medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Doesn't Raffi's song have the words slightly differently:
"Oats an' beans and barley grow
Oats an' beans and barley grow
You and I already know,
how oats an' etc."
I had no idea this referred to the three-crop system, but it gives me a good
idea to teach this material next time in my early medieval course. I second
Kim's request. By the way, I remember there was a New York Times magazine in (I
think) December 1999, asking a few dozen well-known authors what they saw as
the most influential change in the past 2,000 years. Umberto Eco wrote a nice
essay on the role of the bean in European history.
Frans van Liere
Department of History, Calvin College
1845 Knollcrest Circle SE
Grand Rapids, MI 49546-4402
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/history/faculty/vanlieref/
>>> [log in to unmask] 11/16/05 9:58 AM >>>
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
The media culture is not all bad: this song is on one of my small son's Raffi
albums. We now both know the song very well, because he listens to the album
incessantly. Although I have some familiarity with 3-field crop rotation,
could you just remind me how the rhyme correlates with rotation. I would love
to use the rhyme in class, and I want to be sure that I get it right.
Kim
Kimberly Rivers Department of History
Associate Professor University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
(920) 424-2451 [log in to unmask]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Howe, John" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 8:54 am
Subject: Re: [M-R] pulses and legumes
> medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and
> culture
> "I once read in a newspaper that legumes and pulses weren't introduced
> into European diets until the discovery of the Americas (though they
> were used in southern and eastern mediterranean). Does anyone know
> offhand of a scholarly reference for this?"
>
>
>
> Actually these are much earlier. The old debate about the "three
> fieldsystem" is in part a debate about a spring rotation that includes
> legumes. Lynn White Jr.'s Medieval Technology and Social Change made
> the classic argument that the efflorescence of Europe at the start of
> the High Middle Ages resulted from the introduction of the three field
> system, making Europe "full of beans" and able to support a higher
> population thanks to the increased vegetable protein in the diet.
> Likemuch else in that stimulating book this argument is not
> sustainablewithout many qualifications and caveats (the chronology
> of the
> introduction of the three field system, insofar as it can be
> establishedat all, does not correlate neatly with the revival of
> Western Europe,
> and, in some areas, is clearly much earlier).
>
>
>
> I do not have a nursery rhyme guide with me to check the age of the
> first attestation of the following, but one index of the European
> use of
> these crops is
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --John Howe, Texas Tech
>
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