71Y | This Wikipedian was born on 20 December 1952 and is 71 years, 4 months, and 18 days old. |
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by User:Drmies, User:Brianann MacAmhlaidh and User:Bulwersator
My name is John Gowers, and I'm a historian, proud dog owner, and hopefully one day a father too! I would love to chat about my work with you guys, but right now I'm busy writing a history novel based around the stories of the historical (Or were they? What a tantalizing question!) Anglo-Saxon Kings Esla and Gewis. It's pretty fun to do, and I love using Wikipedia for my research, since I have a passion for historical accuracy in everything I do.
You're welcome to edit my page or my talk, but A. Note that you will be forever classed as a vandal, and (more importantly) B. PLEASE USE UK ENGLISH!
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The Epic Barnstar | |
I'm giving you a barn star for your excellent edits to history articles on Wikipedia. You have an enormous knowledge of the subject, and a great sense of humour. Also, I believe it was you who introduced the practice of adding a reference guide of mini-articles to various pages to make it easier to find relevant information. SO helpful! 195.195.166.57 (talk) 14:48, 17 May 2011 (UTC) |
1 | This user is ranked 1 on the list of Wikipedians by number of edits. |
<-- LOL! I wish!
I am very excited that I've finally got round to writing the book I've been planning for a long time about various real historic (maybe(!) - I think so at least, although some seem not to agree with me.) Anglo-Saxon kings, in particular Esla and Gewis. It's going to be a partly historical novel, though since it's only my first I think I might aim for it to be only as good as 'The Tenant of Wildfell Hall' rather than as good as 'Great Expectations' (!!) You're welcome to leave feedback / help on my talk-page, or even on here, although if some people decide to abuse that right and start vandalizing my page, I might take it away.
Below are a couple of old versions of Wikipedia (Isn't it weird that Wikipedia has an article on itself? I wonder which came first.) pages, one of which I created and one of which I love as if it were my own. They were deleted by some vandals a little while ago, and what with my book and everything, I am only going to have time for 'periodic editing over months' as User:Agricolae so deftly put it, so I'm not going to have time to fight back, delete user-pages etc. in order to get my way. So I preserve them here, in case any users actually want to find stuff out about Esla and Gewis:
Esla appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as the son of Gewis and a descendant of Woden. He is also described as the father of Elesa, the father of Cerdic of Wessex who invaded Britain and founded the kingdom of Wessex. That an earlier pedigree of the kings of Bernicia is very similar, except that it has Bernic, eponymous ancestors of the Bernicians, in the same place as the later Wessex pedigree substitutes Gewis, eponymous ancestor of the Gewisse or West Saxons, has led to the suggestion that the later Wessex pedigree may have been modified from that of the Bernicians. Elsa is just a mythical, probably invented, name in a mythical pedigree, that doesn't even belong to the family that is supposedly supplying the notoriety (the original pedigree was hijacked from the Bernician kings).
There has been some speculation which connects Esla to the Gothic name Ansila and in late Welsh sources, a figure with the (possibly Gothic) name Osla, nicknamed Cyllellfawr "Big-Knife" in Welsh. Other scholars may have argued that the name is Brythonic.
It is possible that Esla never existed. Kenneth Sisam makes a strong argument that Esla was simply invented to provide an alliterative couplet with Elesa, demanded when the intrusion of the heroic pair of Wig and Freawine into the borrowed Bernician pedigree set up a pattern of alliteratively-coupled names.
Gewis appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as the son of Wig and a descendant of Woden. He is also described as the father of Esla, the father of Elesa, the father of Cerdic of Wessex who invaded Britain and founded the kingdom of Wessex. That an earlier pedigree of the kings of Bernicia is very similar, except that it has Bernic, eponymous ancestors of the Bernicians, in the same place as the later Wessex pedigree substitutes Gewis, eponymous ancestor of the Gewisse or West Saxons, has led to the suggestion that the later Wessex pedigree may have been modified from that of the Bernicians.
More wikipedia content posts coming soon, as I write my book!
Se you all later!
John.
Since (as I have recently found) writing a novel is actually quite hard work, I've decided that you, the Wikipedia community, can help me out with it. My idea is to have a sort of 'role play' on this page where you can all add your bits to the story, then I can edit it before sending it to the publisher. Please make sure your bits of story are completely consistent with what is known about the history of Esla and Gewis etc. (although if some people had their way, no one would get to know anything about these kings at all) and, above all, PLEASE USE UK ENGLISH!!! I have already written several sections of the book, but I'm going to write the beginning of a chapter which you guys can help me continue. It would be especially useful if you could include lots of links in your posts, and references to historical sources would be much appreciated. See you soon! J.Gowers (talk) 23:23, 27 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm sorry to have taken so long over getting the chapter to you so you guys can 'roleplay' it, but I've been spending the weekend making this memorial to my previous dog (not the one I currently own, but one I had about four years ago which died). The chapter is coming soon, though, so don't worry!
J.Gowers (talk) 22:57, 3 July 2011 (UTC)
This is your chance to contribute to what I hope will be a great book. As you can probably see, I've left it on rather an exciting cliff hanger, so sharpen those pencils (or typing fingers) and get writing! I will not necessarily use the material that you write in the book, but I might pick and choose bits of it that are really good. Thank goodness that Wikipedia is all public domain! Off you go: here it is! DON'T FORGET TO USE UK ENGLISH!!
I apologise to all my WikiFollowers for my long absence. The thing is, I haven't been all that productive recently: I've been writing bits of my book (which no one has helped me out with, by the way - Grrr..) and feeling sad about my poor dead dog, so my recent Wikipedia edits have been exclusively devoted to correcting grammar, punctuation and spelling in various Wikipedia articles: as the more conscientious among you might have noticed, the wrong use of 'due to' as a conjunction (rather than the more correct 'owing to') is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. So what with this or that, I haven't had much time to write many blog posts, delete vandals' user-pages (My apologies, Agri: I realize that joke is probably wearing a little thin now) and write individual reference guides etc. but in the meantime here's a little joke:
The page has been moved here....
That's all for now, folks. And in future I will be using the Wikipedia Content section for "Wikipedia content" posts. See you all soon. J.Gowers (talk) 20:54, 17 November 2011 (UTC)
P. S. Some light bedtime reading: [3]. XX, JG.