Leeds: Tuesday

It was a bit rough getting up Tuesday morning in time to get breakfast before the first session, but I made it.

( Will Power: Sex, Politics, and Salvation in the <i>Logge Register</i> of PCC Wills 1479-86 )

( Post-Conquest English Texts in Their Manuscripts Contexts )

After lunch I seriously considered going back to my room for a nap, but succumbed to the draw of the after-lunch session instead, on "Medieval Urban Literacy, V: Medieval Civic Archives and Civic Secrecy, I". However, because I didn't expect to go to it, I didn't have my laptop with me, so no notes.
( Conserving the Heritage: Virtual and Real )

In the evening I attended the workshop on fingerloop braiding presented by one of the members of Soper Lane. About a month after we moved here, Joel and I added one of the Polderslot A&S days where I learned how to do fingerloop braiding, but since I had no written instructions there was no way I could ever figure out how to do it again on my own, so I went to the workshop mostly to get the written instructions. Everyone was impressed with how quickly I picked up the skill until I told them I'd done it before! But it turned out to be useful -- there were a couple of people who picked it up quickly, and a couple who were getting pretty muddled, and so we ended up pairing off since one instructor couldn't handle it all. After we'd practices using some cheap string, Elizabeth let us use some of her silk. (Oooh, silk yarn is so soft!). Unfortunately, not everyone there knew how to take yarn from skeins, and so by the end of the evening, the three skeins were all messed up! A couple of us took it upon ourselves to wind the skeins into balls -- which took us nearly two hours! But it was fun to hang out after the workshop -- we joked about this being why medieval silkwomen kept so many young women as apprentices!

Book Haul: I don't remember quite which books I bought on Tuesday and which on Wednesday, but I'm pretty sure I got Margaret Wade Labarge, Medieval Travellers: The Rich and the Restless, which I started reading on the train home from the event last weekend. s10clee, I think you'd enjoy it.

Leeds: Wednesday

My two sessions were Wednesday afternoon, so I wanted to get to bed at a reasonable hour on Tuesday. After the fingerloop workshop, I went back to my room to prepare for my talk (which pretty much involved going through the printed copy of the relevant dissertation chapter, and underlining in red the bits I thought would be relevant to read, and then hoping that what I had was about 20 minutes worth! I was in bed with the lights off by 11:15, and I fell asleep quickly. So when an annoying noise blared into my consciousness, my first thought was that it was my alarm clock -- I'd acquired a new travel alarm clock for the trip, so this was only the third morning I'd used it. But then it occurred to me that, no, no alarm clock would be that loud. That was in fact the fire alarm going off! So I stumbled out of bed and took a few moments to dig through my bag for my flannel pants: And this is why you always bring PJ bottoms to conferences (I normally just sleep in a t-shirt) -- you never know when you're going to end up standing in the rain in your PJs at 1am with a bunch of other academics! Whatever was the cause, we weren't out in the rain for too long -- about 15 minutes later I was back in bed and asleep, thank goodness.

The two Wednesday morning sessions were by far my favorites that I attended -- they were two sessions on Gaelic names in Scotland, so I got to go as an onomastician, not as a logician. :)
( Names and Networks in Northern Britain, I: Personal Names and Multiple Cultures in Northern Britain, 1093-1286 )

( Names and Networks in Northern Britain, II: Gaelic Names and Language Change in Medieval Scotland )

In the afternoon were the session that I organized (and I gave a talk in) and the session that Stephen organized (and that I chaired). Both went well; we had larger audiences than I expected (nearly two audience members per speaker!).

Afterwards, I ran back to my room to dump my computer and to grab my coat, because then Stephen and I got a taxi to the train station and then took the train to York to attend a concert in the York Early Music Festival. The concert was in the York minster, which you reach by going through the cathedral. I had seen the cathedral from the outside, and in the dark, a few years ago when I went to the event in the Barley Hall, but I'd never been inside. OMG. Unlike other medieval churches where you can see just vestiges of the painting and the gilding, this cathedral has all of its paint and gold in place. It is overwhelming. It is astonishing. It is beautiful. And there's a row of the most wonderful statues of the kings of England -- each is extremely personalized, with the most delightful expressions on the faces. I would love to go back someday with my camera to try to capture just a bit of the glory of the place.

The minster is a small, round, high-ceilinged room that has excellent acoustics. Even though it was pretty full by the time we got there, Stephen and I got seats only three rows back, so we had a wonderful view of the musicians. The concert was performed by the group Alla Francesca, and ( this was the play list: )

It was an amazing evening. The music was beautiful and so were the voices. My favorite song was "Nu tret herzuo der boessen welle", a penitent's song for the Black Death. And the most impressive part was watching one man play a pipe in one hand while beating a drum with the other; the drum was hanging from the wrist that was holding the pipe. I can't imagine being able to do two different melodies and rhythms at the same time like that!

The concert was/is to be replayed on BBCThree; I have no idea if it has already yet or not, but if it hasn't, anyone who is in the UK, I'd highly recommend trying to catch it.