[Bards] Situations That Ruin Bardic Circles

Ken Theriot kentheriot at ravenboymusic.com
Tue May 1 11:42:27 PDT 2007


< A large number of existing stories from multiple cultures in Medieval
Europe and the Middle East were not recorded or reported to have been
performed in verse>

Okay, but is there evidence that they were performed at all?  My wife is
writing an article on documenting original bardic works, and she's been
nagging people on a list she's on (which includes some of the premier
storytellers in the SCA, as well as a couple mundane professional
storytellers) for any citations of a prose work designed to be performed
aloud to an audience and hasn't gotten any yet.

There's a basic problem, obviously, documenting how things were done in
cultures that were predominantly oral, especially indigenous oral cultures
suppressed by invading Normans, like England post-Conquest and Ireland post-
Strongbow.  But even oral-heavy cultures have enough stuff written down to
give us an idea of what they thought a story for performance looked like.
Non-versifying cultures like Arabs still have a strict formula for
professional storytellers.  No one hearing Duke Cariadoc tell a story would
see any resemblance to a "there we were" presentation.  A prose story done
this way, in character, I have no problem with.  One thing I think we CAN
agree on is stories of the: "Back in AS 20 when Duke XXXX and I were at
Pennsic, we were in the shield wall and....." variety are really not to be
found in period as performance pieces.  

< A filidh is a filidh (poet) and a seanachie is a seanachie (storyteller).>

My wife is yelling something about "Brehon Law" but you'll have to take that
up with her.

<Storytelling was not typically done in verse, poetry was. If a story is
written and performed in verse, it's a poem.>

I must disagree with this.  A sonnet is a poem.  But the mere fact that
something is performed in verse does not make it a "poem."  How many people
go and see a performance of "the poem, A Midsummer Night's Dream"?  It is
not a poem, though it is undoubtedly written in verse, as all of
Shakespeare's plays were (and most everybody else's plays as well).
Chretien de Troyes (who often performed his work live for the court), Marie
de France, Chaucer, the writers of the Chansons de Geste, and the later
trouveres were all great storytellers, and all wrote in verse.  Most of the
Greek storytellers and historians also wrote in verse.  Of course, not all
verse from all cultures looks like poems to modern English speakers, and
many translations don't bother to keep the verse form.  (Many people are
surprised to hear Beowulf described as poetry.)  The Prose Edda was not to
be performed; it was a manual to help people understand the Poetic Edda.


Willow said: < I have in my accounts nobles who told stories. One
entertained the King of France at a siege when it was raining with retelling
the Chansons of William curt nose later St. William.  If I am not mistaken
King Harold Hard-fist, the Norway King who attacked England just before the
attack of William of Normandy listed in a poem 7 things he did well and one
was storytelling.>

But the Chansons de Geste were in verse!  And Harold listed his credentials
IN VERSE.

The example of a knight going into a bower to tell of his adventures is not
a public performance.  I consider a professional entertainer, or at least an
accomplished courtier, performing for an audience as distinct from someone
chatting up a chick or conversing with their friends at the pub about the
day's events.  That's what "there we were" stories feel like to me.  There's
nothing wrong with a group getting together with their cups to hash over the
events of the day around a fire; I know a number of people who like doing
just that of an evening at an event.  But to me, that's not what the "bardic
circle" is for, and from experience, one "there we were" story breeds
another until the poets and singers have to find somewhere else.


I like this discussion.  I think we need to make it its own discussion
thread.

Kenneth







More information about the Bards mailing list