{"id":1043,"date":"2008-07-24T20:35:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-24T20:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1043"},"modified":"2008-07-24T20:35:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-24T20:35:00","slug":"knee-deep-in-the-bloody-ford-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1043","title":{"rendered":"Knee Deep in the Bloody Ford of History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime around age 15 I took home Vol. 49 of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Harvard_Classics#The_Harvard_Classics\">Harvard Classics<\/a> from the Fort Collins (Colo.) public library and read for the first time <em>Beowulf<\/em> and <em>The Destruction of D\u00e1 Derga&#8217;s Hostel<\/em>. (The Ring saga is in there too, but I had already encountered it.)<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Beowulf\"><br \/>Beowulf<\/a> is an understandable story, while <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Destruction_of_Da_Derga%27s_Hostel\">The Destruction<\/a><\/em> at least introduced me to the concept of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Geis\"><em>geis<\/em><\/a>, which is actually fairly troublesome when you are that age and trying to figure out where the walls are.<\/p>\n<p>Not until my undergraduate years did I discover <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Y_Gododdin\"><em>The Gododdin<\/em><\/a>, which is <em>totally different<\/em> from the above. Like petals on a blood-soaked daisy, it is a series of short elegies for warriors who fought and died (more or less to the last man) at the battle of Catterick, c. 570 CE in what is now Yorkshire. (Poetic samples are at the link above.)<\/p>\n<p>There is no narrative; it is as though you had short poems about <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Paul_Revere\">Paul Revere<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Molly_Pitcher\">Molly Pitcher<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_Washington\">George Washington<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Daniel_Morgan\">Daniel Morgan<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Benedict_Arnold\">Benedict Arnold<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Baron_von_Steuben\">Baron Von Steuben<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/John_Paul_Jones\">John Paul Jones<\/a>, etc., without needing to tell the reader about the American Revolution.<\/p>\n<p>Many critics as well as authors of fiction based on the poem tend to create dichotomies about it such as these:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s the Romano-Celtic (mostly Christian) British versus the (Pagan) Anglo-Saxons, with the Celts carrying faded remnants of Imperial Britannia and the Saxons representing ignorance and barbarism.<\/li>\n<li>It represents a nonlinear &#8220;Celtic&#8221; way of thinking versus the linearity of, say, <em>Beowulf<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>It is typical of how glorifying &#8220;beautiful losers&#8221; is part of the Celtic soul or something.<\/li>\n<li>It demonstrates the tactical deficiency of mounted fighters without stirrups against the Anglo-Saxon &#8220;shield wall.&#8221; (But cf.<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Battle_of_Hastings\"> Battle of Hastings<\/a>.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Recently I picked up John Koch&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0708313744?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=chascli-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0708313744\"><em>The Gododdin of Aneirin: Text and Context from Dark-Age North Britain<\/em><\/a> (University of Wales Press, 1997).<\/p>\n<p>I have no background in the Welsh language, so I cannot really follow his discussions of changes in phonetics and orthography over many centuries, nor the 24 types of medieval Welsh poetic meter, for example.<\/p>\n<p>But I do appreciate the point he made about 6th century versus medieval nationalism. In the 6th or 7th centuries, there was none. What is now England and Scotland contained many little kingdoms &#8212; and yes, some were ruled by Old Welsh-speakers and some by Old English-speakers, but they did not line up neatly on ethnic lines.<\/p>\n<p>He argues that there were other Celto-British forces, allied with the Saxons, <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Y_Gododdin#Alternative_interpretation\">on the winning side at Catterick<\/a>, and that another Old Welsh poem represents their heroic versifying about their victory. So much for beautiful losers.<\/p>\n<p>Later, by the Middle Ages (13th century), when the line between England and Wales was drawn on the map and a greater sense of separation existed, <em>The Gododdin<\/em> was cast as Celts versus Saxons and used to reinforce that sense of separation.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, the lesson is to be careful about projecting our categories backwards on the past, especially on the distant and mostly unrecorded past.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sometime around age 15 I took home Vol. 49 of the Harvard Classics from the Fort Collins (Colo.) public library and read for the first time Beowulf and The Destruction of D\u00e1 Derga&#8217;s Hostel. (The Ring saga is in there too, but I had already encountered it.)Beowulf is an understandable story, while The Destruction at [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,21,17],"class_list":["post-1043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-celts","tag-england","tag-scotland"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-gP","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":707,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=707","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":0},"title":"In northern mists: Beowulf and Grendel","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 22, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"M. and I finally got to see the new Beowulf and Grendel movie. (Earlier entry here.)All right, it's not the 8th-century poem we all know and love. There are new characters (the Irish priest, the witch, Grendel's son) and new plot points.But it is still a simply told tale, visually\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":632,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=632","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":1},"title":"What? We gardeners?*Jason Pitzl-Waters has\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 13, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"What? We gardeners?*Jason Pitzl-Waters has new links to the re-paganized movie of Beowulf and Grendel, previously mentioned here.As the director points out, the story is a direct ancestor of the classic Westerns like Shane or The Magnificent Seven: a lone hero or group of companions who ride into town, defeat\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":295,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=295","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":2},"title":"More Pagan movies While we\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"More Pagan movies While we are waiting to see Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great, an Icelandic-Canadian cinematic version of Beowulf is also in the works, and from the Web site Beowulf and Grendel looks visually stunning. Although the original story is set probably in Denmark, this one is filmed\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":954,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=954","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":3},"title":"Gallimaufry with Geats","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 19, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Slate reviews the new 3-D Beowulf movie in heroic verse! I liked Beowulf and Grendel. Comparison will be fun.\u00b6 Staying in a San Diego waterfront hotel is like living in a Tom Clancy novel. Marines in dress blues suddenly fill the lobby. Helicopters and jets dash overhead. On Saturday\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6883,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6883","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":4},"title":"Get the Harvard Classics, Free","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The Harvard Classics, also known as\u00a0 \"Dr. Eliot's\/The Five Foot Shelf of Books,\"\u00a0 are available as a free download. From a time when university presidents actually cared what people read, as opposed to just the size of their donations: What does the massive collection preserve? For one thing . .\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":960,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=960","url_meta":{"origin":1043,"position":5},"title":"Gallimaufry with Dreams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 29, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Anne Johnson on Dream Weaving.\u00b6 Anne Hill writes about dreaming too. (Is this a blog meme? Ann + dreams?)\u00b6 Northern Path likes the new Beowulf movie.\u00b6 Peg is upset about people stealing Pagan music.\u00b6 Caroline posts collage Tarot decks.","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}