The Strike Best Not Remembered – Indianapolis 1926

Indianapolis 1920. Courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society

If the 1913 streetcar strikes were explosive and violent, the 1926 strike in Indianapolis was almost an afterthought. This article is a follow up to last weeks opining of the 1913 strike in Indianapolis a mere 13 years before. It is perhaps because of this it doesn’t even show up in historical annals online and was even glossed over in a history book of Indianapolis. Yet even so, it had the same push and pull between unions and companies that could have derailed into outright violence if it were not for the outing of one man – Harry Boggs. 

Harry Boggs was an ardent supporter of the unions and loudest in proposing the wage increase to .37 an hour and indeed, became a local union president. 

The Indianapolis Times reported in their July 14 1926 edition that: 
Explosives were placed on tracks in front of Illinois, College, Riverside, West Indianapolis, W. Washington and W. Michigan cars. A compound of potassium sulphate and sulphur (sic) was used, according to Detectives and Gaughan, who examined the unexploded charges. 

Purportedly the explosives were left in a sock and did a measure of damage. The reporter may have been confused and meant potassium chlorate or potassium nitrate as potassium sulphate was not going to get the results the strikers were looking for. 

Explosions derail and damage four cars carrying passengers. Sixty persons shaken up, several hurt, one severely. Windows of five houses shattered. Union head charges men employed by street railway with responsibility. Railway officials denies strikers’ charge. Citizens’ peace committee to get plan of action this afternoon. Surrounding of car barns to get workers to join strike practical failure due to police interference, union head says. Police kept on jump. Strikers donated $IOO by garment workers’ unions. State labor federation official calls on all unions to contribute money to strikers. Four street cars were derailed and damaged, sixty passengers shaken up, several injured, one severely and windows of five houses blown out in explosions last night. 

While the damage and the lives effected were considerably less than the 1913 strikes, all sides were quick to point fingers. The tensions of the strike — and the personal accusations — are reflected in this scene from Whiskey Covenant:: 

“Since when did you ever know what it was like to know if your family wasn’t fed?” Simpson snarled. “You got that big fancy house in Irvington!”  

Mick curbed his rage with effort. One thing that he couldn’t stand were men who held him in condemnation for circumstances they knew nothing about. “You think I ain’t ever wondered where the next meal was coming from? You ever been pulling in wages ‘cause your old man drank the rent away? Ever made sure a four-year-old didn’t go hungry ‘cause you was the only one bringing food home, working two or t’ree jobs at sixteen? Don’t stand there talkin’ about what I ain’t lived—’cause I lived it. And I made damn sure I’d never have to live it again. My children eat every day and sleep in a warm bed. And if I have to bootleg a l’le liquor to do it, t’en so be it. So don’t go t’rowin’ what I am now up to me.”  

The silence after this pronouncement felt as oppressive as the heat that pressed in around them. “Ach,” spat a man near the entrance. “He’s a workin’ man same as us. What good we gonna get from fighting among ourselves?”  

Another man pushed forward. Mick remembered him from the other night. The man he had thrown out of the fight. Johnson.  His bald head gleamed with sweat. “Maybe his bootlegin’ don’t matter to ya none, nor who he’s killed, but did any of you fellas know that he was in the vicinity of that streetcar explosion on Lambert the other night? Maybe he’s part of what we’re fighting’.”  

Mick rolled his eyes. “Yeah and so was you, Johnson. And who is ‘we’? You’re not strikin’ Why are you even here? You’re gettin’ your company bonus. What are you suggestin’, Johnson? That I planted the damn thing meself?” 

Boggs came forward. “Nobody’s makin’ outright accusations, Mick—just askin’ questions. You know how it looks.” 

“So I’m making contribution to your cause and also laying out explosives on t’ tracks. Well t’at makes a lot o’ sense,” Mick shot back, the sarcasm heavy in his voice. 

“I ain’t sayin’ it was union men. But the company sure as hell thinks it was,” Boggs said. They’ve uncovered undetonated explosives on the tracks on Wallace, Illinois and Meridian. Mostly the working class neighborhoods, same as on Lambert. Potassium sulfate and sulfur in socks.” 

“Work wool or mercerized?” Mick quipped. 

“Now is not the time for flippancy,” Boggs growled. 

“I’m not being flippant. I’m askin’ who is putting down explosives in t’ tracks t’at got people hurt. Railway men or union men?”  

Eamon scoffed. “T’at’s the trick, ain’t it? Blast goes off, company points the finger at us, never mind that workers were on that streetcar, never mind who really stands to gain from stoppin’ the strike.” 

As of July, Harry Boggs was firmly in the position of union president of the local chapter. As the Times reports 

“Harry Boggs, president of the car men’s union, at a mass meeting of strikers in Plumber’s Hall… admonished the men to refrain from congregating and violence or acts of vandalism.” 

The ones taking the biggest fall were the strike leaders John M. Parker and Robert Armstrong, but soon it would become apparent that not all was as it had seemed: 

CAR MEN DECLARE STRIKE WILL GO ON IN SPITE OF JAILING OF UNION LEADERS Judge Baltzell’s Ruling Finding Parker and Armstrong Guilty of Contempt to Be Appealed. OTHER OFFICERS EXPECTED Mass Meeting Planned Tonight Another Convicted. Although their leaders, John M. Parker and Robert Armstrong, ‘found guilty by Federal Judge Robert C. Baltzell of contempt of court, were in Marion county jail, striking street car men today declared they would continue the strike to a finish. Strikers said they expected other national officers of the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees 

Merely the fact that someone had felt the need to resort to explosives which could have caused much more damage than they did (some of the rails effected had been safely removed with harm or injury to anyone) said all anyone needed to know. Someone was ready to take this to 1913 level escalation.  

But the streetcar men had other ideas. They worked the system differently. They started giving free rides on the streetcar – to everyone. It was insidious. But it worked. It gained public support and served to embarrass the streetcar company. 

A streetcar in Indianapolis, pictured about a decade after the 1926 strike. Courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society

Arbitration came at last, perhaps by men eager to avoid repeating 1913 as Indianapolis Times reports: 

Harry Dynes, Department of Labor representative, began efforts to settle the strike by arbitration as soon as the walkout was voted. He requested Mayor Duvall to call company officials and employees together for a discussion of differences. Duvall, however, refused to intercede until Judge Robert C. Baltzell rules on whether strikers are violating a Federal Court injunction. Efforts to bring the groups together might be in contempt of court, he said. “As mayor of the city I am taking no sides, but I am eager for a peaceful settlement,” he said. “There must be no violence. Police will be instructed to protect property and take drastic steps at the first show of trouble.” 

Harry Boggs, however proved to be the biggest embarrassment to the company and their biggest liability for in September the Times went on to report on September 9, 1926: 

Harry Boggs, president of the local street car men’s union during its strike, told Federal Judge Baltzell today that he had been in the employ of the company during the strike and for two weeks previous to its calling. He said that he had been paid $50 a week for giving the company “valuable information.” The admissions came In response to questions by the district attorney and Judge Baltzell, who thereupon sentenced Boggs to 120 days in Jail for violating the injunction obtained by the street car company against ‘interference with its service.” 

Boggs wasn’t just a weak link — he was the company’s inside man. In Whiskey Covenant, Boggs went to the one man who he thought could save him and discovered he would only be met with contempt: 

Boggs looked around him, peering at the faces of drinkers in the amber glow of the pendant lights. “They said I could find you here,” he rasped. 

“If you’re lookin’ for the bloody bastards you sold out, t’ey don’t usually come in here,” Mick told him acidly. He kicked out a chair for  Boggs. “Seems you have somet’in’ to say so sit down and say it.”  He kicked aside another chair and propped his boots up on it, leaning back and tossing off the rest of his moonshine. He nodded to Charlie when he caught his eye and Charlie nodded back, understanding and brought over a drink for Boggs and another one for Mick. Boggs sat down. He glanced at the drink like he didn’t know what to do with it. Mick watched him through narrowed eyes and waited.  

Boggs licked his lips. “I’m in a bit of a tight spot,” he said.  

“Ain’t we all.” 

“I mean, I’m scared for my life. Look, Daugherty, you gotta hear me out. I didn’t have a choice.” 

“T’at’s a funny t’ing to say, Boggs, since everyone else had one and managed not to sell out.” 

Boggs leaned forward. “I had debts, a’right? Big ones. Bigger than just late rent and unpaid tabs. Fifty a week—it was survival, Mick. I didn’t—” 

“You didn’t what, Boggs? Didn’t t’ink? Didn’t give a damn who you were burnin’ to keep your own head above water?” 

It was the strike that didn’t go down in history, partially because it nowhere reached the extent of violence its 1913 predecessor had done. But perhaps also for good reason that Boggs would expose the machinations of the railway companies; It was no unheard of companies to sabotage their own lines and blame it on union workers. It never came out how far Boggs had gone to sabotage rail lines. Perhaps, as so often happened in Indianapolis quiet money exchanged hands to keep the truth concealed. Boggs is not mentioned again in the press. A man who had sold out his own could only slink away in ignominy and hope that that was the worst of his comeuppance. 

And so the 1926 strike slipped quietly into obscurity — not because it lacked danger, but because the truth was too inconvenient for anyone to preserve. 

All photos courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society

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A Tale of One City and Two Strikes

The early 20th century was known for a variety of social unrest in the United States not least of which came from the labor movement. Streetcar strikes were happening in about every major city, and Indianapolis was no exception with a strike that turned deadly Halloween night, 1913 and ran unchecked for four days. 

It’s the better known strike in Indianapolis. It was messy. It was volatile. But there is another one mentioned in the Indianapolis Times in 1926 that has been completely forgotten and doesn’t show up in history books or online at all. To better cover both of these, this blog will be in two parts. 

What stood out about the 1913 strike was how the police who were called upon to protect the streetcars, often turned their backs or even resigned. Many officers had once been streetcar operators themselves, or had close friends who still were. When ordered to protect the streetcars — or even operate them — loyalty won out. It was the biggest police mutiny in the history of the city. 

 Frequently, the streetcar companies would bring “scabs” from other cities, usually Chicago, hardened men brought in to operate the streetcars and willing to enter a kerfuffle with strikers should the need arise.  

Streetcar operators made shocking low wages even for the time before inflation, often only fifteen cents an hour and they worked six to seven days a week. Appeals for shorter working hours –  sometimes of up to fourteen hours a day – and increased pay was met with resistance by the street car companies. For their part, the  Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees of America began to unionize workers who were fired when their membership was discovered. It was a powder keg: long hours, starvation wages, and a company determined to break the union at any cost. 

Furthermore, even then Mayor Lew Shank seemed to take the side of the rioters, and Governor Ralston was reticent about intervening but as the situation continued to grow steadily more volatile, even he saw the need for calling out the National Guard.  

The unions for their part, brought in their own men, frequently recruited from underground fighting rings to fight the scabs. Is it any wonder there was general pandemonium in the streets? This atmosphere of desperation and violence is reflected in a flashback from Whiskey Covenant:: 

The warehouse smelled of sweat, iron, and something older—desperation. Rusted iron beams arced overhead, making the warehouse feel like a cage—a place that swallows men whole and spits them out as fighters, pawns, or corpses. 

Mick sat on an overturned crate, his body a landscape of bruises, unwrapping the bandages on his hands that he had so carefully wrapped before the fight. His knuckles were split, dried blood creating intricate maps across his hands, sticking to the fabric, as the blood dried. Each breath came with a quiet wince. The fights hadn’t been clean. They never were. Fatigue settled in on him like a cloak. 

Two men watched him. One was lean, sharp-eyed. He reminded Mick of a snake. There was the reptilian about him.  The other man broader, with hands that looked like they’d done their own share of fighting. His face was pockmarked in a landscape of scars and old traumas. They weren’t here to sympathize. They were here to assess. 

“How many fights you won this week?” The lean one asked. No introduction. No softening. 

Mick didn’t smile. Didn’t need to. “Enough.” 

Pockmark stepped closer, studying Mick like he was horseflesh. Checking the muscle, the potential. “You fight for money. Not for a cause.” 

“Money’s the only cause t’at matters,” Mick responded. 

Snakey’s mouth twitched. Not quite a smile. More like recognition. 

“How old are you?” 

“Eighteen,” Mick replied. 

“Been fightin’ long?” 

“In t’ ring? Couple o’ years.” 

“Indianapolis Terminal’s bringing in strikebreakers,” Pockmark said. “We need men who can handle themselves, can hold the line against the strikebreakers.” 

Mick knew what that meant. Muscle. Intimidation. Breaking more than just strikes. 

The lean man pulled an envelope from his jacket. Thick. Folded once, crisp edges. He didn’t immediately offer it. Just let Mick see it. A promise. A threat. A possibility. 

This was only the beginning. Money was offered to these men to hold the strike. Both the streetcar companies and the labor organizations were willing to do whatever it took to hold their own lines. Six trolly cars were destroyed and overhead lines were cut by strikers. 

Only twenty arrests were made the first day though six people were killed and over one hundred injured, some seriously. Over the weekend, crowds of up to ten thousand turned out in the street, overturning a streetcar, injuring thirty including two police officers.

1913 streetcar strikers gathered on Washington Street – Indianapolis Historical Society

I write about this vividly as a flashback chapter in Whiskey covenant as it influenced the eighteen year old Mick in the later labor movement of the 1920s: 

Mick dodged a bottle thrown his direction and it shattered on the pavement around him. Men and women were elbow to elbow on Washington Street. Even on a crisp November day, the heat of humanity and the tang of fear and blood was ripe in the streets. He jostled his way through the crowds to the lone trolley in the middle of the street, lilting dangerously. That it had made it this far from the terminal said something for the intrepidness of its novice driver, some strikebreaker brought in from out of town. Now, however, it was not going anywhere. The mass of humanity around it had swelled and surged in raw numbers. 

Mick continued to fight his way through the crowd. He had come armed with a heavy iron pipe. Most of the crowd were sympathetic with the strikers. But Mick found himself exchanging – and dodging – the occasional punch. On top of the streetcar, a lone, lanky figure was balanced as the streetcar lurched from side to side. The figure emitted a wild whoop and then one long, drawn out wolf howl. As Mick got closer, he recognized him.  Stanszek, if he recalled his name correctly, had given the arresting officer quite a turn by talking to invisible entities. He was always a little different.  

As Mick approached the trolley, Stanszek swung himself from the conveyance. He landed lightly near Mick and grinned. The scab who had been hired to operate the streetcar was surrounded and fighting off rioters. The car wasn’t going to go anywhere soon in any case. The cables had been cut and they sparked wildly. 

On November 6th, Governor Ralston met with angry crowds at the statehouse and his skillful diplomacy defused what could have gone on as a very dangerous situation.  In the end, the companies agreed to a paltry five percent increase in wages and to recognize the unions. Those strikers who had not been involved in violence were invited to return to their jobs. 

The 1913 streetcar riots shaped the political landscape of the city as it pertained to worker complaints and the minimum wage was increased to 28 cents an hour and workers were guaranteed one Sunday off a month and basic workplace safety requirements. Really puts things in perspective for what we complain about now! 

But the 1913 strike wasn’t the end of Indianapolis labor unrest — only the end of the part the city chose to remember 

We’ll continue this thread into another blog post next week which will take us into the much less talked about 1926 strike that was much less violent but no less politically nuanced. 

All photos courtesy of the Indianapolis Historical Society

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Goosie Lee, Indiana Avenue, and the Notorious Hollywood Café

Indiana Avenue, south from Locke Street, Sinclair Gas, Salge Brothers Grocery, 1912 – Indiana Historical Society

Goosie Lee was one of those flamboyant characters that history tends to forget. He doesn’t have a very big role in Whiskey Covenant, but he serves to show that many cities during the Prohibition were run by the real players, like kings with their petty kingdoms, down sharply divided political, racial, and ethnic lines. 

Goosie Lee came from Tennessee where he was born in 1893 and came to Indianapolis with his parents in 1902. For a black man of his era, he made a big impact in Indianapolis during Prohibition and was eulogized at length in the 1943 Indianapolis Recorder when he passed:

Born in the Deep South, Mr. Lee was brought to Indianapolis when quite young. Destiny decided the course he was to take in later life. He rose from the depths to scale the heights of business success by his untiring devotion to friends and his unfaltering determination to forge ahead and to carve a niche for himself that would become the teachings of his loving mother. Maggie Lee. His life story reads like a fable. With a meager education he became a dominant figure in the civic, political and business life of the community. 

He was known for his operation of the Hollywood Cafe on Indiana Avenue, in what was then  known as the “colored section” of town. As influential as he was, he was not immune from raids and was subject to the occasional raids through the 1920s. Establishments like the Hollywood Cafe were well known also as gambling venues for the notorious “pea shakes” and numbers rackets.  Another such venue was the Slovene‑run Westside Club in West Indianapolis.  These gambling operations were easy to hide, hard to prosecute and most often the police looked the other way or were easily bribed anyway. These raids were often more performative than punitive.  

 In Whiskey Covenant, I tried to capture the atmosphere of Goosie’s world— the casual danger, and the way men like him operated with a mix of bravado and political protection. 

The Hollywood Café catered to an overwhelmingly colored clientele but was frequented by a smattering of white men bent on the gambling that Goosie had on offer. Mick stood at the entrance watching the room through a haze of smoke and jazz. A few men hunched over a worn and beaten plank that served as a bar. Goosie enjoyed a measure of protection from the Whitcombs, so he didn’t feel the need to have a doorman or a password to enter. There was a certain brazenness in how he ran his establishment. Almost every eye turned towards Mick as he entered. Goosie came forward. He and Mick knew one another casually. Mick had sold him booze one winter when Goosie’s usual supplier had been picked up by the police. Otherwise they didn’t run in the same circles. 

“You lookin for sumpin’, Daugherty?” 

“Someone,” Mick corrected him. Mick looked just past him, to the unmistakable sound of dry peas in a can, like a child’s homemade maraca. He’d laid eyes on the oil slicked hair of the only other white man in the Hollywood Café. “And I just found ‘im.” 

Goosie shrugged and flung a bar towel over his shoulder. “Suit yourself. If you gonna beat anyone up, take it outside, okay?” 

Goosie was working as a bond man in the early ‘20s when he was arrested for having  a car full of one gallon jugs of whiskey in his car. But at this point, who wasn’t running booze in certain sectors of the city? Still Goosie Lee ran the African American Republican Party, activism on Indiana Avenue and considered himself a respectable businessman regardless of whatever rackets he might have been involved with. He didn’t actively look for trouble. Still trouble had a way of coming to blind tigers run by those of any color, as Mick aptly demonstrates in Whiskey Covenant: 

Then, without warning or hesitation, Mick drove his boot into Barrett’s ribs. Once. Twice. A third time. Barrette groaned, curling in on himself, but Mick didn’t stop. A sharp kick to the side of his head sent the secretary sprawling, his body going limp against the pavement. 

Mick rolled his shoulders, exhaled, and looked down at the unconscious man at his feet. 

“Guess I’ll have to deliver t’ message myself.” He looked up and saw he had an audience. Goosie and some of his clientele had come out to the alleyway. They stood in silence. “Seen enough of t’ show?” Mick asked them crisply. “T’at’s all you’re gonna see. Don’t worry, Goosie, I ain’t gonna li’er your alley wit’ my trash.” 

He hauled Barrette upright and pulled him over his shoulders, carrying him to his car, he threw him in the back seat. Still, no one had said a word. He knew they wouldn’t. Goosie would say what he always said. “Let the white man’s problems be the white man’s problems.” Less said, less seen. 

Like the fictional Flying Dutchman and The Claddagh run by Mick Daugherty and many other such venues catering to varying clientele and social classes, Goosie Lee’s Hollywood Cafe is yet another real life blind tiger that contributed to the colorful and enigmatic history of Prohibition era Indianapolis that went unreported and often ignored. 

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The Many Incarnations Of the Slippery Noodle

I like to write about real people and real places that weave seamlessly into the fictional worlds I build. One of my favorites is Moore’s Restaurant, the Prohibition‑era dive that appears throughout Whiskey Covenant. Today the building is known as The Slippery Noodle Inn, but its history stretches back far beyond its blues‑bar reputation. 

The structure began life as the Tremont House during the Civil War, and local lore insists it served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. The name Tremont House is still visible on the brick if you stand across South Meridian Street and look up. 

By the late 19th century it had become the Concordia House, a German‑American social club that fell out of favor during World War I when anti‑German sentiment swept Indianapolis. After that, the building shifted identities again, eventually becoming Moore’s Restaurant — though “restaurant” was generous even by Prohibition standards. 

During the 1920s and early 1930s, Moore’s had a reputation as the hangout for every underground heister in Indianapolis. The steak was supposedly decent, but the real draw was the booze, the gambling, the women, and the secrets. Stills bubbled in the basement. Politicians and cops drifted through the doors when they needed something done quietly. It was a place where the city’s filth pooled, and everyone knew it. For Mick Daugherty, it’s the perfect place to drop an ear to the ground: 

Moore’s wasn’t just a bar. It was the gutter where the city’s filth pooled—bootleggers, gamblers, pimps, union bosses, the kind of men who made things happen, legal or not. Politicians slunk through its doors like rats sniffing for opportunity. It was Mick’s backyard.  
Mick found his best fighters here. The ones who could take a beating and give it back twice as hard. If they had the right instincts, they moved up—enforcers, men who knew when to break bones and when to break spirits. Mick had been recruited here at seventeen after a drunken brawl in which he had faced off a brute twice his size. Hinkey Dink, one of the brashest, most colorful patrons of Moore’s, had picked him up off the floor and declared him just the material he needed in his prizefighting ring. Now Mick stepped into Moore’s, the dark interior exuding filth and vice, smelling of spilled whiskey and tobacco. The cops never raided this place. They knew better. It billed itself as a restaurant and indeed you could get a half decent steak, but what men really came here for was the booze and the secrets. He paused in the doorway, allowing his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting that gleamed off the pressed tin ceilings. About the only thing that gleamed in this place. The floor was cracked and warped. The brick walls were dingy. Everything had a veneer of tobacco smoke. 

Moore’s as it is today as The Slippery Noodle

Moore’s was notorious for attracting corrupt law enforcement, especially during the Duvall administration. And corrupt law enforcement in Mick’s pocket is an advantage he can’t afford to ignore. And Moore’s is just as lucrative for Mick in Devil’s Track as it is in Whiskey Covenant: 

Mick hadn’t anticipated seeing the cop in here, but so much the better. Any scuttlebutt was better than no scuttlebutt. “Well, if it ain’t the only bleedin’ cop in Indy who charges a fee to not solve a murder.” 

Fogarty looked around in the dim confines of Moore’s, till he saw Mick. He strode over to Mick’s table, throwing his Fedora on it and pulling up a chair and sat down. Well, if it ain’t the walking tax write-off who thinks ‘subtle’ is a word you boil in an Irish stew.

Mick flicked ash off the cigarette. ”You hoping to warn me or bury me, Fogarty? I forget which way your compass spins these days.” 

“I gotta ask,” Fogarty said, squinting at him. “How the hell does the Slovene over at the Westside owe you anything?” 

And Moore’s had a reputation for being a bit of a brothel as well as a purveyor of illicit booze and scuttlebutt.

He heard  Lilly come downstairs, her silk kimono trailing like a whisper behind her on the stairs.  She straddled his lap, silk slipping off one shoulder, scent of rosewater brushing his throat, as she leaned in and breathed deep. “That’s not my perfume,” she said. “No,” he admitted. “It’s isn’t. But it stayed on my coat. She didn’t” 

She didn’t pull away. Didn’t accuse. Just rested her cheek against his collarbone, her fingers curled loosely in the open neck of his shirt.  

 “Do I have to ask?”  

 He let out a breath, warm against her hair. “No.”  

 “Do I need to worry?”  He lifts her chin, eyes meeting hers without deflection.  

“Not unless I stop coming home.”  A long moment. Then she pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth. Not a kiss. A claim. And one he let her take.  

 “You go to Moore’s for what you need… and come home for what you want.” 

“I go for the talk, not the tumble,” he told her shortly. 

“Maybe not, but those girls would walk over broken glass to sink their claws into you. We both know it.” 

Moore’s was one of those places that was as gritty as it was colorful. Today the Slippery Noodle Inn is known as Indiana’s oldest continuously operating bar and one of the state’s most iconic blues venues. Even if you’ve never stepped inside, you know the name. It’s part of the city’s cultural vocabulary, the kind of place people speak of with a mix of nostalgia and pride. The ghosts of Moore’s are long gone, but the bones of the place still hum with history 

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When the Archives Whisper Back: The Real Life “Hots” Gardner

I believe it was Bertrand Russell who said, “There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.” I don’t know if other historical fiction writers ever mourn the fact that so much of their carefully researched information will go unnoticed and underappreciated, but I certainly do. Research is the engine that drives plot and the texture that gives a story its bones. And in the case of the Daugherty Saga, some events look so wild you’d swear I invented them — but some of them came straight from the archives of the Indianapolis Times, preserved nowhere else because they weren’t considered important enough to chronicle. 

So today I’m diving back into blogging with the stories behind the stories — the strange, forgotten, and utterly real events that fed the Daugherty Saga. The real people no one remembers but should. Reading between the lines. Consider it an insider’s view of the Daughertys’ moonshine‑soaked world. 

Today we delve into the story behind George “Hots” Gardner. Hots Gardner was a real person — a dirt‑track driver who met a violent end in 1932. 

The newspapers never explained why Gardner carried the nickname “Hots,” but in Prohibition‑era slang, “hot” almost always referred to stolen cars or hotwiring. Dirt‑track drivers were notorious for running “hot” vehicles, so I leaned into that history when shaping his fictional counterpart. We are first introduced to Hots at the Sugar Creek Speedway, my fictional counterpart for the real Jungle Park track in Parke County, Indiana. 

“Ach,” Karl Reinhardt spat on the floor. In his leering face, never had the name “Vulf” been more appropriate. “Go to hell, Irish.” 

Hots folded his arms across his chest. “Car blew to hell, Daugherty? Sure you didn’t just try to hotwire it and get your wires crossed maybe?” 

“Know something about hotwiring, Gardner?” Mick snapped to the driver. “You and all t’ose cars between here, Indy and Muncie that just happened to disappear from their owners, maybe? I don’t need advice from a shite car heister.” He turned to the German. “Keep looking over your shoulder, Reinhardt. One day, it won’t be me you see first.” 

This April 9 Indianapolis Times article tells us what went down: 

HIJACKER SLAIN IN BATTLE WITH BOOZE RUNNERS Companion, Illinois Gangster, Shot in Head; Flees After Returning Riddled Body to West Side Home. George (Hots) Gardner, Dirt Track Race Pilot, Greeted by Spray of Slugs From Rum Car, Police Believe. 

In Devil’s Track, I used this real‑life incident as the backbone of a fictionalized encounter: 

Ahead in the road, a dark shape loomed. Tommy slammed on the brakes and the truck spun in a squealing of tires. At that moment, Mick felt the impact of a bullet punching into the side of the truck. It sent his senses instantly on fire. The truck was positioned diagonally in the road, but its headlights illuminated the car ahead. There were three men positioned around it. Mick jabbed his door open. He already had a round in each chamber. Leaning over the hood of the truck, he aimed at the men around the car. A holler told him that some of his 12-guage double -aught buck had found its mark. Answering fire made him duck, but on the other side of the truck Tommy was already chambering more shells in his shotgun. Mick unloaded the other barrel at the car before digging in his pockets for more shells.  Tommy snapped off another round while Mick broke open his shotgun and chambered two more rounds. For a moment the thunder of gunfire was all he could concentrate on. But he saw first one and then two figures taking off down the river.  They were out of range now. But one figure remained by the car. Tommy’s answering gunfire dropped him, spinning into the dirt. When he didn’t move, Mick moved closer. He had two more rounds chambered, but he held off. In the headlights from the bullet ridden car, he recognized the face of “Hots” Gardner. Gardner twisted his body, reaching for the revolver that had fallen from his hand. He raised it. Before he could fire, Mick let him have the two chambered shells, one after the other. Gardner’s body jumped and buckled under the force of the buckshot.  

Tommy approached behind him “You reckon this is Vulf’s work?” 

“It ain’t now. He’s gone,” Mick said dryly. “His goons took off and let him eat buckshot. Some friends.” 

“They’re rigged for bootleg liquor. Hijacking, I’m guessing,” Tommy said.  

“Sure, but out t’is way?” Mick said. “T’ey wanted our booze but t’is also a message. He’s a Vulf stooge t’rough and t’rough.” 

‘What now?” Tommy said.  

Mick glanced up at the outline of the shanty town. We get this goon loaded up in his car and drop ‘im back at his boarding house. T’at way his friends know we know who he is.” 

Tommy eyed their truck. We got a few holes ventilating our truck. We’ll have to patch a tire.” 

Imagine my surprise when I later came across a follow‑up article dated April 15: 

COPS TIPPED ON GARDNER’S PAL Mysterious “Mickey” Believed North Side Gangster… 

The police were searching for a mysterious “Mickey” who “figured in” the hijacking that killed Gardner. I had already written Mick Daugherty — owner of the legitimate Daugherty Construction Company and operator of several less‑legitimate enterprises — long before I ever saw this clipping. To find a real “Mickey” lurking in the historical record felt like history tapping me on the shoulder. 

Though we will never know what really went down that April night or who the real Mickey was, it isn’t the first time the archives of the Indianapolis Times have given me fodder for weaving little‑known historical incidents and forgotten people into my fiction. Sometimes the past hands you a gift. Sometimes it hands you a ghost. 

The Story Behind Lilac Season: How a Rock in Maine and a Distillery in Indiana Became a Saga

When I was a child, I found the initials M.S. 1917 carved into a large granite boulder outside my home in Sullivan, Maine. I don’t know why, but I became convinced those initials belonged to a man named Malcolm Silsby. Silsby was a common enough surname in Downeast Maine, and the idea rooted itself in my imagination. As the years passed, the carving weathered until it was barely visible, but the significance — true or not — stayed with me.

I grew up in a town most people have never heard of. In the 1980s and 1990s, Sullivan had a population of around nine hundred. I lived in the old Harvey Robertson house, built in the 1920s by one of the rising quarry masters of the era. The granite industry shaped everything: the landscape, the economy, the stories the old-timers told about teams of oxen hauling massive blocks down the main road before the First World War took the young men away to France.

Harvey Robertson and his house feature in Lilac Season. It was typical of the style of house built by the well off prior to the Great Depression. Robertson, a Sullivan quarry master whose family hailed from Nova Scotia, traded Sullivan granite for Florida cypress with which to trim the mantles and pillars of his magnificent house.

Old Harvey Robertson house, Sullivan, Maine

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to write a story set in Sullivan during its granite‑boom days. But life carried me elsewhere. I moved from Maine to Indiana, started a family, and the story I thought I’d write never materialized.

Then one day, everything shifted.

On a tour of a distillery in Nashville, Indiana, I stepped into a reconstructed moonshiner’s cabin. The guide explained how bootleg whiskey traveled from Brown County to Indianapolis speakeasies during Prohibition. Something sparked — a sudden collision of two worlds I had never imagined together. Maine and Indiana. Granite and moonshine. The past I came from and the place I now lived.

Somehow, those two landscapes fused into the beginnings of Lilac Season, the first book of the Daugherty Saga.

And I remembered the initials on that rock.

M.S. 1917. The year the United States began drafting men for the Great War. Had he carved them because he didn’t know if he’d return? Had he left space for someone else’s initials beside his?

Whoever he was — real or imagined — he became Mal in Lilac Season, the young man Lilly and Victor drive to Waukeag Station, where he will board a train to basic training and eventually to France.

Here is a moment from that scene:

Old Eli Beale was the ferryman. He never spoke. Lilly called him Charon behind his back. The ferry bumped to the opposite shore. Victor had to crank the car again to move the Model T off the deck, and Lilly and Mal began to speculate that they might have to tow it onto land. Mal suggested pushing the T off the ferry and Victor shouted, “No, you don’t!” Finally he got it started.

“Anyway,” Mal continued, “this old war is just about over.”

“You think so?” Lilly said hopefully.

“Absolutely. They’re just sending us over there to finish the Krauts off. They’re already practically beat. I may not even go to Europe.”

Lilly didn’t say anything. She thought about the initials Mal had etched into a piece of granite before he left. M.S. 1917. He had not carved hers beside them. She had noticed.

There truly was a ferry that carried travelers across the bay to Waukeag Station before the bridge was built in 1926 — the Old Singing Bridge, whose humming metal still echoes in my dreams. It was dismantled and replaced the year I left home in 1999.

So while Lilac Season is set largely in Indianapolis, part of its heart will always belong to Sullivan. To the granite dust. To the old house. To the initials carved into a rock by someone I never knew, whose imagined life became part of the story I finally wrote.

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Slavery and Servitude in the Byzantine Empire

Slaves carrying a noblewoman on a litter

We often don’t think as much about slavery in the Eastern Roman Empire as we do about it in the Western, but the fact is, it existed, though perhaps not to the extent as its western predecessor,  at least after the middle and late periods. In the medieval period, enslaving Christians was forbidden and as many of the Slavic countries converted to Christianity, this impinged upon the source for slaves.  Before this occurrence, many Slavs were brought down the Dnieper by Norse-Russian traders. According to Youval Rotman in his  Byzantine Slavery and the Mediterranean World, the Greek word “δοῦλος” (doulos) was synonymous with “σκλάβος” (sklavos), from the root word for Slav.  Slavs were often the unfortunate ones sold in the slave markets of Constantinople.

He headed towards the Mese, wending this way and that, making a slow progress through the throngs that crowded around the stalls. Some had coin; many did not but loitered anyway to look at the fine things that were brought from afar. A line of slaves stood in the hot sun, their wrists shackled before them. Their sun-burnt skin and clothes trimmed in red thread marked them as Slavs. They were unused to the heat and baking sun of Constantinople and their faces bore a sheen of sweat. 

The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

Though castration as at various times outlawed, it was practiced widely and a castrated male slave could command three times the amount of an intact boy. For this reason, parents often had their younger male children castrated, in the hopes they might find places in upper class homes or perhaps even the Great Palace. Often, however, the sad reality was that many of these children ended up as catamati – male prostitutes. However, eunuchs, both slave and free represented a category of positions that often were only open to them, often on governmental and imperial positions.

In the Serpentine Key, Nikolas was just such a eunuch who had been castrated by his parents in the hopes he would end up serving in the Great Palace. He did indeed secure a position as a Keeper of the Doors, but at a great price and his tragic story was only one of many of his social status.

As in most societies, slaves could not have any ownership of their own, nor give evidence in court. However by the ninth century this had begun to change and they began to gain some modicum of property rights. By the end of the medieval period, slavery had largely declined to the point that few actually owned slaves any longer.

Byzantine slavery was largely an urban phenomenon and few rural landholders could afford many slaves. In the Great Palace, those serving within its walls were both hired servants and enslaved persons.  Many wealthy people provided for the care of their slaves after their death and for the education of their children. There was also a special church service specifically for the manumission of slaves.

In The Secret Testament the crumbling rural estate that Sophia inherits does come with some slaves as well as hired help. They knew only the farm as their home and would have been hard pressed to begin a life anywhere else.  It is this continuum that Ulf recognizes when he lingers over the possibility of selling the farm in Anatolia after Sophia’s death. A steward would have been a high ranking servant but never a slave, considered trusted enough to oversee the running of a farm, especially in the absence of the owner, in this case, Ulf.

The farm seemed to be thriving under Lukyan’s stewardship. It was hard to find an honest steward. He had stood one last time looking out over the land before he had ridden away. Micah was right. He came here not just to look over things, but to feed a tightening band of melancholy. He should have set it aside after all these years, but he could not. It had occurred to him several times to sell the farm, pay the servants and disperse them, giving freedom to the two or three slaves who were still part and parcel with the property. He was scarcely ever there anyway. He knew if he did so, however, he was sending all of them away from their home and everything familiar to them. Also, there would be a finality to it, he could not bear. It would be as if in doing so, he closed the door to everything he and his family had shared there. He languished in indecision.

The Secret Testament by G.S. Brown

Often slavery is equated in the modern mind with people from Africa, but as the Byzantines primarily enslaved those whom they captured in war and these were often people to the north, east and west of them, African slavery is rather unlikely in the scope of their civilization. Slaves mentioned are almost always sourced from the Slavic lands, though some are mentioned in the sources as being captured in war from the Saracens with whom the Byzantine were at war.

In rural areas, there was a system somewhat akin to feudalism, but might also be compared to the system of sharecropping in the rural south. These people leased the land they farmed and so technically were not enslaved, but were likely so connected to the land, that they were never able to leave.

Slavery, like castration and many other things in Byzantine culture, was questioned, especially in a Biblical context, but it never entirely went away. It is also likely that because of the common practice of bound tenancy (basically serfdom) it was considered to be technically not slavery in practice, many would not have considered themselves as slave owners. Just as child labor and many other forms of slavery continued in the western world long after slavery had supposedly been abolished and in face, the practice of white slavery continued well after abolition, Byzantines could look the other way at whatever might not be in practice considered true slavery.

The Varangian Guard

Varangian returning home

In the Varangian Chronicles, a family of Varangian Guardsmen become entangled in some way with the secrets of the Brotherhood of Lampros.

 The Varangian Guard were one of the most elite guard units of history comparable to the Praetorian Guard and the Janissaries.  While Varangians as an ethnic group had long served as mercenaries in the Byzantine military, the Guard itself was established in 988 the year Vladimir of the Rus officially became Emperor Basil’s brother-in-law and sent 5,000 of his finest warriors to Constantinople. To join required at three pounds of gold. Ethnically, the composition was made up of Rus’ (Russians) and Scandinavians. As time went on, however, more and more men from England joined the Guard, as Anglo-Saxons became disenfranchised in their own country in the Norman Conquest of 1066. By the late eleventh century, Anglo-Saxon Guardsmen were common enough that a traveler to Constantinople might hear English spoken there.

In the beginning, a Guardsman’s weapons and equipment were supplied by himself. Often his weapons might include the broad “Dane axe” for which they were famous.  They might also have brought a sword with them. Armor of any kind was likely to be ring mail, but they might also have adopted the lamelar armor common to the Byzantine infantry. The long mail shirt they were known for had a Scandinavian name –  hauberk. The arms and equipment of the Varangian Guard is informational enough to be its own blog post and maybe I will address that at another time. 

The Varangians as a regiment saw their first battle under Basil II at Chrysopolis against Kalyros Delphinas and again at Abydos in which the rebel Bardas Phokas was killed.  The rebels could not have anticipated the fury of the Northmen that Basil had brought upon them, but the reputation of his northern mercenaries quickly became legendary and a force to be reckoned with. Combined with Basil’s use of Greek Fire, Phokas’ own troops were quickly defeated.

Phokas’ dromons could not come so far onto shore, as they had a much deeper draft.
They sat in the water, as shallowly as they dared. Basil’s  dromons were waiting for them. Sven
saw the great siphons on the prow of the lead imperial ship. Phokas’ helmsmen turned the prow on the  dromon. Sven stood on the deck of the longship as his men pulled at the oars, directing
the vessel into the narrow alley of water. The Rus ships with their narrow draft, easily navigated
the shore and jumping out, the men pushed the ships onto the beach. The imperial dromon
continued to bear on Phokas’ warships, daring the shallows. The great brass lion set firmly on the deck had a mouth wide and gaping as if it roared. The siphon extended from its mouth. The naval officer aboard the lead ship called aloud to his men, commanding them to bring the great siphons about. The lion’s heads were lit up in the night from the flames spewing from their
mouths, and the dark of the night was made blindingly bright as the flames snaked over the
water, dancing on the surface in a demonic frenzy.

The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

Wherever Basil went, his Varangians went with him and their presence was an indication of his presence on the battlefield.  There were shouts of “The Emperor is on the field!” and even “The Emperor’s wineskins are here!” (One of the names for the Varangians was “wineskins” as they were given to prodigious drinking.) They also had a fondness for the capitol’s brothels and the chariot racing and were known to put down their substantial wages on both. Sven himself was known to frequent the brothels and he was certainly a frequent presence in the tavernas. 

After leaving Ahmed, Sven stopped at a taverna. His thirst for wine had begun to consume
him. Throwing a coin to the taverna keeper, he took his cup of wine to a darkened corner of the
taverna and sat in his usual careless manner, feet propped on a nearby bench. He needed to think. Sipping the wine, he thought about how all he had learned fit together.

The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

The Varangians had their own churches as well (after all the Imperial Guardsmen had to show some piety towards  the same God of the emperor whom they served). Likely many of them had been baptized prior to their arrival in Constantinople, yet there were still many who would have clung to their old ways. 

The leader of the Varangians was the Akolouthos who was usually Greek. There was at least one who was Norse, Nambites, but it seems that the Byzantines preferred to leave matters of leadership in the hands of their own men. 

As I mentioned before, there was a substantial fee for joining and a man newly arrived in the empire might serve for a while in the regular imperial army, working to earn the amount necessary for joining the Varangian Guard.  In The Secret Testament Þórsteinn has the gold but not the physical constitution for it after an injury in an encounter with Penchenegs on the Dnieper disqualifies him from joining

Þórsteinn was in a foul mood. He had been in Constantinople for two months now. He
had been slightly overawed by the city. It was nothing like Kiev or Novgorod. Where the Rus’
cities were largely built of the timbers that were plentiful in the forests, Constantinople was
mostly stone. It had taken quite a lot of getting used to. He had recovered his strength since he
had been here, but he still walked with a limp. He had not been successful at concealing it when
he had reported to the Zeuxippos Barracks to announce that he wished to join the Guard. He was skilled at handling weaponry, and he had his three pounds of gold. But the commanding officer there had noticed the limp. It was no good to try to pretend otherwise. He was rejected. His disappointment was profound.

The Secret Testament by G.S. Brown

The Guard’s services were utilized for police duties within the capitol , as well as enforcing revenue collection. This made them quite unpopular with the citizens and the fact that whatever Greek was spoken was tinged with the accent of their northern homeland, that their culture and mannerisms were different, set them apart even in a city that was a cosmopolitan and diverse as Constantinople. To many people, no matter how many Varangian churches were built, the Rus had a tinge of the pagan and barbarian about them.

As time went on the Guard became distinctly less Scandinavian or even Germanic as less and less men from England joined and the reputation that Guard had earned as the Empire’s fiercest fighting forced waned. They were no longer held to the same standards, nor did they have Basil II to lead them, a man so respected by his men he was called “The Father of the Army”. By the time Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Guard was no longer a recognizable entity. Perhaps if the weak and ineffectual Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos had the advantage of Basil’s bold men sent from Rus and Scandinavia, Constantinople might never have fallen into the hands of Mehmed II.

The Black Sea, Jewel of Eurasia

The modern coast of the Black Sea

Constantinople lay at the  mouth of  Bosporus, leading to the Black Sea, surely one of her secrets to her expansive hold over commerce. Across from the Black Sea lay what is today Ukraine, but at the time was a constantly shifting arrangement of borders between the Varangian Rus, the nomadic Penchnegs and the ever opportunistic Khazars.  The Byzantine empire did business and war with all of them at one point or another.

Between the Black Sea and home, lay the Dnieper River for the Varangian traders that made their way  to and from the empire with their wares, furs, slaves, honey and many other  things. 

In The Serpentine Key, Sven sets sail across this sea on his mission with Vladimir of Kiev in a small, two-man boat. 

This was to be a clandestine operation. No need to leave from the main shipping area on the Sea. The boat was similar to the rigged faerings he was used to from back home, easily manned by two men, especially if one sailed close to shore. The waters themselves were usually calm, even at this time of the year. The Scythians called these waters Axinos – black. The Greeks called it the Euxine Sea.

The Serpentine Key by G.S. Brown

The Black Sea has not the biodiversity of flora and fauna of an area such as the Mediterranean.  However there are at least three species of dolphins living in the Black Sea as well as jellyfish a small type of shark, crabs, mussels and scallops. There is speculation that because of a lower layer of water saturated with hydrogen sulfide and that beneath this is a completely different world fed by an underwater river originating in the Bosporus. 

in 2018 one of the oldest intact shipwrecks ever found was confirmed at the bottom of the Black Sea. The Bronze age relic was dated to 2,400 years old and found at a depth of 2,000 meters.  It has been likened to the ship on a vase depicting Homer’s Odyssey.  The researchers said they would likely find items such as copper (a hot commodity at this time) and amphorae of wine.

At the height of the Byzantine Empire, the Black Sea continued to be an important avenue for trade and chief among these trades were slaves. As Islam did not allow the enslaving of other Muslims and Christianity did not allow the enslaving of other Christians, the prime victims for enslavement were the pagan Slavs. In fact, the name Slav is commonly cited as the origin of the word “slave” so often were these unfortunate people enslaved by both Christians and Muslims. As the Slavic tribes gradually fell under the sway of Christianity, they became less and less fodder for enslavement with the Christian empires, but many Europeans were still being captured and enslaved by Ottoman Turks as late as the nineteenth century. 

Because of the location of the Black Sea, it was not only an avenue to the Dnieper and Rus’ (now modern day Ukraine and Russia) but also a way to the East, especially the Levant. Commerce was alive and well and thriving throughout the time of the Byzantine Empire and it is safe to say that Black Sea more than helped to facilitate this as maritime travel was cheaper and faster than overland. 

Greek Fire being used against the Rus in 941

But just as the Black Sea brought silk and spices to the people of Constantinople it also brought violence.  in 941 the Rus, originally immigrants from Scandinavia,  launched a series of attacks with 1,000 ships (which must have been an incredible sight)  upon Constantinople and were only repelled with the aid of Greek Fire.  Though they were defeated, the Rus led another larger force in 944 and this time the Byzantines elected to settle the difference with trade agreements rather than prolonged warfare. The Rus’ were notorious for the brutality of their warfare, nailing the heads of captives and crucifying others. Clearly, the Byzantines felt they would make better trading partners than enemies and in the decades that followed there was a steady stream of commerce down the Dnieper into the Black Sea and the heart of the Empire. However, except for Varangian Guard, they were specifically forbidden from carrying weapons in the city or having too many of them in the city at one time. The Empire was not ready to go toe to toe with these fierce warriors again soon.  In 988, Vladimir the Great of Kiev became a Christian and the Emperor’ brother-in-law, effectively changing the Nordic/Slav culture north of the Black Sea forever. 

The Bold Akritai of the Eastern Frontiers

A little known backstory for Sven Thorvaldson in The Serpentine Key is that before he served in the Balkans with Basil II, he was a member of the Akritai. There is no evidence to suggest that Norsemen served in the Byzantine border patrol, but since the Norse (in particular the Rus) had served in various mercenary positions within the empire since at least 911 and often were deployed against the Arabs to the Empires’ eastern borders, it is not without the realm of possibility. So the backstory remains as Sven having a been a member of the Akritai.

The Akritai were recruited mainly native Byzantine infantrymen and Armenian soldiers, being comprised of both professional soldiers and irregular units. In short, they were a mixed bunch, not just militarily but also ethnically. Being on the border, they might have been from anywhere and may well have included mercenaries. According to Historical Sociology and  World History by Alexander Anievas and Kamran Matin:  “Akritai were exempt from taxation and entitled to full disposition of booty acquired through border raids…” which would have been a very appealing  and lucrative contract for mercenaries if they were not exempt from signing up with the Akritai. 

Their job was to secure the eastern border, but to also combat brigands, but they were just as likely to be brigands themselves. Their tactics seem to have been guerilla warfare, and involved getting the local populace to fortified strongholds, while harassing and shadowing the enemy, and in this way are reminiscent of American frontier warfare. Of course, if they could line their pockets with the gold of a traveling merchant, particularly if he was a Saracen, well who would notice?

The Akritai were reduced in importance in the latter half of the tenth century (about the time the fictional Sven would have left to to join the war in the Balkans and Basil’s continuing struggle against Tsar Samuil.) However they continued in some form until the latter half the of the thirteenth century. They were recalled by Basil to help him in his Balkan wars when manpower was low. This likely explains the distinctly Armenian vanguard that were responsible for getting Basil out of a tight spot at the ambush at Trajan’s Gate in 986. 

The Akritai are best remembered for the Akritic songs ( literally Ακριτικά τραγούδια “frontiersmen songs) the epic poems that celebrated the life of the guard of the Empire’s easternmost frontiers. Digenes Akritas is the best known of these and this one emerged sometime in the 12th century. The hero of this poem is named Basil, though he is known as Diogenes Akritas (“two-blood border lord”) the son of an Arab father and a Byzantine noblewoman. The original Akritac songs were likely oral and put one in mind of the Frankish Song of Roland, which tells the story of a hero much like Digenes Akritas. The Akritic songs might have even had an influence as far afield as France, as their influence showed up in Arabic and Slavic literature. 

Like the Danish Beowulf, Digenes also came up against a dragon amongst many other heroic exploits. Like Cú Chulainn of Irish myth, he possesses superhuman strength.  Like Cú Chulainn and his Scáthach, he has a love affair with a warrior woman, the Amazon Maximou. Perhaps this only proves how universal the Indo European folk tales really are. 

The Akritic Songs provide far more material than I have time to delve into in the scope of this article, but suffice to say, they provide an intriguing look at life at the time.  It was very popular for centuries and still retains a level of popularity in Greece today. A graphic novel has been made of the exploits of Digenes Akritas. 

In The Red Empress, the courtesan Khatia attempts to read a portion of the Lay of the Emir to a surly Asbjørn, with little success. 

When he only shrugged, she said “Or I can speak to you if you like, so you are not so obliged.” She had plenty of experience with men who had retreated into themselves like a cloak.

When he still didn’t reply, she said, “Shall I read to you?”

“If you like.”

With so little encouragement to go on, she sent one of her girls for a copy of one of the Akritai poems, Lay of the Emir. It was about a great romance of the Akritai border guards. She thought it might amuse and distract him. She searched for a passage most likely to be interesting and when she had, she began to read:

“They hissed like dragons, they roared like lions, they soared like eagles, and the two clashed And then you could see a fight between fine brave youths. In the heat of the battle they struck continuously, and from the great clashing and the cut and thrust the plains grew fearful and the mountains re-echoed, trees were uprooted and the sun was darkened.”

She looked up to see if he was still listening. It was difficult to ascertain.

“Blood flowed down over their horse-trappings and their sweat ran out over their breastplates Constantine’s black horse was speedier, and its rider was a marvelous young man. He charged at the emir and struck him a blow with his stick and then the emir began to tremble and flee. A Saracen addressed the emir –”

“Read instead from the Iliad,” Asbjørn interrupted.

Well that was better. She found she better liked his boorish abruptness to which she was accustomed than this stony silence. Still, she had begun to enjoy reading from the Lay of the Emir.

The Red Empress by G.S. Brown

There are also some elements that remind me of the heroic bogatyr from Slavic myth and perhaps some of the Varangians took these popular tales home to Rus’ with them where they influenced the Slavic folk tales. After all, the Russian bogatyr Dobrynya Nikitich also fought his dragon.