Working with Folklore

[lorna]

I've recently found myself drawn toward deeper explorations of local folklore and considerations of its possible relationship to earlier pagan, and in particular Brythonic mythologies (I've posted a couple of articles for anyone interested in the Brython section).

Heron, I know you work with and value folklore through your personal blogs, seeing this as just as important a duty to the gods and spirits of this land as working with earlier myths.

I was wondering what significance working with folklore holds for other people? At what point does it stop being mere research and become a spiritual or relgious process?

~

For me folklore speaks alot about the location and nature of local spirits such as fairies and boggarts and peoples' fears, superstitions and relationships with the Otherworld. It's my opinion that Lancashire's folklore is rooted in Brythonic and Anglo-Saxon / Norse traditions (like the name of my home town 'Pen-wortham) and through a mixture of research and intuiton it's possible to trace or at least gain a personal vision of these roots.

And doing so is part of my duty to the local spirits, to the people who have kept alive these stories. It's also part of my duty to Gwyn as a ruler of the Otherworld- he seems to have an interest in the recovery of these stories and their dissemimination... re-enchantment is a major part- the majorist part? of my role as Awenydd.

I think it's believing in and having experiences or relationships with (or in case of the ones best avoided seeing through visualisations or poetry at least!) the deities or spirits that makes it spiritual / religious rather than an academic process.

[julieb]

I caught the end of a talk on www.paganradio.co.uk the other day
The speaker was talking about his experiences working with fairies etc - it was fascinating and I would like to read more of his work
Did anyone else hear this and know who the speake ris?

[lorna]

I've never listened to Pagan Radio. I couldn't find a link to anything obvious. Do you know what the name of the show was?

[julieb]

No,sorry - thank you so much for looking

[Heron]

Sept 14, 2014 19:10:58 GMT -1 lorna said:

Heron, I know you work with and value folklore through your personal blogs, seeing this as just as important a duty to the gods and spirits of this land as working with earlier myths.

I was wondering what significance working with folklore holds for other people? At what point does it stop being mere research and become a spiritual or relgious process?

~...

As you say Lorna, I do regard folklore as fundamental. And there is the frisson of engagement with Faery as an experience, the transportive shift into the Otherworld/Othertime where we walk in the realm of the gods though often with the gods as shadowy accomplices rather than specific identities.

Folk and faerie stories are another matter, though they, too, often give us glimpses of the Otherworld. Folk tales have been studied professionally to identify common motifs which appear in stories across different cultures. The so-called 'Arne-Thompson index' of these motifs lists them taxonomically. This is in one way a confirmation of the deep matter of these stories - that they contain fundamental perceptions which are recognised by all human beings across different cultures - but also tends to blind some researchers to the particularity of the stories as told within each cultural setting. Because as well as being the ‘same’ , they are also in other ways not the same at all. Could this tell us something?

Take a story like the medieval Welsh tale of ‘Culhwch and Olwen’. It is a complex layering of different elements shaped by a tale-teller and written down as such, though its elements are sourced from oral tales. Folklorists refer to it as containing certain recognisable motifs stitched together to make a literary construction. So the frame for the tale is the so-called ‘Wicked Stepmother’ motif, while the narrative content of the tale is structured around several themes, notably the ‘Giant’s Daughter’ and the ‘Hero Quest’ motifs. In the process it introduces characters who have their origin in gods as well as episodes from the specific cultural milieu of Brythonic society. The tale has been much commented on by Jungian psychologists who find prominent archetypes displayed there, by scholars of Celtic Studies who find remnant gods and early legendary material, by literary and cultural critics who see it as expressing all these things in a story that tells as much about both the time in which it was written and/or the way earlier material survived into this time.

For us, finding the gods represented in these tales is, then, compatible with the finding of all these disciplines because they appear transformed across generations of oral transmission and continue to be so even in the more fixed forms of written stories. If philologists can identify the names of the old gods in the medieval stories, folklore scholars can identify the nature of those gods in the identities of characters in the stories, literary critics and psychologists can show the way in which certain identifiable human perceptions of otherness are communicated by the stories. But each of these disciplines may only see part of the picture. And the less imaginative practitioners of each discipline may be blinded by their specialisation to the other parts of the picture.

If the elements in the stories are universal, while the enactment of the stories is in each case very much local to both time and place, this might tell us something significant about the way we relate to the gods from where we are and from who we are as inhabitants of particular landscapes and the way the gods inhabit those landscapes. It might also suggest that even ‘local’ gods have an essence that is infused into the Universe as a whole while also showing themselves to us a particular expressions of the natural world in a specific place or environment so they are the psychic expression of that locale or environment. That is what the stories engage with, though always they seem to point beyond to somewhere other. And that is how we - as pagans - relate to them.

[lorna]

Thanks for your explication of this from so many angles, Heron. Your final paragraph is very interesting in relation to the way that this world and the otherworld, we and the gods interact, and how these interactions must 'take place' at specific times and places. Hence the Brythonic myths and most folkloric stories occur in place, are written into and are a part of the land (as opposed to fairytales 'once upon a time').

As someone who once had a keen interest in historical materialism and in particular the German philosopher Walter Benjamin I wonder much at the specificity of the time and place of each, its meaning within its context.

And I wonder more at the way at the way pagan / druid / polytheistic traditions are developing. How since the end of the 20th C it has become acceptable to believe in gods, land spirits, the land as sentient (rather than just being able to write it as during the Renaissance and Romantic period) and live in relationships that for those during centuries of Christianity could only be dreams. And what this re-emergence of a land based mythic consciousness in the 21st C means...

[Gwenno]

I'm still trying to get my head sorted with regard to the gods. Well ones with names and identities.My god of the between spaces is there,but also not there if you see what I mean?

But folklore is definitly my thing. So this conversation was to my taste.
>Heron your words about the Culhwch and Olwen story really make sense to me. Yes its all there both in the local stories and everywhere else. But the local story is the one we know. Oh there's so much in there i can't put my finger on but it speaks to me.

>Lorna you say about us being able to believe in the gods but that earlier in history they didnot. I always assumed they believed more than us. But you say they only wrote about it. Thinking about that, yes I can see that it was all just literature to them (the Romantics)So what about the Middle Ages. Did those mabinogion people believe it?

[Heron]

Mar 8, 2016 18:48:29 GMT -1 Gwenno said:

...
But folklore is definitly my thing. So this conversation was to my taste.
>Heron your words about the Culhwch and Olwen story really make sense to me. Yes its all there both in the local stories and everywhere else. But the local story is the one we know. Oh there's so much in there i can't put my finger on but it speaks to me.

Thanks Boudicca, if you have any interesting folklore from your area (or beyond) to discuss by all means keep this thread alive with it.

Mar 8, 2016 18:48:29 GMT -1 Gwenno said:

(....). Did those mabinogion people believe it?

Good question! At least one modern critic (Patrick Ford) has argued that they must have been aware of the mythological significance, though others have thought that it was just inherited raw material for story-telling. I'm sure that Ford is right, but whether they 'believed' it is another matter. That raises the interesting question of what constitutes 'belief'. If they experienced the mythological matter in the inherited stories and were able to manipulate it in story telling to draw out its significance (as they did) then this might be thought to be closer to the gods than, say, a modern adherent of an Abrahamic religion who is required to say 'I believe ...' to be accepted into the faith, regardless of any significant experience of what is believed.

[Gwenno]

Belief oh I see yes But for me it's deciding what my experience means. That's the thing . You all seem to have that sorted out. Mindfulness again

[Gwenno]

There are quite a few stories around here about stones that move about which I think are interesting. There are four together which are supposed to be four kings who were turned into stones and they go down to the River Wye to drink. There is also a story about a female giant called Moll who put some stones where they are. It's usually the devil who does this in a lot of tales, so it's interesting that it is a female figure here. She is someone I listen out for when I'm out on the moor. But I don't think she has much patience with humans.

[Heron]

Mar 17, 2016 8:05:13 GMT -1 Gwenno said:

There are quite a few stories around here about stones that move about which I think are interesting. There are four together which are supposed to be four kings who were turned into stones and they go down to the River Wye to drink. There is also a story about a female giant called Moll who put some stones where they are. It's usually the devil who does this in a lot of tales, so it's interesting that it is a female figure here. She is someone I listen out for when I'm out on the moor. But I don't think she has much patience with humans.

Giants are often perceived in that way, or at least as being uninterested in humans if not actually hostile. One interesting female giant is the one that inhabits the same valley as Melangell, further north and west from you if you are on the Wye; but it has always seemed to me that Melangell is the 'human face' of the giantess. The same flat rock in the valley is said in alternative stories to be 'Gwely y Gawres' and 'Gwely Melangell'.The giant would have been the aboriginal inhabitant of the valley while Melangell is said to have withdrawn there and of course became known after saving a hare from the hunter.

But it would be good to hear more of your Moll if there is anything further to tell.

[Gwenno]

Oh yes I know about Melangell. I had the story of her saving the hare when I was small.I didn't know about her being a giant. I always meant to visit her valley as it's not all that far away, though difficult to get to without a car. Something for this summer.

Nothing more on Moll I think she keeps herself to herself.

[Gwenno]

Mar 21, 2016 22:39:53 GMT -1 Gwenno said:

Oh yes I know about Melangell. I had the story of her saving the hare when I was small.I didn't know about her being a giant. I always meant to visit her valley as it's not all that far away, though difficult to get to without a car. Something for this summer.

Nothing more on Moll I think she keeps herself to herself.

First try at this quotey thing so I'm quoting myself

Just to say I've found lots of info about Melangell but nothing about a giant. This is interesting to me. Where can I find out?

[Heron]

Mar 23, 2016 23:05:12 GMT -1 Gwenno said:

[....]
Just to say I've found lots of info about Melangell but nothing about a giant. This is interesting to me. Where can I find out?

Yes there's plenty of material out there on Melangell as a saint and her hare story, but less about her her as an aboriginal 'giant' or hare goddess or tutelary spirit of the Tanat valley. There is, at least was, quite her good site dedicated to her but I can't find it having done a quick search so maybe it's no longer there. Mara Freeman's 'Chalice Centre' blog has a good page of info about Melangell and a link to an older post on my Gorsedd Arberth blog.

There is a comprehensive book on Welsh giants : The Giants of Wales : Cewri Cymru by Chris Grooms if you can find it. It's a compendium of geographical references to giant sites with quite bit of detail about the giants associated with each one. The entry for the Pennant Valley duly notes the overlap with the Melangell legend.

The giants in Culhwch and Olwen and in the Third Branch of the Mabinogi also deserve further attention.

[Gwenno]

Mar 25, 2016 17:15:27 GMT -1 Heron said:

Mar 23, 2016 23:05:12 GMT -1 Gwenno said:

[....]
Just to say I've found lots of info about Melangell but nothing about a giant. This is interesting to me. Where can I find out?

Yes there's plenty of material out there on Melangell as a saint and her hare story, but less about her her as an aboriginal 'giant' or hare goddess or tutelary spirit of the Tanat valley. There is, at least was, quite her good site dedicated to her but I can't find it having done a quick search so maybe it's no longer there. Mara Freeman's 'Chalice Centre' blog has a good page of info about Melangell and a link to an older post on my Gorsedd Arberth blog.

There is a comprehensive book on Welsh giants : The Giants of Wales : Cewri Cymru by Chris Grooms if you can find it. It's a compendium of geographical references to giant sites with quite bit of detail about the giants associated with each one. The entry for the Pennant Valley duly notes the overlap with the Melangell legend.

The giants in Culhwch and Olwen and in the Third Branch of the Mabinogi also deserve further attention.




Thank you so much   Cant find the book except for lots of dollars in USA. But web sites are good and yes | will look again in my Mabinogion.