Cane Caldo described the difference between white knights and churls in the discussion of Call me unchivalrous:
Proverbs 30:29-31 (ESV)
29 Three things are stately in their tread;
four are stately in their stride:
30 the lion, which is mightiest among beasts
and does not turn back before any;
31 the strutting rooster, the he-goat,
and a king whose army is with him.Before chivalry, an English king’s army was made up of churls; free men who were called up to fight. Most men were free in this time; perhaps 10% or less were slaves. It is cognate with the names Charles and Carl, which mean manly. I bet they walked like a strutting rooster, or a he-goat. We see bright colors of this idea in our Second Amendment. They have been watered-down as we refuse to give men authority and hold them to account for it, and so trust them less.
…
I forgot to add above: Now churl, which means man and is still the root of many of our names (Charles, Carl, etc.) is now used to communicate someone rude, or uncivilized. To be manly is to be unchivalrous or uncivilized.
Churls can keep Biblical instruction for men and women. Chivalrous men cannot.
*Edit: Sharkly warns that Google images included a NSFW image in the results for the second link (searching for “leg cling”). I don’t see the offending image but I suspect our Google settings are different.
The Churls are Back in Town.
Perhaps on consideration instead of going with your unchivalrous Christian label you could try Christian Churl. Has a nice ring to it.
Dalrock,
You might want to be careful linking to pages of google images. I saw a pair of tits on the “leg cling” link. Maybe the results are just personalized to my preferences though. IDK. Thanks though. /S
@Sharkly
Women’s bare breasts are but one of many dangers that churls must face which others do not.
I’ll risk some more bad taste and quote myself…
…as a lead-in to show how long you have been rightly hunting down chivalry, and ahead of basically everyone. Note the dates.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2010/08/15/on-gun-control-and-wimpy-betas/
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2010/11/21/overcivilized-men-uncivilized-women/
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/raising-feral-females/
In these you used the term “overcivilized” for men, but it’s clear now that you were describing chivalry.
Women’s bare breasts are but one of many dangers that churls must face which others do not.
LOL I guess that makes me a dedicated and seasoned churl, then, in that regard. However my wife and my workplace may not recognize how valiant the fight is on my part, not being red pilled like us.
Do you guys think there could be a relationship between “profanities/vulgarities” and chivalry? I’ve always wondered
Sharkly warns that Google images included a NSFW image in the results for the second link. I don’t see the offending image but I suspect our Google settings are different.
… OR … he and you are usually searching for different things 🙂
Women’s bare breasts are but one of many dangers that churls must face which others do not.
I’ve bravely stared down many bare breasts in my day.
The tits were quite hard to spot in a very small image, but I was able to find them with my keen senses. I’d post a direct link to prove it, if I didn’t suspect that would only make the problem worse.
Frank Frazetta’s art often included mostly naked people of both sexes.
But seriously: Don’t miss the symbolism. The leg cling (churl) pictures show women respecting their men’s authority. The men kneeling to propose (chivalry) pictures show men submitting to women. The men and women in the leg cling pictures can be quickly baptized with some clothing and they are recognizable as Biblical images. Those in the proposal pictures have to change everything about themselves except their clothing.
Chivalry is just as opposed to churlishness as it is to genuine Christianity. Churls were real warriors, Chivalric ‘knights’ were just courtiers.
@ white
“Vulgar” and “vulgate” both mean common in Latin. If you’re not a nobleman, and not a slave, then you’re a commoner, and therefore “vulgar”, or a “churl” in old English.
A knight (for whom chivalry was invented) is a nobleman. I highly doubt any of us here are noblemen. I’m certainly not. If we’re churls, then let’s be Christian churls. Let’s not LARP as knights, or courtiers.
I sense t-shirts and mugs coming…
“All Churled Up”
“The Unchivalrables”
“Churlman of the Board”
Ooh, couple more
“Give chivalry the chiv”
“Churls for the girls”
I’ll see myself out.
From which we get our English word “churlish”. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/churlish: rude, surly, vulgar, impolite, ungracious, unchivalrous (!), uncivilized.
From this word history, “churl” means “free man”. The common man. Not a nobleman. Just your ordinary, average, unrefined, regular guy.
The word “churlish” in common parlance is an insult. But, clearly, it was originally intended to mean the ordinary everyday man.
Lol
collegereactionary
I wouldn’t go that far. Knights were killers who started training around eight years old. They started with wrestling, then boxing, then the staff, and so on until they got to train with swords, lances, etc. They’d be apprenticed (as a squire) to a knight around 16, and if that knight vouched for them, they’d be knighted in their early 20s.
All that stuff is great, and supremely manly, but it was (by necessity) reserved for the elite few.
The terrible part of chivalry is what Dalrock has been cataloging here. Pretty much every way Chivalry regulates relations between men and women is terrible.
But, again, we’re not the elite few. I’m certainly not. But we don’t need to be. It was the bowmen (churls) who won the day at Agincourt, not the knights (noblemen).
@thedeti
Yes. Under, the Norman French (who also introduced chivalry to England) churl became an insult.
@Oscar
Generally speaking, knights killed non-nobles while trying to take opposing knights and nobles captive; feting them until they were ransomed.
There’s a lot of miserliness of respect wrapped up in chivalry even on the martial side.
Rock! Where’s this kid fit in the pantheon of psycho-sexual romance?
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/man-cites-virginity-as-reason-he-planned-to-kill-as-many-girls-as-he-could-utah-police-say
Churl
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/churl?s=ts
Proto-Germanic *kerlaz, *karlaz (cf. Old Frisian zerl “man, fellow,” Middle Low German kerle , Dutch kerel “freeman of low degree,” German Kerl “man, husband,” Old Norse karl “old man, man”).
The Dutch ‘kerel’ and German ‘Kerl’ both have the (modern) connotation of being a tough, sturdy, manly man.
Does anyone know the connection (if any) between churls and the English longbow? As I recall the longbow required great skill to master, An investment that would seem fitting for a churl but not a serf. I’ve searched a bit on the topic and can’t find the answer either way.
Oscar I see that you partially answered my question before I asked.
Dalrock, I can’t speak to the earlier period, but later period (closer to Henry VIII) longbow practice was mandatory for all English free men. It did require great skill, hence the compulsory practice.
One thing I never understood is how, at the Battle of Crecy in 1346, why the Longbow used by the English was such a surprise to the French.
The story is that the English had a firing rate 3-4 times faster than the French Crossbow, so the English won handily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cr%C3%A9cy#Longbow_versus_crossbow
But the LongBow, in various forms, was already being used over all of Eurasia for thousands of years. From the Mongols of Genghis Khan (long before Crecy) to the Roman Era to India as far back as 1500 BC to 10,000 BC across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. How on Earth were the French defeated as though they had never experienced Longbows before?
According to Sir Walter Scott, who wrote the classic “Ivanhoe”, it was the post 1066 Normans who invented two tiers of society, lording it over the conquered Saxons. Part of this domination was the introduction of the Norman French language, which was considered cultured while Saxon was ”uncouth”. They also brought in dandy fashion, since the Saxons wore plainly-woven clothing and armour, which the Saxons thought cowardly.
How much of this is true is open to debate, but it is typical behaviour of conquering nations. If true, it would demonstrate how the seeds of chivalric effeminacy was introduced as ”sophistication”, which is a trademark of the elites, while the rest of us were happy being ”churls”. As Theodore Dalrymple and others point out, it is the sexual degeneracy of the upper tiers of society percolating downwards via their literary justifications (“Monogamy is outdated and unreasonable…we are serial monogamists…”) that causes social destruction.
In my own youth, I was the son of working-class Italian immigrants. I switched from my parent’s RC faith to Anglican post-conversion in my teens. My parents raised some eyebrows but weren’t unhappy.
What was an eye-opener to me were two subsequent events: First, visits to richer-area churches and the summer camps run by them. There existed a snobbery that neither I nor my church friends had ever encountered before. We were actually looked down on due to where we came from. I’m unsure whether the teaching of New Testament James had sunk in yet, but even instinctively,we knew this to be wrong.
The second was my introduction to University. While the rural Christians were great, the rich urban ones carried that same air of snobbery. They disdained the working class and had more in common with the atheist professors, who sneered and condescended at anyone who even remotely thought of taking the Bible seriously.
Even though Communism appeals to academics as ridding themselves of the ”elites”, it is in truth a simple switch of one set of elites for another.
Elitism has always been an enemy.
I opened the offending Google image link a couple more times and the offending image did not reappear. I went back to my original tab and the offending image linked to a story at express.co.uk.
“Davina McCall forced to wrap leg in cling film…” The offending image was from a “related article” shown on that page. I blame the British, and specifically their usurping Queen for this pornography. I’ll have y’all know I’m descended from a very early King Edward. If I was restored to my rightful reign I’d straighten that place up. I am your King! As much as we’re celebrating our churlishness today, I must confess my royal lineage. And I’m an adopted son of the King of kings, so there’s that too.
Anon says:
January 23, 2019 at 4:56 pm
Re: the French defeat at Crecy at the hands of the longbow
My understanding, meagrely gleaned from ”Battlefield Detectives” who did an episode of Crecy, was that the English bowmen were ”uncouth churls”, while the French knights were nobility.
When these two sides met for battle, they had two vastly different aims. The French wanted to make their way to the command center and capture nobility or royalty and hold them for ransom.
Not so the English. Apart from the longbow, they were also armed with poniard daggers to stab fallen armoured soldiers or knights through visors or small chinks in their armour, plus maces and clubs to hit fallen knights or armoured infantry.
What historians postulated was this: French knights charged and were met by volleys of arrows. The volleys killed a lot of infantry but not the knights. It wasn’t the arrows that were effective against the armour. Many knights were unhorsed when they charged through the English ranks looking for nobility / royalty to capture, only to find there was none. This occurred by the uncouths grabbing at the reins, the stirrups or whatever they could and hoiking the knight out of his saddle.
When the knight was unhorsed, if he could still fight on foot, he had a chance of escape. But if he fell onto the ground, wet and muddy, his armour would fatally stick to the ground, making him a sitting duck for clubs maces and poniards.
Where our historians let us down is that they tend to edit out the nastier bits of their victories: The English didn’t ”fight fair”. Also, surrendered French prisoners were slaughtered when the English left to go back to England. Like out modern wars, history gets written by winners.
Given the rapid pace of these apostate and heretical female feminists in Western Civilization transitioning into actual witches who practice witchcraft (willingly interacting with the world of the occult under Satan’s domain); I say a churl looks divine in comparison.
@toocrazy2yoo—I’m currently in that town. Haven’t heard a word. Craziness.
Churls for the girls
Haha not bad
@ Cane
Good point. Knights only respected their fellow elites, which sounds eerily familiar.
Knighthood (ancient chivalry) was reserved for the elites.
Chivalry led to feminism.
Feminism reserves marriage for the elites.
Gentlemen, I believe we may have stumbled onto something big.
Freaking Frogs shouldn’t be allowed to do anything other than cook.
Pingback: White knights vs churls. | Reaction Times
@spike
Ancient Rome before decadence managed to be elitist and undandy. Their fashion,art and architecture remained masculine whilst being excellent in beauty.
Under, the Norman French (who also introduced chivalry to England) churl became an insult.
Were Normans French in 1066? Normans, Norsemen, North Men, Vikings. When did Gauls, or Franks, or Normans become French? I could look it up but you can bet someone reading here already knows.
I’ve been told by archery aficionados that the English long bow had a nearly one hundred pound draw weight. This is outrageous by modern standards and virtually no one tries it except by use of compound bows. Not a job for every ordinary churl, unless those guys really were bad to the bone.
I liked the first Proverbs 30 section Cane Caldo posted before the one in the OP.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2019/01/21/call-me-unchivalrous/#comment-298197
I slightly reformatted it:
21 Under three things the earth trembles;
under four it cannot bear up:
22 a slave when he becomes king, (Democracy? Check.)
and a fool when he is filled with food; (Welfare? Check.)
23 an unloved woman when she gets a husband, (Frivolous marriage? Check)
and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress. (Divorce and remarriage? Check.)
Sounds like Liberalism to me.
From InfoGalactic:
https://infogalactic.com/info/English_longbow#Training
“Ancient Rome before decadence managed to be elitist and undandy. Their fashion,art and architecture remained masculine whilst being excellent in beauty.”
^ In Ancient Rome, “it was expected and socially acceptable for a freeborn Roman man to want sex with both female and male partners” [Amy Richlin, The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor (Oxford University Press, 1983, 1992), p. 225].
In Ancient Rome, “it was perfectly normal for an older man to desire and pursue boys… The result was that in Ancient Roman times, pederasty largely lost its function as a ritual part of education and was instead seen as an activity primarily driven by one’s sexual desires and competing with desire for women” [Craig A. Williams, Roman Homosexuality, p.23].
A great deal of that “masculine” art you’re speaking of corresponds with their culture of homosexuality and pederasty. Just saying.
@Sharkly
Thanks; glad you liked it.
Great conversation here.
@LP
This is how I understand it:
The “original” French are Franks (name gives it away) who were Germanic barbarians like the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes; the people who in England melted together into just “English”. Before the Franks, the land which is now called France was roughly Gaul; which is cognate with Celt. The Gauls were Celts. (Incidentally, so were the Galatians. Galatia means, crudely, “Celtic city”) Julius Caesar subjugated Gaul, took their king back to Rome and executed him. The power of the Celts in Gaul was broken and later the Franks and other Germanic tribes moved in. Normans indeed came from Norsemen, but after initial success were subjugated by the Frankish kings. They payed homage to the French kings, spoke French, intermarried, and followed French customs. It’s hard to imagine today, but France was a powerhouse for centuries.
After the Norman Invasion and the victory of William the Conqueror (Duke of Normandy and a vassal of the king of France) at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the English lands were ruled by the Normans. Yes, the Normans by this point were French. By French rules of feudalism (which were alien to the English), William owned England, but he couldn’t watch over it alone so lands were given in stewardship to the lords who were loyal to him. (Prior to 1066, when England was ruled by the English, the ownership of land was practiced basically the same as it is today; ownership by individuals.) The rulers were all French, spoke French, and considered themselves French. The ruling class of England considered itself French for centuries after they were being born in England. Because they were Normans and England was just one of the patches of land they ruled. Being French, they would not deign to use the longbow, and they preferred to fight on horse unlike the English who preferred to fight on foot. You have to be nuts and super rich to take horses into the hell of close-quarters battle. Horses are for arriving there.
So, the longbowmen relate to the churls in that the churls were Anglo-Saxon (Anglo-Saxon becomes English) and the longbowmen were English. But churls, strictly speaking, were not known as great longbowmen in battle. They favored the spear and a long knife called a seax. It’s 100 years after the Norman Conquest that the Norman rulers employ English archers as a large contingent of their armies.
@Info and American
Rome’s soldiery was, like the Anglo-Saxons, made up of citizen warriors. Each man had to provide his own arms and armor and serve his duty. It was after Rome started using professional soldiers (often barbarians) that they had big trouble. I’m not saying that is what caused the fall of the Empire. I’m saying that when they were a great Republic it was defended and grown by citizens.
Related: https://canecaldo.wordpress.com/2017/08/23/a-churlish-defense/
My Pocket OED defines Churl thus :ill bred, surly person, peasant [OE = man]. Churl has gone out of common use but we have a new and very similar word, too new for my 1986 Pocket OED, Chav.
I think it arguable that the most important battle (coincidentally fought on the rolling fields of Battle) The Battle of Hastings, was the most important and disastrous battle in all history for the arrival in England of the Normans under their leader William the Bastard brought about the redistribution of all the lands in England to The Bastard’s cronies which lands are still largely owned by the descendants of those same families. This thousand year stand-off between the English and their invaders is such that even now and despite the importation of some French words we still speak English and not French. When Winston Churchill rallied the nation in his famous speech about fighting on the beaches he eschewed yet doubtless unconsciously all words of Norman origin. Our Parliament is divided into two Houses The Lords (the invaders) and The Commons (the natives). Is not your Revolutionary War merely a further war as between the Colonists (natives) and the Norman elite. Likewise Brexit is a battle between the native English who want freedom and the Elite who want to remain tied to the their European lands (villas in Chiantishire – as it is called – and the like). What is political correctness (the worship of women, the forced love of aliens, and respect for homosexuals) other than a further attempt by the Normans to force their perverted ways on the chav natives.
I believe (contra Cane Caldo) that it is mistaken to say that any English were ever slaves and even Tacitus observed that treating the English in such a way was not a smart move for the Romans. The correct term is Serf which was a voluntary disposition by natives Britons to a powerful Lord and whatever happened at Crecy the French had still not learned by Agincourt the lesson that the English Long Bowman was superior to any weapon of in their French armoury. Apparently many of the English bowmen were suffering form Dysentery and so Agincourt is surely the first and only battle where one of the armies was naked from the waist down.
We may remain two nations separated by a common language but almost every post at this blog refers and usually sooner rather than later to something English. So here is a clip of those English Long Bowmen causing Havoc in the French lines.
@ CC, Opus, Oscar, et al,
That’s good stuff.
Reading backwards from Opus, it now becomes apparent that Zee Germans are behind a lot of our problems. You just can’t keep those boys out of trouble for too long a stretch.
The “original” French are Franks (name gives it away) who were Germanic barbarians like the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes;
Or a Mongol. Those dudes were incredible!
Incidentally, one of the battles that saved Western Civilization is the Battle of Tours. The Muslims had conquered what is now Spain and Portugal, and invaded France.
Charles Martel knew that the Muslims preferred to fight on horseback, and used mobility and speed to their advantage, so they were lightly armored. Charles chose to fight with heavily armored infantrymen on terrain that made it impossible for the Muslim cavalry to outmaneuver the French infantry.
The Muslims threw themselves against the heavily armored French phalanx, lost badly, and retreated back over the Pyrenees. And the Spanish began the 700-year-long “Reconquista” (reconquest) of their land.
@ Lost Patrol
My ancestry is German, Spanish, and Amerindian, so…. I can’t argue with that.
@American
Architecture and military in its decorative armour and gold standards. Of all the good they got from the greeks sodomy is of course the worst.
Romans did have a period prior to decadence when they were not sodomites. Your sources are all about Rome as it was declining.
There is no such thing as good art that requires sodomy. In no way was Solomons Temple beautiful because of gays.
@American – A lot of the behavior the Romans called “Greek”, and it was seen as a later development. Even the Roman satirists lamented the Roman youth who rubbed their legs with pumice stones (aka, waxing their legs) as a feminine act.
Slightly off topic, but what is the origin of the word “choad”? Any connection to churl?
“Your sources are all about Rome as it was declining.”
^ False, scholarly sources state homosexual and pederasty became normalized in Ancient Rome during the early Republican times which began in 509 BCE following the Regal period.
As for the period of decline, read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome#Under_Christian_rule
@American
I stand corrected.
However I see no reason why pederasty and sodomy has to be essential to Masculine Art and architecture. As well as how their military is endowed.
Its doable and good Art has been done among the Theocracy of Israel which God commissioned.
And yes the its a shame that Greek influence with all the good of its art has to come with sodomy.
@American cholarly sources state homosexual and pederasty became normalized in Ancient Rome during the early Republican times
This is exactly why it’s always absurd to hear Christians arguing that we should accept “homosexuality” because the modern notion of homosexual identity in a lasting relationship was “not known” to the Greeks or Romans, and therefore the prohibitions in the NT could not POSSIBLY be against such behavior.
I did not know the original meaning of churl, thank you.
“Mean” was just a word for “average”. Which in evolving connotation now equates to awful or hateful. Of course, it still has the original value in mathematics.
“Ordinary” is another example. In American dialect, it converted to “ornery”/”onery”; again meaning “mean-spirited, disagreeable, and contrary in disposition; cantankerous” [thefreedictionary.com] around the late 1700s/early 1800s. Brittish English does not have this shortened word.
@Spike
Old English before Norman conquest:
Uncouth?
Stop at 0:49. That was unexpected and rude.
Better video on this:
Beowulf vs Grendal in Old English.