Was Pippin named after Gandalf?

[William Cloud Hicklin]

from the Frankish Pepin, first king of the Franks and son of Charles Martel

I think you meant first Carolingian king of the Franks. The house of Merovech had been ruling them for some two and a half centuries.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

I think you meant first Carolingian king of the Franks. The house of Merovech had been ruling them for some two and a half centuries.

That is what I meant; unfortunately, that is not what I typed.

Interestingly enough, there is a Chronicle of Fredegar who compiled the annals of the Franks, including the eras of Roman, Merovingian and Carolingian rule.

No word on Fredegar's weight (or whether there was actually a "Fredegar" who wrote the chronicle), but the mythological aspects of the chronicle are interesting. For instance, the line of Merovech included a creature referred to as a "quinotaur"

It is said that while Chlodio was staying at the seaside with his wife one summer, his wife went into the sea at midday to bathe, and a beast of Neptune rather like a Quinotaur found her. In the event she was made pregnant, either by the beast or by her husband, and she gave birth to a son called Merovech, from whom the kings of the Franks have subsequently been called Merovingians.

No bull.

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I just finished reading a most interesting book, The Dark Queens, covering the tumultuous lives of Brunnhild (yes, that one, or at least the real one) and her sometime sister-in-law Fredegund; the former a sort of cross between Elizabeth the Great and Catherine de Medici, and the latter a fullblown Lucrezia Borgia. Fortunately for us, most of their lives and fascinating (and bloody) doings were recorded by Gregory of Tours, a formidable historian.

I love the Merovingian period because it exists on the fringes of the Roman, the medieval and the legendary world. This was, after all, the period during which King Arthur was busy not existing in Britain! And Brunnhild herself went into the Cauldron of Story and, apparently because this Visigothic princess was for a time Queen Regent of Frankish Burgundy, was translated by 150 years and 150 miles to get tangled in the fall of Gundahari and the Rhenish Burgundians, and thence the Nibelungenlied, Volsungasaga and Ring des Nibelungen...