Ugandan Robert Serumaga, arguably the greatest theatrical director ever produced by Africa, died by poisoning in Kenya at the age of 41 in 1980. No one was ever found guilty of his murder. There are numerous contradictory stories about how he died, most involving reports of a visit to his room by a beautiful woman who supposedly administered a lethal dose of poison. However his death occurred, it brought to a violent end the life of one of Africa's theatrical giants, one nearly forgotten today by much of the theatre world. Serumaga was, early in his career, a dramatist of power and later a charismatic actor, a visionary artistic guru and finally a theatrical provocateur who combined notions of African indigeneity with a range of European dramatic forms ranging from the psychologically rooted theatre of Stanislavski to the dramatic tropes of the Theatre of the Absurd to the ritually tinged edges of Artaud's vision of Total Theatre.

Serumaga was also a fine economist – trained at Dublin's prestigious Trinity College (some may wish to note the absurdist Samuel Beckett's own Trinity connections here) – but one obsessed by politics in both his life and work. That Serumaga survived the reign of the dictator Idi Amin was something of a miracle. That his company, Abafumi (The Storytellers), did not is no surprise. Serumaga was simultaneously taking part in the anti-Amin underground while running Abafumi, a career combination that was as theatrically mad as it was politically dangerous. We know now that Serumaga was taking funds from the CIA at this time, funds which were used to support both his causes. When Amin was finally driven into exile, Serumaga, rather than turning to his company full-time, took on a cabinet position with the new government. Only months later came his fatal trip to Kenya. That he had political enemies was obvious. As was the fact that he loved beautiful women.

Where Serumaga's political career might have led had he lived is anyone's guess. But at his death he had certainly achieved international theatrical fame with his company for his 1970s masterpieces Renga Moi (a name that roughly translates in Uganda's Acholi language as Valiant Warrior) and Amayirikiti (in Luganda, The Flame Trees).

‘Lied’ Op. 3 no. 4 (‘Weit über das Feld’) (comp. July 1853, publ. Dec. 1853)

THE 20-YEAR-OLD BRAHMS may have first encountered the poetry of Friedrich Bodenstedt on a concert tour with the violinist Eduard Reményi in Hanover in summer 1853. Bodenstedt came from nearby Peine, and his Gedichte, from which the ‘Lied’ was drawn, had been published the previous year. The poet had enjoyed a burst of success following his 1851 translations of the Azerbaijani poet Mirza Shafi Vazeh, Lieder des Mirza-Schaffy. In 1857, Brahms acquired a copy of this volume in its fourth edition (1856), possibly from Clara Schumann, who noted in her diary that she was reading Bodenstedt late that year; however he set nothing more by the poet despite his renown. Brahms's opinion of Bodenstedt fluctuated; in one letter of 1877 he described him as unjustly neglected; but according to Kalbeck, on another occasion he declared: ‘Far too much is made of Bodenstedt; in my view he is one of the direst of poets. Absolutely no comparison with Geibel, who in turn is far too underrated.’

The ‘Lied’, as Brahms composed it, was a selection of two verses from a long narrative poem, Iwan, der Sohn des Starost: Poetische Farbenskizze aus Rusland (Ivan, Son of the Starost: Poetic Colour Sketches from Russia) which had first appeared in 1842, and reappeared in the Gedichte. A village girl, Masha, is engaged to a handsome village boy, Ivan, but has caught the eye of the local landowner, Count Büstrow. Büstrow, who has recently returned from travels, finds that Masha has grown into a great beauty, and the two renew their friendship. This triggers furious jealousy in Ivan, who cannot compete with the count's charm and wealth. Ivan resolves to take revenge. It is at this point that Brahms's chosen text is heard. The count tricks Ivan into going away, leaving the coast clear for a liaison with Masha. Ivan overhears their arrangements, lies in wait and slaughters them both with an axe; their bodies are found in the river the next day.

Introduction

The sagas of Icelanders discussed in the last chapter take an oppositional attitude towards the saint and question the presuppositions of hagiography. Other sagas are more open to what hagiography has to offer: its contextualisation of human action within the cosmic drama of salvation, and its clear vision of moral and religious truths. One of the most obvious areas in which the sagas interact with hagiography is in narratives about the Christian missions to Iceland and the official conversion in 999/1000. The story of ‘how Christianity came to Iceland’ (as the opening of Kristni saga puts it) is inevitably also the story of how a local people come to enter the universal Church. By the end of the thirteenth century, the Icelanders were familiar with a wide range of missionary literature: the translated sagas of apostles and of classic missionary saints such as Martin; the lives of the Norwegian missionary kings, Óláfr Tryggvason and Óláfr Haraldsson; and the narratives about Iceland's conversion to Christianity in Íslendingabók, Kristni saga and the kristniboðsþættir (‘conversion stories’) preserved in compilations of Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta. Although, as discussed in Chapter 1, Iceland had no official conversion-age saints, these narratives about the missions to Iceland can be described as ‘semi-hagiographic’: they draw on both hagiographic conventions and local oral traditions of storytelling (p. 22–3). The first missionary to Iceland, the German bishop Friðrekr, is a saintly figure, who performs several miracles and lives an exemplary life: Kristni saga describes him as ‘sannheilagr’ (‘truly holy’) and Þorvalds þáttr víðfõrla tells us that he ended his life ‘með háleitum heilagleik’ (‘with sublime holiness’). The Icelandic missionary Þorvaldr and the German or Flemish cleric Þangbrandr are more ambiguous figures, who, like Óláfr Tryggvason, combine saintly fervour with heroic acts of violence – they preach and perform miracles, build churches and found monasteries, but they also engage in scurrilous poetic contests and carry out revenge killings: they are ideal material for a saga narrative.

In his OctoberPaper of 1974, Egyptian president Anwar Sadat announcedInfitah, an open door economic policyaimed at encouraging foreign investments in Egypt's privatesector. ‘Codified in Law 43/1974, Infitahstripped away state intervention, provided major taxexemptions for foreign companies, and lifted the requirementthat foreign companies be partly Egyptian-owned’ (Brownlee‘Peace Before Freedom’: 649). Infitah endedup enriching the bourgeoisie and the foreign companies whomade investments in Egypt. The populace, however, were notso fortunate: ‘Infitah had unleashed“consumption liberalization” without alleviating the strainon Egyptian families’ (Brownlee: 650). The cost of livingrose by 20 per cent, crime rates skyrocketed, along withunemployment, and other forms of maladies.

Following theoutcome of Infitah, Egypt's intellectualsbegan to view the foreign exploitation of their country as anew form of colonialization. With the arrival of the foreigncompanies came not only economic exploitation, but culturalinfiltration by the West. It was a painful reminder of themid-1960s when Coca-Cola and other American multinationalcompanies in Egypt ‘played an integral role in buttressingIsraeli militarism, Zionist settler colonialism, and Westernimperialism’ (Labelle ‘De- Coca-Colonizing Egypt’: 124). Theintellectuals viewed this new combination of economic,cultural and political manipulation of Egypt as a majorthreat to their country's prosperity. Together with theEgyptian masses, they began to campaign againstInfitah and the overall permissivenessof their country's leaders with the Western politicians andbusinessmen. In January 1975, thousands protested on thestreets of Cairo, and in March of that same year, 40,000workers in the town of Mahalla went on strike. In January1977, thousands rioted in cities throughout Egypt, leavingeighty people killed, and hundreds wounded. Manyintellectuals who galvanized the masses suffered frequentraids and imprisonments by the regime.

This historicalmoment in Egypt is the focus of Sonallah Ibrahim'sThe Committee (1981). Ibrahim, one ofEgypt's most influential novelists, had been imprisoned in1959 for alleged communist ties. He spent five years out ofa seven-year sentence behind bars and was released in 1964.My discussion of Ibrahim's The Committeesuggests that Ibrahim's novel is shot through with motifsfrom Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of theEarth (1961), and that its narrativeallegorically presents several major components of Fanon'sdecolonization structure.

6-part a cappella choir:

‘Abendständchen’ Op. 42 no. 1 (comp. Oct. 1859, publ. 1868?)

Des Knaben Wunderhorn: ‘Wiegenlied’ Op. 49 no. 4 verse 1 (comp. July 1868, pub. Nov. 1868) – see ‘Simrock’

‘O kühler Wald’ Op. 72 no. 3 (comp. March 1877, publ. July–Aug. 1877)

THE ROLE of Brentano's original poetry in Brahms's songwriting is relatively small. His real significance lay in the folksong collection he compiled with Achim von Arnim, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the edited collection of folk-poems which, following its publication in 1806–8, helped shape the culture of the emerging German nation during the century and beyond. As with Simrock, Uhland and Wenzig, Brentano's creative identity spanned both original and folk poetry. He was an avid reader and collector of old books and manuscripts which shaped his writing, much as Brahms found inspiration in older music.

Brahms's ensemble text ‘Abendständchen’ was a popular short poem set by members of his circle such as Herzogenberg and Kahn, as well as Reger and Paul Hindemith. ‘O kühler Wald’ reflects a different set of interests, with deeper roots. In late 1853, Brahms developed a friendship with Bettina von Arnim, Brentano's younger sister and Achim von Arnim's wife. This friendship was cemented by others: Joachim, who was in love with von Arnim's daughter Gisela at the time; the family friend, philologist and art historian Herman Grimm whom Gisela ultimately married (see ‘Candidus’); and the Schumanns, who had known her since the late 1830s (although notably, neither Robert nor Clara Schumann set Clemens Brentano's poetry). One result was the dedication of Brahms's first song opus, Op. 3, to her in December 1853, perhaps following Schumann's example with the littleknown Gesange der Fruhe Op. 133 composed two months earlier. (Brahms also copied Brentano's poem ‘Der Spinnerin Lied’ into his earliest poetry notebook.)

Following Brentano's death in 1842, his works and correspondence were published. Bettina von Arnim tended to give such works to her friends along with her own writings; for instance she gave Joachim, through Brahms, a picture of Novalis and a volume of her songs published in 1842 by Breitkopf & Härtel (all settings of Goethe's or her husband's poetry).

The texts discussed in this book are denoted in bold.

c. 1123–39: Historia regum Britanniae, Geoffrey of Monmouth, England

c. 1155: Roman de Brut, Robert Wace, northern France

c. 1160s–80s: The Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes, northern France

c. 1200: Grail Trilogy in verse (including the Merlin), Robert de Boron, eastern France[?]

c. 1215–20: The Vulgate Cycle (including the Estoire de Merlin, the prose translation and continuation of Robert de Boron's Merlin), anonymous, France

c. 1215–35: Le roman de Tristan en prose, anonymous, France

c. 1235–40: La Suite du Merlin, anonymous, France

c. 1260–66: Li Livres dou Tresor, Brunetto Latini, France

c. 1270–74: Le Roman du roi Artus, Rustichello da Pisa, Pisa

c. 1279: Les Prophecies de Merlin, ‘Maistre Richart d'irlande’, Venice

c. 1280–1300: Il Novellino, anonymous, Florence

c. 1283–88: Cronica, Salimbene di Adam, Reggio Emilia

End of 13th century: Tristano Riccardiano, anonymous, Tuscany

1308–20: La Divina Commedia, Dante Alighieri, Florence

After 1320: Cronica delle cose d'italia dall'anno 1080 fino all'anno 1305, Paulino Pieri, Florence

1324–30: La Storia di Merlino, Paulino Pieri, Florence

Early 14th century: Tristano panciatichiano, anonymous, western Tuscany

Early 14th century: Tristano veneto, anonymous, Venice

Early 14th century: La Tavola Ritonda, anonymous, Tuscany

1452: Lo libero dello savio Merlin profecta, Jachomo de Çuane Barbier, Venice

1480: La Historia di Merlino, divisa in VI libri, printed by Luca Venitiano, Venice

1483: Orlando innamorato, Matteo Maria Boiardo, Ferrara

1498: Histoire de la vie, miracles, enchentements et prophecies de Merlin, printed by Antoine Vérard, Paris

1516: Orlando furioso, Ludovico Ariosto, Ferrara

This volume has its genesis in a two-day conference held at Durham University in January 2012, which was organised by the late Richard Britnell under the auspices of Durham's Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The aim was to explore shared elements in the development of socio-political institutions, landscape and agriculture on either side of the Anglo-Scottish Border before the onset of the Wars of Independence in 1296. As Richard Britnell expressed it, his desire was to encourage ‘focused exchanges of knowledge between historians of Scotland and northern England concerning common or cognate features of the two regions’. To that end, he invited scholars specialising in particular fields to re-visit the primary evidence in the light of the latest scholarship, taking a comparative approach across ‘middle Britain’, the region bisected by the Anglo-Scottish Border. Before he fell ill, he had secured the agreement of speakers at the Durham conference to develop their papers with a view to publishing a volume of collected essays. The present editors took over responsibility for the volume after Richard Britnell's death in December 2013. Since then some changes have been made to its scope by commissioning additional chapters from Janet Burton on religious institutions and culture, David Ditchburn on towns and trade, and Philip Dixon and Chris Tabraham on fortifications, in order to ensure more comprehensive thematic coverage.

The book's development has also resulted in a shift of emphasis from similarities to similarities and differences. Although the ‘common foundations’ that underlie medieval middle Britain, be they institutional, environmental or otherwise, are carefully investigated in the pages that follow, there is also much discussion of how far and why northern England and southern Scotland developed differently from one another, not least in the context of the gradual emergence of two independent medieval ‘nation-states’ and their distinctive trajectories. Common foundations were a pervasive and striking aspect of middle Britain, but they tell only one part of its story in the formative centuries of the central Middle Ages.

We would like to acknowledge Richard Britnell's initiative in organising the conference from which this volume stems, and to express our appreciation to our fellow contributors for their support and patience. We are likewise much obliged to the Department of History, Lancaster University, and to the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Durham University, for funding the production of the maps by Cath D'Alton.

On 8 September 1890, in the rural town of Utuado in Puerto Rico, for reasons that were never ascertained, 28-year-old Esteban Serrano Borrero and his 40-year-old neighbour Faustino Santos Nazario, both jíbaros or mountain peasants, came to blows. Santos was later found dead, and Serrano arrested and brought to trial. This mundane occurrence in the far reaches of what remained of the Spanish Empire would become an early test of the clash between modern European notions of justice and lingering traditions of colonial authoritarianism. At that time, it should be remembered, Puerto Rico was still a Spanish territory – one that had long been fighting to transcend the status of colony and attain that of full-blown province. After much delay in extending constitutional rights to the Antilles, the Spanish Penal Code of 1870 was modified for use in Puerto Rico and Cuba in 1879; the 1882 Ley de Enjuiciamiento Criminal was also applied in 1888. It was thus that Serrano Borrero's case came before the newly created Audiencia Criminal de Mayagüez.

According to details that emerged during the proceedings, a handful of people arrived after the fight had started and saw Serrano strike Santos with his hands and knees, eventually knocking him down despite his greater size. Santos's wife and a couple of others separated the two men, and the woman later testified that she took her husband

Later that evening, Serrano Borrero approached Andújar's house on friendly terms, looking for one of the latter's sons.