Post by snowfyre on Mar 24, 2016 20:50:38 GMT
A few of my old Heresy posts re: Craster's Keepers and Red Herring, etc.:
Interestingly, CRASTER is the name of a fishing village in England. Noteworthy for at least two things that caught my eye (among others):
(1) a prominent geological feature of the area are its basaltic cliffs (basalt = an igneous/volcanic rock, as are obsidian and granite)
(2) Craster is famous for its kippers. Mostly this means fish, but the Old English root was *kippian*, which means "to spawn." But of course, kippers can be found outside of Craster. On the Isle of Man, for instance, where the local phrase for kipper was *skeddan jiarg* - which actually translates to "red herring."
So, perhaps if you're interested in red herrings, Craster's Spawn is not a bad place to start.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craster_kipper
Interestingly, CRASTER is the name of a fishing village in England. Noteworthy for at least two things that caught my eye (among others):
(1) a prominent geological feature of the area are its basaltic cliffs (basalt = an igneous/volcanic rock, as are obsidian and granite)
(2) Craster is famous for its kippers. Mostly this means fish, but the Old English root was *kippian*, which means "to spawn." But of course, kippers can be found outside of Craster. On the Isle of Man, for instance, where the local phrase for kipper was *skeddan jiarg* - which actually translates to "red herring."
So, perhaps if you're interested in red herrings, Craster's Spawn is not a bad place to start.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craster_kipper
Excerpted from: Villages of Britain: The Five Hundred Villages that Made the Countryside
by Clive Aslet (2010)
CRASTER
NORTHUMBERLAND
“The 'perfit golden blandishment' of the kipper.”
“Why cannot a kipper be a meal or refreshment?” The person asking this pertinent question was Lord Goddard, in the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court. The year was 1956, and a shopkeeper had been caught selling a kipper on a Sunday, allegedly in violation of the Shops Act. Meals or refreshments could, however, be sold under the Act. So the question exercising some of the greatest legal minds of the day was: could a kipper be eaten without cooking? Hotel guests, for example, might be surprised if they were to be served a raw kipper, but, as Lord Donovan opined, some people did eat their kippers raw.
No doubt the case was followed closely in Craster, which has always been famous for kippers. The idea that they are a specifically northern delicacy is probably wrong. Smoking is an ancient method of preserving food. There are also some very old references to kippers, although the etymology is confusing: a kip is a bony extension of the lip that male salmon grow before mating, in order to do battle with rivals; as a result, male salmon used to be called kippers.
However, we know that herring were smoked in Elizabethan England, because Thomas Nashe described the process, and celebrated the joyous result, in Lenten Stuffe (1599). By a transformation comparable to alchemy, the tin-coloured herring came to exhibit 'a perfit golden blandishment', such as noblemen might adopt for their armour. The kipper — or, as Nashe called it, the red herring — was an outstanding piece of 'English merchandise', a national achievement whose virtues were specially to be appreciated during Lent. In the nineteenth century, the removal of the salt tax in 1825, coupled with railway transport, ensured something of a Victorian kipper boom.
At Craster, L. Robson and Sons have been smoking kippers for four generations. Beside the harbour, the blackened stone smokehouses, with louvres in the roof, add a distinctive tang to the ozone. The poor herring girls who used to split the fish are now spared the task by a machine. After soaking in brine, the herring are hung on tenterhooks and slid into the smokehouses, where whitewood shavings and oak sawdust smoulder away for as much as sixteen hours. The plumper the herring, the better the kipper: after decades during which the connoisseur's enjoyment has been marred by small fish and a surfeit of hones, we must hope that the shoals will recover and that once more we can have kippers that flop off the side of the breakfast plate.
by Clive Aslet (2010)
CRASTER
NORTHUMBERLAND
“The 'perfit golden blandishment' of the kipper.”
“Why cannot a kipper be a meal or refreshment?” The person asking this pertinent question was Lord Goddard, in the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court. The year was 1956, and a shopkeeper had been caught selling a kipper on a Sunday, allegedly in violation of the Shops Act. Meals or refreshments could, however, be sold under the Act. So the question exercising some of the greatest legal minds of the day was: could a kipper be eaten without cooking? Hotel guests, for example, might be surprised if they were to be served a raw kipper, but, as Lord Donovan opined, some people did eat their kippers raw.
No doubt the case was followed closely in Craster, which has always been famous for kippers. The idea that they are a specifically northern delicacy is probably wrong. Smoking is an ancient method of preserving food. There are also some very old references to kippers, although the etymology is confusing: a kip is a bony extension of the lip that male salmon grow before mating, in order to do battle with rivals; as a result, male salmon used to be called kippers.
However, we know that herring were smoked in Elizabethan England, because Thomas Nashe described the process, and celebrated the joyous result, in Lenten Stuffe (1599). By a transformation comparable to alchemy, the tin-coloured herring came to exhibit 'a perfit golden blandishment', such as noblemen might adopt for their armour. The kipper — or, as Nashe called it, the red herring — was an outstanding piece of 'English merchandise', a national achievement whose virtues were specially to be appreciated during Lent. In the nineteenth century, the removal of the salt tax in 1825, coupled with railway transport, ensured something of a Victorian kipper boom.
At Craster, L. Robson and Sons have been smoking kippers for four generations. Beside the harbour, the blackened stone smokehouses, with louvres in the roof, add a distinctive tang to the ozone. The poor herring girls who used to split the fish are now spared the task by a machine. After soaking in brine, the herring are hung on tenterhooks and slid into the smokehouses, where whitewood shavings and oak sawdust smoulder away for as much as sixteen hours. The plumper the herring, the better the kipper: after decades during which the connoisseur's enjoyment has been marred by small fish and a surfeit of hones, we must hope that the shoals will recover and that once more we can have kippers that flop off the side of the breakfast plate.
Let's do some creative free-association for a moment...
Thanks for putting these posts up 
I've an idea about Craster sending his sons away into the woods; giving them to the trees. Reminds me of a wolf pack were the Alpha male keeps his pack free of other male contenders. The younger males must go off on their own to make a new pack or die. Heh. 
