The Rising of the Star

[dennis grace]

Greetings Cosyns,

Lyonel ici.

In response to Talen's

>>The performer will perform the way they learned.  What Sir Burke is asking
>>is "what should the TEACHER teach?".  I'm in favor of the original. 
>>Besides, it goes against the fabric of a TRUE Bard to change something they
>>pass on, as one of the roles of a Bard was to pass on oral tradition in a
>>society that was basically illiterate.


Alan wrote:

>Not necessarily true, as evidenced by the number of different versions of
>some period songs and stories. I have read that the early Scottish works
>dealing with King Arthur are much more favorable to Mordred than those of
>other locales, possibly because Morgause (his mother) was queen over part of
>Scotland. There would be a natural tendency to adapt bardic works to
>accomodate local beliefs and legends, else the bard might receive a rather
>cool reception. The Robin Hood stories also show change; originally Maid
>Marion was Robin's enemy.

I have to agree with Alan's objection--in part.  This is one of those
marvelously ambiguous points where "period" and "medieval" refuse to carry
the global weight we so frequently try to load onto them.  

In this case, while the whole idea of adherence at the verbal level (i.e.
word for word) to an original story/song/poem may seem appropriate to some
early bardic schools (Norse, Celtic, Anglo-Saxon), the concept would have
seemed misinformed to later medieval bards and poets.  Take the Canterbury
Tales as an example.  Most of these tales can be traced to clear precursors,
but only one attempts anything like a verbatim translation and transcription
of its original (the Tale of Melibee), and even that tale has a few added
snippets (three lines in ~1000).

As Chaucer's narrator notes in the Prologue to Melibee:

        . . . ye woot that every Evaungelist
        That telleth us the peyne of Jhesu Crist
        Ne seith nat all thyng as his fellawe dooth;
        But natheless hir sentence is al sooth,
        And alle acorden as in hire sentence,
        For somme of hem seyn moore, and somme seyn lesse,
        Whan they his pitous passioun expresse--
        I meene of Mark, Mathew, Luc, and John--
        But douteless hir sentence is al oon.

        (... you all know that not every Evangelist 
        Who tells us of the suffering of Jesus Christ,
        Says everything that his fellows say;
        Nonetheless, their meaning is all true,
        And they all concur on the matter of meaning,
        For some of them--among Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John--
        Say more, and some say less,
        When they describe his pitiable passion,
        But their meaning is unquestionably the same.)

In other words, Chaucer--like many of his contemporaries--believed that
important poems and tales--tales whose "sentence" was "sooth"--carried an
authority independent of the telling.  To Chaucer, even an incompetent
narrator couldn't fail with a good tale (e.g.--The Man of Law's Tale--IMHO).

So in a sense, both Alan and Talen are correct.  To answer the original
question--"What should the teacher teach?"--the teacher should teach
whatever she considers the best version.  For a Norse skald, the best will
(I think--help me on this one, Gunnora) be the "official" version handed
down from generation to generation with as little variance as possible.  For
a later medieval jongleur, poet, or minstrel, the best will be the version
that most appropriately mirrors the work's sentence with "solaas" (pleasure).

Pardon this quasi-scholarly intrusion.  

Yours in Literary Service,

Sir Lyonel Oliver Grace