500 A.D - A Celtic Wheelwright

Five hundred years after the birth of Christ, a number of things were going on in the world. It was the year 3136 by a Chinese calendar. It was known as the year of the consulship of Patricius and Hypatius, 1253 for a number. The Berbers called it 1450. To the Buddhist, it was 1044; it would be 138 years before the Burmese had a calendar. The Egyptian Coptics would say it was 216; while the Ethiopians would say it was 492. To the Jews it was 4260. The Koreans said it was the year 2833 and the Thais would say it was 1043. It was about one hundred twenty five years before Mohamed migrated to Medina, marking the beginning of the Islamic calendar, known as Hijri. Emperor Xuanwu of Northern Wei, China, became the King of that region, starting a dynasty. Genghis Khan would be born about six hundred and sixty years later. The city of Uxmal was founded about this time by the Maya civilization in what is now the state of Yucatan in Mexico.

It was a leap year in the Julian calendar, and it started on Saturn's day. There was a battle going on in the British Isles: The Romano-British along with the Celts fought off an Anglo-Saxon army led by Cerdic of Wessex, being, perhaps, the basis of the King Arthur legends. In France, the Frankish kingdom was forming.

This was in the days of what they used to call the dark ages, when nothing supposedly happened. Yohand lived in the Merovingian Kingdom of Clovis. Clovis was the son of Childeric, whose father ruled a Merovingian, or Salian, Kingdom, becoming a foederatus of the Romans, along with other Frankish tribes. A foederatus was a native tribe bound by treaty. They were not a Roman colony nor were they Roman citizens, but were expected to provide a contingent of fighting men when trouble arose, while Rome would protect them from outsiders, thus they were allies.

Rome was losing control over its dominions. Clovis was in the process of extending his authority over other regions because of the Roman weakness, expanding his territories south and west into Gaul.

Yohand was a wheelwright, meaning he made wheels. As a teenager he learned to make cart wheels that were made of solid wood; now he was learning to make spooked wheels as the Romans did. There were heavy ones for wagons made for transporting goods, lighter ones for carts meant to carry people, and lighter still, but yet very strong, wheels for war chariots. The chariots were not of Roman design, but from the Celts. The Celts had a long history of wheeled transportation, going back from before Rome had begun.

Yohand had learned his craft from his father, who originally was a wainwright, meaning he made wagons, wheels and all. He excelled at making wheels, however, and let someone else be the wainwright, selling him the wheels for the wagons.

Clovis converted to Roman Catholicism to put himself in good stead with the very powerful Church; also many of his Gallo-Roman subjects were Catholic. In those days the religion of the ruler was the religion of the people, by direction of that ruler. Yohand's father still worshiped Thor, but he was pretty much out of sight now that he had retired; Yohand, on the other hand, was very much in sight. Clovis needed wheelwrights to buildup his army. He needed heavy and light wagons; he needed chariots; and he needed other wheeled devices. Yohand's skills were well-known, much-needed, and therefore utilized.

The agent sent by Clovis to see Yohand, told him: "Your services are needed, and you will be paid very well, but you need to become a Catholic, if you don't you will be killed."

Wanting the business, surely not wanting to die, Yohand became a Christian. Not quite the Christian that St. Patrick had become, but still a Christian; in time he learned the true meaning of Christ, and how Thor was just a myth.

Yohand had to build bigger quarters for the business, plus he hired some people. As each new employee came into the business, Yohand made them his direct apprentice, working very closely with the new employee until that employee could work on his own. After two or three months, he would hire another one, repeating the process. After starting about ten people this way, he bought a slave to try out, having been given that advice from a Roman Administrator, who wanted to sell one of his slaves.

The administrator said, "He is very intelligent, I am afraid he will try to escape, and I cannot watch him every moment. You, on the other hand, can lock him up in your loft each night, and watch him all day."

"Oh, I don't know. I've never had a slave, and I don't too much like the idea of having one. Others can have their slaves, but I really do not care about having one," said Yohand, "Besides he is black. I am not sure I would know how to handle him."

"You know there are black horses and there are white horses. You treat them the same. You have black slaves and you have white slaves. No different, you still treat them the same. I'll tell you what, take him, and I will increase the amount we pay you for each of your wheels," said the administrator.

Yohand could not turn down that offer, so he now owned a slave.

He took the slave up to a room in the loft of his building, showing him a locked room.

"Clean this room out; it will be your room. Put everything in there over in that corner," he said, "when you are done with that, come down and see me; by the way, what do they call you?"

"My last master called me Crafbay, my mother called me Phillo," the slave said.

"I'll call you Phillo. Right now I've got to get back downstairs; just come down when you are done. Later on, we will find something for you to sleep on."

"No! No!" Yohand said to one of his workers as soon as he got back downstairs, "You are trying to force that spoke in too hard. They are supposed to be tight, but not so tight as to force splinters out of the wood."

Yohand checked on the rest of the crew, and at the stockpile of wheels they had finished, checking each for craftsmanship. He also checked his scrolls of orders. He was still behind on the orders, but thought each of his workers was just about up to their capability. Still, one could always press just a little more. He had run out of people he could just bring into the business, although there was a neighbor who had a son that was getting close to the age that he could start.

"I will go see about the boy later," he thought to himself.

Phillo came down in due time, "OK, what would you like me to do?"

"Clean up that area right over there, and I will finish doing this; then we will start," said Yohand.

Yohand brought over a small elm log, about two feet long, and about half that thick. "You first saw this in half. You start with this saw, and I will be back before you are finished."

Yohand checked on his other workers and came back. Phillo was waiting.

"You did well. Now you have to make them into naves, the center of a wheel. They have to be tapered using an ax, and they have to be as close to each other as possible, because I want them to be matching wheels. Look at this example, then you can start, he said, showing him a finished nave."

Yohand went down the street to see the neighbor about his son. "I was thinking about making your boy Simjin an apprentice."

"I was thinking about sending Simjin to the monastery to become a priest.

"Well, look into it," said Yohand, "I will leave the offer open."

Phillo was finishing up with the second nave when Yohand got back. "Hmmm, they are not quite the same size, but not bad, in fact very good. We will have to make them into two different sets, but I'm sure you will match them eventually. But for now you have to make the holes for the spokes. I will do it for the first nave; you can do it for the second one."

Yohand made the marks on both naves where spoke holes were to be put; then with a chisel he quickly dug out the eight spoke holes on one of the naves.

"There," Yohand said, "You will be at this for the rest of the day; I will go find some bedding for you."

Yohand went to his house, asking his wife for some bedding for the slave. She got some and then dished up a bit of food.

"Here," she said, "This should do nicely."

Yohand took the blankets and the food, putting it all into a wooden box, taking it all to Phillo's room. He then went down to see how Phillo was doing.

Phillo was working on his third hole out of the eight needed.

"You are going to need to be faster," he said, "But it will come soon enough. Right now I have some supper for you in your room. Let's go up there and I will lock you in."

The next day Phillo learned how to make spokes, and how to pound them into place on the nave. The day after that he learned how to make the felloes, pegging them together as each were mounted on two of the spokes, making the rim of the wheel. Next he learned to take a strip of flat iron, heat it to red hot, pound nail holes into it, and then forcing it around the outer side of the wheel, nailing the tire into the wooden rim below it. It was called a tire, because it tied the whole wheel together as it cooled. Lastly he learned how to hollow out the nave, insert a cast iron bearing box, fixing it in place with cast iron wedges, and finally to put on the two nave bonds on each side of the hub. They used smaller strips of iron for this.

"In the next two days, you will finish a pair of wheels by yourself, but I'll be close by to watch your progress, and answer any questions that might come up. If you do not get it by then, I will have to let you go, though I sure do not know where to sell a slave. I am sure someone can take you to a larger city and do that for me."

Phillo progressed very fast; he was soon among the top producers. The orders kept rolling in. Yohand soon had to expand his shop; it was now big enough to be called a factory. Yohand even had an office separate from the three production rooms.

Yohand brought his top three producers into his office. Phillo was one of them. "I am going to put each of you in charge of one of the production rooms. Who ever gets the most production out from one full moon to the next, I will make the general manager, and he can name his own replacement as a production room manager. I am saying this: watch your people and see who you would like to replace you if needed."

Later Yohand took Phillo aside. "You are one of my production managers, and maybe even will be my general manager. I need you to be a free man. I therefore set you free, and hereby give you this scroll that states so. I will also give you the same amount of money that the other managers get, and free you from your locked room. That is the good news. The bad news is now you will have to find your own place to live, though I will let you stay where you are for as long as you need, but worse, now you have to pay taxes, you may have been ahead as a slave!"

Phillo was not sure how to take it. He had been a slave all of his life, now he was a free man, but he still was subject to the laws of Clovis. When Clovis died, one or more of his sons would be sovereign. Phillo did not dwell on this too long. He was too busy producing wheels.

Yohand and his wife had no children. When he was younger he resented his wife for not producing him a son. As time went on, he felt It maybe it was his fault. He prayed for a son, first to Thor, then, after turning Christian, he prayed to Jesus and Mary. By this time he did not even think of it too often.

Yohand came home one day; his wife was slumped over in her chair. She had died while he was at work. Yohand never was the same. He could not go to work. Phillo came by one day, telling him "You know all of our orders are filled, but I know there are more sitting on your desk at work. You have to get back and get the orders down to the production floors."

Phillo had not gotten the general management job, but he was the one that came inquiring about the problems. "I will make you the head of the company, until I can figure out what to do. You tell Snitzel, the general manager, that you are now the head of the company, and he is to find a production manager for your floor."

Yohand came into work for a few hours every day for several months showing Phillo the details of the company; how to set up orders; how to deliver them; where to get the raw materials for wheel production. He started coming in less and less, finally no longer came in at all.

Yohand had always been very slender. Now he spent a lot of time eating and drinking wine. He gained a lot of weight, now weighing over three hundred pounds. As he gained weight, he exercised less. He was to the point he could not even make meals for himself; so for the second time in his life, he bought a slave. Phillo was making his monthly reports to Yohand. Yohand introduced his new slave to Phillo.

"This is my new slave, Buckis. If anything happens to me, set him free and make sure he has a job."

One day, Yohand was having a good lucid day. He took Buckis to the factory, showing him around, even taking a knife and carving a spoke. He told Buckis about growing up learning how to do all those jobs, and how when he was still a child, his father would make wagons, putting on the wheels he also made.

Yohand hung to life for several more years, but was sinking into senility until he did not even recognize Buckis from time to time. These times became more frequent, and lasted longer each time. Soon he did not recognize Buckis at all. He soon died after that.