I'm sorry, but this has been going through my head forever now (as a joke, so please don't take offence): Females. They're far to emotional. 😉 Really, though, remember the men and women in Emond's Field advising Perrin and Faile on how to handle each other right before the two got married? Perrin and Faile were being advised on how to handle different species of wild animals.

No zombies playing zydeco music. The music can be beautiful, but you've got to be an excellent musician to make things work. Do you really think a zombie could be a musician?

Winter. Keep the doors shut!

University stuff. Once I get done with this dissertation, among the different things I'm planning on doing to celebrate the victory is one night I'll build a big bonfire. And then papers will BURN.

Ouch! Well, I don't like poltergeists. Always throwing things around and getting in my way. So, NO POLTERGEISTS.

Kids. I don't particularly like goats anyway, but baby goats must be crazy!

Thanks! I'm happy to answer questions.

Invoices. I hate paying bills.

Thanks! I attached it above, although I'll be happy to email it to you as well. Expect an email from haycraftd@gmail.com. I'm using British English. It was funny, actually--on one paper my first year here, spellcheck was still checking for American English, not British, and on one paper marked up, the professor (who's now my supervisor), in correcting it, would write in "u"s whenever they were needed.

Thanks so much! I suppose I should ask for three specific things--things which can easily get lost once you've studied things for too long. 1. Do I make sense. --I make complete sense to myself and everyone else who's been in on my dissertation "gets" it. But they've been in on it for a WHILE. I'm told every rough draft is a bit of a mess once it's done and when you're trying to make sense of it, but I don't want to be in as bad a shape as Mat was when he had to bring Bryne, Agelmar, and Bashere's campaigns together. I'll begin writing the final draft to prepare for the Last Battle in June or July. 2. Does everything fit together. --You know how things can get jumbled in the brain. I want this clear and to the point, like a good streak of balefire. 3. Have I convinced you. --.I've convinced quite a few people, but that's far easier to do in a conversation than in an essay. I'd also welcome plenty of other feedback if you have it and I'd be happy to answer questions, but those are the main things.

Thanks so much! We scholars tend to get so familiar with our subjects that we forget no one else knows them. Soo, get ready to swallow a huge dollop of information before you start. The Vikings arrived in AD 793 to raid England and Ireland from what would become Denmark and the south of Norway. I'm discussing what they did to the Frankish empire in Continental Europe forty-one years later. The Franks were first ruled by the Merovingian family for two centuries, but the Carolingian family took control in 750-751. The Carolingians under Charlemagne started conquering Europe from around 769 until Charlemagne died in AD 814. His son Louis the Pious continued, managing to subordinate many Slavic tribes, but neither Charlemagne nor the Pious was ever quite able to catch the Danes. So, in 834, the Frankish empire was ruled by the Pious and he had three adult sons--Lothar, Pippin, and Louis the German. Now--the three annals I discuss in here--I've termed them the RFA (the Royal Frankish Annals), the AB (the Annals of St Bertin), and AX (the Annals of Xanten), were all written at the time of the events they describe. The RFA ended in 829, but the AB took up it's specific story in AD 830. The AX had been going since 790. Now, science--we know the state of the climate during spring/summer those years, oddly enough, because of tree ring science. The tree ring data I chose to use for temperature, that I've termed the OTC (Oak Tree Chronology), comes from oak trees up and down the Rhine. As far as wet/dry goes, scientists put a TREMENDOUS effort to create the OWDA (Old World Drought Atlas) in 2015, using more than 100 tree ring chronologies, and made maps of how wet/dry the summer was--it's absolutely marvellous. I've put maps in there. Unlike a lot of this stuff, anyone can access the data in the OWDA from the web: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo-search/study/19419 FINALLY, one more term you might find odd is that I mention "Correlative Cases" and then call this a "Corroborative Case." I made three categories of "cases" where I thought the natural disaster seemed a glaring coincidence. "Statistical Anomalies" are those where the timelines are far too close my liking, "Correlative Cases" are incidences where both timelines and locations seem too close for comfort, and "Corroborative Cases" are those where timelines seem to fit too well, locations seem to coincide far too much, AND I have enough political data behind it that I think I can model the whole thing. Soo--yeah. I hope you enjoy it! HAYCRAFT March 2019 AD 834 (1).pdf

Anyone up for reading my dissertation's first case study (just reaching 28 pages), where I examine the first Viking attack in Europe, and how I think a natural disaster played into it? I've had a few people read it, but those who have know many of the facts behind it. I've been discussing it incessantly with friends for at least two years by now.

Ferrets. I have experiences with them and they are SMELLY.

Didn't the Heroes of the Horn have many names? (I think it was in the GH, not the MoL). I seem to remember that some of the names were VERY familiar ones, like Artur had also been named Arthur. When I first read it, I thought RJ wasn't alluding to the fact that the Heroes had had many previous lives, but that there were many worlds out there and one of them was ours. So if one had fought the Shadow with ballistic missiles, that makes sense.

I'm not a fervent Christian and don't attend a church, but @LilyElizabeth, Patrick did not. He was on his mission in the mid-fifth century and made some converts in the eastern kingdoms of Ireland, but the kingdoms didn't fully convert until the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh. Christianity wasn't a malevolent religion in spreading, changed quite a lot, and was still "new" in the ninth century. Charlemagne tried to do things the hard way in Saxony in the late eighth century and was condemned by major Christian leaders for trying that. We worship the old gods still daily, with Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. In Ireland, just about every myth of a "Hero" used to be a myth of a Celtic god and every leprechaun and fairy originates from a pagan myth. They just changed honorifics. Since Christianity was such an cruel evil religion that put a boot on European pagans and demanded submission, isn't it surprising that Halloween and Christmas are filled with pagan rituals? Isn't it surprising how many superstitions survive--we knock on wood, we still throw coins in ponds, we still like Arthur and the Lady of the Lake, and there are so many fairy tales? Pagan myths, every single one. Weird, Isn't it? The way Christianity "won" was by Christian missionaries examining every pagan ritual and urging the incredibly helpless pagans to replace the old god or goddess they were celebrating with Jesus, Mary, Joseph, or a saint. People are throwing coins in ponds to honor the water spirit there, so build a church beside the pond and urge people to place the coin there instead. The Early Middle Ages weren't when witches were burned at the stake, you had to get to the late Middle Ages and the enlightened Renaissance for that kind of thing to happen regularly. As far as St Patrick's day goes, I'm not planning on doing anything. Work, work, work!