Well someone had to break the ice, so here we are!

I'm wondering what your thoughts are on classical mythology? Was it all a load of bedtime stories, or is there a historical base to the myths and legends of classical Greece (I confine this to Greece for now, since Roman myth would fail all anti-plagiarism software checks!). For a good example, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were considered to be purely fictional, until a certain Mr Schliemann went and did a bit of (badly done and highly destructive) digging in Western Turkey. Prior to this, Troy (Ilium) was thought to be a purely fictional construct, yet suddenly here's a huge city in the right location which showed evidence of being sacked.

How strange it would be if Hesiod's Theogony was actually just a handed down tale of a dysfunctional family in pre-Greek Greece. Any thoughts?

Perhaps a bit off the main thrust but this programme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SWKQIVbXgM has some interesting thoughts about how fossils may have been incorporated into myth to produce of the more exciting fauna.

Places have a habit of appearing out of myth and back into reality. Besides Troy there are several other notable examples, even one such here in Norway. Mythical people however tend not to do it so much - perhaps a reflection of the nature of archaeology rather than an indication that people in myth belong there and only there.

However a good rule of thumb when discussing myth, I have found, is that where myth imparts personality to an element it is normally in order to prosecute a certain philosophical viewpoint or a feature of such. Where myth employs references to place it is either to contextualise and augment the personalities who populate the myth or simply to provide pseudo-factual references that a contemporary audience can identify with in order to impose an air of actuality on the rest of the contents. It is those which fall into the latter category which tend to be found through archaeology.

A rather naive question - does all myth have to include an element of the magical, the supernatural or are there any that don't? What is the difference between myth and legend, or is there any?

There is a distinct difference when discussing the topic in academic circles. Myth purports to provide a religious (or similar philosophical or pseudo-philosophical) explanation for phenomena. These phenomena can be observable and experiencable in the real world but do not have to be. They can also be a reality only in as defined within another myth, and so on. Myth therefore tends to have both a self-contained logic and a self-contained chronology, should either be required to believe it.

Legend on the other hand tends to simply mean a narrative placed in an historical context. Its primary function is to impart an alleged story from the past. This of course could well be motivated by a desire to persuade an audience that a particular myth is a valid explanation for something, but not necessarily so.

Myths and myth cycles can therefore contain many legends. Legends however tend not to contain myth in the same way, but can of course be employed in an attempt to validate myth in the minds of the audience.

Or as Bierce remarked once (from memory) - "A legend is a lie told as a good yarn. A myth is whole bunch of lies told with no pretence to entertain."

ferval wrote:

- does all myth have to include an element of the magical, the supernatural or are there any that don't?

Since myths don't, by definition, have to concern themselves with realism they do tend therefore to incorporate fantastic claims almost as standard. An example of myth which avoids magic and the supernatural however is political mythology - the ouvre of fables and legends which grow up about the origins of particular ideologies etc. They still tend to veer from factual and truthful reportage, but they also tend to incorporate as many plausible assertions as possible.

DarkLight wrote:

(I confine this to Greece for now, since Roman myth would fail all anti-plagiarism software checks!)

It's interesting, nevertheless, how some mythological stories are echoed in seemingly unrelated cultures.

For example in Greek mythology the great monster Typhon is (after a literally Olympic struggle) trapped by the god Zeus under Mount Etna. His periodic but vain efforts to escape are said to be the cause of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

While on the other side of the world in Japanese mythology the giant catfish Namazu is vanquished and restrained underground by the god Takemikazuchi. His periodic and violent efforts to escape are also said to be be the cause of earthquakes.

Other cultures have such splendid monsters in their myths and legends: the English have worms.

The Lambton Worm is perhaps the best known of  our legendary worms.

This particular story usually has a section called "The Worm's Wrath", which, it must be admitted, doesn't sound that terrifying.

But, of course, I should add that "wyrm" was the Old English for "dragon". How fortunate it is that we have this alternative: St. George and the Worm doesn't sound at all right. And Drake as El Wormo would never have put the fear of God into the Spanish.

I liked that one!  

England is a country whose history has, sadly, shorn it of nearly all of its ancient native mythology, leaving only the legends in its wake. Tolkien's day job at one time was a concerted effort to recover the myth cycles from the fragments, a task in which he ultimately failed. I think it was when he found that he was reduced to inventing plausible mythical frameworks for the scraps remaining that he decided to make a virtue of necessity and constructed a romance instead, so at least something came out of it of some worth.

The nearest I can think of in terms of myth relates to King Arthur, though not in the way that most people associate "myth" with what is now essentially three distinct legends separated by point and time of origin. It is the last one, the one concocted in Norman France/England, that fulfils the criteria of myth in that it is an essential ingredient in that pervasive myth (some people still amazingly subscribe to it today) of an era of chivalry. That particular myth had very real political and social value in its day which got it over the first hurdle of solely contemporary relevance, prime elements at its core proving useful to perpetuate in later generations, Arthur being one of them.

Another legend that cries out for a mythical context however - and which probably had one that is now almost completely lost without trace - is Beowulf, that marvellous hybrid of Saxon, Danish and Swedish elements which must have had a huge relevance for a people engaged in constructing myth that explained these disparate influences in their own society. The Cú Chulainn legend excised from its context within the Ulster Cycle of Gaelic myth would leave us with an interesting warrior figure of no relevance to contemporary society. The preservation of that cycle however allowed the reinvention of Cú Chulainn by successive generations, an ongoing process even today - exactly as myth is supposed to work. Poor Beowulf on the other hand has been left stranded in that respect. We can theorise to our hearts' content about the references but unless it is translated by a genius like Seamus Heaney (who incidentally grew up immersed in Ulster Cycle mythology imparted as history) its mythical point evades us.

Edit: Shouldn't leave a point about Heaney's "Beowulf" without his marvellous opening stanza - a heartfelt plea for the legend to take its place back in myth:

And now this is ‘an inheritance’ –
Upright, rudimentary, unshiftably planked
In the long ago, yet willable forward
Again and again and again

Those lines are superb, aren't they, but they are actually taken from his poem, "The Settle Bed". I think (not sure) he uses those lines as an introduction to Beowulf somewhere. I know of no other poet who understands the sea so well; he can get you right there in the longboat with the Spear-Danes - " ...yet willable forward/Again and again and again" - those simple words capture the rhythm of the oars and the thrust through the water perfectly.

You're quite right to say the man is a genius: his translation of Beowulf is up there with the best. His other stuff is pretty good too.

The Settle Bed
Willed down, waited for, in place at last and for good.
Trunk-hasped, cart-heavy, painted an ignorant brown.
And pew-strait, bin-deep, standing four-square as an ark.
If I lie in it, I am cribbed in seasoned deal
Dry as the unkindled boards of a funeral ship.
My measure has been taken, my ear shuttered up.

Yet I hear an old sombre tide awash in the headboard:
Unpathetic och ochs and och bobs, the long bedtime
Anthems of Ulster, unwilling, unbeaten,
Protestant, Catholic, the Bible, the beads,
Long talks at gables by moonlight, boots on the hearth,
The small hours chimed sweetly away so next thing it was

The cock on the ridge-tiles.
And now this is ‘an inheritance’
Upright, rudimentary, unshiftably planked
In the long ago, yet willable forward

Again and again and again, cargoed with
Its own dumb, tongue-and-groove worthiness
And un-get-roundable weight. But to conquer that
  weight,

Imagine a dower of settle beds tumbled from heaven
Like some nonsensical vengeance come on the people,
Then learn from that harmless barrage that whatever is
  given

Can always be reimagined, however four-square.
Plank-thick, hull-stupid and out of its time
It happens to be. You are free as the lookout,

That far-seeing joker posted high over the fog,
Who declared by the time that he had got himself down
The actual ship had been stolen away from beneath
  him.

Maybe it was the publisher who thought it fitting to put it up front in my edition. There is most likely a proper credit which I just never noticed.

One things that in a way is quite sad about Heaney's translation is that he felt (rightly) the need to replace traditional English words with Irish-English words since he felt that the English word in these cases had been emasculated over time of its original impact, import and relevance. "Bawn", for example, replaced "hall" or "keep" when it referred to Hrothgar's embattled building, the better to convey the sense of the enemy without as English settlers in Ireland had once used the bawn (and coined the term) to just that end. Of the passage where Hrothgar waits and watches for Grendel's arrival Heaney defends this stance by saying "... indeed, every time I read the lovely interlude that tells of the minstrel singing in Heorot just before the first attacks of Grendel, I cannot help thinking of Edmund Spenser in Kilcolman Castle, reading the early cantos of The Faerie Queene to Sir Walter Raleigh, just before the Irish would burn the castle and drive Spenser and Munster back to the Elizabethan court."

Thank you for bringing this up, because it has made me check my own Faber & Faber edition of Heaney's Beowulf. You are absolutely right: Heaney himself does indeed head his Introduction with the lines from "The Settle Bed" which you have quoted. To my shame, I read the Introduction for the first time just half an hour ago. I'm so glad I did, because it is full of interesting details such as the information about the word "bawn" and the comment about Spenser which you mention.

Interesting too what he says about Gerard Manley Hopkins - "a chip off the Old English block". I'd never thought about that properly before either, but of course Heaney is right.

Comforting to know too how Heaney, genius as he is, still had to toil over his translation, "like a sixth-former at homework". Twenty lines a day was all he could cope with - "the whole attempt to turn it into modern English seemed to me like trying to bring down a megalith with a toy hammer."

And isn't what he calls his Hiberno-English "Scullionspeak" choice of "So!" instead of the corny old Victorian "Behold!" or "Lo!" or "Hark!", or even the more colloquial "Listen!", just perfect for that opening imperative "Hwaet"? Heaney tells us: "...in that idiom, 'so' operates as an expression which obliterates all previous discourse and narrative, and at the same time functions as an exclamation calling for immediate attention."

This be the verse all right - "the clear song of the skilled poet."

Casting a sword in a stone mold may be the origin of the Excalibur story. 



and the use of sheepskin for gold panning, the origin of Jason and the Golden Fleece.

DarkLight wrote:

How strange it would be if Hesiod's Theogony was actually just a handed down tale of a dysfunctional family in pre-Greek Greece. Any thoughts?

While we're in poetical mood DarkLight's original question above (what's he up to these days, I wonder?) was addressed beautifully by Patrick Kavanagh's "Epic", especially the closing couplet. A small dispute about a farm boundary becomes the stuff of myth ...

I have lived in important places, times
When great events were decided, who owned
That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
"Here is the march along these iron stones."
That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
Was more important? I inclined
To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A local row. Gods make their own importance.

And now Seamus Heaney has left us ...

Seamus Heaney Dies Aged 74

I feel poorer already




A DRINK OF WATER

She came every morning to draw water
Like an old bat staggering up the field:
The pump's whooping cough, the bucket's clatter
And slow dimineundo as it filled,
Announced her. I recall
Her grey apron, the pocked white enamel
Of the brimming bucket, and the treble
Creak of her voice like the pump's handle.
Nights when a full moon lifted past her gable
It fell back through her window and would lie
Into the water set out on the table.
Where I have dipped to drink again, to be
Faithful to the admonishment on her cup,
"Remember the Giver," fading off the lip.



-- Seamus Heaney

And it was only yesterday that culling blackberries I recalled his nostalgic poem and was determined that I would not get so many that they would fur with mould before I could use them, His clear microscope on the small always revealed a greatly expanded view.

This is one of my favourite Seamus Heaney poems:


The Skylight

You were the one for skylights. I opposed
Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove
Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed,
Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof
Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling,
The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling.
Under there, it was all hutch and hatch.
The blue slates kept the heat like midnight thatch.

But when the slates came off, extravagant
Sky entered and held surprise wide open.
For days I felt like an inhabitant
Of that house where the man sick of the palsy
Was lowered through the roof, had his sins forgiven,
Was healed, took up his bed and walked away.


All the more poignant now.

In sunny Stafford (or rather soggy Stafford today) until recently there was a Wicca shop.In Stafford, not way down yonder in New Orleans. I thought it had closed but it's changed to a magical gift shop. So seems some folk believe in magic in the 21st century. When I was a child I was disapponted when I learned dragons and unicorns were not real. Haven't been to buy any magical gifts though. Some years ago when I was young enough to get away with long hair I was sweeping up some autumn leaves in the garden on a very windy day in the run-up to Hallowe'en. My then cat who was black was scaring me in case he ran in the road and I said something daft  like "Watch it". A couple of little girls who were passing must have thought I was speaking to them. I heard them say something about,"She's got a broom, she's got a black cat" whereupon they ran off quickly.

Ah, you need to talk to our resident Wicca watcher, Normanhurst. He's probably out in the forest right now, spying on nubile young witches and hoping they'll cast a spell on him. What kind of spell I will leave to your imaginations.

Current mythology is interesting. Children sort of half believe in Spider Man, Bat man and Super Man - and that in crisis the favoured one will zoom in to bring them to safety. I know of a girl of 7, who on being given a Super Woman kit with cloak   jumped down a three storied stair well, assuming that she could now fly; sci-fi may be taking over where mythology left off

For children belief and knowledge both contribute almost identically to experiential learning techniques that they naturally utilise to make sense of their world, especially when combined in a single experience. Fantasy pads out the gaps that knowledge might leave and knowledge provides solid launchpads for exploratory fantasy. It's what makes them so easy to indoctrinate into any given faith system unfortunately, but it's also a fantastic method of acquiring actual knowledge through experience (that we adults often dismiss as simply "play") that I often wonder why we actually lose the tendency to do it, if not the actual ability to do it, as we "mature". When my brother and I arranged a few planks and a push-chair with an upturned bucket on top in our backyard and sat inside it we were - to all intents and purposes - "in" the actual batmobile and had several high speed adventures without travelling a single inch that experientially are as valid in my memory to me as if we had once sat in the "real" thing. The flight-inducing superhero costume trap that several children have fallen into (literally) is an indication of the very real risks involved in the technique as a learning process. But you can't deny that it's a risk we all chose to ignore as kids when the possible rewards in terms of exploring and mastering our universe were so tantalisingly high.

Aye - I agree with all of that, nordmann and have relieved the play experience with a grandson - being somewhat like  The Cat in a Hat when my daughter is away and I can then change the house into a wonderland of duvet dragon dens and such all over ...that we clear away by 5pm...... I was delighted to find out that he now does similar with his brother. I still reckon that daydreaming is not a waste of time...... By furnishing children with shop bought objects of their fantasy worlds we strip the of the power of the mind. I never quite lost this play exporation because when writing, I am there. I live it - and the exciting part is then trying to try to bring  the reader into my world.

Yes. Adults have a perverse notion that "play" somehow should always equate with "fun". Kids know it's a very serious business indeed. It can be fun of course, but it can also be an exploration of just about every other human emotion to which they are gradually being introduced (in the case of some emotions one hopes very gradually). When their use of fantasy is inhibited for whatever reason then their ability to explore these avenues of experience and emotion is restricted. It's unavoidable. Why anyone should think this might be a good thing defeats me.

I suppose in a way one could lump adult belief in obvious myth as an extension of this ability to suspend disbelief in order to explore, and for some people this may indeed be true. But once the myth becomes formulaic then I doubt that it's much different from when one circumvents a child's natural propensity to fantasise by getting them hooked on Nintendo games and the like. The balance of control, once switched from the individual, fast turns what could have been a learning opportunity of real value into an indoctrinal teaching opportunity on the part of the provider of the artificial stimulus. Not the same thing at all.

The infusion of the National Curriculum with its aims and targets, prescribed levels and contents was the warning bell for me to leave education. I implemented it  because I saw the reasons for it as lanes of procedure with teachers  whose reasons for being in teaching were suspect; long holidays often  the  manque one. Being, private, abroad and head made it it easier for myself to move while apparently wearing the white jacket of strictures with great guile to carry on doing as I always did; taking my children into another world to explore the world like the white rabbit. When my classroom door closed out the rest. then we - me as well - had fun albeit maths, language - whatever. It was my job to open the windows of enticement. It was up to them to fly out to it. To be honest I loved every moment - it was so much fun. Of course they had to take exams to get into other schools - no one ever failed, honest - and that was because it was just another challenge,  I think. Rich days - and one of the joys  is that I am still in contact with so many of them - even from 50 years ago when I  started  not much older than they were.  Sadly, in later years I had few staff about me who understood the pleasures of education; and who with half knowledge of what they were really about, took themselves far too seriously, unable to use the joyous child's perspective. It was time to leave. Then came the first book.

So I guess this is a fairly safe place to admit that most nights I still revisit in my imagination a world that I started to develop when I was 14/15 years old or so and have expanded/explored ever since. So that now, even in my 50's, after a busy day and before going to sleep, I still regularly go back to the huge fantasy world that exists only in my mind. 

I know this world intimately, in places down to the very geology, rocks, weather, seasons, plants and animals, .... and to the history and culture of its inhabitants. But as I say, it exists only in my mind. Yet in times of need I know it is always there. I'll admit its not a always a particularly comforting world  - it has it's own particular problems and issues. But to me it is comforting by its own constant continuing existence. Though again I admit this world exists just in my imagination, nestling in a only several million neurons !

So I concur: Never underestimate the capacity and power of a child's imagination!

OK - Now you can call the men in white coats!

Goodness, there's so much here that makes me want to cheer and wave a colourful flag.  

I got extricated from my hole in the ground today by a phone call asking me to collect my granddaughter from school and we've just had one of her long and immensely complicated games which involved an imaginary child from Africa arriving in her school, speaking an invented language, inviting all her classmates to go home to Africa with her etcetera etcetera. I should be clearing up the litter of paper from all the hand drawn passports, the plates from the welcome feast and so on but that can wait. It's such a relief that a very tech concious child still prefers proper play.


P, I so understand. It was largely because of the straight jacket of curriculum and syllabus that I very promptly scooted out of mainstream education to a setting where I could have the freedom to teach what I felt would really mattered to the youngsters in my care and when the powers that be began to obsess about certificates and percentage passes (so they could tick all the right boxes, not for the long term benefit of the kids) that a well timed early retirement package gave me an exit.


MM, do tell us more, I envy you in your ability to hold on to that ability to retreat into a private universe. When does the first book or computer game come out?

And these games can lead to great things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondal_(fictional_country)

The world of Gondal was invented as a joint venture by sisters Emily and Anne. It was a game which they may possibly have played to the end of their lives. Early on they had played with their older siblings Charlotte and Branwell in the imaginary country and game of Angria, which featured the Duke of Wellington and his sons as the heroes.

As in the case of Angria, Gondal had its origins in the Glasstown Confederacy, an earlier imaginary setting created by the siblings as children. Glasstown was founded when twelve wooden soldiers were offered to Branwell Brontë by his father, Patrick Brontë, on 5 June 1826. The soldiers became characters in their imaginary world. Charlotte wrote:

“ Branwell came to our door with a box of soldiers Emily & I jumped out of bed and I snat[c]hed up one & exclaimed this is the Duke of Wellington it shall be mine!!...When I said this Emily likewise took one & said it should be hers when Anne came down she took one also. Mine was the prettiest of the whole & perfect in every part Emilys was a Grave looking fellow we called him Gravey. Anne's was a queer little thing very much like herself. [H]e was called Waiting Boy[.] Branwell chose Bonaparte. ”
 
— Charlotte Brontë, The History of the Year


However, it was only during December 1827 that the world really took shape, when Charlotte suggested that everyone own and manage their own island, which they named after heroic leaders: Charlotte had Wellington, Branwell had Sneaky, Emily had Parry, and Anne had Ross. Each island's capital was called Glasstown, hence the name of the Glasstown Confederacy.

Emily and Anne, as the youngest siblings, were often relegated to inferior positions within the game. Therefore, they staged a rebellion and established the imaginary world of Gondal for themselves. "The Gondal Chronicles," which would have given us the full story of Gondal, has unfortunately been lost, but the poems and the diary entries they wrote to each other provide something of an outline.[5] The earliest documented reference to Gondal is one of Emily's diary entries in 1834, 9 years after the Glasstown Confederacy, when the two younger sisters were aged 16 and 14 respectively; it read: "The Gondals are discovering the interior of Gaaldine."


They made up tiny books, just for fun...

I never knew any of that, Temp. How enchanting. 'The Gondal Chronicles' ... now that sounds like quite an entertaining story ....

Here's a map Branwell Bronte drew, MM. You can see "Sneaky's Land" quite clearly.



So, ferval, keep that little girl scribbling!

We wove a web in childhood

A web of sunny air

We dug a spring in infancy

Of water pure and fair...

Opening lines from Retrospection by C. Bronte.

I'm keeping an open mind as yet about the Beeb's new fantasy "Atlantis".  I know mythology isn't true - well there may be a kernel of truth in the stories but I bet they've been "embroidered" over the passage of time.  The "Atlantis" writers are playing somewhat fast and loose with the Jason legend - on Saturday Jason fought the Minotaur (I thought it was Theseus).  I usually don't like changes in stories I know - even fictional ones - too much.  I hate "Once Upon a Time" the TV series because I feel the writers are being somewhat pompous and trying to change everything and be clever-clever (as well as Horrid Hen-ree the whiney kid - though I haven't been watching the second series).  I used to get hacked off by all the "fair" maidens in the story books; I was brown haired when I was young (with a bit of chestnut if the sun shone from the right direction - which it didn't always) and when I was reading the stories I got fed up of all the heroines seemingly being blonde.  I liked Snow White (though not "Once Upon a Time" Snow White) because having black  hair she was at least dark of hair - though brown would have been better.  Reading through Temperance's post above, I'm afraid my playmates and I were rather unimaginative compared to the Brontes - playing fairies and witches and kidnapping and that sort of thing, when we used our imaginations - and didn't I feel like thumping (don't worry I didn't actually do it) my blonde friends when they said I couldn't be the Princess because I had dark hair ..........

One thing is sure; if mythology is at times "enhanced history" then re-writing established myth will break that link with the past. A terrible disservice to both myth and history.

Injecting Jason, a hero associated with post-Alexandrian retrogressive justification for the spread of Greek/Macedonian authority in the lands then seen as the gateway to the rest of the world, into a much more ancient myth concerning Mycenaean acquisition of power and wealth in the post-Minoan eastern Mediterranean, simply shows a complete ignorance on the part of the writers concerning the respective myths' scope, purpose and age. It is akin to having William Tell turning up as a Helvetian prince fighting Caesar. Out of context, out of time, and missing the point of both narratives.

PS: I agree with you entirely about the blondes. To me "fair maiden" meant only that the lady concerned was beautiful, and I am sure that up to Disney this was how the whole world read the phrase too. Reminds me of two of my old acquaintances in a pub one evening, the one a rather pretty female who knew this all to well and the other a deliciously cynical Cavan man. He surprised everyone by suddenly and loudly complimenting her on her (recently touched up) blonde hair, describing it as "the very picture of those flaxen locks as immortalised in odes of old". With mock humility she replied that her hair was not really so golden, but needed help now and again. To which he responded, equally loudly as before, "Oh, it wasn't the colour I meant. It is so deliciously coarse and oily, like flax."

Well  I haven't said I definitely like it - just that I wasn't rushing to judgement.  On the whole I dislike changing earlier versions of stories as I said.  I forgave some pretty liberal artistic licence taken by the same team in the "Merlin" series (they had Morgause asking Arthur to kneel so that she could strike his head off -  though she didn't actually do it, when in the earlier tales it was the Green Knight who did so to Gawain).  I hated "A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur" and also disliked the novels by Rosemary Sutcliffe (who I usually liked) and Mary Stewart (whose books were recommended to me and I found very disappointing) for tinkering with the Arthurian myth.  Thus far, I can tolerate (just about) time-travelling Jason much more than "kick-ass" Snow-White in "Once Upon a Time".

It saddens me that people seek to improve on what were already good stories.  The Atlanteenees and Once-upon-a-Timers aren't the first to do so I guess.  I'm sure I learned at school that Sir Walter Scott tried to "improve" some of the old Scottish (or Scots??) folk ballads.

Edit:  When  I first typed this I didn't see Nordmann's remark about the blondes.  Now I don't hate blondes.  I have even been known to have blonde friends. Nordmann's story about the lady with the "enhanced" hair is very funny though.

Indeed, it goes on all the time. With myth it has repercussions, especially in trying to understand their origins and points. But with fairy tales too it can be equally damaging. Excising the sex and violence from Grimms' collections for example (by the Grimms themselves on occasion, though much has been excised since) takes us a huge stride away from getting into the minds of the communities in Europe that originally devised the stories, the times in which they lived, and of course the stories' actual purposes.

For the same reason I cannot help but shudder when I see Enid Blyton's stories being "sanitised" for modern young sensibilities. While I understand the point of the exercise it is yet another barrier of incomprehensibility dropping down between us now and the mind-set of the generations just before us. The historian in me is aghast at losing the source data, and in such a relatively short time frame too.

Andersen could be very dark and morbid. Even when little more than a child himself he wrote this; Det Døende Barn (The Dying Child). The last verse, written from the child's viewpoint, is harrowing:


Hvorfor trykker saa Du mine Hænder?
Hvorfor lægger Du din Kind til min?
Den er vaad, og dog som Ild den brænder,
Moder, jeg vil altid være din!
Men saa maa Du ikke længer sukke,
Græder Du, saa græder jeg med Dig,
O, jeg er saa træt! – maa Øiet lukke –
– Moder – see! nu kysser Englen mig!


Why do you press my hands so?
Why do you lay your cheek on mine?
It is wet, and yet it burns like fire,
Mother I will always be yours!
But you must no longer sigh,
Though if you must cry then I will cry with you.
Oh, I am so tired! Must close my eyes.
Mother, look! Now the angel is kissing me ...


There are few of Andersen's stories in which love and death are not presented as two sides of the same thing. Gloomy, yes. But often curiously uplifting and moving too. One thing I am quite sure of - they are by no means children's stories!

"The Little Match Girl" is one such story that I read countless times with dread and tears in hope that one day there would be a happy ending. Not a cosseted childhood, mine, I knew well of poverty and the strength of people who lived through it but this tale, though of a different era, explained the misery of the depression years that affected so  many lives.

Quite. People tend to be ignorant now of the true purpose of a "fairy tale" (I prefer the Norwegian "eventyr"). It was not the entirely mendacious modern version in which the child learns to expect a happy ending by right, but a way of imparting all the crucial lessons to learn in life when young, including that life is often just a piece of shit when it comes to fairness. The lesson is not in the outcome but in the behaviour of the protagonists beforehand.

On the other hand my 7yr old grandson told me in great detail on the phone, tales about Kronos and Rhea et al with keen interest......... he even suggested that he took  the phone to bed so that he could call me and discusss it further. That he had been picked to play in an under 10's team at an FA event for his area in Birmingham was brushed aside in his huge interest in what he called 'Classics.' The working's of a child's mind never ceases to fascinate. Just when I was thinking that all was lost......

Great to hear. What children get out of a good story is rarely what they go in looking for, and for them that is a brilliant part of the deal. If only more film producers and publishers could realise this simple fact.

Although I never warmed to most of Mr Andersen's stories I did quite enjoy (in an edge of my seat sort of way) the traditional story "Jack and the Bean Stalk" with the giant's "Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman".  When I heard it the first time I didn't know Jack was going to get away .....   It is good to hear from Priscilla that her grandson has a lively imagination.  I will freely admit I don't have an in-depth knowledge of Roald Dahl's stories for children but some are quite dark I think (not the Hollywood versions - Miss Honey in Hollywood "Matilda" was so sickly sweet she made one feel quite ill). Children do seem to like his writing though.  The first story (traditional) I remember that I thought had a wrong ending was the one about the two lovers where everything goes wrong and they die and are buried together and the flowering plants planted on their graves grow to entangle together.  I was quite angry when I read that the first time in what was then top infant class.  It wasn't a fairy tale but Ginger's fate in "Black Beauty" broke my heart in first year juniors - and then years later JO DIDN'T MARRY LAURIE in the sequel to "Little Women"!

nordmann wrote:

Adults have a perverse notion that "play" somehow should always equate with "fun". Kids know it's a very serious business indeed. It can be fun of course, but it can also be an exploration of just about every other human emotion to which they are gradually being introduced (in the case of some emotions one hopes very gradually). When their use of fantasy is inhibited for whatever reason then their ability to explore these avenues of experience and emotion is restricted. It's unavoidable. Why anyone should think this might be a good thing defeats me.

The lockdown has thrown up some unexpected phenomena in this regard. The sale of bicycles, for example, has rocketed. It’s now not uncommon to see large groups of teenagers roaming around on bikes throughout the day and late into the evening. This was a sight which was familiar up until about the 1980s when increased motor traffic volumes, combined with the advent of home computer games etc, meant that ‘playing outdoors’ became a rarified and archaic event. I don’t know which educationalist it was who said that the vital components of adventure were ‘exercise, exploration, expedition and experience’, and that adventure was a vital component of a child’s education, but it seems that many children are now rediscovering this for themselves.

When children have had to stay indoors, however, then it’s interesting to see which topics have proved most popular as reading material. Intriguingly, during the Blitz of 1940-1, tales of myth and legend really don’t seem to have registered particularly highly, with the possible exception of Enid Blyton’s The Enchanted Wood. As an author she was riding high on the best sellers' list at that time with books such as The Naughtiest Girl in the School being hugely popular as too was Richmal Crompton with William and Air Raid Precautions and William Does His Bit. It was only in the 1950s that the likes of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings would make the fantasy genre popular. That said – Tolkien’s The Hobbit had been published in 1937 so presumably copies of that were still circulating and firing children’s imaginations during the blackout.
 


(Britain’s best-selling children’s book of 1940 which included the unforgettable quote - "I’m the Bold, Bad Girl! Beware! I Bark! I Bite! I Hate Everybody!")

The current lockdown has apparently seen a flourishing of creative writing by children themselves:

Lockdown gives wings to schoolchildren’s imagination

The long-term effects of this global arrestation (or realignment) of education could well be beneficial. It’s also likely that the 2020 pandemic will engender a whole cycle of mythology and legends all of its own.

Vizzer, seeing the book of Blyton:



I started to wonder, as I suppose in Britain the schools were organized in quite another way than here in Belgium and perhaps also in Ireland. I guess the mixed school existed in Britain much earlier than in Belgium.  As we had in Belgium from the beginning the "official" state education system and the "free" Catholic education, which were very different from the "official" one. And certainly in the field of apart schools for boys and girls...

So I am for nearly an hour seeking for the simple question (I thought): when started the mixed school in Belgium?
From one side in the "Catholic system" and on the other side in the official one?
And I have found no answer till now...

I can only speak from my own experience in the Catholic education...up to the Sixties there was certainly no mix in the Catholic education system including the cyclus (12-18 years)
And my sister in the "official " branch, was attending also in the Sixties a girls only school. Thus also "segregation" overthere?
I think I will have to ask the friends, who experienced it all in the Fifties and Sixties...

Perhaps can nordmann give some enlightenment as he is so knowledgeable about Ireland and Britain?

PS: During my research this evening, I read that psychologists are pleading now again for an apart girl-boys education system...but I think if that come through again it can be that the statue molesters change their field of operation to the schoolbuildings...

Kind regards, Paul.

Paul – Blyton’s books tended to be set in boarding schools and grammar schools which were normally fee-paying and thus available only to the children of well-off parents or children on scholarships. The Naughtiest Girl in the School, for example, was set in a boarding school. Mixed-sex boarding schools were still very rare in the 1940s although they had existed as early as the 19th century. Single-sex remained the norm in boarding schools until the 1980s. State-funded secondary education in the UK was established in 1944 (i.e. 4 years after the book’s publication) and this was mainly single-sex (in England) until the 1960s after which mixed-sex secondary schooling became the norm.

Thank you so much, Vizzer, for this valuable information. 
And it shows to me, how different the Belgian, Dutch (The Netherlands) and I am nearly sure the French system was. I mean the boarding schools.
I suppose, as I don't know any here in Northern Belgium, that it overhere were and are exceptions. Perhaps around Brussels for the rich ones and then French language or English language ones? Or perhaps the schools for the ex-pats where the fee is paid by the company?
Even our heir apparent is studying in Britain Wales I see now:
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2018/08/28/princess-elisabeth-off-to-wales/
I guess it is a boarding school :
"Pupils hail from 90 different nations.  School fees are 25,000 euros a year.  30% of pupils enjoy a grant."

Intereresting that the state funded (and here in the Sixties: the Catholic schools were also state funded and they had to follow an obliged state programm) Secondaries weren't that different from the Belgian ones.

Thanks again for the quick enlightenment and kind regards, Paul.

And since this thread was also meant to be addressing the nature of myth - there is a whole discussion to be had in its own right simply examining the Blytonverse, a peculiarly detailed world with its own innate logic and features and which, thanks to Enid's sheer volume of output, ended up as a composition of hundreds of individual stories which ended up being way more than the sum of its parts. Proper myth, in other words.

I liked the "Naughtiest Girl" elements within that mythical world - she starts off a right little bitch and then slowly, through peer pressure and gradual self-realisation, evolves into a very self-aware all round brick with a feisty edge to her, character traits that even in pre-puberty I could identify as something I knew I would be looking for in potential breeding partners once the hormones kicked in. Most of Blyton's characters were junior puzzle solvers punching above their weight and always guaranteed to win. Young Ms Allen however was both the puzzle and the solver in her stories, and her story arc over all the books in which she featured was one in which she, and you as the reader, were rewarded in the end with only a small advance in her personal redemption in each episode. This, along with the odd regression or reversion to type, struck even the most worldly-ignorant and naive child reader as somehow being a little closer to "real life" than the four sociopaths and their dog loose in Dorset ever could achieve, and that somehow therefore one was learning something actually useful from following her adventures.

Her school, Whyteleafe, was also a much more instructive petri-dish of early adoloscence because it contained males as well as females within the same close environment playing by the same narrow rules of that establishment. I believe Blyton based it on the King Alfred School in Golders Green after she had been invited to give a lecture to the children there just before the war. In her daughter's book about her it is said that she was completely taken with the idea of the school's co-educational and progressive principles and toyed with the idea of sending her own children there. She was dismayed to find however that they didn't take boarders so instead simply used it as inspiration for story-telling. Though when she combined this progressive educational milieu with the boarding school milieu in her own stories she ended up with something not quite real at all. There were indeed co-educational boarding schools in the UK at the time, but nothing quite like Whyteleafe. Which of course didn't matter a jot anyway - in the Blytonverse the fewer parallels with the more depressingly mundane and sordid bits of reality with which we were all too familiar anyway the more immersive the experience for the young reader. People who subsist on ginger ale and jam sandwiches alone don't obey the laws of physics, and it allows the characters to concentrate on much more important metaphysical matters concerning justice, meeting the world on one's own terms, and how to identify (or become) a "good egg" - exactly what children will do naturally anyway, given a chance.

People I know with children and grandchildren say EB's books are still popular.  Though I believe they have been nade more palatable to a modern audience - might have been nordmann who said that on the children's literature thread and I remember Patience reminding me that the naughtiest girl became a monitor later in the series. I don't think we ever knew what an adult Minnie the Minx (not EB) would have been like - would she have stayed a rebel.  I bieve she has a statue in Dundee.

I see I was harsh upthread about Hans Andersen.  I doubt I'll ever be a lover of his work but (apologies if I've mentioned this before) I have been told the original translations were not perhaps perfect translations and that better translations exist now.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Even our heir apparent is studying in Britain Wales I see now:
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2018/08/28/princess-elisabeth-off-to-wales/
I guess it is a boarding school :
"Pupils hail from 90 different nations.  School fees are 25,000 euros a year.  30% of pupils enjoy a grant."

Paul - I visited Atlantic College in December 1998 when I was working in Cardiff. I remember it being December because the Christmas decorations were up and there was a splendid Christmas tree in the great hall. The college is housed in a fabulous old castle, set in stunning gardens and grounds and with spectacular views out across the Bristol Channel. Yet when I arrived there I’d never heard of the place.
 
I had been invited, along with several other people from various different sectors of employment, to attend a careers day in which we (as representatives of the ‘real world of work’) would give a brief talk about our roles and then act as mock interviewers while the students practiced their job interview technique. However, when confronted with the incredibly pleasant, confident, intelligent, articulate and thoughtful young people studying there, I remember thinking - “You kids should be giving me careers advice, not the other way around!”

St Donat’s was a medieval castle which had fallen in semi-ruin by the 1920s, when American publisher William Randolph Hearst bought it, renovated it and restored it. The castle was sold to the college in the 1960s. I had assumed that Atlantic College was just some kind of fancy international school but now I discover its excellent curriculum even attracts royalty.

nordmann wrote:

Her school, Whyteleafe, was also a much more instructive petri-dish of early adoloscence because it contained males as well as females within the same close environment playing by the same narrow rules of that establishment. I believe Blyton based it on the King Alfred School in Golders Green after she had been invited to give a lecture to the children there just before the war. In her daughter's book about her it is said that she was completely taken with the idea of the school's co-educational and progressive principles and toyed with the idea of sending her own children there. She was dismayed to find however that they didn't take boarders so instead simply used it as inspiration for story-telling. Though when she combined this progressive educational milieu with the boarding school milieu in her own stories she ended up with something not quite real at all. There were indeed co-educational boarding schools in the UK at the time, but nothing quite like Whyteleafe. Which of course didn't matter a jot anyway - in the Blytonverse the fewer parallels with the more depressingly mundane and sordid bits of reality with which we were all too familiar anyway the more immersive the experience for the young reader.

A very insightful observation nordmann. The unreality of the milieu being, perhaps, an essential escapist (or at least aspirational) component of Blyton’s particular brand of children’s literature. For every child who actually attended a ‘Whyteleafe’ (very few to none as you point out) there were dozens if not hundreds who dreamed of attending such an establishment. Or at least wished that they lived in a world where such schools existed. One wonders, however, just how much books like The Naughtiest Girl in the School or films such as The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950) - in which an administrative mix-up by the ministry of education results in a girls’ boarding school and a boys’ boarding school having to share the same building - either steered or reflected prevailing attitudes of the times.
     
At the other end of the spectrum is E.R. Braithwaite’s 1959 autobiographical novel To Sir, With Love which also depicts a co-educational school although this time a down-at-heel state school in London’s East End set during the late 1940s. Local educational authorities in the suburbs and the counties would rarely have countenanced mixed-sex schooling yet the straitened circumstances of many inner-city communities often dictated otherwise. For those attending state schools in the 1940s and 50s, therefore, a post-code lottery created a 2-tier system whereby the geographically fortunate attended better schools (which also tended to be single-sex) while the less fortunate had to make do with inferior schools (which also tended to be mixed-sex). Co-incidence or otherwise, just how much the integration or separation of the genders in secondary schooling actually affects academic performance is another debate.

One thing I have always found quite remarkable about Braithwaite’s novel, however, is the phenomenon of jaded and cynical teachers, along with unmotivated and disinterested pupils, being depicted just 2 or 3 years after the passage of the Butler Act. One wonders, therefore, if ‘Greenslade’ (the school in To Sir, With Love) is merely a dystopian equivalent of ‘Whyteleafe’ and equally mythological for that.

Vizzer wrote:

Paul - I visited Atlantic College in December 1998 when I was working in Cardiff. I remember it being December because the Christmas decorations were up and there was a splendid Christmas tree in the great hall. The college is housed in a fabulous old castle, set in stunning gardens and grounds and with spectacular views out across the Bristol Channel. Yet when I arrived there I’d never heard of the place.
 
I had been invited, along with several other people from various different sectors of employment, to attend a careers day in which we (as representatives of the ‘real world of work’) would give a brief talk about our roles and then act as mock interviewers while the students practiced their job interview technique. However, when confronted with the incredibly pleasant, confident, intelligent, articulate and thoughtful young people studying there, I remember thinking - “You kids should be giving me careers advice, not the other way around!”

St Donat’s was a medieval castle which had fallen in semi-ruin by the 1920s, when American publisher William Randolph Hearst bought it, renovated it and restored it. The castle was sold to the college in the 1960s. I had assumed that Atlantic College was just some kind of fancy international school but now I discover its excellent curriculum even attracts royalty. 

 
Thank you Vizzer, for your explanation about Atlantic College and your personal related story.
And yes St Donat's castle...a 12th century Norman castle? In the place of a timber one, as we discussed already Norman Castles on this forum.
http://www.ecastles.co.uk/stdonats.html



Kind regards, Paul.