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Originally Posted by PBishop
Hi Manolo,
Berber culture attracts me very strongly indeed. I'm a devout multiculturalist for one (I even recently started a multicultural club here in New Jersey), so diverse cultures interest me in a general way.
More specifically, I'm very interested in Berbers, the Ainu, Basques, and Lapplanders for the reason that these groups just might be the aboriginal inhabitants of their territories. Linguistically as well as genetically, they are quite distinct from any of the surrounding people.
But what REALLY sold me on the Berbers per se was a movie called "The Wind and The Lion," in which Sean Connery plays a kind of sherif. Very very cool movie.
I'm a huge fan of Berbers wherever they live, and one of my goals is to do some trekking in the Atlas mountains. There's a remote place in S. Morocco called Tizguiedel that I want to explore. I had a student a few years ago who was a Berber, and my barber when I lived in NYC was a Berber as well - Aziz, the Berber barber... Both were very high quality people.
I think you're probably right about that chopper, it does lack some of the curviness of the flyssa, and I'm glad you liked my story. If it DOES end up in some serious publication, remember where you saw it first...maybe I should get it copyrighted!
Cheers,
Patrick
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From "Men of Iron", by Howard Pyle:
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The weapons allowed by the High Court were then measured and attested. They consisted of the long sword, the short sword, the dagger, the mace, and a weapon known as the hand-gisarm, or glave- lot--a heavy swordlike blade eight palms long, a palm in breadth, and riveted to a stout handle of wood three feet long.
The usual lance had not been included in the list of arms, the hand-gisarm being substituted in its place. It was a fearful and murderous weapon, though cumbersome, Unhandy, and ill adapted for quick or dexterous stroke; nevertheless, the Earl of Alban had petitioned the King to have it included in the list, and in answer to the King's expressed desire the Court had adopted it in the stead of the lance, yielding thus much to the royal wishes. Nor was it a small concession. The hand-gisarm had been a weapon very much in vogue in King Richard's day, and was now nearly if not entirely out of fashion with the younger generation of warriors.
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For those of you not familiar with his work, Howard Pyle was a Victorian-era author and artist who was best known for his four book series about King Arthur as well as his retelling of the tales of Robin Hood. His novel "Men of Iron" is set at the end of the reign of Henry II, circa 1400 AD.
Pyle was an expert on the arms and armor of the period he wrote about. "Men of Iron" covers the life of its protagonist from page through knighthood, and is one of the better novels of its type I've read. It was also the basis for one of those abysmal Hollywood sword-and-shield epics, "The Black Shield of Falworth", starring Tony Curtis. If you've abused yourself with the movie, do yourself a favor and treat yourself to the book. You can even read it for free online:
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng...c/PylMeno.html 