Twelve Silver Pennies: coins of the Breelands
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2019 8:04 pm
So this is a project that's been a really long time coming.
And now it's done!
Since the very first time I was curled up in the grade school library reading about poor Butterbur and his dear twelve silver pennies, I wanted a little "pony purse" of my own. For long years I forgot about that... until I got back into this hobby.
My father was a hobby numismatist, my mother into living history... I suppose it only natural I'd eventually get around to wondering how to make a coins in old Butterbur's purse.
From the beginning, I thought it fairly obvious from the text that the "silver pennies" that passed from hand to hand in Bree stood in for those common throughout Northwest Europe in the late Saxon era (and well on after that into the High Middle Ages). A bit more research led me to the thoughts I went over back in August of 2016 Hunting the Castar.
Then what?
The hardest part was researching the text. I thought it likely the Breelands had little use for elf-speech, even in so formal a context as coinage. Thus I went down the rabbit hole of Westron and its ancestor Adunic. I quickly came to the limit of what published material there was - but there was just enough to work out most of the text with some reasonable confidence. I think I'm at least close enough that I can chalk up any errors to the shaky literacy of some hypothetical coinwright.
The reverse was easiest, for there I thought the silversmith tasked with hammering out new coin every so often by the town fathers would leave his own mark. "Cotman of Apple End" seemed a suitable name for such a man, and so that's the reverse: "Hlothram an razarnag"
The obverse started out fairly easy. I figured coins of Eriador in the late Third Age trafficked by weight rather than a sovereign's fiat, and so simply marked them as "pennyweight" - "tharnibrodan."
That left the name, and this was hardest - neither "Bree" nor "Combe" are truly the names of those settlements. Rather, they're Brthyonic "translations" of the toponyms "hill" and "valley" respectively.
... but exactly one word of Dunlendish is attested - "forgoil" for "straw-headed."
That would be no help.
I finally settled on "tûn" as not too different from Quenyan "Túna/Tún" - and so I could at least hand-wave a possible link. More, the word had a nice Gaelic mouth-feel, which I thought fitting. I'm sure it's not the word the Professor himself would have chosen, but it's as close as I could come with what I could find. Perhaps one day more of his notes will be released from the archives, someone will find the right word in some marginalia, and make a new more correct version. In the meantime, I'm happy enough with what I've made here.
By this time I'd found a diemaker, but would have to deliver what I was looking for as a digital file. Rather than just render out a print font, I created digital tengwar "stamps" in hopes that the final work would look more hand-made:
Finally came the images. The Breelands are an idyllic pastoral land, with no need for kings and princes. Even the face of a hypothetical town selectman didn't seem quite right for a coin likely undated and infrequently issued. I decided on the age-old standby of a symbol of plenty: a sheaf of wheat-corn, stored food against the coming winter.
The reverse was easier: Old Cotman of Apple End would surely mark his work with the sign of his namesake - a trio of apples.
I tried again to make the designs as "hand-friendly" as I could manage with digital tools, hoped for the best, and send my files off the diemaker.
Many weeks later, a minting machine from mintmaster.cz shows up, along with my die.
Pavel provided a number of blanks, but I've since settled on sterling discs of a size to about match the silver sixpence made by Shire Post Mint, the better to replicate the mix of similarly-sized coins that would be floating around Eriador in our period. I stamp them out, give them a good dunking in tarnishing solution, then re-polish them back to a ruddy grey. The gunk gets stuck down in the crevices while the surface gets a little muddy and worn - makes 'em look like they've been changing hands along the Great East Road for fifty years!
... and that is the story of this particular journey.
Finally: I'm sorry, but I can't sell them.
Our very own Wil Whitfoot has paid dearly for the license to produce coins of Middle-earth, and I can't in good conscience infringe on a right he's paid (I assume dearly) for. That said, I'm sure these trinkets will find their way into the occasional Yule gift and the like.
And now it's done!
- merf-silver-pennies-coin-purse.jpg (105.67 KiB) Viewed 19991 times
My father was a hobby numismatist, my mother into living history... I suppose it only natural I'd eventually get around to wondering how to make a coins in old Butterbur's purse.
From the beginning, I thought it fairly obvious from the text that the "silver pennies" that passed from hand to hand in Bree stood in for those common throughout Northwest Europe in the late Saxon era (and well on after that into the High Middle Ages). A bit more research led me to the thoughts I went over back in August of 2016 Hunting the Castar.
Then what?
The hardest part was researching the text. I thought it likely the Breelands had little use for elf-speech, even in so formal a context as coinage. Thus I went down the rabbit hole of Westron and its ancestor Adunic. I quickly came to the limit of what published material there was - but there was just enough to work out most of the text with some reasonable confidence. I think I'm at least close enough that I can chalk up any errors to the shaky literacy of some hypothetical coinwright.
The reverse was easiest, for there I thought the silversmith tasked with hammering out new coin every so often by the town fathers would leave his own mark. "Cotman of Apple End" seemed a suitable name for such a man, and so that's the reverse: "Hlothram an razarnag"
The obverse started out fairly easy. I figured coins of Eriador in the late Third Age trafficked by weight rather than a sovereign's fiat, and so simply marked them as "pennyweight" - "tharnibrodan."
That left the name, and this was hardest - neither "Bree" nor "Combe" are truly the names of those settlements. Rather, they're Brthyonic "translations" of the toponyms "hill" and "valley" respectively.
... but exactly one word of Dunlendish is attested - "forgoil" for "straw-headed."
That would be no help.
I finally settled on "tûn" as not too different from Quenyan "Túna/Tún" - and so I could at least hand-wave a possible link. More, the word had a nice Gaelic mouth-feel, which I thought fitting. I'm sure it's not the word the Professor himself would have chosen, but it's as close as I could come with what I could find. Perhaps one day more of his notes will be released from the archives, someone will find the right word in some marginalia, and make a new more correct version. In the meantime, I'm happy enough with what I've made here.
- merf-silver-penny-legend.jpg (52.87 KiB) Viewed 19981 times
Finally came the images. The Breelands are an idyllic pastoral land, with no need for kings and princes. Even the face of a hypothetical town selectman didn't seem quite right for a coin likely undated and infrequently issued. I decided on the age-old standby of a symbol of plenty: a sheaf of wheat-corn, stored food against the coming winter.
The reverse was easier: Old Cotman of Apple End would surely mark his work with the sign of his namesake - a trio of apples.
I tried again to make the designs as "hand-friendly" as I could manage with digital tools, hoped for the best, and send my files off the diemaker.
Many weeks later, a minting machine from mintmaster.cz shows up, along with my die.
Pavel provided a number of blanks, but I've since settled on sterling discs of a size to about match the silver sixpence made by Shire Post Mint, the better to replicate the mix of similarly-sized coins that would be floating around Eriador in our period. I stamp them out, give them a good dunking in tarnishing solution, then re-polish them back to a ruddy grey. The gunk gets stuck down in the crevices while the surface gets a little muddy and worn - makes 'em look like they've been changing hands along the Great East Road for fifty years!
- merf-silver-pennies-of-the-breelands.jpg (108.53 KiB) Viewed 19991 times
Finally: I'm sorry, but I can't sell them.
Our very own Wil Whitfoot has paid dearly for the license to produce coins of Middle-earth, and I can't in good conscience infringe on a right he's paid (I assume dearly) for. That said, I'm sure these trinkets will find their way into the occasional Yule gift and the like.
I love your thoughts about the coin maker putting his own mark on the coin, it gives it so much more of a story
