Some commonly used words are after the list of characters. Replace th on end of words with ness and t with d or ed and most of the rest are obvious if sounded out aloud. Some words with n or en on the end can be easily understood if the n is replaced by a d. Only difficult words and words that do not exist in English are now referred to specifically at the end of the chapter. Appendix 1 Folk words and language usage, Appendix 2 Castle places, food, animals, plants and minerals, Appendix 3 a lexicon of Folk and Appendix 4 an explanation of the Folk calendar, time, weights and measures. All follow the story chapters.

The year was thirteen hundred and eight of Our Lord, and Jacques de Saint-Georges d’Espéranche, known on the other side of Mor Breizh,(1) as La Manche(2) was known in Breton, as Master James of Saint George, the widely travelled, great castle ingeniator(3) and mazun(4) was on his final journey, a disappointed but not bitter man.

Bitterth(5) was not possible for a man who knew he had been called friend by Saijät.(6) Saijät, who may have been real or the ultimate illusion, but for those who had Saijätʼs friendship Saijät was more real than their own existence. Saijät, whose memories reached both backward and forward over all time and for whom all time was one time and no time. Saijät, the dreamer, the dreampt(7) and the dream itself. Saijät, who may have been man or woman but who it was suspected was probably neither, either or both according to what was appropriate. Saijät, who at one and the same time could be the epitome of empathy and the final harbinger of death. Saijät whose very existence was the stuff of the legends that lay at the core of his people’s identity.

Jacquesʼ wife Ambrosia had died many years ago, and at the age of seventy-eight, after an educated life full of honour, wealth and power, he was tired and ready to go on. Though he had lived most of his early life in Savoy(8) where he had been born, his father, Master mazun John, had been of Celtic Breton origin, as had been Ambrosia and most of his family, and in that community the death watch was still kept as it had been for centuries before the arrival of the usurper: the new, white Christ. Surrounded by his family and friends, he started to leave and they knew his passing was close, and he was on the way to the Great Mystery, for he could no longer see them and did not appear to be aware of their presence, but he was aware of the other world which for him was now more real and of greater substance than the one he was leaving.

When younger he had travelled the Holy Land, and he’d known the Crac de l’Ospital(9) at the zenith of its power and influence whilst still under the control of the Hospitallers.(10) He had subsequently designed and builded many castles for King Edward,(11) including the greatest of them all, Beaumarris on the Druids’ isle of Ynys Môn,(12) incorporating much he had seen on his travels, his own designs and his improvements on all he had ever seen in his life. He had been devastated when his friend Edward told him Beaumarris was not to be completed yet, for the funds were needed for the campaign in Scotland. He had gone with Edward to Scotland and worked on reducing Stirling castle’s defences culminating in his creation of Loup de Guerre or Warwolf,(13) a massive engine of destruction, the largest trebuchet(14) ever maekt, during the siege of thirteen hundred and four, which ended the siege with Edward’s taking of Stirling.

It was a wonder to his family and friends but as he lay adying he was conversing with his God, and was clearly saughten(15) to know not only would he not finish Beaumarris, the ultimate child of his genius, but it would never be finished. They understood from the half of his conversation they could hear he now realised Beaumarris was only a shadowy forerunner and a pale imitation of his next opportunity to do great works for the glory that was Christendom, to build the greatest castle that would ever be builded, which would sound the final death knell of the heathen. He died smiling. The token Christian priest in attendance, who had been seriously disturbed by the pagan nature of what he had witnessed merely said, “Of a surety God will assoil him.” He maekt no mention of Jacques’ likelihood of entering heaven, which those there considered to be appropriate given what they knew of Jacques’ beliefs.

Jacques awoke after his deadth, somewhere and somewhen else, with all the knowledge and skills he had acquired after a lifetime of diligent study, but as a young man in his middle twenties. He was with many others, many of who had fought the crusades or been on pilgrimage to the Holy land. They were the first incursion of incomers, and they awoke at a bitterly cold place they considered to be so perfect a site for the ultimate castle, it was clear to them they could only have been sent by God, and they believed they had been taken to what they called God’s Holy Land and given the ultimate opportunity to prepare for the final battle with the heathen, which they would win by the total obliteration of the scourge of Christendom.

The two moons, they named the brighter Lune and the lesser Dimidd,(16) were considered to be a sign of the ascendancy of light over dark, of Christendom over Islam. That they had moved in time, to somewhile at least fifteen hundred years before whence they came, as well as in distance did not occur to them. Back on Earth, Christ had yet to wait two hundred years for his birth, Muhammad even longer. There were more than two hundred thousand of them, men, women and children, and huge numbers of all the animals they were familiar with, and some they weren’t, along with vast quantities of supplies, including all types of seed corn and other vegetable seeds, some of which they didn’t recognise, which they believed to mean their future was a long term plan of God’s. Though they knew they had been taken from many places on Earth, it took them a long time to realise they had not all been taken from the same time on Earth.

That Jacques lived long enough to finish the building of the castle, the ultimate castle, by far the biggest and the strongest that had ever been builded with absolutely no compromises at all, in a mere eighty-three years, with no sign of the enemy, they considered to be a sign of God’s favour, as they considered the plentiful supplies of first class building materials so close to hand and the complete range and number of craftsmen and women who were with them. The severity of the climate they took as a permanent reminder of their God given obligations. There were no men of high estate mongst them, and from the moment of their arrival Jacques had been the leader of the community, none else had his organisational skills which all knew were required for them to survive in the cruel climate.

Due to his gentle(17) spaech, which he had acquired as a result of a lifetime of intercourse with the nobility, he had originally been referred to as the lord of the castle in humour, but it soon became the reality, a necessary reality, and he was declared the first Lord of Castle. Jacques was a realist and he knew the way women were regarded by most of the world he had known was not an option. A reversion to the older Celtic attitudes and practices of his fore-bearers was necessary, which he not only accepted, but he regarded as an opportunity to satisfy his God’s original plan. In order for them to survive he created a Council comprising the most able, and that meant all of the most able, they could not afford to discard half of that all too small a number, just because they were women.

Moreover, he had the members of each craft choose a Master or Mistress crafter to represent their fellow crafters on the Council. Any man who was put forward and who in his opinion was inadequate or of lesser ability than an overlooked woman, he rejected and he told the crafters to select someone better or they would not have a voice on the Council at all. It rapidly became clear to all, no matter how chauvinistic, it was better to be represented by a woman than be not represented at all. The makers of warm clothing, mostly women, those who hunted, mostly men, and those who collected and grew food, who were of both sexes, were all equally significant to the survival of all. Jacques created the Council purely on the grounds of intelligence and ability. Its members were the senior craftswomen and craftsmen, Edwina his Mistress of the hunt and Allan his Master at arms.

He had selected Edwina because she was the best archer in the community and when challenged he had said, “any man who can better her skill may be Master of the hunt in her place. Any man who complains, or fails to do her will, but can not better her must leave, for I have no use for incompetent malcontents.” Any Council members who were perceived to be inadequate by the Council were simply not informed when and where meetings were to take place and soon replaced by someone better. The population was only represented by those who were most fit to represent them: a meritocracy.

Jacques fell in love and remarried, and his fifteen year old wife Mary had eventually given him fourteen children, eight daughters and six sons. In his and the Council’s opinion, none of his sons was fit to take over after him. The population wouldn’t follow any of them because they were weak, and it was important for the population to have strong leadership. He and the Council started training his gifted third child, Helen, to be Lady of Castle long before she married Fulk the second son of Allan the Master at arms, after which they continued to train the pair of them for their positions to come and the population to accept them. Jacques handed over power to her as soon as the population could see she was ready for it, which became the norm, and by the time of his deadth his great grandson and his wife were being readied to take over from Jacques’ granddaughter and her husband. Jacques’ last legacy was the creation of the craft of ingeniators who would maintain the castle for all time.

When he died, Jacques was over a hundred years old and the oldest man who had ever lived. Due to the longer Castle year, he was nearly a hundred and thirty and he had lived about a hundred and ninety years in all. As time progressed, the weather became much colder due to the natural cycles of the planet, which they considered to be a warning of the coming of the heathen. It was nearly two hundred years after the first incursion when the second occurred. Shortly after, the disease that came to be known as the fevers struck for the first time, which reduced their population from over a quarter of a million to just over a hundred thousand. The fevers recurred at irregular intervals, and the population had been reduced to about forty thousand by the time the third incursion occurred.

The fevers tended to disproportionately eliminate the oldest and the youngest, and it was not long before their history had gone from memory. The old who remembered and the young who had time to listen, were no longer available in sufficient numbers to keep their history from extinction. The incursions settled down to between two and three hundred persons at forty to fifty year intervals and the fevers eventually became a part of the population’s dynamic equilibrium and coupled with the normal birth and deadth rates stabilised the population at about thirty-five thousand, which nowhere near filled a castle designed and builded for the protection of over a quarter of a million persons.

After five centuries they referred to themselfs as the Folk, the castle as the Keep and the planet as Castle. They had no memory of their origins and the climate was much harsher than when their ancestors first arrived. Religion had disappeared, aught which didn’t directly aid survival in their now extremely difficult environment was regarded with deep suspicion and faded away or was deliberately extirpated.

An ironic feature of the whole matter was the large number of Muslims, mostly attractive nubile women, in some of the early incursions, particularly in the original one, who recognising their vulnerability had simply said nothing as to their beliefs and often took new names, they learnt the language of the ruling Council quickly, their children never learnt aught else. The castle’s principal water supply, a major civil engineering project involving cuttings, tunnels and aqueducts, had been designed and its construction overseen by Aswad, a talented, huge, heavily built, black skinned, middle aged man who had worked on similar, albeit lesser, schemes in Al-Andalus.(18)

Aswad had fallen in love with, courted and married Friðegyð, an intelligent, tiny, pretty Saxon redhead with violet eyes nearer a third of his age than a half who came from a very old noble family with royal connections that had owned much land before William’s(19) Conquest, which they had then lost. Friðegyð was from a much earlier when than any other incursionist and they considered her spaech to be archaic. Many maekt fun of her, but that ceased when she married Councillor Aswad, who initially she had thought to be making fun of her too. Fifteen year old Friðegyð was more than happy to marry a man of Aswad’s status. As a girl she had expected to marry an older man from a family as powerful and wealthy as her own and had been looking forward to it, but the Conquest had been the shattering death of all her dreams. Aswad had given them back to her, and it was not long before she came to love the man who adored her.

It was also not long before her intelligence had maekt a Councillor of her too. That and her annual pregnancies for over twenty years, which she had enjoyed every moment of, maekt her one of Castle’s most respected citizens. The law as laid down by the Council defined women as legally equal to men in all ways, but it was Friðegyð who ensured it became a day to day reality. Her strategy was simple, and she repeatedly said, “You are free individuals and may cook for, look after and bed whomsoever you choose. It is your choice. Any who physically abuse you I will see punished by whipping. Any who rape you I will see executed. And remember under our law your children are legally still part of your body and under your charge till they become adult at fourteen, which law applies to any you have adopted too. No man may ever have control of them or force them to apprenticeship.

Many of the Muslims, like Aswad, were gifted craftsfolk, and they were well come and appreciated, like he they had intermarried with the Christians, and said nothing of their beliefs, and in one generation Islam had become extinct. May hap the greatest irony of it all was Jacques’ fifteen year old wife, Mary, had originally been an elderly Muslim woman from the harem of Saladin, whose name had been Mariam, though she said nothing to any of her life on Earth beyond the age of twelve.

The Castle Way, the laws by which the Folk lived, originated in a set of codes of conduct which revolved berount the simple concept of, if you help me I shall help you, and had early on been formalised by those of Celtic and Nordic ancestry with racial and social memory of their ancestors’ family, kin, clan and social structures. With time, the social philosophy that was usually just referred to as the Way became much more sophisticated, and all religion of incursionists became to be regarded with suspicion, Christianity along with all other religions had become perceived to be inimical to the Folk and so Christianity too became extinct. On their world, the original incursionists, without realising it, had achieved their goal, and wiped out the heathen Muslim without a single sword being raised, or the castle ever having been put to use, they were also unaware, in the process, they had wiped out Christendom too. It was equally true to say the manhood of Christendom had been conquered by the wombs of Islam. In this new land Heathen and Infidel alike had integrated to become one folk, which had no time nor use for either of their original religions nor indeed any other.

The enlightened practice, of the Folk in a marriage defining their marriage, had its roots in their ancestral Muslim practice. There were significantly more women in the first incursion than men, and many of the Iberian women decided to share a husband since it accorded with their understanding of family. They referred to each other as sister which maekt their families acceptable to the other women, many of who chose to join them rather than be without a man and a family or worse accept a man who would not treat them well. The act of putting a knife through the heart of an abusive husband as he slept, initially a not infrequent occurrence, was always condoned, though all such were dead within a handful of years and the practice became no longer necessary. The practice of multiple marriage partners also had its roots in the Nordic practice of taking in to the family a wife’s widowed sister and her children or a dead brother’s wife and her children, conversely it had not been historically unheard of for two poorer men, usually brothers, to pool resources and share a wife. With the deadth of religion meaning there was no longer any concept of sin. That coupled with the coöperation and assistance required of every member of the community to survive meant sexuality had become a private matter. After all in a multiple marriage who did what with whom in the privacy of their bed was impossible to know and none cared.

The clan structures of the Folk and their adoption practices were based on their Celtic heritage. All of the most practical customs and practices of their African, European and Middle Eastern antecedents had merged to create a viable and essentially non-violent society, which had a particular emphasis on the protection of children, capable of surviving with comfort, if not luxury, in a harsh environment. Coöperation was necessary to survive, persons became more precious as the climate deteriorated, children and pregnant women even more so, and large families were essential for the community to survive.

Women with many children became of higher status than those with few, and the joining of families to become larger socio-economic units was referred to as adoption too. Social status was determined by the contribution to society a person maekt, which included children, and nothing else, and everyone had to contribute to the best of their ability. Those who didn’t did not receive help when they required it, and all required it sooner or later, it was a deadth sentence and the phrase, to be taken by Castle, originated. Those who thiefen were not helped. Thieft soon became a capital offence and quickly unheard of.

The most widespread language of the original incursionists was a rather inhomogeneous Middle English which contained many elements of Old English and Norman French. Most of the first incursionists, spake English in various stages of transition from Old English(20) to Middle English, unlike Friðegyð who spake an unmodernised version of Old English from the south east of the country. A large minority spake other European languages, and there was a sizeable number who spake various Middle Eastern languages, some as a result of Al-Andalus, also known as Muslim Spain or Islamic Iberia, with African, mostly Berber, but also some sub-Saharan, influences. All these factors soon created a new language, Folk, which though based on Middle English had a different proportion and selection of loan words.

With time, Folk and English as spaken on Earth developed differently. Folk retained many words no longer uest or regarded as archaic in English, it acquired a different set of new words, and its grammar developed differently, in both retention of old and acquisition of new forms. Later incursionists brought new vocabulary and forms of language, mostly English as the preponderance of incursionists had always come from that country. The new names non-English incursionists brought were quickly absorbed, and soon maekt Folk significantly different from English. Despite the influence of regular incursions, after fifteen hundred years of divergence the two languages were all but mutually unintelligible.

For a long time, a relatively small proportion of the Folk were literate and much of their culture and tradition was of an oral nature. That and that there had never been a standardised spelling of Folk had randomising consequences for the way Folk eventually came to be written and spaken in terms of irregular verb forms and general lack of consistency. The high level of social conformity and coöperation required of the Folk for survival had never been an inconvenience to those who had survived, it was why they had survived and others had not, but it meant they had developed different ways of expressing their individuality. When literacy became more common they delighted in their own names retaining as much of their historical peculiarities as were known.

Literacy became regarded as an art form and the Master at arms archivists, who maintained the records, were high status individuals. All the accents and modifiers of all the languages that had contributed to Folk were retained, for they were considered to be important parts of their history. Thus, ligatures, the letter thorn and many diacritical marks too are used. Widespread use of the diæresis to indicate two successive vowels are pronounced separately is used, as in agreän, Zoë, naïve, coöperate, and fluüff.(21)

Given it’s roots and how different Folk and English had become, it is may hap surprising just how superficially similar Modern Folk has become to Modern English as spaken by the English in the northern part of that country in recent times. The biggest single event responsible for the re-convergence of Folk towards Modern English was the Fell Year which nearly wiped out the Folk. The two centuries following the Fell Year saw ten incursions starting with smaller numbers of incursionists than was usual, the numbers gradually increasing. Those incomers formed a significant part of the Folk, and thus had a disproportionately large modernising influence on the language. The differences between Modern English and Modern Folk are however significant and make incursionists readily identifiable from their spaech, and as happened with Middle English and Early Folk those differences have increased and are still increasing.

Two of the most notable differences between Modern Folk and Modern English are Folk never uses ness as a suffix, rather the th suffix has been retained, harshth rather than harshness. In English where this occurs the words are very old as in warmth. Also d or ed is virtually never uest to indicate a past tense of a verb, rather t or et is uest instead, trackt rather than tracked, killt rather than killed, sayt rather than said, aegt rather than aged, adviest rather than advised, telt rather than told. This is in many cases the pronunciation still uest by the English in the north of that country. A number of verbs ending in d take dd as their past tense suffix, bedd rather than bedded, but when spaken it sounds like bedt. A number of verbs take tt as their past tense suffix, knitt and constructt rather than knitted and constructed, offcutt rather than offcut. Where this occurs in spaech the final t is stressed.

Modern Folk also has more verbs than Modern English derived from or adapted to strong verbs in Early English which take en as a suffix for the past tense, dien rather than died. New verbs usually take the strong form as a default rather than the weak form as is the case in English, so machinen not machined or machient, though it is gammont not gammonen, (to make gammon or to describe a dish containing gammon). Folk too has its irregular forms and its own expressions and constructions, not all of which are derived from English or indeed from any other language from Earth. As a result of the incursion that happened five hundred and sixty-eight years after the Fell Year some new verbs have arrived and are still in the process of having entire conjugations decided on. A process that happens by custom and usage rather than decree, for example to quilt [the hand craft] currently has two past tenses in common usage, quiltt and quilten. Eventually one form will possibly become the only one in use, but possibly not, for there are some old verbs that have had more than one form in use for centuries.

Index of significant characters so far listed by Chapter

1 Introduction
2 Jacques de Saint-Georges d’Espéranche, Saijät, Ambrosia, Master mazun John, King Edward I, Christ, Muhammad, Edwina, Allan, Mary, Mariam, Helen, Fulk, Aswad, Friðegyð, William I, Saladin

Word Usage Key
Some commonly used words are below. Replace th on end of words with ness and t with d or ed and most of the rest are obvious if sounded out aloud. Some words with n or en on the end can be easily understood if the n is replaced by a d. Only difficult words and words that do not exist in English are now referred to specifically.

Agreän(s), those person(s) one has marital agreement with, spouse(s).
Bethinkt, thought.
Braekt, broke.
Cousine, female cousin.
Doet, did. Pronounced dote.
Doetn’t, didn’t. Pronounced dough + ent.
Findt, found,
Goen, gone
Goent, went.
Grandparents. In Folk like in many Earth languages there are words for either grandmother and grandfather like granddad, gran, granny. There are also words that are specific to maternal and paternal grandparents. Those are as follows. Maternal grand mother – granddam. Paternal grandmother – grandma. Maternal grandfather – grandfa. Paternal grandfather – grandda.
Heartfriend, a relationship of much more significance than being a girl- or boy-friend is on Earth. Oft such relationships are formed from as young as four and they are taken seriously by both children and adults. A child’s heartfriend is automatically one of their heartfriend’s parents’ children too, and a sibling to their heartfriend’s siblings. Such relationships rarely fail and are seen as precursors to becoming intendet and having agreement.
Intendet, fiancée or fiancé.
Knoewn, knew.
Lastdaysince, the day before yesterday.
Loes, lost.
Maekt, made.
Nextdaynigh, the day after tomorrow.
Sayt, said.
Seeën, saw.
Taekt, took.
Telt, told.
Uest, used.

1 Mor Breizh, pronounced moːʁˈbʁɛjs, the channel between England and France.
2 La Manche, the channel between England and France.
3 Ingeniator, origin of the word engineer (civil).
4 Mazun, mason.
5 Bitterth, bitterness. There are no words that use a ness suffix in Folk. Th is generally uest though there are innumerable irregular forms.
6 Saijät, pronounced sigh + airt, (saiɛərt) a mystical consciousness that passes from philosophical leader to philosophical leader according to it’s own volition, or may hap whimsy. The choice may not be gainsaid due to the intellect and perception that accompanies it. For millennia, Saijät has been both the title and subsequently the name of the chosen one.
7 Dreampt, the one who is dreamt about.
8 Savoy, now in modern day France, Italy and Switzerland.
9 Crac de lʼOpital, a huge and strategically significant crusader castle in modern Syria, held for over a century by the Knights Hospitallers. It is forty kilometres [25 miles] to the west of the city of Homs near the border with Lebanon.
10 Hospitallers, The Knights Hospitallers, a religious and military order under its own Papal charter, was charged with the care and defence of the Holy Land and those on pilgrimage.
11 King Edward, Edward Longshanks later Edward I.
12 Ynys Môn, the isle of Anglesey.
13 Warwolf, Warwolf accurately hurled missiles weighing as much as one hundred and fifty kilograms.
14 Trebuchet, a siege engine uest in the Middle Ages to attack castles and fortified towns.
15 Saughten, reconciled, at ease.
16 Dimidd, pronounced Dim + ith, th as in them, (dimið).
17 Gentle, a characteristic of those connected with lordly or noble backgrounds: the gentility.
18 Al-Andalus, also known as Muslim Spain or Islamic Iberia.
19 William I, William the conqueror. The conquest began with the Battle of Hastings on the 14th of October 1066, but it was a few years before William consolidated his hold on England. He confiscated much Saxon land to give as rewards for those who brought men to assist in the conquest.
20 Old English, Anglo-Saxon.
21 Fluüff, pronounced flue + uff, (flu:ᴧf), a fermented cereal powder. Different makers use different combinations of cereals, but all include some rye. When steamed, fluüff rises into a dark coloured, porous, substantial cake which is then soaked in a fruit and honey syrup. Fluüff is selt as small cubes on fresh edible leaves of many kinds and is a gloriously sticky confection much loved by children from the age of one to one hundred and one. Fluüff are similar to Idlis which are maekt in Southern India from broken rice grains and pulses, though usually served a a savoury staple in place of rice.