno, I'd been faced with the full scale of my geographical ignorance: mountain ranges were long as well as high, and St Jean Pied-de-Port was right down the other end of the Pyrenees. A good 250 kilometres away, indeed, which at horse trailer speeds warranted setting off at dawn, or rather 9.30 a.m. once the three of us had wrestled a furiously unyielding Shinto into the back. Poor little sod, I thought, watching his ears swivel about in trepidation above the trailer's side walls. Was this sympathy? Well, it was a start.
Marie-Christine and her daughter wept to see their fourlegged friend thus dispatched, which didn't do much for my confidence, and may explain why my normally competent map reading badly let
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