Robert Biket (fl. c. 1175) was the author of Lai du cor ('The Lai of the Horn'), a late-12th-century Anglo-Norman Breton lai. The lai, preserved in a single late-thirteenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian library,[1] tells the story of a drinking-horn which cannot be used by cuckolded husbands without spilling the contents.
A Breton lai, also known as a narrative lay or simply a lay, is a form of medieval French and English romance literature. Lais are short, rhymed tales of love and chivalry, often involving supernatural and fairy-world Celtic motifs. The word "lay" or "lai" is thought to be derived from the Old High German and/or Old Middle German leich, which means play, melody, or song, or as suggested by Jack Zipes in The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, the Irish word laid (song).
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The Mỹ Lai Massacre was the Vietnam War mass murder of unarmed South Vietnamese civilians by U.S. troops in Sơn Tịnh District, South Vietnam, on 16 March 1968. Between 347 and 504 unarmed people were killed by U.S. Army soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade, 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. Victims included men, women, children, and infants. Some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated as were children as young as 12. Twenty-six soldiers were charged with criminal offenses, but only Lieutenant William Calley Jr., a platoon leader in C Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but served only three and a half years under house arrest.
Layamon or Laghamon – spelled Laȝamon or Laȝamonn in his time, occasionally written Lawman – was a poet of the late 12th/early 13th century and author of the Brut, a notable work that was the first to present the legends of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in English poetry.
The Battle of Fleurus, on 26 June 1794, was an engagement between the army of the First French Republic, under General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan and the Coalition Army, commanded by Prince Josias of Coburg, in the most significant battle of the Flanders Campaign in the Low Countries during the French Revolutionary Wars. Both sides had forces in the area of around 80,000 men but the French were able to concentrate their troops and defeat the First Coalition. The Allied defeat led to the permanent loss of the Austrian Netherlands and to the destruction of the Dutch Republic. The battle marked a turning point for the French army, which remained ascendant for the rest of the War of the First Coalition. The French use of the reconnaissance balloon l'Entreprenant was the first military use of an aircraft that influenced the result of a battle.
The Song of Roland is an epic poem based on the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778, during the reign of Charlemagne. It is the oldest surviving major work of French literature and exists in various manuscript versions, which testify to its enormous and enduring popularity in the 12th to 14th centuries.
The Book of Enoch is an ancient Jewish apocalyptic religious text, ascribed by tradition to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah. Enoch contains unique material on the origins of demons and giants, why some angels fell from heaven, an explanation of why the Great Flood was morally necessary, and prophetic exposition of the thousand-year reign of the Messiah.
The lais of Marie de France are a series of twelve short narrative Breton lais by the poet Marie de France. They are written in the Anglo-Norman and were probably composed in the late 12th century. The short, narrative poems generally focus on glorifying the concept of courtly love by the adventures of their main characters. Marie's lais are thought to form the basis for what would eventually become the genre known as the Breton lais. Despite her stature in Anglo-Norman literature and medieval French literature generally, little is known of Marie herself, but it is thought that she was born in France and wrote in England.
Thomas Horn Jr. was an American scout, cowboy, soldier, range detective, and Pinkerton agent in the 19th-century American Old West. Believed to have committed 17 killings as a hired gunman throughout the West, Horn was convicted in 1902 of the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell near Iron Mountain, Wyoming. Willie was the son of sheep rancher Kels Nickell, who had been involved in a range feud with neighbor and cattle rancher Jim Miller. On the day before his 43rd birthday, Horn was executed by hanging in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
A lai is a lyrical, narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance. Lais were mainly composed in France and Germany, during the 13th and 14th centuries. The English term lay is a 13th-century loan from Old French lai. The origin of the French term itself is unclear; perhaps it is itself a loan from German Leich .The terms note, nota and notula appear to have been synonyms for lai.
Ancrene Wisse is an anonymous monastic rule for female anchoresses written in the early 13th century.
The book of hours is a Christian devotional book popular in the Middle Ages. It is the most common type of surviving medieval illuminated manuscript. Like every manuscript, each manuscript book of hours is unique in one way or another, but most contain a similar collection of texts, prayers and psalms, often with appropriate decorations, for Christian devotion. Illumination or decoration is minimal in many examples, often restricted to decorated capital letters at the start of psalms and other prayers, but books made for wealthy patrons may be extremely lavish, with full-page miniatures. Books of hours were usually written in Latin, although there are many entirely or partially written in vernacular European languages, especially Dutch. The English term primer is usually now reserved for those books written in English. Tens of thousands of books of hours have survived to the present day, in libraries and private collections throughout the world.
The Karkadann is a mythical creature said to have lived on the grassy plains of India and Persia.
Opone was an ancient Somali city situated in the Horn of Africa. It is primarily known for its trade with the Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, Persians, and the states of ancient India. Through archaeological remains, the historic port has been identified with the city of Hafun on the Hafun peninsula in modern-day Northeast Somalia. It is possible that it corresponds to the Land of Punt as known by the ancient Egyptians during the Old, Middle, and New Kingdom.
King Horn is a Middle English chivalric romance dating back to the middle of the thirteenth century. It survives in three manuscripts: MS. Harley 2253 at the British Library, London; MS. Laud. Misc 108 at the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and MS. Gg. iv. 27. 2 at the Cambridge University Library. It is also presumably based on the Anglo-Norman story Romance of Horn (1170). The story was retold in later romances and ballads, and is considered part of the Matter of England. The poem is currently believed to be the oldest extant romance in Middle English.
'Lecheor' is a short, bawdy Breton lai that tells the story a group of noble women who decide to write a lai about female genitalia.
The Digby Conversion of Saint Paul is a Middle English miracle play of the late fifteenth century. Written in rhyme royal, it is about the conversion of Paul the Apostle. It is part of a collection of mystery plays that was bequeathed to the Bodleian Library by Sir Kenelm Digby in 1634.
Caradoc Vreichvras was a semi-legendary ancestor to the kings of Gwent. He may have lived during the 5th or 6th century. He is remembered in the Matter of Britain as a Knight of the Round Table, under the names King Carados and Carados Briefbras.
Dame Siriþ is the only known English fabliau outside Chaucer's works. It uniquely occurs at folios 165 recto 168 recto of Digby 86, where it is preceded by a Latin text on truths and followed by an English charm listing 77 names for a hare. It appears that the text originally part of a separate booklet inserted into its current place in the manuscript when the volume was bound. Dame Siriþ is based on a traditional story that has analogue in a number of different languages and that might ultimately have been oriental in origin.
Robert of Cricklade was a medieval English writer and prior of St Frideswide's Priory in Oxford. He was a native of Cricklade and taught before becoming a cleric. He wrote a number of theological works as well as a lost biography of Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury.
The Proverbs of Hendyng are a later thirteenth-century poem in which one Hendyng, son of Marcolf, utters a series of proverbial stanzas. They are in a tradition of Middle English proverbial poetry attested in the Proverbs of Alfred and the two texts include some proverbs in common. The rhyme-scheme is AABCCB.
2. Fein, Susanna, ed. Interpreting MS Digby 86: A Trilingual Book from Thirteenth-Century Worcestershire. Woodbridge: York Medieval Press/Boydell Press, 2019. ISBN978-1-903153-90-1.
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.
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