Myth-making (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

The problem with "myth" evidence is that the last person to write it down unwittingly introduces contemporary things even when they are trying to be "historical". We sometimes forget that we are much better historians than the Ancients--they did not know that cereals were introduced at such and such a date--so an Ancient scribe of c 2000 BC might introduce references to barley even though faithfully reporting events of 10,000 BC. To him barley and food are coterminous.

That's why historians are so frightfully keen to stick to contemporary documentation. If the "extract from the Zoroastrian flood myth" was written in 10,000 BC we would have to put back the date for cereal cultivation (and the invention of writing). Of course, the fact that historians have now made a fetish of requiring contemporary documentation has led them up several garden paths.

On the question of sacral kingship, the facts are these:

1. Living communally is highly advantageous
2. Living communally requires internal organisation i.e. A tells B and C what to do
3. B and C don't particularly like being told what to do
4. A has to be given the power to make B and C do what they are told
5. This wastes resources
6. All communities therefore seek ways by which B and C will do what they are told which wastes least resources.

Basically, human (political) history is the story of this quest to find the least inefficient way of getting people to do what they otherwise probably wouldn't do. Animal troops do it by having the alpha male and alpha female and a pecking order. Which is OK until numbers get to, say, fifty plus when it gets unrealistic to expect the alpha male to directly challenge every rising young male.

The "tribal" way is use sacral kingship where authority is vested in an individual, generally chosen by a mixture of inheritance and fitness, and then surrounded by taboos and legends and laws. It doesn't matter whether da king is actually the brightest or the strongest, so long as the tribe doesn't have to waste resources getting everyone to do what he says. That system is pretty good and lasted until 1704 when Robert Harley introduced cabinet government based on the popular vote. A British invention that went round the world. If I may introduce a modern myth.

[Ray]

It's true that myths are susceptible to later modifications. That's one reason why academia ignores them. Another is that they frequently state the unthinkable.

But they don't get altered as much as you might think. In the pre-literary era when everything had to be memorised you had two streams of'historical' lore: the fireside yarn variety, which was subject to frillification, and the formal bardic epics in which every word was sacrosanct.

Notice that the Zoroastrian myth doesn't mention crops - just plants. A later reworking would almost certainly have done exactly as you suggested: it would have replaced the word with crops of some sort. That, and the fact that a square enclosure would have been seen as ridiculously inadequate later on - I mean, how Old Stone Age can you get? - is what convinces me that it is essentially pristine.

I don't push them out until I've looked at them and dozens like them, very carefully.

[Mick Harper]

I do not disagree with your detailed arguments (nor endorse them either) but this "first writing of myths" is vair, vair important.

As you say, writing things down requires a different text than spoken forms in two respects:
1. There is no need to retain all the mnemonic devices of the spoken saga
2. There is no longer scope for bardic extemporising for the benefit of the actual audience in front of you. (I dispute your distinction about being word-perfect.)

This appears to result in the "first writing" being Homeric, ie. enshrining everything for all time, warts and all, archaicisms and all. The poem comes to stand for "all that it good and noble in one's culture". Like Robin Hood standing for Merrie England when English was first written. Probably The Bible has the same function. And Gilgamesh. The Romans knew all about this and got Virgil et al to write the Aenead et al.

The Tudor bastard who forged Beowulf was aware of this also and consciously made it an epic. Even though the Anglo-Saxons themselves used Anglo-Saxon strictly for City Charters, Annals and limericks.

Zoroaster, by the way, is himself a half-mythic figure. It is not at all clear whether he was a real person or just a convenient vehicle available when Persian (?) epics were first written down. Bit like Moses, I expect, for Hebrew.

[Ray]

[DPCrisp]

[Mick Harper]

On the question of word-perfect epics. I accept that Druids et al were trained memory banks (trained over eighteen years or more, I believe) but we have to ask ourselves why everything that has come down to us is in the form of "entertaining tales" (aside from the genealogies which have the smack of word-perfecticity).

And Gurdjeff's father is the real giveaway. Yes, he told Gurdjeff that what HE was saying was faithfully recounted from aeons ago, but then that's what the priests told Solon too. That's what everyone says when they want to be taken as an authoritative source. I bet Gurdjeff (in part, an old fraud of course) wasn't able to be word perfect in his turn. If nothing else, it offends against any "bard's honour" not to improve on what he was given. Even the medieval scripturalists were not above this.

We're not talking Chinese Whispers or Urban Myths here, but nor are we talking about absolute fidelity. But I accept, as historians do not, that it can be used as historical evidence, so long as it is not taken for historical proof.

[Bronwyn]

[Mick Harper]

Not sure I entirely agree, Bronwyn. While it is true that forging relics was something of an industry in late Medieval Europe, it was still illegal, so you couldn't exactly go round to your local Relics 'R' Us.

The general pattern is for forgers to be singular figures but with an outside man to do the actual offering to the gullible. (Or not so gullible in the case of Churches requiring relics.) However the original Beowulf manuscript is unusual in being both a) a purported five-hundred-year-old artefact and b) a work of art in its own right. So what's the chance of the forger being both an expert manuscript "ager" AND a suberb poet in an acquired language?

Quite high actually. Forgers tend to be mini-geniuses, not specially interested in money, but very interested in being "artists". I can quite see that an antiquarian monk with a knowledge of Anglo-Saxon would rather like to see his work seen as the real thing, as opposed to the many poems-in-Anglo-Saxon we know about from this period. And he would not have had to be a very good manuscript-doctor either since, unbeknownst to him, his manuscript would not be permitted to be examined EVER by later Anglo-Saxonists.

By the by, the poem itself would not have to be very good either. Since Beowulf is the only early poem in the English language (sic) it is given such reverence that everyone genuflects at its brilliance. Actually if you stuck in a pile of bog-standard Norse sagas, nobody would turn a hair. Bit like The Bible. Everyone (even non-Christians) pretends it's a work of genius but you only have to read it to see that it is just Ye Olde Standarde Stuffe.

And, furthermore, it is devilishly difficult to sort gold from dross when dealing with unfamiliar but valuable material. A coupla Aussie jokers turned out some "Aboriginal" poetry one drunken night and for decades afterwards it was taken as being not only "Aboriginal" but of a high artistic order. There's many similar tales (eg Ossian) in the history of "instant epic poetry". It always relies on the punters wanting to believe.

[Hatty]

When did history become a straightforward account of "facts" as we treat it rather than a 'telling of tales' or recounting the deeds of saints? Bede is known as the father of English history although there was a gap of over 200 years after his death before another 'history' was written

Polydore Vergil (or Virgil), for example, is described as "the most influential Tudor historian" (my italics), is that how he was regarded by his contemporaries or by our current standards... (comments like he marks the beginning of modern English historical criticism)? Yet he was scarcely objective, his antagonism towards Wolsey clearly coloured his version of events.

[Geoff Gardiner]

Although I do not think it matters whether Beowulf was faked or not (it does not seem to have much relevance to English history), Mick's remarks strike more than one chord in me. As I had to fake Greek and Latin poems in my distant youth, translations of Shakespeare et al., I know that though difficult, it is not impossible. And it is much easier if one is writing original stuff, hence the marvellous Latin poem written by Dr. Sam Johnson about the island of Skye, and the poem written by Sir Alexander McDonald about him. No doubt also the winners since 1774 of the Sir William Browne medal for a Latin elegy have made a good job of it.

Faking was rife, surely. Take the Annals of Ulster, first published 1540 but supposed to be contemporary annual entries. One entry for a year in the 6th century, if my memory serves, reads, 'Anglii in Angliam arrivunt.' 'The Angles have arrived in Anglia'. How could the country be called 'Anglia' until after they had settled, assuming they did. Clearly the entry was faked long after the date given. Was it faked for political reasons? Are any of the entries in the Annals of Ulster of any value at all?

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

The wrong forest, AJ. The point Geoff is making is that an "annal" is supposed to be just that -- a contemporaneous account of the year just gone. Geoff thinks (and I agree with him) that Anglia would not be called that so early. However I think we would both agree that there is just the possibility that the Angles are being reported as having arrived in Anglia some time before and that Anglia really had acquired its name by this date. The Anglo-Saxons did, after all, arrive in Britain in 495 (according to their annals anyway!). However I have to say that this particular 'annal' really does remind one of the coin that had 325BC stamped on it.

I don't know where you get the idea that I disagree with the details of Anglo-Saxon history. I don't think there's much doubt that there really were 'Anglian' kingdoms in Britain in the sixth century (or thereabouts).

[Ishmael]

Jesus was born in North America!

Don't believe me?

Just read this little-known document, originally written in the Huron native language, and only translated into English in the 1960s!

Have courage, you who are human beings: Iesus, he is born
The okie spirit who had us as prisoners has fled
Do not listen to it, as it corrupts the spirits of our thoughts
Iesus, he is born

The okie sky people are coming with a message for us
They're coming to say, "Rejoice!
Waria, she has just given birth. Rejoice!"
Jesus, he is born

Three elders of great authority have left for the place of his birth
Tiscient, the star appearing over the horizon leads them there
That star will walk first on the path to guide them
Iesus, he is born

The star stopped not far from where Iesus was born
Having found someone for them, he says,
"Come this way"
Iesus, he is born

As they entered and saw Iesus they praised (made a name) many times, saying
"Hurray, he is good in nature"
They oiled his scalp many times, anointing his head
with the oil of the sunflower
Iesus, he is born

They say, "Let us place his name in a position of honour
Let us act reverently towards him for he comes to show us mercy
It is the will of the spirits that you love us, Iesus,
and we wish that we may be adopted into your family
Iesus, he is born

[Wireloop]

[Ishmael]

wireloop wrote: