How Many Penises Are There On The Bayeux Tapestry?

The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most famous works of medieval art in the world, but what do we actually know about it? Who made it? Where? Why? And are those actually human genitals? Kate is joined by Dave Musgrove, content director at History Extra and co-author of 'The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry: Unraveling the Norman Conquest'. This episode was edited by Hannah Feodorov. Produced by Sophie Gee. The senior producer was Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. All music from Epidemic Sounds. Betwixt the Sheets: History of Sex, Scandal & Society is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:35Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. Welcome back once again to Betwixt the Sheets. Make yourself comfy, a cup of tea is on the way. But before we can get too snuggly, I do have to tell you, and I will keep telling you until the lawyers tell us that we don't have to do it anymore. This is an adult podcast, a book about adults, to other adults, about adulty things and adulty way, covering all adult subjects that you should be an adult to. Right, on with the show.

• 1:02Kate Lister?

  Welcome to the decades after 1066, when people get their news via tapestry. And what a tapestry we are looking at here. What are the stories unfolding before us? A battle is brewing. Men in chainmail and tunics march, ride horses and cross the Channel in timber ships. Their spears are held high and their shields are at their shoulders. The armies are ready to fight, and so it seems, are their horses, whose members are making quite a show of themselves. And they aren't the only ones. All over the place, men are exposing themselves willy-nilly. Well, it's often not willy-nilly. In fact, if it was willy-nilly, there wouldn't be a story here at all. It is very much willy-willing.

• 1:47Kate Lister?

  And that doesn't seem to be a good idea with all these shiny blades and arrows knocking about.

• 2:15Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal and society with me, Kate Lister. The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most famous works of medieval art in the world. It might be the most famous. But what does it actually show? Who made it? And a question that doesn't get asked nearly enough, why are there so many penises on it? Well, today I'm joined by Dave Musgrove, one of the authors of The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry Unraveling the Norman Conquest. So if anyone can help us understand why there are so many knobs on that tapestry, it's Dave. Embroidery needles at the ready, everybody. Let's do it.

• 2:59Kate Lister?

  Well, hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Dave Musgrove. How are you doing?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  I'm very well, thanks, Kate. How are you?

• 3:07Kate Lister?

  Well, I'm thrilled to be talking to you because dicks on the Bayeux Tapestry is one of my all-time favourite subjects, quite frankly. And how fabulous that the Bayeux Tapestry is now here and we can go and see the dicks for ourselves.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  It's an exciting time, isn't it? Big cultural moment, massive interest in this story. And yeah, you're right. You know, the underlying penis story is always, always gets people going.

• 3:30Kate Lister?

  That's what the people want to know, isn't it? Once we've got past the basic historic facts of who, why, when, it's all about the penises. That's not true. It's not true. I bet the people listening to this not even once occurred to them that there are penises on the Bayeux Tapestry. But before we get to that, you are somebody who has quite a lot of interest in the Bayeux Tapestry. You've written books about this and everything. Why, Dave? What's your origin story with this? Was it the penises?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  I've written a book. I wasn't initially interested in the penises.

• 4:03Kate Lister?

  That wasn't your gateway?

• 4:03Speaker 01

  No. But, no, so I work on History Extra magazine, it used to be Beebs History magazine, I worked on that for years. And like in 2008, I went to a conference at the British Museum all about the Bayeux Tapestry, because I was writing an article about it, met all the, all the great Bayeux Tapestry academics, and they all seemed like a lovely bunch. And I thought, well, this seems like a good topic. And I, and I wrote an article up about the Englishness of the Bayeux Tapestry, which is kind of one of the big things, the big themes of the, of the loan these days, all this chat about it coming home. I sort of explored that with these, the experts, thinking about how likely it was to have been made in England. Put that in the magazine and then it went onto the internet. And then obviously, whenever there was a, a Bayeux Tapestry story came up, people Googled and got my name. And so I was asked to comment on it.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  So, um, so when the story broke in 2018 of it being loaned to the UK, I got a call at 6am from Radio 4 saying, have you heard the news? And I said, what news? And they said, the Bayeux Tapestry are coming out. I said, wow, cool. And they said, can you come and talk about it like imminently? And I said, yeah, okay. And then I thought, oh, well, that's interesting. Uh, maybe I'd better, uh, crack on and write a book. So from there, I jumped straight into it. And, and, and I co-wrote a book with a fellow called Michael Lewis, who is the curator of the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition. So, uh, the guy who really knows what he's talking about. So that was good fun.

• 5:18Kate Lister?

  I love that. So like when everybody this summer has been singing, it's coming home, it's coming home, that's, that's had a completely different meaning for you guys.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  I mean, it's been, it's been a really big part of the narrative about the loan story. I just think people have, uh, have used that and it has allowed it to sort of hinge into that World Cup story and, uh, and sort of, you know, it, the, the two things did align. It was interesting, actually, the, the day the tickets went on sale, which was the first of July, it was an, an England World Cup game, England were playing DR Congo. So I jumped on the tickets, you know, the ticket selling site at two o'clock in the afternoon. They'd already been on sale for like, since 10am. And I was 76,000th in the queue or something like that. I then went and watched DR Congo versus England. And so I missed the moment when, when I could have bought the tickets because I was watching the England football game.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  It is really interesting how much enthusiasm there is for this, this loan. I do think it's going to be a really, really significant cultural moment. It's going to really sort of supercharge interest in history, um, and particularly in the early medieval period and, and in the story of the Norman conquest. And, and the, and the British Museum, to their credit, are doing a lot of outreach work, trying to, you know, get people involved around the country. So it won't just be sort of the story of, of central London. I think there'll be lots of stuff going on around it as well, I hope, anyway.

• 6:39Kate Lister?

  So there might be, I don't think there'll be anyone listening to the podcast who doesn't know what it is, but let's just imagine that there is. I mean, there might be, we have people listening all around the world. I know we've got at least one listener in the Democratic Republic of Congo, because I've seen the data. So to that person, they might not know what the Bayeux Tapestry is. Can we explain what it is? What, what's the big deal about it?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  I mean, we should probably apologise to DR Congo for their defeat in the World Cup then, if you've got one, one listener. What is it? Okay. So it's, uh, okay. First things first, the thing we always need to say when we're talking about the tapestry is it's an embroidery, not a tapestry, because people who are real experts and enthusiasts for textiles get quite agitated about that.

• 7:18Kate Lister?

  Oh, do they?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  So a tapestry is where it's kind of, the design is woven into the fabric on, on the loom, whereas an embroidery is it's kind of stitched onto a backing cloth. So this, this is actually an embroidery, because you've got nine bleached linen sheets and then the, uh, the, the design has been stitched on it with dyed woolen threads. So that makes it an embroidery rather than a tapestry.

• 7:39Kate Lister?

  That's a fun thing to squirrel away, to, to remember at dinner parties or to annoy fashion historians, I think.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you try that? So what is it? So it's almost 70 metres long, 68.3 metres long, I think, and about half a metre high. So it's pretty narrow, actually. If, if, you know, when you're, when your listeners go and have a look at it at the British Museum, you'll see it, it is a monumentally long thing and it's going to stretch out all across the, the room in the British Museum. But actually, it's, uh, it's height is, is, is fairly modest. So you do need to get up reasonably close to be able to make out what's going on. So it's a monumental embroidery and it tells the story of this really famous event in English and latterly, British history, the Norman conquest of 1066. And it tells it in kind of, uh, graphic novel format. So you've got several elements to the makeup of the tapestry. You've got the central register or frieze, which is where the kind of the cartoon action

• 8:30Speaker 01

  happens, that goes from left to right with some flashbacks. And then above and below there are borders in which other stuff happens, which may or may not relate to what is going on in the, in the main narrative. And that's kind of where some of the stuff that we might talk about in this podcast occurs. So the story is told in this central theme and there are very, very terse Latin captions that accompany the images. And from my mind, they seem to be deliberately evasive. They don't really tell you very much about what's going on. So you, it kind of leaves a lot of room for interpretation. You're looking at it and it just says, here is King Edward. It doesn't tell us what he's doing or why he's there. So you're required to think about what it's showing.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  And the thing that most people know about it is it shows the Battle of Hastings, this really monumental battle between England's King Harold II, Harold Godwinson, and the invading forces of Duke William of Normandy. And, and then there's this really sort of cataclysmic moment when Harold dies and the Latin text goes, Harold Rex interfexus est, Harold King is dead. And it looks as if he's getting an arrow in the eye, though that is kind of a, a bit of a moot point. There's a, there's a debate around what, what you actually see in the tapestry. But that is actually only the last third of what you see in the tapestry, the, the Battle of Hastings, which is, you know, horses charging, Anglo Saxons fighting, arrows going everywhere. The first two thirds is set up and sort of the political story that brings us to that

• 9:57Speaker 01

  point. And it's probably sort of 1064, 1065, doesn't say what date specifically, but kind of like, it, it's important to note that, you know, you think, some people, I think, just imagine it's just battle. It's not, that's only the last third of it.

• 10:11Kate Lister?

  Well, see, we're busting myths already. So it's not a tapestry. I thought, I knew it was really long. I thought it was massive. I thought it was like a mural type of thing, but it's not. It's, it's, it's long and thin, which can be fine.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  All right, Kate.

• 10:25Kate Lister?

  Sorry.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Is this the level? Is this where we're at?

• 10:30Kate Lister?

  Child, right. It's long and it's thin. It's not huge. And it doesn't show just the battle. It's got like all of the, the lead into that as well.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:40Kate Lister?

  Who made it? And when was it made?

• 10:43Speaker 01

  So all these things are very much open to debate. We don't really know the answer to, to anything very much about the tapestry. The, the one sort of deliberate thing we can say with any accuracy is that in 1476, it was in Baye Cathedral. We know it was held in the cathedral in Baye in Normandy, and it's been there basically ever since by a couple of incidents involving Napoleon and some Nazis. So at that point, it was in Baye Cathedral. And they say it was hung around the nave on like a feast day in July and then for eight days afterwards. So it was kind of displayed and then it was put back in a chest. So that's kind of the first temporal moment when we can actually speak.

• 11:23Kate Lister?

  Made in Bayeux?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Probably not. Most, most.

• 11:26Kate Lister?

  Bloody hell.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Man alive.

• 11:28Kate Lister?

  Not a tapestry, not made in Bayeux.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Most, most people who've studied it think it was probably made in England shortly after 1066 and probably made somewhere near Canterbury, though a few people talk about Barking as well.

• 11:42Kate Lister?

  Should be the Barking embroidery.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  The Barking or the Canterbury embroidery, take your pick.

• 11:46Kate Lister?

  Canterbury, Canterbury embroidery. Right, everyone make notes, please.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Though, though I, I should be clear, I prefer Baye Tapestry just because I think that's how we know it and how we describe it.

• 11:55Kate Lister?

  It does have a nice ring to it.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  It's, it's got, it's got a bit more kudos to it, hasn't it? There's loads of reasons why people think it might have been made in Canterbury, but the kind of the, the clincher really is the fact that when you look at the, actually both the style and the substance of the tapestry, it's very similar. It looks to be copying directly from Old English illuminated manuscripts, which we know were in monastic libraries in Canterbury in the 11th century. So whoever designed it had access or had seen those manuscripts and had basically directly copied from it. Given that, you know, people didn't have mobile phones and cameras and such like kind of that demands a certain proximity to that place. And then on top of that, there was a, you know, a tradition of Anglo Saxon embroidery sort of, and particularly women doing the embroidery.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  There was kind of Anglo Saxon women were noted as being good at embroidery. So kind of that aligned as well. So, so most people think probably made late 1060s, 1070s, 1080s in England, probably in southern England.

• 12:55Kate Lister?

  Close to the time period. The amount of times in historical research that you realise the text you're working with happened hundreds, sometimes thousands of years after the fact, but this is like in the aftermath.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Though, interestingly, because it's pulling off those Old English illuminated manuscripts, it actually includes elements which are quite similar to Old Testament scenes, because those Old English manuscripts are all, they're basically biblical stories. And because it's kind of directly pulling chunks from that, you're actually got scenes which aren't out of place in biblical stories. So on, on that sense, it is a bit of a remove. But yeah, most people think probably made pretty soon afterwards.

• 13:33Kate Lister?

  But we don't know who commissioned it or who owned it.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  We definitely don't know who owned it, but the most people, when they talk about the, the patron, the person who paid for it and had it made, it's a guy called Odo of Baye, who was the half brother of William the Conqueror. He was the bishop of Baye.

• 13:50Kate Lister?

  That would make sense.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And after the Norman conquest, he was made Earl of Kent. So he was in sort of in charge of the Canterbury region. So he had kind of the, the means to corral the resources. And it would have been substantial resources to sort of get this going. You need a lot of linen, so that means a lot of flax. You need a lot of sheep. You need the people involved. Like it's, you know, it's not an insubstantial task. So probably that guy.

• 14:10Kate Lister?

  That makes sense. Yeah, that probably would be him. But what would you use it for? Like 70 metres long? What, what are we doing with this? Is this like medieval bunting?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Medieval bunting? I don't think so. No, I don't, I don't think it's decorative. I think, I think it's got a very clear political aim. And I think that its political aim is essentially to legitimise the conquest of, of William.

• 14:35Kate Lister?

  And PR.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but essentially, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a thousand year old piece of PR and it's doing a good job because we still, we still refer to it and sort of think about it when we talk about the, the Norman conquest. So it's all about showing how he, his invasion was both rightful and mightful. And just a little bit on the setup. So basically it's a story of two halves. So the first half is about Harold, this guy Harold. So who, who was a really important man in Anglo Saxon England, who was basically second to the incumbent king in, in 1065, King Edward the Confessor, who notably had not produced a male heir. So when he dies at the start of 1066, there's a vacuum of power.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  So Harold in the first half is kind of him and his adventures, and he's portrayed as quite a good guy. He's portrayed in quite a positive light. He's sort of shown praying in a church, feasting with his men, so being a good lord. He's shown as actually quite a heroic guy in, in battle as well. And then sort of the crux of the piece, the, the tapestry, the way the, the story pivots is the oath scene, this sort of the sacred promise. And this is kind of in the middle and it's where Harold and William are together in Normandy. And basically he is making a sacred promise on holy relics in sight of Duke William. Doesn't say exactly the nature of that promise in the tapestry, but other sources tell us that basically he is agreeing to support William's claim to the throne of England

• 16:05Speaker 01

  in the event of Edward the Confessor dying, which does shortly happen. So from that point, Harold goes from hero to zero. He, he essentially purges himself because then he goes back to England. Edward dies and Harold, rather than following through on this apparent oath, has himself crowned king. And so that means that William is the, you know, then has right on his side and can, you know, correctly invade. In, in fact, it's almost his duty to invade, to deal with this terrible perjury that Harold has committed. So that's the basic story, just showing that William was the right guy. You know, it was, it was his duty to invade England in 1066.

• 16:49Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Dave and the Baye Tapestry after this short break.

• 16:54Kate Lister?

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• 17:38Kate Lister?

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• 18:21Kate Lister?

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• 18:27Speaker 02

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• 19:36Kate Lister?

  And would they have exhibited this? I'm just trying to think, like, what would you do with it? So you've got, and as you said, it's a huge amount of work and resources, like not only the materials that it's made with, but the labour that goes into it, which we'll talk about in a bit. I mean, it's an enormous piece of work, huge commission. You said that when it was in Beow in the 15th century, it was wrapped around the nave. Would you be kind of doing that thing with it?

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So one theory is it was made specifically for the consecration of that very church, Beow Cathedral, which happened in 1077. So shortly after it was made, it was quite, you know, there's an idea that maybe Odo had it made like to take over to Beow and show around the nave. I was there in Beow Cathedral the other day, actually. And though it's changed quite a lot, the nave is still has sort of 11th century elements to it. You go in there and you think, well, it would be really hard to see that in this context because it is so narrow. It would be quite difficult. There's another theory that it was kind of made to go around the sort of the square keeps of Norman castles. The Normans were, you know, very keen on building castles. That was their big thing.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  They build these square keeps. And there's a really interesting idea that kind of like it's designed to go around four walls and kind of if you stood in the middle, then you would be able to kind of look one way and another. And then you would make sort of comparisons between what you're seeing and you would get all sorts of interesting views. So that is quite interesting, actually, in the way that the tapestry is going to be displayed in the British Museum. And in fact, in the way that's going to be displayed when it goes back to Beow, which will happen in a year or so. It's going to be displayed in one long line. So you won't get that sense. If that was the original intended point, we won't get that sense. And I broadly think it was probably made for display in some sort of thing like that, possibly to be moved around. It notably doesn't have gold thread in it. So it's not as heavy as it might be

• 21:22Speaker 01

  if it had, if it employed that sort of stuff. So it could have been possible. It could have been designed to be just moved around and displayed to various people. There's a theory which I do quite like, which it might have been made very soon after 1066, before William had really stepped up his campaign against the rebels in Anglo-Saxon England. It's like, which happens is that the famous harrying of the North at the end of the 1060s. At a moment when he was trying to bring together the vanquished and the victors, so, you know, what was left of the Anglo-Saxon hierarchy, maybe they all went and kind of stood and looked at this tapestry and sort of just, you know, and just sort of chewed the fat a bit and reflected on this, what must have been a really visceral

• 22:07Speaker 01

  experience for all of them. And perhaps just for, you know, yeah, look, it was a bad fight. It was a tough thing. But like Harold, he's shown okay here. He's not, he's shown as a good guy. So even though I was defeated, I was, I wasn't, you know, fighting on a terrible side or anything like that. So it's kind of like they could have been shoulder to shoulder and just trying to, to sort of just bring together those, those two political factions. It's an idea. We don't know. Or it could simply have just been to aggrandize William and say, this was a good thing and didn't I do well?

• 22:34Kate Lister?

  It's like after a football match, when you get all the pundits together talking about what happened and what went wrong. It's that sort of a tapestry version of that.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Well, I prefer a rugby analogy, actually, which I was a bit hesitant to do because it does sound a bit speechless. But basically, rugby, you have 80 minutes, the lads are all like basically, you know, battering each other. And then they go to the bar afterwards and they have a pint of bitter and sing bawdy songs and all, and they're all mates again, right? That's rugby, isn't it? I don't play rugby, but that's, that's what I see. So it's kind of, so I do wonder if there's kind of a bit of that. I mean, obviously it's not the same. They have been killing each other in the terrible bloodshed and violence and stuff. But something a little bit like that might have been going on.

• 23:13Kate Lister?

  Whoever commissioned it, like they must have had a good understanding of what happened. They must have had to have been somebody there. When was it? And you said it was made by women, but we'll get, we'll get to them. So whoever's there with the women, you must have to have some kind of historian or somebody there with them to go, no, no, no, that happened. This happened, the other happened, to make sure they've got it right.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And it's quite interesting to sort of compare the story it tells to the documentary sources, and particularly the ones closest to it. And sometimes it aligns, sometimes it doesn't. But, you know, there are, there's, you know, there's, there's obvious similarities between, between the different things. I think probably the general consensus is there must have been one sort of overarching design mind saying, this is, this is the narrative we need to be telling here. And this is the, the basic gist of it. But then when you start kind of dropping in bits from these old English manuscripts, for example, there's a scene where William and Harold, they've gone on a campaign together in Brittany. So they're fighting against Duke Conan II of Brittany, and they're besieging one of his castles. And there's a chap who's, who's shown sort of escaping from the castle down a rope.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Now, that scene is basically a scene from the siege of Jericho in the Old Testament, where someone in the Old English manuscript, I think it's the Old English Textual, there's a bloke descending from a rope off the walls of Jericho. So it's kind of, that is, that has been transposed into this. But it's, but you know, whoever's designing it is using those elements to drop in. So it's kind of like how much that they, they have certain sort of strictures that they're trying to do. They're not just creating from nothing. They're saying, well, that's, that's quite good. Actually, that would be quite a good story. There is one really, really interesting idea, which has been developed by Professor Gail Owen Crocker, who is one of the, like the leading lights in tapestry study.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  She's just published a new book and she's, she has said that actually these, all these scenes from the Old Testament, when they're dropped in, they're chosen quite specifically because they're all scenes of like tyranny and injustice. So maybe whoever was doing it was doing it with quite a willful idea.

• 25:11Kate Lister?

  They must have been. I mean, it's not AI where you just, it's any old crap can turn up. I mean, you had to have spent like, how long does it even take to make it? Like they, everything must be so deliberate and carefully thought through.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  I mean, there's, there's an idea that they basically use templates. So they use templates, like specific sort of shapes that they, that they essentially modified to, to make all sorts of things. Yeah. So the kind of like quite a templated format. But yeah, it would have taken a long time to create it. So the, you'll, you'll have heard, I'm sure of the ladies of Leake who created the Reading replica in the 1880s. A group of Victorian ladies, 35 of them, basically made a facsimile in the 1880s. And it took them a year to make it. And they were working off, you know, an actual, a design. So they, they didn't have to do the design process. So, you know, it's that sort of thing. And then there's, there's a lady called Mia Hansen right now, who's, who's engaged in making her own replica on her own.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  And she's been going for 10 years.

• 26:08Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Wow. Okay.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  You should check her out. Yeah. She's, she's, she's big on Facebook and, and she's very, very interesting and interested in the tapestry. But yeah, so it would have been a substantive task for sure.

• 26:19Kate Lister?

  Let's talk penises then, because it's, it's one of my favourite penis history facts is that there is 93 slash possibly 94 penises on the Beow Tapestry. And there's actually quite a lot of argument about that. So who has the most penises? It's not humans, is it? It's horses. Most of them belong to horses.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  It is horses. Yeah. So, right. So this is, this is basically my finest hour in historical journalism is, so a few years ago, I organised a little conference about the Beow Tapestry, you know, after this one in 2008. I thought I'll do, I'll do one for our readers. And I invited a fellow called Professor George Garner along, and he did a talk. I wasn't entirely sure what he was going to talk about, but I saw he was, you know, an acknowledged expert. I thought he'd be good. So I got him in.

• 27:00Kate Lister?

  Always check, Dave. Don't just let academics do whatever they want.

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Well, I was younger then, but, but no, it was, it turned out it was really good. And, and he said, you know, at one point, I've, I've counted the penises in the Beow Tapestry. And I thought, well, hang on. I mean, you know, here's, here's some things. I'm in charge of this history magazine, so I'm always looking for good stories. This guy has just said this. I think we can do something here.

• 27:24Kate Lister?

  I think we can.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  So I said, Professor Garner, that was very interesting. Would you mind just writing that up? And he did so. And it's basically one of, one of our best articles we've ever done. Like, you know, everyone loves it. So that was great. But then a few years later, when I was sort of reading through some other stuff, I noticed that there was possibly some dissent in the number of penises and that somebody else thought that maybe there was one more. So that's all. I then spoke to that person, Dr Chris Monk, again, a lovely chap. And, and that sort of created a second wave of interest in the story. So it's, it is the one thing that excites the most interest in the tapestry, I would say. And it does allow for a way. And so, sorry. Yeah. So to answer your question, so most of the, of the penises are attached to horses.

• 28:09Speaker 01

  88 are equine. And there is a disparity in the size of the horse schlong, if I can use that phrase.

• 28:18Kate Lister?

  Some of them very dinky, some of them not.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  And it's quite easy to explain this, actually. So basically, William the Conqueror always has a well-hung horse. It's pretty transparent.

• 28:28Kate Lister?

  We don't need Freud, do we?

• 28:29Speaker 01

  He's the big guy. And sometimes Harold's horse, so his, his protagonist looks a little, you know, feminized, shall we say? So it's kind of, so it's trying to, to sort of defenestrate Harold a bit. I don't think it shows any particular commitment to equine anatomy on the part of the designer.

• 28:46Kate Lister?

  It's a gesture, isn't it? A horse penises might be quite hard to do via tapestry. Like you just, you know, there's like hands and feet are difficult to draw. You might just get a bit of a gesture.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:57Kate Lister?

  Right? So the horse penises are kind of telling a story about masculinity and by extension, who's the most powerful? Who's going to win? The one penis that's disputed that, because there are some on humans, we'll talk about them.

• 29:14Kate Lister?

  One academic says that it's a penis and the other person says that it's, it's a dagger that's been sort of badly drawn. And I love that idea because I can just like flashback to the women who were originally sewing it and a conversation being like, look, don't let Maude do any more daggers. They always end up looking like dicks. And somebody would just be like, oh, it won't matter. It'll be fine. And then look, a thousand years later, we're still arguing about it.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  It is an interesting scene. So all, so the other ones that we, we were talking about a second, they're all attached to naked bodies. So it's pretty obvious what you're seeing. Whereas this disputed one.

• 29:44Kate Lister?

  I'm looking at it right now, staring me in the eye. I can see it's on my computer screen.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  It's an interesting colour, isn't it? So it is, it is hanging below someone's tunic. So it's not a naked man. So someone's wearing this tunic, which kind of goes calf length, I guess. And he's running along. And then there is something clearly dangling below that.

• 30:03Kate Lister?

  There's something dangling.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:05Kate Lister?

  With a red tip.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  What's interesting actually is, so. We've got the tapestry today and it looks like what it does, but we also have various artistic representations that were made in history. So the first drawings we have of the tapestry date back to the 18th century, early 18th century, and then there's a series after that. And some of the dispute around this kind of, you know, is around, is this, is this actually really there? Or is this a later reproduction? Like, because there's restoration done. So it's not like, has something gone on here to make to add that?

• 30:38Kate Lister?

  Someone's coloured it in.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  But, but when you look back at these early ones, it looks to me as if it's, it's there in the, in the earlier ones as well.

• 30:43Kate Lister?

  What do you think? What's, what do you think? Dagger or penis? Penis or dagger? What do you reckon?

• 30:47Speaker 01

  I mean, I've looked at it quite a lot. And I, I would say that ain't no dagger.

• 30:51Kate Lister?

  I don't think that. It, it's a very badly drawn dagger. I mean, it's even got testicles.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it doesn't really stack up. It, it looks to me as if it's some sort of deliberate thing.

• 31:02Kate Lister?

  Although, my, my understanding is that there was a piece of medieval weaponry called a bollock knife.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yes, that is true. It doesn't look quite right. It's not in quite the right shape or the right size. So I think, and, and, and yeah, the testicles, I mean, or the things that look like testicles look like testicles. So I, I would err on the side of genitals myself.

• 31:20Kate Lister?

  Team penis.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  What's really interesting about that scene, actually. So obviously, we need to try and understand that. We need to try and explain why this would exist in, in this venerable embroidery. So above that, so this is in the lower border, right? So this is, this is shown in one of these lower borders. Above it is, is a really macho scene where Harold, he's, he's just been shipwrecked and he's been captured. He's being manhandled by a guy called Count Gia Poncia. And it's, and it's like a, a brawl scene. And it's quite an evocative brawl scene. It always reminds me of like, it's something, something you would see in EastEnders when someone's been booted out of Phil Mitchell's bar. It kind of looks like they're being, they're being, and, and it's like super macho. And

• 32:02Speaker 01

  then down below, we've got this guy who seemingly has like something super macho going on.

• 32:08Kate Lister?

  It's a huge penis.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Is there some correspondence between the two? One of the things about the borders is, is that lots of arguments have been made about them sort of telling stories from Aesop's fable. So the classical Greek fabulist who told these stories were using animals to kind of moralise about human society and the nature of humanity. And what this scene might be is a thing called the wolf and the kid, where basically a wolf goes to eat some sheep and, and the kid kind of says, don't eat me, let me sing first. A bit odd.

• 32:41Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  And in that intervening period, while, while the kid is singing, people come along and scared the wolf away. And the moral is, don't be distracted when you should be doing something important, is basically it.

• 32:51Kate Lister?

  What's that got to do with dicks?

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Well, very good question. But what, what you can see here is like, that, that guy is chasing somebody, is chasing some animals, running along chasing or possibly being chased. So that's kind of where it fits in. So it's kind of like, okay, maybe telling that story and then maybe referencing Harold up above who's become distracted by being shipwrecked. It's, you know, it's, it's a bit of a stretch, I admit. But then you kind of layer in the knob to just increase the macho tension. That's the kind of the, I mean, it is really hard to explain this stuff, but that's kind of one answer to why it should be there.

• 33:30Kate Lister?

  I mean, the thing is, it would have made perfect sense to them. They, they wouldn't have needed any explanation, but it's just, all the context is lost. It's completely devoid now. We don't have those immediate associations. And that's just, so like the central banner that runs through it, which tells the history bit, and then above it and below it, you've got like, almost like footnotes, but it's telling different stories, stuff from Aesop's fable and stuff from the Bible and things like that. And it's mostly there that we're finding the penises, isn't it?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Exclusively there.

• 34:01Kate Lister?

  Oh, it's exclusively. There's no, there's no human penises in the actual central bit.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  It's all in the borders.

• 34:07Kate Lister?

  See, that's interesting as well. And there's, there's a couple of scenes, which is obviously people are having sex and they're doing stuff. But again, we don't know who they are. But obviously to the Normans who saw this, they'd have been like, oh, that was that thing. Like, isn't that, there's a woman called Elfgiver in, in it? And we don't know, we don't know anything apart from her name and a little rude thing that's depicted on the tapestry.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  So, okay. Well, let's, let's do Elfgiver in just a second. But yeah, so there's basically, there's, there's four, in my mind, undisputed penises in the tapestry, male, human penises. So take away that guy with the tunic. After that, there's, there's three scenes of basically paired couples, naked humans, and they're kind of running towards each other. One's at the start of the tapestry and two at the end. One of those couples, the penis is obscured a, a carefully positioned axe shaft.

• 35:01Kate Lister?

  I'm looking at it right now. Yep.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  You can make out the testicles quite clearly.

• 35:05Kate Lister?

  Sticking out of his bottom. Yes, I can.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  So you've got those three kind of vignettes of, of paired couples in which you can see two penises. There are only two out of three. And then the other two undisputed penises are around the elf giver scene where you've got one guy who is weirdly doing some woodworking in the nude and, and you can see his pecker there. And then probably the most famous sort of nude man is directly under this elf giver scene. And it's a guy who's kind of in a, quite an exaggerated pose with a, I don't know, it's, it's a very chimescent member and he's clearly mirroring.

• 35:38Kate Lister?

  It's a cracker. Yeah.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  It is a cracker, isn't it? And he's clearly mirroring the stance of a guy in, in the main, in the main register. And then there's one other penis that might exist, which is sort of attached to a corpse right at the end of the tapestry and a kind of a, basically a flaccid penis. So seems to be a very different concept. So you've got those four ones there, maybe the fifth one and the testicle guy, one imagines has a penis, but it's beneath the axe. So those three scenes of, of the couples, they're kind of all explained according to Aesop's fables in a way. And kind of, you can create stories around them. One of them might be about a man who raped his daughter, which is obviously a very bad thing. And that kind of might reflect badly on Harold, who's directly above that scene. And then the other two, where the battle of Hastings happens, they're kind of stories about duplicity

• 36:22Speaker 01

  and deceit. So again, might suggest that Harold's been duplicitous and deceitful. Though also I do wonder about those, about whether they maybe say something about the poor soldiers, you know, having to go to war and maybe they're, you know, they had their last marital rights or so. Or maybe it's, you know, talking about that in some way as well. We don't know. So, so those ones, kind of, there are explanations that are essentially Aesopian. The elf giver one is the one where it's much harder to make that link.

• 36:49Kate Lister?

  It's a good name though, isn't it? Elf giver.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Well, it is a good name. And that's basically the, the nub of the story is elf giver was a really popular name for high status women in the 11th century, in, in the 10th century, in fact. It's, I think there's, the, the phrase is diaphomatic. I'm not sure how, I'm not a, I'm not a name scholar, but the way in the Anglo-Saxon period, names were generally constructed in two bits, like wolf, noth, or, you know, so basically two parts and they just sandwiched them together. And that basically gave most names. And so they give such a, a wide variety of names that you could get away with that. Though they did start to give kind of by names in the later 11th century. There's, there's famously Humphrey Goldenbollocks is in Doomsday Book.

• 37:28Kate Lister?

  Oh, hello. That's amazing. I make a note of that, that one. I love insane historical names like that one. Like, what was the name Fuckbeggar that shows up in like the 15th century? Goldenbollocks. That's brilliant. Right. Okay. Continue.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  So, so you do start to get those sort of names coming. But elf giver was, was like the name that was mostly used for, for royal women at the time. And, okay. So this scene, this elf giver scene, need to just sort of explain it a little bit. So basically you've got a woman, she's slightly levitating off the ground. It seems her feet are not on the surface. And she's within this weird structure, which has got these twisty columns with sort of animal heads on the top. She's fully clothed. She's got a, like a headdress and she's maybe got some sort of veil going over her eyes or she's doing, like, there may be some sort of veil sense. Then there's a, a cleric, a man of the church. He's clearly around the church because he's got the top of the haircut.

• 38:20Kate Lister?

  Yes, he does. Yes.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  And his hand is going into this scene. He's going into the building and to the face of this, this woman. And either sort of touching, caressing or slapping. We can't quite see the, the mode of action there. So that's the, sort of the way that scene is shaped. And then the text above it is where a cleric and elf giver, in Latin, I can't remember what it is specifically, but it's that, that's it. It lacks a verb. That's the key thing. It's like, where a cleric and elf giver, dot, dot, dot.

• 38:47Kate Lister?

  Oh, so it's not even finished. It's, it's starting to explain it. So it's where a cleric and elf giver, you know, fill in the blanks, could be anything.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  And basically, we have to assume that everyone looking at this in 11th century knew what was going on here. Because it's just like, doesn't need explanation. Whereas now, 950 years later, we can spend a lot of time conjetating on it because we do need to explain it. So we've got this scene. And then just before it, we've got a scene where William and Harold are in discussion there, in a heated discussion in William's ducal palace. William sort of sat surreally on his chair and Harold is sort of standing up agitatedly, making a case for something we don't know what. And there's all sorts of hangers-on standing around nearby. And then the naked guy with the chimescent penis is, is almost directly below the elf giver scene. And his stance directly mirrors that of

• 39:37Speaker 01

  the cleric. And then the woodworking guy is, is a little bit earlier on. He's underneath the ducal palace. So kind of, we have to assume that these are all somehow linked, but it's trying to work out exactly what's going on. Now, the sort of the nature of this strange building in which the elf giver figure is in, kind of invites us to think that something's, something's happening here that is not part of the main narrative. So it's either a temporal or geographical remove. So some people have said it's kind of like, it's, it's relating something that happened earlier or to something that happened somewhere else. And it does look kind of Scandinavian. It's kind of got a Scandi noir look to it. Yeah. So, and, and obviously there's a big Viking element to this whole piece. You know, the Normans were Vikings. Essentially, there's a lot of Viking activity

• 40:21Speaker 01

  that happens in the preceding 50 years. So, so there's, there's possibly that. So it's trying to piece together all those things and think about, okay, what might have happened in a little while earlier, somewhere else that might be the subject of a conversation that Harold or William are having. And then that invites you to think about elf givers and they're happily our three elf giver figures, who we know were royal women at the start of the 11th century, around about the time of the earlier Viking invasion under Svein Forkbeard and his fabulously named son Knut. And kind of like, they, these three women have all been proposed as possible elf giver figures for various reasons, which we can, we can have a go at exploring if you want, but it's, it's pretty complicated. But maybe

• 41:06Speaker 01

  one of those people is, is the elf giver woman. And, and then the reason why there's the nudity around is, the suggestion is there's a sex scandal. There's a sex scandal involving one of these women. And that's kind of, that's how we should understand the positioning of this whole scene.

• 41:20Kate Lister?

  11th century sex scandal.

• 41:23Kate Lister?

  This is like in a thousand years, somebody found a meme and it said, Kim K and Kanye, dot, dot, dot. And that would make sense to us, but nobody would have a clue what that meant a thousand years in the future.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  True story. Yeah. Yeah. And if anyone is making an embroidery of that, then they should take note of this.

• 41:49Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Dave and the Bayou Tapestry after this short break.

• 41:58Kate Lister?

  Hello, betwixters. I'm jumping in here because I have some very exciting news. Betwixt the Sheets has set up camp on YouTube. That's right. It took us a while, but we are there now. So if you are the kind of person who likes to see your podcasts as well as hear your podcasts, you can now go and find us right there. And the link is in the show notes. And please remember to like and subscribe because the people in charge of the money really do like that. Right, let's get on with it.

• 42:40Kate Lister?

  Who made this? Was it women? I don't, I just, I love the idea of a group of women sat around stitching knobs together. I know that there's more to it than that, but I just get a real kick out of that image.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  So most people think it probably was women who did it, given that it was mostly women who did this sort of embroidery. Though, there could have been men involved. It's not impossible there could be men involved.

• 43:00Kate Lister?

  The ones making the huge penises.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, exactly. Yeah.

• 43:04Kate Lister?

  Honestly, it's massive. It's so big. It's much bigger than that, Mildred.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  I mean, one thing to think about is just the essential machismo of the tapestry. So we just talked about, you know, the graphic nudity. We haven't talked about the number of women who actually feature in the tapestry, which is minuscule versus the number of men.

• 43:25Kate Lister?

  I was about to ask you about them. I was gonna say, are there any fannies on the Bayou Tapestry?

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Well, so there's these three naked scenes of these three paired couples and you can kind of see stuff going on.

• 43:39Kate Lister?

  Yeah, there's a thing.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  But it's, yeah, it's kind of, it's a bit less obvious than a, than a norm, I suppose. It's quite hard to display that sort of thing. There's definitely three naked women, for sure. And then in the main sort of cartoon story, there are another one, two, three women who, who feature. So we've got Elfgiver, we've just had. We've got Queen Edith, who is Edward the Confessor's wife and also the sister of Harold Godwinson. So she features on the deathbed of Edward the Confessor. And then there is one fervour woman, unnamed, who is leading a child, probably her son, away from a burning building, which has just been torched by Normans who've landed in, in southern England and are basically,

• 44:22Speaker 01

  you know, pillaging the land. So that's a really evocative, empathetic scene of basically a refugee scene. That's all you get. The rest of it is men, horses and men.

• 44:31Kate Lister?

  Yeah, even the horses are men.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, lots of the horses are men. That is true. So it's, it's a really man-heavy thing. So I think most people think that the design mind is a male mind. But the embroiderers are more likely female. Now, the question of how much agency they had in sort of changing the design is, is discussed, is debated. Some people think they did have agency and they could have been sort of doing stuff and putting stuff in. Others that, that like, you know, the design was fairly rigid and it would have been sort of traced onto the linen and they would have been having to follow along. We don't know. We don't know, I'm afraid, Kate. It's, it's

• 45:07Kate Lister?

  We just don't know.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  It's hard to say. Sorry.

• 45:09Kate Lister?

  Well, that's okay. No, I just, like a group of women sat there getting instructions about how, you know, we have to make the man's horse, this penis even bigger, no bigger than that, and that it's all men and no women. I just, the image of them all sat there just going, right, oh, then love. Yep, absolutely. That's fine. I'll do that one for you then. So do you think that we can tell a story with the penises? Like, are they, are they there quite deliberately to tell us something? Or is this just, because people are often quite surprised when you talk about the medieval period, which against a thousand years of history, it's a very, very long time. But they have quite an earthy, open attitude to sex and nudity in a way that, that can often seem quite abrasive and shocking to us. Like, it's in, in the, the language of the street names and the towns and, and, you know, Mr.

• 45:52Kate Lister?

  Golden Ballocks in the doomsday book. It's, they do have this kind of very, just, yeah, it's a ballock. What of it?

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm, I'm reminded of another name. I'm pretty sure there's a Godwin Claw cunt.

• 46:02Kate Lister?

  There is a Godwin Claw cunt. Indeed, there is. There's a Guernica cuntles that appears as well. Spectacular.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  They weren't afraid of, of rich language, for sure. And I, I suppose just thinking about the broader context, you don't need to look much further than churches, Anglo-Norman churches, to see some pretty graphic sculpture. So the shield, the gig figures that you can see on some churches, the best one I would say is, is Kilpeck in, I think it's in Herefordshire. Brilliant church, lovely church, lovely place to go. And they've got these really graphic images around the, the sort of the top of the arcading of female figures with very, very graphic portrayals. So those dated around about the same time. So, you know, they weren't afraid of showing that sort of thing, and even in an ecclesiastical environment. And then also, kind of just think about Anglo-Saxon poetry and riddles as well. I mean, that's, there's some pretty-

• 46:52Kate Lister?

  They loved an ob joke.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  They love an ob joke. And they love stuff which is kind of a bit hard to understand, don't they? They like the, the evasive aspect of it, which does tie in with the tapestry. So, you know, that whole thing about, what is it? The onion one where someone's, you know, you hang an onion-

• 47:05Kate Lister?

  Yes. I am hairy and shaggy and I make young girls cry. That one.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:09Kate Lister?

  It's an onion. And then they have another one for a key, don't they? Is that I'm long and thin and I go into a lock and unleash things. And yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. Or, or the dough one, rising dough.

• 47:21Kate Lister?

  Yeah. Ladies put their aprons over me and knead me to their delight. Yes.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  So those Anglo-Saxons and their, and their bants. So yeah, definitely that you, you've got that sense for sure. So I don't think it's ridiculous to have it in. But I think also, quite often when you do see nudity in early medieval art, it is related to negativity. Um, to like, to demons and devils and stuff. And so there is possibly a bit of a moralistic vibe going on here. And particularly if you really go deep into the Esopian kind of things, then you would probably find that sort of thing. Um, there is one really interesting theory, which is that the whole thing is not actually a celebration of William's conquest. It is actually a, a moral exposition. It was made by monks for monks so that they could cogitate on the secular woes.

• 48:09Kate Lister?

  Interesting.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  And like, you know, and basically look at the actions of these terrible secular lords and how they, how their actions resulted in terrible bloodshed. And then they can reflect on that and think, well, that's, that's a bad thing to do. You can read the whole tapestry in that way. And there was, there was a fun story a couple of months ago where basically a historian said, it could indeed have been hung around a monk's refectory.

• 48:30Kate Lister?

  Could have been.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  So they could cogitate on it as they were eating in silence. They could look at it and think about it. So, you know, you can interrogate this in many ways and kind of go really, really deep on it. Or you can take it at a fairly superficial level. But there is possibly some moralistic thing. I would, one thing I would just say is going back to the Elfgiver scene. One of the potential women involved, one of the queens, she's called Emma.

• 48:54Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's very disappointing after the names we've been given. Just Emma, right? Okay.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  She's of the Norman royal family. She's the daughter of the Duke of Normandy. And she marries King Ethelred of England, the famous unready guy. And when she marries him, she changed her name to Elfgiver, just to confuse matters. And curiously, Ethelred already has a wife called Elfgiver. And then once Ethelred dies in 1016 and is replaced by Canute, she marries Canute. And Canute also has a wife called Elfgiver. So there's, these are the three Elfgiver women's that I was talking about. And so it's, it is a very confused story, which is why I didn't particularly want to go deep into it. But it's kind of like, this is where you get the triumvirate of Elfgivers. But the Emma one is kind of interesting in the sense that she gave a, a certain sort of blood legitimacy

• 49:40Speaker 01

  to William's claim. A very loose one, in the sense that she was his great aunt.

• 49:47Kate Lister?

  Solely maid.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  And she'd married Ethelred. And so it's kind of like, you know, yeah, maybe. And she was also involved in the sex scandal, where she apparently had an affair with the Bishop of Winchester and had to walk over burning ploughshares.

• 49:59Kate Lister?

  Oh, but that not an obvious, that's not obviously the people in the tapestry.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  It could be, but we don't know. So, so the, the naked carpenter guy could be doing something with ploughshares. Like, you could look at it another way. And then the priest could be the sex scandal guy, maybe. In which case, kind of why, why would she be there? Why would they be talking about her at that point? And maybe in sort, in the broader context of what I was talking about earlier, about it being designed to legitimise William and to show that his pretext for his invasion was because Harold had perjured himself. It's kind of like, well, what's, what does Emma add to that? Because if, if there was some sense that his legitimacy was based on her, on the blood claim via her, you need to kind of get rid of that. So maybe they're in this ducal palace discussing that. And then, and kind of like, we can disregard that because she's basically a bad sort. She's had the

• 50:47Speaker 01

  sex scandal. So, but then Harold then does a bad thing. So, right, okay, now we know what we're talking about. Now we're on to the real thing. This is the real reason Harold's perjury, not Emma of Normandy's perceived sex scandal. Does get pretty, pretty deep, but maybe, maybe that's what's going on.

• 51:03Kate Lister?

  I'll tell you someone who didn't like an ob joke, or at least they, they, not outwardly, the Victorians. I mean, secretly, they, they did, they were absolute dirtbags. But outwardly, they were very repressive and like, we just don't like sex very much. And when the group of ladies came to redo the Bayou Tapestry- Did they include the penises?

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Okay, so this goes back to these Ladies of Leake in the 1880s. So they create this replica, which is now in Reading Museum, well worth a visit. You can go and have a look at it. It's just hop off the train station in Reading and you'll be there in five minutes. It's hung around the museum. So yes, they do not include the rude bits. They kind of give the guys like little shorts and the, which is sweet.

• 51:41Kate Lister?

  I love it.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  And the horses.

• 51:44Kate Lister?

  The horses in shorts as well.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Well, the horses just have less prominent appendages, basically. It's all toned down a bit. But I think the really important thing to say here is, so this was made by these Ladies of Leake. Yep, 35 of them under this very powerful sounding woman called Mrs Elizabeth Wardle. And she sort of directed it all and they've signed it all. So in stark contrast to the original tapestry, you can see who's actually made it. They've signed the bits that they've done underneath it. So that's really nice, really a point of difference. But they were working off a photographic version. So in the 1870s, a squad of British photographers had been sent over to Bayreuth to make a photograph of the full tapestry. They didn't have colour photography, so they brought these plates back. And this happened in what is now the V and A Museum.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  And they decided to colourise what they'd got. And it was colourised by men. And it was the men who decided they didn't want these offending priapic appendages going in there. So they baudrillardised it. And because the Ladies of Leake were working off this replica, they didn't have the opportunity to include them. Whether they would have themselves decided not to include them, we don't know. But it wasn't them, the ladies, who specifically censored it.

• 52:57Kate Lister?

  I love that. So as a final question then, have you seen the Bayreuth Tapestry before? And if not, when are you going to go and see it? And what are you looking forward to seeing the most?

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Do you think it's possible to write a book about it without at least seeing it?

• 53:10Kate Lister?

  Oh, I know plenty of historians who've written about stuff they've never seen.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Well, I can honestly say I've seen it several times in Bayreuth and very much enjoyed it. I've also spent quite a lot of time.

• 53:22Kate Lister?

  On your own, have you ever seen it like up close and personal, like where, like out of its box?

• 53:25Speaker 01

  No, but I am, I'm angling to try and get in there and have a look at it. I suspect I won't be able to because they're pretty strict about what can be done there.

• 53:34Kate Lister?

  Is anyone allowed to do that? Like go in and just like, even supervised, even with the white gloves on? Is anyone allowed to handle it?

• 53:41Speaker 01

  I very much doubt it because there's so much concern about it. What actually is interesting, when it goes back to Bayreuth in a year's time, it's going to be displayed in a slightly different way. So in the British Museum, it's going to be displayed flat, like vertically, horizontal. For the last 40 years, it's been vertical. And that's the kind of the problem, the verticality of it has been sort of damaging the threads apparently. So when it goes back to Bayreuth, it'll be kind of on a slant, so flattish, but slanting. But then they've got this clever mechanism, which means they can kind of spin it round. When the museum shuts and you can kind of look at the back of it. So they're gonna, I don't, I don't understand how it works, but it was explained to me the other day. So they're gonna spin it. So if you are a bona fide researcher, you'll be able to go in and kind of look at the front and the back,

• 54:24Speaker 01

  which is actually really, really interesting because you learn so much from the back. Because that's how stitching works. So you'll be able to look at the colours on the back and the colours are probably quite different to the front because it's had lots of fade and stuff over the years because it's been exposed to natural light and stuff. So yeah, so that will be a really interesting thing once it's back there. So to answer your question, will I be going? Absolutely, I'll be going to the British Museum as soon as I can. I will be really interested to see the way it's displayed in this long span. Because for the last few years, it's always been this kind of U-shaped thing in the museum in Bayreuth, which is, I don't think that was ever how it was designed, that would have worked at all. So you can't really get a sense of the monumentality of it. And so it'd be quite different seeing it like this. I will be looking out for a few little bits.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  My absolute favourite bit, aside from all the knobs, which is obviously interesting and I'll be having a look at them. There's some bits where you can, you can really see the humanity of what's being displayed. And I don't, you know, I'm not an embroiderer, so I don't know how difficult it is to do. But it strikes me as nothing short of miraculous that 950 years on, you can look at it and you can still get a sense of emotion. So you've got this scene of the woman leading her son from, I think that's a really evocative scene. But there's another really good bit where, so Harold's just made this terrible sacred oath, yeah, right in the middle. And basically then he leaves Normandy, he gets on a boat and he sails back to England. And he goes to meet Edward the Confessor. Just when he lands, there's this kind of tower shown.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  And you can see these little faces in the windows of the tower. And they're kind of, they're craning forward, you can see the necks are craning forward. And you can see, and you can see this sense of peril and anticipation. Somehow they've managed to imbue this scene with a power of like something bad is about to happen. There is trepidation in their eyes. And I just, I really like that thing. It just feels like, wow, how did they do that? How did, how did they create that sense? And you kind of need to study the tapestry a bit to get to, you know, to clock that. But when you do, you think, wow, that is, that's really powerful. I will be standing there, gawping that a bit and probably craning my neck forward in similar vein to the people in the tower.

• 56:30Kate Lister?

  Dave, you have been wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much. And if people want to know more about you and your work and about the penises, where can they contact you?

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Check out the History Extra magazine podcast and also the book that I've co-written with Michael Lewis, The Story of the Bayreuth Tapestry. You can buy that in all good retailers, but yeah, History Extra is where I'm normally found.

• 56:48Kate Lister?

  Are you on social media at all?

• 56:49Speaker 01

  I am. DJ Musgrove is my normal moniker, I think, on Twitter.

• 56:53Kate Lister?

  Fabulous. Well, thank you so much for dropping by. You've been spectacular.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  Thanks, Kate. It's been fun.

• 57:01Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Dave for joining us. And if you like what you heard, don't forget to like with you and follow along wherever it is you get your podcasts. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or if you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at [email protected]. This podcast was edited by Hannah Fyodorov and produced by Sophie G. The senior producer is Freddy Chick. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.