Did you know there were 150 knights of the Round Table when it was full?

 

So this one took me a while, but I worked my way through Le Morte D'Arthur in Middle English, and as if to emphasize that I am now surrounded by nerds, one of my coworkers mentioned that he had also read through this version. Middle English is not unfathomable to the Modern English speaker, but it hails from an era where spelling was optional and the sentence structure was somewhat different. One thing I noticed was that some of the grammar and sentence structure felt more like French or Spanish than Modern English today. There are also plenty of archaic words that sent me to the glossary or the internet. One thing I will say for this particular translation, it has lots of annotations but they are not good annotations, and looking at reviews online I saw that sentiment shared. There were frequent footnotes where 'of' meant 'off' or 'the' was missing in the sentence, simple details that could be easily gleaned from context, but then where some utterly archaic word was presented there would be no footnote at all and at times the term would even be omitted from the glossary in the back.

That said, it was still rewarding to read the original, complete with Thomas Malory's plea at the end of each section for people to pray for him in prison, from where he wrote the whole thing. 

I've been on a medieval kick since before Christmas, and as a result decided it was time to make myself a roughly accurate knight costume, so that's been a long-term project for several months. I cheated on the pants because the ones from my pirate costume look accurate enough once they're mostly covered by all the other parts of the costume. King Arthur himself, inasmuch as he was ever possibly based on a real person, would have lived somewhere in the 5th/6th century A.D. in an era when plate mail was not yet a thing.

There would have still been a heavy Anglo-Saxon influence to the clothing of the time, even though the saxons were the very group he would have fought against. Cotton was not yet used much at all, and the favored cloth would be linen and wool. Unfortunately I was frustrated in my attempts to buy linen locally, as the selection was limited to white or off white, so I bought two yards of a goldenrod color and three yards of a beautiful deep green from an Etsy seller. This amount of fabric left me with very narrow margins for error, but the patterns of the middle ages were designed for just that, as they had to design them to use every bit of material they could get. The early medieval tunic is simple and geometric, with very wide shoulders and a flare with side slits at the bottom. The surcoate was a similar design, just longer and without sleeves, and usually additional slits in front and back to allow for more easily mounting/dismounting from a horse. Sadly, I do not have a horse to pose with in costume, although I'd happily jump at the chance. Well not literally. I'd use the stirrup to mount up appropriately. I do know how to ride a horse.

Over the lower half of the legs a commonly worn piece of clothing were wininga or leg wraps, and this is an article that definitely hails from the saxons and vikings. Usually made of wool, this can be as simple as just a long strip like a wide ribbon, anchored in place by being tucked into itself or with a little bit of cord wrapped overtop for extra security, or can get as fancy as having little metal hook closures for just below the knee. Either way they are wrapped starting with a loop around the arch of the foot, then he ankle, and then wrapped up the leg in a spiral from there. I have leather shoes as a work in progress, using a pattern based from those found at various dig sites such as Sutton Hoo, but in the photos I just used my slippers which honestly don't look too far different from that much older design. 

Overtop the tunic but under the surcoat is where the primary piece of armor of the era would go, and before the advent of plate mail a knight would be lucky to have a full chain mail shirt, or hauberk. Some may have only had leather or padded cloth, and scale mail shorts were also used during this time period. Chain mail was the most expensive option due to the sheer amount of labor involved in producing it, and not all chain mail shirts had full sleeves this long. While I have worn a full chain mail short before (I had some weird friends in High School), and it is possible to find modern reproductions online, I decided they were cost-prohibitive. What I am wearing here is actually knitted from a heavy grade yarn, by a seller on Etsy who goes by CenturiesChest. It was still not cheap, nor should it be, because there's still a fair amount of labor involved, but it is lighter and cheaper than something made of wire/metal.

The ring belt was also purchased from Medieval LeatherShop on Etsy, but costume geek that I am, the rest is stuff I already had around, including my choice of sword. Most of my swords are of later designs, so the best fit was this viking-style sword with the shorter crossguard. It has a full leather scabbard, but the methods of hanging a sword from the belt at this time were very simplified, and at times the scabbard itself was simply hung directly from the belt itself with a small hook near the top to keep it from slipping through. Sword hangers later on became more complicated with extra straps and buckles, but this was a time before buckles and the hanger used here is simply two loops of leather stitched together, one around the scabbard and the other around the belt. 

I have plans to add a coat of arms to the surcoate, an applique of a white stag. The coat of arms was a large part of the purpose of this garment, as it identified the knight even at a distance on the battlefield/in a tournament. I may go back and buy a knit chain mail hood and make a period-accurate style helmet from EVA foam, but lacking these I feel like my current hair looks good in context. I haven't had a haircut since the pandemic started, so this is what two years of no haircuts looks like. The trickiest part of this whole outfit thus far was the collar of the tunic. I kept trying to add the green trim in one piece, and ultimately just had to do one long strip around it and fiddle with the bit where it dips down in a notch in the front. We'll see how sewing the leather shoes goes, yet, but it's not bad for a work in progress.