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A grave subject
Mar. 8th, 2026 10:44 amI have a minor character in the current book who appears only fairly briefly. She's a dwarven bard; there aren't so many of those in the D&D universe, since bards basically run on Charisma and dwarves have a racial penalty on that. However, this one's a specialist. She does execution ballads. Every time anyone is sentenced to death, it's her job to gather all the relevant information - what they did, how they did it, why they did it (if known), who their accomplices were (if any), and all the rest of it - and work the whole lot up into a lengthy ballad. She then sings most of it just before the execution, and after that takes place she adds a few more verses covering that, after which she sings the complete ballad in the town hall. The words are then copied out and distributed. It's an effective and memorable way of getting the news out in a society where they don't have regular newspapers and there are probably also quite a few people who can't read.
This is not a figment of my imagination, though I suspect anyone outside the SCA will probably take it as such. Nope. This is actual history (well, other than the fact that she's a dwarf, of course). They really did this in the late Middle Ages.
Mediaeval execution ballads were pretty much tabloid articles set to music; they tended to be long and sensational (and they very often went to the tune of Fortune my foe, given that it was a well-known and rather sombre tune; I have a very nice recording of d'Artagnan singing the original words). They also frequently, but not invariably, contained a pious expression of repentance on the part of the condemned criminal, to which they may or may not have actually subscribed. Some of them went on for a full 15 minutes. We don't know exactly how many of them were written, since there's good historical evidence that many did exist but are now lost; we also don't know whether they were written for all executions or just those relating to the most serious crimes, given that there was a strong tendency in the Middle Ages for punishments to be out of all proportion to the crime committed (unless you were a member of the nobility, in which case you were very unlikely to be hanged for stealing some valuable item you didn't need; ordinary people could be, and were, hanged for stealing small amounts of food that they desperately needed to live). But there do seem to have been quite a lot of them, given how many of them did survive.
It just occurs to me I can't remember if I've posted about this before. If I have, please bear with me. I am whacked out this morning (combination of recent circumstances and a late night or two too many).
This is not a figment of my imagination, though I suspect anyone outside the SCA will probably take it as such. Nope. This is actual history (well, other than the fact that she's a dwarf, of course). They really did this in the late Middle Ages.
Mediaeval execution ballads were pretty much tabloid articles set to music; they tended to be long and sensational (and they very often went to the tune of Fortune my foe, given that it was a well-known and rather sombre tune; I have a very nice recording of d'Artagnan singing the original words). They also frequently, but not invariably, contained a pious expression of repentance on the part of the condemned criminal, to which they may or may not have actually subscribed. Some of them went on for a full 15 minutes. We don't know exactly how many of them were written, since there's good historical evidence that many did exist but are now lost; we also don't know whether they were written for all executions or just those relating to the most serious crimes, given that there was a strong tendency in the Middle Ages for punishments to be out of all proportion to the crime committed (unless you were a member of the nobility, in which case you were very unlikely to be hanged for stealing some valuable item you didn't need; ordinary people could be, and were, hanged for stealing small amounts of food that they desperately needed to live). But there do seem to have been quite a lot of them, given how many of them did survive.
It just occurs to me I can't remember if I've posted about this before. If I have, please bear with me. I am whacked out this morning (combination of recent circumstances and a late night or two too many).
