Posted on 06/28/2009 6:41:21 PM PDT by PotatoHeadMick
Medieval Scottish soldiers fought wearing bright yellow war shirts dyed in horse urine rather than the tartan plaid depicted in the film Braveheart, according to new research.
Historian Fergus Cannan states that the Scots armies who fought in battles like Bannockburn, and Flodden Field would have looked very different to the way they have traditionally been depicted.
Instead of kilts, he said they wore saffron-coloured tunics called "leine croich" and used a range of ingredients to get the boldest possible colours.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I think they just liked the smell of horse urine.
Hey, it’s okay to hit my own people. :’)
So you’re sitting around your subsistence lifestyle and the crier comes up to announce the English advancing. Your response: “Hang on, gotta wait for my horse to pee so I can die my only shirt.” Seems doubtful.
Maybe it wasn’t horse pee. ;’)
Not sure I want to know what’s under a yellow tunic....
;o]
Are you suggesting the Scots’ tunics became yellow, umm, after the fact?
Kilts for courting - war for killing.
You know I kind of figured that when Braveheart's battle of Stirling Bridge had no bridge
You got a yellow tunic, sion?
During the middle ages, warmed urine was used as a bleaching technique. I can't even imagine how bad people smelled, especially when they began to sweat. I wonder if that's where the term Pee Yew came from. LOL!!
Hmmm.
My favorite color is Prussian Blue. I was amazed to discover that a major ingredient in the original dye was ox blood (the chemist was trying to get a red...).
If a chemical reaction with urine would get a bold yellow color, believe me, the dyers would go for it.
Urine was also used in tanning leather and quenching iron to make blades.
Yes but did they moon enemy troops, that’s what we really want to know.
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Every time I decide I'll buy the book (because it really does appear to be worth the read) I choke on the idea of supporting Webb and go for something else.
Amazon is touting "How the Scots Invented the Modern World" today, maybe I'll hit that one.
Odd, I was thinking about James Webb quite a bit over the weekend. I’ve got a lot of respect for Webb- as a man, and a Marine and the role he played in re-building and resurrecting the Marine Corps after their lows of the 1970s. I encourage you to learn more about him. I was wondering what essentially caused him to turn on his head. He now seems very paritsian and political. Yet, the side he has embraced is the one that has no love for the values he embodied or the culture he shaped.
Urine was also used in “fulling”, the process of thickening woolen cloth. However, I think human urine was used.
Could have come from a question asked of an olden times asparagus fancier:
"Pee, you?"
Same here......like 20 years ago
Here’s something probably of interest, maybe even postworthy:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_islands/8116431.stm
The Queen is visiting Culloden Battlefield and the L140m Glendoe hydro power scheme in the Highlands. She is the first British monarch to set foot on the battlefield - the site of the Jacobite defeat of 1746.
:’) The don’t wear undies under the kilts so they don’t crap their pants too.
Heh...
Ah, the smell of battle. Ew, wait a second...
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