Author: Master Jonas Flynn, Facultatis Mentis Chair at Meidport, Professor of History
Imprint: Meidport, 1634
CAPITVLVM XVIII
In the examination of historical records and civic annals, two fixtures persist so prevalently in the fabric of Meidport society through the span of millennia as to demand particular examination: the Watch and the Circle. In fact, both predate Áth Dá Abhainn — what we know today as Portus Medius.
One can hardly be surprised that the Watch is an old and glorious institution. Though royal and Imperial garrisons have resided within Meidport’s walls for centuries, the true stewards of the city’s streets, the Crag’s battlements, and the harbour approaches are the Watchmen — and have been since before those walls were raised.
For those reading this text outside of Tír Dá Ghlas — or, as we say in the common tongue, “South Meid” — the Watch is a wholly peculiar expression of an altogether mundane function, one that yet articulates and embodies its most ancient origins. They serve as house-guard to Arx Altus, commonly known as the Crag, the central fortress at the heart of Meidport; but they are equally the primary keepers of the city walls and the constabulary of its streets. Though other cities — sunny Berric, and glorious Altun among them — maintain dedicated and professional peacekeepers separate from their Imperial legions or provincial forces, those are regarded as a vocation, a trade, a wage for a service rendered. In the Watch, the matter stands otherwise. It is treated as something approaching a holy calling — a thing to be aspired to from birth, and born into where fortune allows.
Looking back to the founding tales of St. Bastian and King Brendan, and to the construction of Dún An tInbhear, the Estuary Fortress: while Dua and Men laboured to raise the walls of Arx Altus and the palisades of the seed-settlement of Áth Dá Abhainn on the border of river and sea, its defence was entrusted to Teachgárdaí an Chéad Fhir — “the House-Guard of the First among Men.” These were honour-guards given as tribute to their new king: the clan champions of the families who had followed him to the estuary. Ledgers dating to the seventh century substantiate a direct continuity of this body to the present day.
Their purpose, principally, is the protection of the city and its fortress. The most ancient record of their pledge — in Caelic, from the early ninth century — reflects this precisely. In the year 1373, when Martin II rode to war beneath the Imperial standard, his Watch was refused him: they were not his army, his councillors reminded him, but the keepers of his fortress.
So deeply ingrained are the Watch in common Meidish speech that certain turns of phrase have long since passed from the guild-hall to the market and the hearth. “The Watch comes with the castle” — meaning tenants, more often than not vermin, are a fixture inseparable from a home or barn. “The Watch decides” — a particular piece of local nuance, denoting one’s scepticism of a matter, though a willingness to be persuaded by the collective vote. This latter phrase stems from the institution’s peculiar practice: though the Watch is ranked from novice to Watch-Commander and follows a strict chain of command in day-to-day affairs, it votes on matters of great consequence, yielding impartially to the collective will where the stakes demand it.
Like many military orders, they maintain their own traditions and particular devotions. They share with the Flower Knights of Altun a special affection for St. Catherine, and are the central guild in the city’s spring Katemass observances.
For a Meidport native, to join the Watch is an honour — a demanding fellowship, but a faithful one. A Watchman, man or dame, is considered a Watchman for all time. They will always have the care and protection of their brotherhood, which extends in cases of death to widow and unmarried children alike. That is not to say the Watch will suffer poor conduct from its own ranks without redress; rather, they are by long custom given dispensation by the Royal Judiciary to punish and reform their own. Many Watchmen, observed at the Meidport Balneum on their off-days, will bear the evidence of at least a few such dispensations on their backs.
Despite considerable effort, I have not been able to satisfactorily ascertain the origin of their arms: a jackdaw on argent. The Meidish royal arms — a square fortress in sable, ringed by sable coins on argent — explains the grey and black livery well enough, but no written account beyond perhaps an apocryphal musing in Bede the Younger provides documentary insight into the bird itself. Speaking with the present Watch-Commander on the matter, he offered the common-most story told in the city: the jackdaws sit black and grey upon the walls, and so do we.
More curious still is the history of the Circle.
I had expected, approaching this subject, to find only modern record of the organisation. Instead, I encountered copious allusion to its antecedents, reaching back to times before the kingdom itself.
In our present day in Meidport, the Darning Circle is a women’s social and charitable lodge. Its members must be married or widowed, and tend to be drawn from the merchant and tradesman classes — many have trades of their own, or husbands in some journeyman occupation, or are business-owners in their own right. They gather irregularly, though with greater frequency on Stardays, at their lodge on High Street. Officially, the meetings are for socialising and the mending of stockings and the like; in practice, they talk, conduct business, and drink. The lodge meetings are private affairs, though the Circle will court promising candidates, many of whom become full members following a degree of cider-related ceremony and pageantry the particulars of which I was not privileged to observe.
In Meidish, “to have a darning wife” is a backhanded — though often sincere — compliment, or half-jest, implying that the subject is not the sharpest party in their partnership, romantic or commercial, but is at least clever enough to know it. It is said by those who say such things that a few dozen Circle-wives, if asked humbly and plied correctly, could resolve great matters of state, unravel the Collegia’s most esoteric difficulties, or arrive at theological certainty by means that would embarrass the seminaries.
In literature, the thirteenth-century Pilgrimages of the Fox-Knight — famous even abroad in translation — introduces the Meidish merchant O’Gill as “Mostly proude and fytte for lyfe / For he hast a goode and darning wyffe.” In legal records, from the early eleventh century at the very beginning of the Imperial era, a court case concerning the disruption of a neighbourhood and its commerce by a collapsed sewer cites the plaintiffs as, in Falcian, “…quorundam membrorum Circuli Sarcitorum, qui curant vicinos suos” — certain members of the Darning Circle, who attend to their neighbours.
Reaching further back, to the pre-Imperial and even pre-Kingdom era: the Mahon Cycle of the fourth century refers to the clan elders as the ciorcal dearnála — the darning circle — in explicit contrast to the hero’s “circle of battle.” The wise matrons who tend the village, possessed of greater foresight than the battle-blind warriors who subsequently perish: this figure is named, in the Meidish imagination, by a circle of women at their sewing. Whether this constitutes evidence that the Circle as a formal organisation existed before the eleventh century is a matter on which I shall not presume to rule with confidence; that the concept existed, and was already named, is beyond reasonable dispute.
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