Yen and Yang (or Kiplings Take on Men and Women)

If you can keep your head when all about you

   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

   But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

   Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,

   And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

 

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master;

   If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with triumph and disaster

   And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

   And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

   And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

   To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

   Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

   Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch;

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

   If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run--

   Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

 

If -  ~ Rudyard Kipling

 

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When the Himalayan peasant meets the he-bear in his pride,
    He shouts to scare the monster, who will often turn aside.
    But the she-bear thus accosted rends the peasant tooth and nail.
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

    When Nag the basking cobra hears the careless foot of man,
    He will sometimes wriggle sideways and avoid it if he can.
    But his mate makes no such motion where she camps beside the trail.
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

    When the early Jesuit fathers preached to Hurons and Choctaws,
    They prayed to be delivered from the vengeance of the squaws.
    'Twas the women, not the warriors, turned those stark enthusiasts pale.
    For the female of the species is more deadly than the male.

    Man's timid heart is bursting with the things he must not say,
    For the Woman that God gave him isn't his to give away;
    But when hunter meets with husbands, each confirms the other's tale—
    The female of the species is more deadly than the male.

    Man, a bear in most relations—worm and savage otherwise,—
    Man propounds negotiations, Man accepts the compromise.
    Very rarely will he squarely push the logic of a fact
    To its ultimate conclusion in unmitigated act.

    Fear, or foolishness, impels him, ere he lay the wicked low,
    To concede some form of trial even to his fiercest foe.
    Mirth obscene diverts his anger—Doubt and Pity oft perplex
    Him in dealing with an issue—to the scandal of The Sex!

    But the Woman that God gave him, every fibre of her frame
    Proves her launched for one sole issue, armed and engined for the same;
    And to serve that single issue, lest the generations fail,
    The female of the species must be deadlier than the male.

    She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast
    May not deal in doubt or pity—must not swerve for fact or jest.
    These be purely male diversions—not in these her honour dwells—
    She the Other Law we live by, is that Law and nothing else.

    She can bring no more to living than the powers that make her great
    As the Mother of the Infant and the Mistress of the Mate.
    And when Babe and Man are lacking and she strides unclaimed to claim
    Her right as femme (and baron), her equipment is the same.

    She is wedded to convictions—in default of grosser ties;
    Her contentions are her children, Heaven help him who denies!—
    He will meet no suave discussion, but the instant, white-hot, wild,
    Wakened female of the species warring as for spouse and child.

    Unprovoked and awful charges—even so the she-bear fights,
    Speech that drips, corrodes, and poisons—even so the cobra bites,
    Scientific vivisection of one nerve till it is raw
    And the victim writhes in anguish—like the Jesuit with the squaw!

    So it comes that Man, the coward, when he gathers to confer
    With his fellow-braves in council, dare not leave a place for her
    Where, at war with Life and Conscience, he uplifts his erring hands
    To some God of Abstract Justice—which no woman understands.

    And Man knows it! Knows, moreover, that the Woman that God gave him
    Must command but may not govern—shall enthral but not enslave him.
    And She knows, because She warns him, and Her instincts never fail,
    That the Female of Her Species is more deadly than the Male.

The Female of the Species -  ~ Rudyard Kipling

More from “Mobility: Voluntary or Enforced? Vagrants in Württemberg in the Sixteenth Century”

“Mobility: Voluntary or Enforced? Vagrants in Württemberg in the Sixteenth Century” by Robert W. Scribner. from Migration in der Feudalgesllschaft, Gerhard Jaritz, Alber Müller (H.G). Page 65, published 1988, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/New York. ISBN: 3-593-33883-1

Page 69:

“Of all the identifiable types of vagrants, wandering soldiers seeking employment as mercenaries, the ‘Landsknecht’ or ‘Gartknecht’, made up by far the largest single group. Throughout the sixteenth century, they were held to be one of the greatest threats to law and order, even where they travelled singly, usually with their ‘Kebs’, or concubine. Like Veit Brunner, they often carried firearms and could be obstreperous, even without provocation. Most frequently they travelled in groups, such as the band of 15 persons who halted at an inn in Denkendorf in the district of Stuttgart in 1531: seven men and eight women, four of them married couples, and from places as scattered as Munich, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulm, Pforzheim and four other places which are no longer traceable, possibly villages outside Württemberg. This group claimed that they were travelling to seek service under the Emperor, but they fell into a brawl with some carriers in the inn. Local farmers tried to intervene to keep the peace, and became involved in the fighting. One of the farmers was felled, another was wounded; and one of the ‘Landsknecht’ threatened to harm the village in revenge. This was common behavior as it appears in the criminal records – they quarreled, brawled, disputed the bill, threatened farmers and innkeepers, and were not averse to a bit of extortion, even forming into robber bands engaged in ‘Plackerei’ or highway robbery.”

OK. So ‘Kebs’ is a new term for me. As someone who attempts to avoid the term Kampfrau, I am always collecting other phrases to describe the women of the baggage train. The news that Landsknecht “often” carried firearms is sort of off-putting. I have always been under the impression that guns were still pretty pricey in the early period (where the Veit Brunner example comes from), so were these men just walking away with the contents of the local armory after a campaign? It seems unlikely. Maybe the guns were plunder? Hum…

It is also interesting to note that the group of 15 people mentioned in this passage came from such a diverse number of places. I have been under the impression that most ‘groups’ of Landsknecht would have been from a similar geographical location; both for social reasons, and because I had heard that travelling singly was dangerous enough that even soldiers didn’t do it willingly. Add to that the idea that most peasants didn’t like soldiers and it seems like you are looking for death long the roadside if you take off on your own to find a Fahnlein to join. Would it be possible that this group were picked up along a muster route?

Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be Landsknecht… No, really – there’s a song for that. 

Further along…

“From the end of the fifteenth century Swabia became the most common recruiting ground for mercenaries, and from that time on there were repeated attempts to regulate the trade.”

And further still…

“The usual period of absence on military service seems to have been no more than a year, for those charged were usually apprehended after returning home at the end of the campaigning season.”

And then…

“The most common employer was the King of France, followed by the Emperor. Occasionally employment was taken under German princes recruiting for local campaigns, such as the Landgrave of Hesse or Margrave Albrecht of Brandenburg. Thus Italy, the Low Countries and Central Germany were the main theatres of activity.”

The article goes on to state that most of the folks arrested for this offence were not thereafter arrested again for the same issue. Perhaps evidence that not many people partook of multiple campaigns?