How Legends Pass

Roland is missing; his grave near Bordeaux is long destroyed. Where is the bearer of that mighty horn, where the bearer of the sword Durandal? He who was Lord of the Breton Marches, he who passed on the Ides of August in 778, is gone. They say he may yet rise, a paladin in the service of men.

Arthur is lost; Who is Arthur?, say the voices of the learned. We know that someone shut the voices of the Saxons in the 6th Century after Christ. Some say he sits, resting with his knights, until Britain needs him once more.

The Thunderer once said that even if he were to be lowered into his grave, he would rise up if anything went wrong with Atlantis. He still lives, but one can tell when a legend is passing, and when the device of foreshadowing is being employed.

But the Gnome has passed. And this one will not return. For like many elemental spirits of earth and matter, of coin and gem, of earthy humour and down-to-earth ways, he has built himself into the land and returns his body thereto. His sinews are in our institutions, his mind is in our processes, his veins are in our roads and tunnels. His historical record will be everywhere, like Arthur; his memory will survive his grave, like Roland.

And like Sir Christopher Wren, "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice!" — if you require a memorial, look around you!

The Atlantean Myth (Part II): The Gnome's Tale

Of all the Thunderer's lieutenants, the only one that deserved TWO chapters in those annals was the Gnome. Born in a dead old port of brown sugar and silver, the Gnome came from an odd branch of an odd family. He was disposed towards cleverness and impropriety from a young age, a cousin of cousins and a watcher from afar.

The Thunderer came to appreciate this older friend, the one entity who could turn the arguments of thunder upon their heads and make everyone see something new. For that, of course, is the way of the Gnome.

The myth of the Gnome has ever been that he dragged a team of mechanical engineers through the bowels of the Ministry of Education, much as one would drag a claw through the entrails of an enemy, thus killing the spirit of education of the Old Time and placing a new and soulless thing in the body. But it was not so.

Reading the accounts, it is clear that the Gnome brought with him a bunch of young and idealistic demiurges—systems engineers, not mechanics. They found inefficiency and silliness in the body of the beast, and purged it. Unfortunately, it was like trying to cut out a cancer in the bones, while hoping that the body would remain supported. It worked, to a large extent, but the essential nature of education in Atlantis would be changed forever.

It is recorded that the Gnome actually thought (for he never was much good at assessing the responses of human nature) that when he generously created a place for the less intelligent in his scheme of things, that they would be happy to have such a place. It is subsequently recorded that he flew into a rage when the parents of the less intelligent merely worked them harder so that they seemed more intelligent, met all the tests, and were given places for the more intelligent, thus jacking up the level of stress throughout the island. It was as if the Archmage Turing was laughing in his grave.

It is amusing that this should have happened; the Gnome was ever an economist, but he had failed to see how the market worked. When education is seen as a multiplier of wealth, a factor of economic prosperity, then who would want to have less of it? His plan failed while succeeding; in all his speeches concerning the matter, the Gnome laments the examination-driven life.

It was of course the Thunderer, less intelligent but more perceptive, who realised what a great tool the Gnome's 'streaming system' was. You could have a pluralistic society, a multiracial society, whatever... but if the examination system with all its numerical and linguistic biases was seen as a fair gatekeeper, you could forge a nation from that alone. And he did.

The Atlantean Myth (Part I): The Thunderer's Tale

I was re-reading, for the fourth or fifth time, the autobiography of that great hierophant, the Thunderer. I still, to this day, marvel at the audacity that led him to name his own story, The Story Of Atlantis. It is the capstone to the Atlantean myth, that the island between the oceans was formed by the will of men, and not of the gods; more exactly, it is the capstone of the Thunderer's legend.

That is not to say the Thunderer does not deserve to have a legend. Far from it; it is well-chronicled even in the tomes of the barbarians that he has been a formidable leader who indeed made Atlantis into a legend far beyond its limited shores. The footprint of the island makes it seem as if it is not a little green dot, but something as big as Australia. The numerous ambassadors and diplomats he sent forth from this island nation were (and continue to be) all very good at enlarging her boundaries in the minds of men.

It's always amusing to me to see how he delicately skirts around the issues of the Gnome, the Howler, Black Diamond, the Misfit, and all the other sorcerers and magi of his cohort. Of them all, he was certainly the one most prepared to lead; of them all, he was the one who most understood legend and what constitutes the makings of a myth.

I still think of him with respect. I would venture to say that the majority of present-day Atlanteans think of him with the kind of awe their ancestors would have reserved for the Highest; a kind of fearful respect for supernatural authority and dynamic manifestation, occasionally tinged with impiety in the kava shops and opium dens.

Long Journeys (Part I)

Long journeys are the main course of a literary diet. In some cases, the journey is such an epic one that it takes on a life and significance of its own, eventually settling down as the cultural ballast for an entire civilisation.

This was the case with the Hebrews and Moses' sojourn in the wilderness (and to some extent his antecedent in Abraham, whose journey from Ur covered the entire Fertile Crescent and the Nile Delta), with the Greeks and Odysseus' eponymous voyage around the Aegean Sea and parts unknown, and with Aeneas and his flight from Troy (funny version here) which ends up with being the basis for both a legend of Rome and one particular dream of Ancient Britain (vide Geoffrey of Monmouth). It is even the case with Dante's phantasmagoric La Divina Commedia, and its resonances (or reverberations) on Italian culture.

In each case, the idea of the journey is that of a great and complex and divinely-inspired test of the protagonist. By the ordeal of the journey, he is made fit to assume legendary stature as the leader of a people and the founder of a nation. By contrast, modern nation-building myths are not so heroic, and have to be conflated, inflated and insufflated (by the adoring masses, of courses) before they reach the same effective stature (if ever).

The old-fashioned heroic story-telling, I think, was about excellence: the protagonists looked larger because their peers and accomplices and friends (like the Paladins of Roland, or the Fellowship of the Ring) were great in their own right or grew to greatness with them. Since the protagonists excelled even these, they were champions and heroes of even greater merit.

Nowadays, sadly, the norm is to make the protagonist look bigger by tearing down his rivals and diminishing his peers. It is all very depressing.

Mythology For Some People

And it came to pass that, one night in the chilly November, the Chancellor of the College took it upon himself to set up a great statute of himself (no, not statue, that was Nebuchadnezzar) and claim the title of Great Visionary. For this was one of the few titles not in common use since the time of the Great Helmsman. And many saw this, and some were made to bow down before it, but it was all in jest, although those who ingested were not all of good digestion thereafter.

Outside, the leaves turned red in embarrassment and the skeletons knocked their bones together in the closet. Many who had worked on earlier statutes were in uproar and disquiet. But some smirked merrily to themselves.

Then the wise men of the Family came together, and some younger of the wise men asked, "Should this be done with the lucre that we have raised for the youth of the nation?" But the older and wiser said, "Is it not great theatre and a worthy appendage to the year? For how else should we gain entertainment and have something to laugh at during the dying days of the year?"

And the younger men went away appeased, for they saw the truth, and the truth made them laugh quite a bit.

Word of the Day: Afanc

I think the sheer horror of the vasty deep, of all that is cold and wet and old and dead and ought to be buried, but isn't, can be hidden in the many visions that this word can evoke.

The afanc is a Celtic horror, one of the many ghastly terrors conjured up by this race of poets and dreamers and bards. In the older legends (or at least those forged by that master of the tall tale, Iolo Morganwg), it is a demonic presence of scales and slime and watery doom that roars forth from mist-wreathed Welsh lakes to consume (or at least panic, drown and otherwise frighten) the unwary and the unprepared. Arthur himself is supposed to have driven away the physical presence from Llyn Barfog, the Bearded Lake.

Sadly, like most legends, this one has dwindled over time. Modern Welsh uses afanc to mean 'beaver'. How art the mighty fallen, and with what a big splash too.

Forty Years

"Forty years on, when afar and asunder, parted are those who are singing today..." is the first line of the reunion anthem of the old Harrow School, that bastion of classical English education.

Today I heard a colleague reflect on the fate of the 40-year old eagle. Aristotle's 'History of Animals' says that the eagle will smash off its overgrown beak against granite rocks when the beak is too heavy to allow it to fly well; the South African 1st Eagle Scouts' website has the same story, expanded for a modern audience. The story appears totally apocryphal, but might be related to some eagles' very real habit of tapping their beak against rocks to remove undigested food remains (bones, feathers, hair) stuck in the craw.

The story continues that the eagle does this to permit it a new lease of life. Lighter and less encumbered, it now has thirty more years to live. Se non é vero, é molto ben' trovato, I say, echoing the old Italian adage. It has shed its beak, feathers, and even talons - it can then grow them back and be as a young eagle again.

I suppose that despite the silliness of the whole story, my own reflections are cheerful on this point. Yes, indeed I have jettisoned my talons and beak and feathers; yes, indeed have I begun the growth of a new armamentarium. But I also think about Benjamin Franklin's protest regarding the use of the Bald Eagle as a national icon - and I reproduce them below for you:

"For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly. You may have seen him perched on some dead Tree near the River, where, too lazy to fish for himself, he watches the Labour of the Fishing Hawk; and when that diligent Bird has at length taken a Fish, and is bearing it to his Nest for the Support of his Mate and young Ones, the Bald Eagle pursues him and takes it from him.

"With all this Injustice, he is never in good Case but like those among Men who live by Sharping & Robbing he is generally poor and often very lousy. Besides he is a rank Coward: The little King Bird not bigger than a Sparrow attacks him boldly and drives him out of the District. He is therefore by no means a proper Emblem for the brave and honest Cincinnati of America who have driven all the King birds from our Country . . .

"I am on this account not displeased that the Figure is not known as a Bald Eagle, but looks more like a Turkey. For the Truth the Turkey is in Comparison a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America . . . He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on."