On Being the Water in the Stew

By Bobby Neal Winters

I’ve begun working my way through the Brother Cadfael books on my walks, listening on Audible. I’d first become familiar with this series when they were on the Old PBS Mystery Series back ump-teen years ago.

They were written by Ellis Peters.  As I was listening, I marveled how well the characters were written, and how three-dimensional the characters were, even the women.  I marveled at how good a job Ellis Peters had done, so much so that I looked him up.  Or I should say her up, because Ellis Peters was the pen name of Edith Pargeter.

These are very interesting stories, and I am discovering that the old BBC series stayed close to the books, at least in the points that I can remember from so long ago.

The stories are set in Shrewsbury (pronounced SHROHS-bury).  It is a town in England in Shropshire, a county that borders Wales. It is set in the time of “the Anarchy.”  This was when England was having a succession crisis. There were two claimants of the throne and they were having a war to determine who: King Stephan or Empress Maud. (In case you are wondering who won, the answer is neither.  They ultimately came to a compromise that Maud’s son, known to history as Henry II, would take the crown. The rest is history, as they say.)

I like this sort of stuff.

For one, the setting itself has so many boundaries in it: England and Wales; Stephan and Maud; Church and State.

For another thing, it is part of my history.  Or my family's history.

Like so many Americans, my family didn’t really know where we came from.  Whenever the census came around, we were among those who, when asked about their heritage, replied, “American.” (Or more likely ‘Murican.) This was because we were poor, uneducated, and just didn’t know.

Now, given the Internet and DNA testing, we are much better informed.  We took the DNA test.  We’d thought at one point that we were German. No. We had a persistent tradition in the family that there was some Cherokee among our genetics. Nope.

With the collective knowledge of the Internet and the full power of modern science, I’ve reached the conclusion that we are British through and through. No German at all; not a drop of Cherokee.

It was really, really hard to give up on that Cherokee.

Some family history work one of our distant cousins had done had given us a clue, but the DNA test backed it all up.  For good measure, I double-checked on an online genealogy site.

English, and in North America since the 1750s on the Winters’ side. (My mother’s people might go back to Jamestown.  I am less sure of this. We’d been told that they were Irish, but no.  We can’t claim victimhood anytime after the Norman Conquest, and it’s possible that some of our ancestors were Normans.)

This knowledge has had an interesting effect on me.  While I’d always enjoyed the snotty British shows on PBS (it stands for “Pretty British Stuff”), I began watching the programs more carefully. In particular, I really pay attention to anything in a rural setting, anything out in the country.

Do they garden the way Grampa did? Do they cut up their tators like Grandma did?

Always looking for some connection to the past, to our roots.

People of British heritage, English in particular, are not really encouraged to have pride in it.  The Irish get away with the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade; the Scot’s are allowed pride in their kilts and their bagpipes; but the English not so much.

I suppose there are a lot of reasons for this. One voice in my head says it’s because the English are the oppressors, the colonizers, the paradigm bad guys.  Every villain in every movie has a British accent.  

Another voice in my head says it’s because the English were the water in the stew and all others were the meat and taters. Back in Europe, the meat and taters were the Scots, Welsh, and Irish. In America, the meat and taters were the Germans, the Italians, the Africans, the Irish (again), the hispanic, and the Indigenous peoples and the others that I am leaving out due to ignorance. 

Looked at that way, it’s not so bad. You have to have water to make a stew, and a stew is a good thing.  Meat and taters are good by themselves, but there’s nothing quite like a good stew with some cornbread crumbled up in it on a cold day.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.