Period Storytelling

[Heather Rose Jones]

On Wed, 3 Jan 1996, Mark Ramsden wrote:

> > statement implies that it was _expected_ that "bards and storytellers" 
> > would know stories "without a book".
> 
> Bards and storytellers are not meant to memorize every word.. very true.
> This does not mean the detail did not exists.  It was, most likely, "grown"
> by the bard, changing with every telling and adapting to the specific
> audiences.  For one, this enhances the feeling of "the first time" rather
> than a stale, over-rehersed bore.  The audience should feel as though the
> events of the story have never happened before, and only now occur, unfolding
> as a billowing sheet in the breeze before them.

I would say, on the contrary, that the rule is for traditional stories to 
use highly conventionalized descriptions that are iconic rather than 
attempts at life-descriptions. Take, for example, the descriptions of 
clothes that appear in medieval Welsh literature (since this is one of 
the aspects specifically mentioned in the passage from the Dream of 
Rhonabwy). In the four branches of the Mabinogi, every mention of the 
material of a garment -- with only one exception -- describes it as 
"a garment of shining gold brocade". (The one exception is a character 
who is "disguised" and wears "a garment of brownish-grey wool ... by way 
of a hunting garb". Compare this to the sort of description that appears in 
Rhonabwy: "a squire with crisp yellow hair upon his head, fair and 
graceful, and a mantle of green brocaded silk about him, and a gold 
brooch in the mantle on his right shoulder as thick as a warrior's third 
finger, and a pair of hose upon his feet of fine totnes, and a pair of 
shoes of speckled cordwain upon his feet, and gold clasps thereto". (This 
is one of eleven similar descriptions in the tale.)

There is a clear stylistic difference between the clothing that gets 
described in the older tales -- the ones likely to have been transmitted 
by oral tradition -- and those that appear to be literary compositions of 
a later date. The latter tend to mention many details, use a variety of 
specifically-named materials, and use a variety of words describing 
different garments. The former use a quite limited set of words for 
garments (most often just "gwisg", which literally means "something worn") 
and overwhelmingly use some subset of the following formula: "a <garment> 
of <color> [brocaded] silk; buskins of [speckled] cordwain; a circlet of 
red gold set with precious stones".

I would be wary of the premise that medieval storytellers tried to 
present material in a fresh way, varying the tale with each telling. 
Studies of story transmission in cultures that have a living tradition of 
this sort of oral culture show that a great emphasis and high premium is 
placed on learning and telling the story exactly "as it has always been 
told". This isn't to say that drift doesn't creep in over the 
generations, but that it is considered something to be avoided. The story 
becomes something of a ritual, with each part needing to be present at 
exactly the right place. (If you think that this isn't still a part of 
the human psyche, just try messing with a young child's favorite bedtime 
story!) The quest for novelty was not a driving force in the medieval mind.

Tangwystyl verch Morgant Glasvryn