November Labours: Martinmas, killing pigs and swingling flax

Traditonally, November is the month for killing cattle and pigs to preserve their meat,  when there was little fodder to spare for livestock and the main drive was to lay in provisions  to last the household through the harsh winter months.  Many Calendars show pigs, as in the fifteenth century rhyme,
 "At Martinesmasse [11th November] I kylle my swine".
This medieval manuscript decoration shows a labourer with what might be a poleaxe, stunning the pig before it is despatched with the blade.

(Wikimedia commons)

Other Calendar versions for November show pigs still being  herded in the woodlands,  as in this late fifteenth century French calendar, with the zodiac sign of Sagittarius clearly having loosed his arrow below.  And is the young man in the background out to catch a bird?

Heures de la Reine Anne de Bretagne, Paris

© National Library of France

Anne of Brittany (1477-1514) was Queen Consort to two kings of France, Charles VIII and then his succeeding cousin Louis XII. Four surviving  Books of Hours bear her name. By the sixteenth century royal collectors liked their new style printed books to have hand-painted illustrations, and also still commissioned traditional illuminated manuscripts.

For those who did not have to labour, hunting was a source of meat as well as a pastime, and this later Venetian image for November shows a very relaxed young man with his dogs and hunting horn and again with a small bird - sparrow hawk, delicacy or pet?

Month of November,  oil painting, Venice c. 1580

© National Gallery London

And this November image from  the Da Costa Hours  is unusual as it shows an image from textile production - the preparation of flax, an important crop for seed (linseed oil), straw and linen. Flanders, where this painting was done, was a centre for the linen trade. 

Detail from November: Swingling Flax, Da Costa Book of Hours c.1515  Ghent

After being retted, which used water or outside weathering to soften the stalks, the flax was beaten to break up the fibres and separate them from the straw and woody stems.  

This "swingling" was done with a heavy ridged or toothed tool, although probably not in such an artistically neat circle as this. A scutching tool was also used to dress the flax, with a thin edge one side like knife.   The woman in the background is using one.  Finally the fibres would be combed, or "heckled" to remove the last shreds of straw and wood.  

It is clearly a winter occupation as the manuscript pages below are consecutive,  with bare trees and the pigs in the farmyard, and the actual calendar page ends with a fine Sagittarius as the zodiac tailpiece.

November illustration from the Da Costa Book of Hours, Simon Bening, Ghent c. 1515. 

From the coats of arms on the cover,  thought to be made for a wealthy family in Porto, Portugal, and then owned by Don Alvaro da Costa, the King's chamberlain.   © Morgan Library, NYK

From the Da Costa Book of Hours, as above.

Sagittarius: the Archer

The Fair Toxophilites   William Powell Frith 1872

© Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter

It was Roger Ascham, tutor and later secretary to Queen Elizabeth I,  who coined the word "toxophily".  In 1545 he published his treatise on archery -- "Toxophilus", -- from toxon, the Greek word for bow, rather than the Latin arcus. His book takes the form of a debate between Philologus, the scholar, and Toxophilus the archer, on the respective virtues of learning versus shooting.  Toxophilus is clearly no mean scholar himself, drawing on as many classical writers - Plato, Aristotle, Hesiod and more - as the book-loving Philologus.  This was the first handbook on archery written in English, and Ascham's dialogue format was soon copied by other writers, including Izaak Walton in his Compleat Angler in 1653.

the Moon goddess, late 17th century engraving

The constellation of Sagittarius takes its name from the Latin for arrow, sagitta, and is often portrayed (as above) as a centaur, that half-man, half-horse beast from Greek mythology;   although it is perhaps that other archer,  Cupid, who is the more popular figure in western art and literature.

"With what sad steps, O Moon! thou climb'st the skies!

How silently! and with how wan a face!

What! may it be that even in heavenly place

That busy archer his sharp arrows tries?"

Sonnet 31, Astrophel and Stella  Sir Philip Sidney