Welcome to the History of English Podcast, a podcast about the history of the English language.

This is episode 62, flesh and blood.

In this episode, we're going to move the story of English a little bit closer to the year

1066.

Last time we looked at the reign of King Canute, the Danish king of England.

This time we'll explore what happened when Canute died.

The underlying theme of this episode is flesh and blood, and we'll explore both senses

of that term.

We'll look at how two mothers competed against each other to promote their own flesh and

blood to the English throne, and we'll also explore the more literal sense of flesh and

blood, that is, the human body.

So we'll look at Old English words for parts of the body, as well as Old English words

for sickness and disease.

But before we begin, let me remind you that the website for the podcast is history of

Englishpodcast.com, and you can always reach me directly at kevinathistribinglishpodcast.com.

And I'm on Twitter at English HIST POD.

Now I had planned to move the historical narrative up to the year 1066 with this episode, but

I have too much to cover before we're done with Old English.

So in terms of the chronological history, this time I'm going to cover the years between

the death of Canute and the restoration of the Westsex monarchy under Edward the Confessor.

Next time we'll close out the Old English period with the last few years of Anglo-Saxon

rule.

...