Literary Formulae

[Jed O'Connor]

Tangwystyl is as always well informed and well informing. Everything I know 
about storytelling suggests that she is on firm ground when speaking of the 
value placed on exact word-for-word replication in what we regard as 
storytelling, but what our forebears more likely regarded as history. Just 
as you would not wish your bard to confuse the geneological history of your 
lord and villagers, just so you would not wish him to "improve" on legends 
anymore than fundamentalist Christians would wish us to "improve" the tales 
in the Bible. 

Tangwystyl's observations on "icons" are also well taken. The Celtic 
otherworld is largely identified by the traditional coloring of 
beasts--white stags, dogs, and horses with red ears, silver birds, etc. 
There are plenty of formulae in folk song lyrics, too: the snow-white/milk 
white or berry brown steed, the occurrence of remarkable events around 
"holidays"-- vestigial remnants of solar year divisions such as solstices, 
equinoxes, or cross-quarter days. Wine is never white, always red, often 
blood red in period lyrics. A professor of mine held that whenever grass or 
green growing things appear, sex is always the subject under discussion. 
(Green mammary mounts in the beginning of Le Roman de la Rose, tendre 
croppes followed by smale foules mak(ing) melodye in Chaucer's CT Prologue, 
what results from "comin' thro' th' rye," etc. I'm sure there are thousands 
of such conventions to remark upon.

When REcreating, these formulae and conventions should be the proper objects 
of study and replication. When CREATING new literary efforts, there is no 
reason why one should not coin new images and see whether they take hold 
over time. That, too, is a valid path for our sCa energies to follow. The 
Knowne Worlde audience, much like the medieval audience before it and the 
Celtic Revival audience of a century ago, will sort the wheat from the chaff 
over time by virtue of its own aesthetic sensibility.

--Jed Silverstar