Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle Read Free Book Online Page A

throat:
    “Take me somewhere safe, take me to sanctuary, don’t let them hurt me, please! ”

DR PlERCE RATCLIFF Ph.D. (War Studies)
Flat 1, Rowan Court, 112 Olvera Street, London W14 OAB, United Kingdom
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Anna Longman
Editor
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9 October 2000
Dear Anna,
It was good to meet with you in person, at last. Yes, I think doing the editing section by section with you is by far the wisest way to go about this, particularly considering the volume of the material and the proposed publication date in 2001, and the fact that I am still fine-tuning the translations.
As soon as my net connection is properly set up I can send work to you direct. I’m glad you’re reasonably happy with what you have so far. I can, of course, cut down on the footnotes.
It’s kind of you to admire the ‘literary distancing technique’ of referring to fifteenth century Catholicism in such terms as ‘Green Christ’ and ‘Briar Cross’. In fact, this is not my technique for making sure the readers can’t impose their own preconceptions about mediaeval life on the text! It’s a direct translation of the mediaeval dog-Latin, as are the earlier Mithraic references. We shouldn’t be too concerned, this is just some of the obviously false legendary material – supernatural lions and similar – attributed to Ash’s childhood. Heroes always gather myths to themselves, still more so when they are not remarkable men but remarkable women.
Perhaps the Winchester Codex purports to reflect Ash’s limited knowledge as a child: Ash at eight or ten years old knows only fields, woods, campaign tents, armour, washerwomen, dogs, soldiers, swords, saints, Lions. The company of mercenaries. Hills, rivers, towns – places have no names. How should she know what year it is? Dates don’t matter yet.
All this changes, of course, in the next section: the del Guiz Life.
Like the editor of the 1939 edition of the ‘Ash’ papers, Vaughan Davies, I am using the original German version of the del Guiz Life of Ash, published in 1516. (Because of the inflammatory nature of the text it was immediately withdrawn, and republished in an expurgated form in 1518.) Apart from a few minor printing errors, this copy agrees with the four other surviving editions of the 1516 Life (in the British Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Glasgow Museum).
Here, I have a considerable advantage over Vaughan Davies, who was editing in 1939 – I can be explicit. I have therefore translated this text into modern colloquial English, especially the dialogue, where I use the educated and slang versions of our language to represent some of the social differences of that period. In addition, mediaeval soldiers were notoriously foul-mouthed. When Davies accurately translates Ash’s bad language as, “By Christ’s bones”, however, the modern reader feels none of the contemporary shock. Therefore, I have again used modern-day equivalents. I’m afraid she does say “Fuck” rather a lot.
Regarding your question about using different documentary sources, my intention is not to follow Charles Mallory Maximillian’s method. While I have a great admiration for his 1890 edition of the ‘Ash’ documents, in which he translates the various Latin codices, each Life, etc., in turn, and lets their various authors speak for themselves, I feel this demands more than modern readers are willing to give. I intend to follow Vaughan Davies’s biographical method, and weave the various authors into a coherent narrative of her life. Where texts disagree this will, of course, be given the appropriate scholarly discussion.
I realise that you will find some of my new material surprising, but remember that what it narrates is what these people genuinely thought to