Cuirboilli Cuirass

[Stephen L]

Anybody know if it's intentional that the armour table (p215 core rules) doesn't have a Cuirboilli Cuirass?  

Apologies if this has been done to death, my searches on Forum posts seem sporadically successful at best.

[rsanford]

I am not at my computer but I am 99% certain that Warlords of Alexandria (available on BRP Central free) has what you need!

[Akhôrahil]

The statline for linothorax would work for courbouillie as well? Very similar concept.

[Jape_Vicho]

Seems like neither chest, chest & abdomen or abdomen have cuirboilli, I'm guessing it's because boiled leather is completely rigid and if worn in a part of the body that is suposed to move (unlike the greaves and vambraces) it would be very uncomfortable and eventually break, therefore for the chest and abdomen it is replaced by 2 options: heavy leather is cheap and easy to make, and as it's not boiled it's not rigid, but it protects less; OTOH, light scale (I interpret it as leather scale) is made of sclaes of boiled leather, is heavier and more difficult to produce, and as the scales are tied together, they allow for movement, and they protect far more.

Edited September 10, 2020 by Jape_Vicho

[d(sqrt(-1))]

I happened to watch this the other day re cuir boilli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO_nG6OpCKg

[Runeblogger]

I used to think the leather lorica musculata you see in every film with Romans was made of cuir builli, but these people think not:

https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/thread-22624.html

Still, it might be that leather cuirasses have not endured the passing of millenia, and that's why there are no evidences of it? 🤔

[Loïc]

... french question: is it "cuirboilli", "cuir builli" or "courbouillie"' (the three are written above)?

As a French, I'm discovering this word, and I'm quite amazed. In french it is "cuir bouilli", meaning "boiled leather". Why don't you just say "boiled leather"? It is not a criticism, juste a question. I know there were no Antiquity and Middle Age in the US, but I think the translation is easier here. So why? Are Antiquity/Middle Age specialists keeping the french word? (Here in archaeology we are keeping a few german words for the Neolithic period).

[French Desperate WindChild]

2 hours ago, Loïc said:

... french question: is it "cuirboilli", "cuir builli" or "courbouillie"' (the three are written above)?

As a French, I'm discovering this word, and I'm quite amazed. In french it is "cuir bouilli", meaning "boiled leather". Why don't you just say "boiled leather"? It is not a criticism, juste a question. I know there were no Antiquity and Middle Age in the US, but I think the translation is easier here. So why? Are Antiquity/Middle Age specialists keeping the french word? (Here in archaeology we are keeping a few german words for the Neolithic period).

I would say English language is the merge (or just the union ?) between Saxon and Norman imported from France

maybe the technology was imported at this time or after then the word followed

or just only nobles could offer it and as they were Norman after their victory the Norman word won

 

[Akhôrahil]

We also say ”mail” (from ”maille”) and not ”ring armor”. It’s just how language works - technical terms get imported.

[Stephen L]

5 hours ago, Loïc said:

Why don't you just say "boiled leather"?

We've a lot of words from French, particularly from the warrior elite after the Norman Conquest.  So, when it's on a plate its called beef, whilst the peasant will be herding a cow... Not to say we won't have mangled the pronunciation or indeed in this case spelling, but in our defence spelling had yet to be invented back then!

14 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

chest, chest & abdomen or abdomen have cuirboilli

Yet the Glorantha Bestiary, P32, has Duck typical armour as:

   Armor: Cuirboilli body (3 pts.), composite helm (3 pts.), and leather limbs (2 pts.).

15 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

The statline for linothorax would work for courbouillie as well? Very similar concept.

Indeed, it's not difficult to make it up, but I wondered if it's been omitted for a reason, or just an oversight.  Perhaps this should go in the rules clarification thread.

Edited September 11, 2020 by Stephen L
Add missing sentence - originally posted prematurely

[Loïc]

Thanks all! Really... Didn't realize the importance of the Norman Conquest in this matter.

[Sir_Godspeed]

7 hours ago, Loïc said:

... french question: is it "cuirboilli", "cuir builli" or "courbouillie"' (the three are written above)?

As a French, I'm discovering this word, and I'm quite amazed. In french it is "cuir bouilli", meaning "boiled leather". Why don't you just say "boiled leather"? It is not a criticism, juste a question. I know there were no Antiquity and Middle Age in the US, but I think the translation is easier here. So why? Are Antiquity/Middle Age specialists keeping the french word? (Here in archaeology we are keeping a few german words for the Neolithic period).

English, especially academic English, has a fetish for French.

[Stephen L]

24 minutes ago, Loïc said:

Didn't realize the importance of the Norman Conquest in this matter.

Off topic but perhaps interesting...

French was the mother tongue of every English king from William the Conqueror (1066–1087) until Henry IV (1399–1413):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Norman_language

 

[Brootse]

19 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

Seems like neither chest, chest & abdomen or abdomen have cuirboilli, I'm guessing it's because boiled leather is completely rigid and if worn in a part of the body that is suposed to move (unlike the greaves and vambraces) it would be very uncomfortable and eventually break, therefore for the chest and abdomen it is replaced by 2 options: heavy leather is cheap and easy to make, and as it's not boiled it's not rigid, but it protects less; OTOH, light scale (I interpret it as leather scale) is made of sclaes of boiled leather, is heavier and more difficult to produce, and as the scales are tied together, they allow for movement, and they protect far more.

The word for torso armor, cuirass, literally comes from the word for cuirboulli. Just use the stats and cost for linothorax.

[soltakss]

13 hours ago, Loïc said:

... french question: is it "cuirboilli", "cuir builli" or "courbouillie"' (the three are written above)?

A lot of English words are French, or based on French.

I had not heard of cuirboilli until I played RuneQuest and had to look it up.

Cuirboillin just means boiled leather, but refers to armour made from the boiling and hardening of leather.

8 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

We also say ”mail” (from ”maille”) and not ”ring armor”. It’s just how language works - technical terms get imported.

Ringmail. Problem solved.

Now, i am waiting for everyone to tell me that ringmail isn't really a thing.

6 hours ago, Loïc said:

Didn't realize the importance of the Norman Conquest in this matter.

French, or rather Normal french, was massively important in England for centuries afterwards.

The King of England held more lands in France than the King of France, for a while.  

3 hours ago, Brootse said:

The word for torso armor, cuirass, literally comes from the word for cuirboulli.

So, if cuir is leather, does cuirass mean leather ass? Must be all that riding.

[Akhôrahil]

20 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Ringmail. Problem solved.

Now, i am waiting for everyone to tell me that ringmail isn't really a thing.

You're half right - it's a thing (at least theoretically), but it's a different thing. Quoting Wikipedia: "Ring armour (ring mail) is an assumed type of personal armour constructed as series of metallic rings sewn to a fabric or leather foundation."
 

[soltakss]

3 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

You're half right

Well, that's better than normal

[Thaz]

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.":-  James Davis Nicoll (A shorter form is often wrongly attributed to Pratchett) 

 

[g33k]

I have occasionally wondered if the list of languages -- extant languanges -- from which we have "loan"words might just be longer than the list of languages from which we do not have any loanwords...

 

[Sir_Godspeed]

8 hours ago, soltakss said:

Ringmail. Problem solved.

 

A puritan "Ænglisc" version could use "ringbyrn(i)e", I suppose. 

Speaking of (unattainable and probably unwanted*) linguistic purism, here's an introduction to atomic theory written without Romance-language loanwords. It's interesting and amusing if nothing else. (Note that loanwords from other Germanic languages are still used though).
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/complexity/people/students/dtc/students2011/maitland/fun/

(*Although, speaking as non-native speaker of English, there are times when I wish academics would spell things out in plain English instead of pulling out a Latin or French proverb in a long-winded musing about the nature of something or other, without any explanation or translation in the footnotes.)

[French Desperate WindChild]

impossible n'est pas français but i m pretty sure there is no "pure" language in a "not closed" society.

Maybe some very isolated tribe in deep forest would be able to, or people on an island  who kill everyone on sight (like north sentinel)

[Loïc]

12 hours ago, soltakss said:

The King of England held more lands in France than the King of France, for a while. 

Agree. I'm from Bordeaux, where Alienor is a heroin (whereas the rest of France considers her like a traitress and a garce), and Bordeaux' coat of arms is still english (from below to above: the Gironde river with a crescent of moon (Bordeaux' nickname is "harbor of the moon"), the city's walls and a golden leopard on a red background - a blue ribbon with fleurs-de-lis was added later at the top).

24 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

impossible n'est pas français but i m pretty sure there is no "pure" language in a "not closed" society.

Maybe some very isolated tribe in deep forest would be able to, or people on an island  who kill everyone on sight (like north sentinel)

Much agree. I would add that I don't think a totally "closed" society does exist. Even the remote / protected islander tribes now isolated (and access to their isles is forbidden) certainly weren't in the past. So their actual language has certainly several sources / corruptions (on a linguistic meaning, not pejorative).

I'm sorry I provoked this digression out of the initial topic. In the heat of a good conversation, you know... 😉

[Brootse]

15 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

You're half right - it's a thing (at least theoretically), but it's a different thing. Quoting Wikipedia: "Ring armour (ring mail) is an assumed type of personal armour constructed as series of metallic rings sewn to a fabric or leather foundation."
 

18th century European historians started to use the word mail incorrectly to refer to any armor. And "ring mail" was invented by a Victorian antiquarian who thought that art pieces like eg. the Bayeaux tapestry where the warriors had large rings on them were accurate representations of real armors, and not just the artist's way of depicting mail (ie. "chain mail").

[Akhôrahil]

54 minutes ago, Brootse said:

18th century European historians started to use the word mail incorrectly to refer to any armor. And "ring mail" was invented by a Victorian antiquarian who thought that art pieces like eg. the Bayeaux tapestry where the warriors had large rings on them were accurate representations of real armors, and not just the artist's way of depicting mail (ie. "chain mail")

The point was that if you start calling (chain) mail ”ring armour”, this is what people will believe you’re talking about.

Edited September 12, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Kloster]

9 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

impossible n'est pas français but i m pretty sure there is no "pure" language in a "not closed" society.

Maybe some very isolated tribe in deep forest would be able to, or people on an island  who kill everyone on sight (like north sentinel)

Considering the number of arabic (zero, algèbre,...), german (bretzel, diktat,...), germanic (meaning frankish) (France,...), english (paquebot,...), dutch (matelot, dune,...), czech (robot,...), nordic (a lot of maritime words, like hauban), spanish (azur, ...), italian (casino, pantalon,...), greek (lot of scientific words, like philosophie or anthropologie), russian (bistrot,...) and I don't know how many other languages the french language contains (in addition to the vulgate and classical latin basis and the modern globbish addons), I can ensure you french is not 'pure', as is any evolving language.