Legend & Folklore - SP/SU 2016, No.18

Legend & Folklore

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Contents.

Retrospect Journal.

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Contributors:

Academic: 5 ... Wicked Women 7 ... This World fareþ as a Fantasye 9 ... Trident, Cold War History and the ‘Myth’ of Deterrence 11 ... Ghosts in Fairyland 13 ... Improvers and Romantics

Features: 15 ... Bosnia: Myth and the Modern State 16 ... The Narnia Effect 17 ... Breaking down the Myth of ‘Jefferson’s University’ 18 ... The Mystery Author of Beowulf 19 ... The Legend of Lost Edinburgh 21 ... Fairy Tale Russia 22 ... In the Wake of Slavery 23 ... The Legend of Omukama Kabalega 25 ... The Legend of the Assassins

Reviews: 26 ... The King in the North / The Revenant 27 ... Rebecca

Fiction: 28 ... The Vengeance of Lodbrok 29 ... The Storytelling 30 ... Mercat Tours

Anahit Behrooz Morgan Boharski Eva Colley Dr Malcolm Craig Liska Crofts Enzo DeGregorio Iona Diver Dr Sarah Dunnigan Lucy Hughes Charlotte Lauder Lauren Letch Isobel McConville Anna McKay Ciara McKay Flo McMullen Helena McNish Matthew Mitchell Mathew Nicolson James Page Kyomugisha Penina Francesca Street Sarah Thomson Lewis Twiby Georgia Vullinghs

Editor in Chief // Kerry Gilsenan Deputy Editors // Katherine Dixon & Nicol Ogston Secretary // Maddy Pribanova Design Editor // Mary Wienckowski Senior Academic Editor // Anna McKay Senior Features Editor // Charles Nurick Senior Reviews Editor // Frances Roe Academic Editors // Ivana Cernanova, Enzo W. DeGregorio & Rebecca Rosser Features Editors // Liska Crofts & Francesca Street Reviews Editor // Helena McNish Fiction Editor // Hilary Bell Societies Editor // Mathew Nicolson Postgraduate Editor // Alice Williamson Radio Editor // Lauren Porter Media Officers // Elle Arscott, Isobel Bishop & Claire Godfrey Fundraising Officers // Sarah Beamish & Calum Mackie Schools Officer // Charlotte Lauder Cover Illustration // Patrick Hughes Stock images // Internet Stock Book Images

Legend & Folklore

Editor’s Note Winter has seemingly crept into our SP/SU 2016 issue, bringing with it tales of vikings, Russian ballerinas and evil stepmothers, amongst snowcapped mountains, and Narnia-esque settings. For the second time this academic year, Retrospect has been overwhelmed with not just the number of submissions we have received, but their quality. The content for ‘Legends & Folklore’ has captivated our editorial team, making our job, as usual, a pleasure. We cannot thank our members enough for their continued support of all that we do. Nevertheless, to all who spent time voluntarily in the library producing fantastic academic pieces and features, to those who sought and reviewed their entertainment, and to those that ran away with their imaginations in historical fiction, thank you.

On a personal note, this will be my ninth, and final, issue of Retrospect that I have contributed to or edited. At each stage of my time at this University, Retrospect has provided me with the opportunities I needed to grow as a writer, become an editor, plan events and projects, and manage an entire publication. The individuals that I have worked with have made me incredibly proud of the ever-growing community of Retrospect fanatics walking through our hallways. As a small organisation, we have asked ourselves what brings our members to us, and what more can we do for them? Retrospect will continue to offer students interested in creating content and developing skills as many opportunities as possible to show us what they’ve got. This year saw the introduction of podcasting and historical fiction under the biggest committee yet. What next? It’s entirely up to you!

Keep an eye out for us next year. I know I will be checking the website, reading, listening to and experiencing the creations yet to come, while looking back on all that we had achieved by my final year at university.

Happy reading.

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Retrospect Journal.

Classics Society

Archaeology Society

Salve.

After having a brilliant first semester, the Classics Society has been busy. Under the guidance of our social secretaries, we’ve had all sorts of fantastic events including a toga pub crawl, karaoke (the full soundtrack of Disney’s Hercules was ‘sung’), and a devilishly hard classics pub quiz. Look out for many more cracking socials before the end of the year! We’ve also been helping out the Classics Department, chairing Staff Student Liaison Meetings, and promoting the Edinburgh Student Experience Survey and National Student Survey.

Following the enormously successful Classics Society trip to Athens in 2015, we undertook our second annual trip, this time to Rome. 18 students went to the Eternal City over Innovative Learning Week, with highlights including the Colosseum, the Forum, Capitoline Museum and the Vatican. A great time was had by all, and no doubt we’ll be off to another fascinating Classical city next year.

Our regular socials and academic events are well worth attending for anyone with an interest in the Ancient World.

For any further information, please be sure to visit our Facebook page, get in contact with our president at edclassicssoc@ gmail.com, or find us in the pub on Thursday evenings!

Archsoc has had a fantastic lecture series this year, and we’ve thoroughly enjoyed spending a good few evenings in the pub with you over the last semester. We had a great Christmas meal in the Beehive, and we enjoyed seeing all the picts at our pub crawl at the start of the year! We finished off this semester with even more exciting lecturesl, with some fantastic topics, and held our AGM - a great opportunity for anyone who has been interested in getting involved with the society to keep it going for the year to come. We are really excited to see what is in store for us.

We will be organizing some more events for the semester so keep up to date with our Facebook page for details. We can’t wait to have some great times with you and we thank you all so much for your support throughout the year!

James Page

History Society The History Society has had another incredible semester so far and I cannot believe we only have a couple of months left. Our fantastic Winter Ball was a huge success and the society hasn’t stopped since. We have held countless other events from lectures on the Holocaust, to Filmhouse outings, to a very messy flat crawl, and most recently an unbelievably fun trip to the Czech Republic. I was confident the society would continue to hold successful and exciting events but my expectations have well and truly been exceeded.

Even as deadlines hit and the stresses of university life build up, the society endures as a way for people to connect and have time away from the confines of the library. I feel we have helped to create a community of students that is welcoming and open – especially important at a university in which it’s easy to feel lost and a little overwhelmed. All of this would be impossible without the dedication of the History Society committee who have been incredible. I feel very lucky to have not only worked alongside them to make the Society a success, but also to have had the chance get to know them all this year as friends.

On a final note I would just like to say that getting the chance to help run this society has been such a privilege and an honour. It is an experience I will never forget and I look forward to seeing what exciting things are in store for this fantastic society.

Lucy Hughes

Iona Diver

Arts and Heritage Volunteer Group It has been a busy semester for us at the Arts & Heritage Volunteer Group, as some of our biggest projects for the year kick-started into action. We eased ourselves into the new year with a social trip to the recently refurbished Battle of Bannockburn Centre in January, with members new and old coming along for exclusive after hours access to enjoy a pie and a pint whilst taking on the battle game.

After the fun trip to Bannockburn, February saw us commence recruitment for our journal in collaboration with the Scottish Historic Buildings Trust. A large project aiming to catalogue the history and restoration of the organisation’s buildings, our dedicated team is in the final stages of writing and editing, so keep an eye out for our publication at the end of the year!

Another big project we have been working on since September came to fruition in March as we drew upon the success of our careers fair last year to make it even bigger and better by collaborating with the University’s Cultural and Creative Career’s Festival. With representatives from a wide range of heritage organisations, students were given an unprecedented opportunity to network within the industry through a university-sponsored event.

Looking forward, we haven’t lost sight of our role as a volunteer group, and have organized exciting new volunteering roles developing into the new academic year, including volunteering opportunities with the Edinburgh World Heritage Trust and the Magdalen Chapel to name just a few.

Lauren Letch

Legend & Folklore

The Late Antique and Medieval Postgraduate Society (LAMPS) The Late Antique and Medieval Postgraduate Society (LAMPS) aims to promote the academic study of the Late Antique and Medieval periods at the University of Edinburgh, while encouraging interdisciplinary connections between students. We host weekly academic seminars on Monday evenings where our members have an opportunity to present their current research, and works in progress.

Building on the theme for our spring seminar series, ‘Opposing Forces’, trips were organized to Stirling Castle, the Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre, the beautiful besieged castles of Dumbarton, Tantallon, and Dirleton, and Edinburgh Castle, where we learned about crime and punishment in the Middle Ages from an executioner! Additionally, LAMPS hosts various social events outside of academia, such as pub nights, pub quizzes, and seasonal celebrations.

We are continually strengthening our relationship with the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and with their support we have organised a conference on the theme of Gardens and Enclosures. This theme was inspired by a developing ECA and LAMPS collaborative endeavour, the Edinburgh Medieval Pigment Project (EMPP).

Upcoming Events for Spring 2016: Saturday, 9 April: National Museum of Scotland Celts Exhibition Tour Friday, 15 April: Speed Dating Research Q&A Saturday, 23 April: St. Andrew’s Trip Friday, 6 May: LAMPS Second-Annual Postgraduate Conference Keep an eye out for our upcoming summer events programme on Facebook (EdinburghLAMPS), follow us @LAMPS_Edinburgh on Twitter, or email us at lampsedinburgh@gmail.com!

Morgan Boharski

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Retrospect Journal Retrospect have had an excellent second semester. As well as working towards our spring edition, ‘Legend & Folklore’, we saw the return of our highly successful 24-hours event during Innovative Learning Week. This year titled ‘Echoes of Edinburgh: Voices from the City’, we once again attempted the ambitious feat of researching, writing, editing and publishing an edition of our ed24 magazine within the space of a single day.

This proved to be a rewarding experience with some excellent, perhaps partially caffeine-driven, articles produced. Throughout the day talks were held by experts in the media industry, providing valuable advice for getting into the competitive jobs market and the type of work available.

If this was not enough, Retrospect also collaborated with FreshAir to produce a 24-hour radio show which, along with the continuation of Retrospect’s newly established podcast, took the world of history, classics and archaeology beyond the page. On a less intense note, our semester’s social and fundraiser ‘Retrospectacle’ also proved to be a great success. Featuring the talented artists Annie Booth, Jambouree and Caitlyn Vanbeck; an enjoyable evening was had by everyone and all funds went towards supporting the publication of this very issue.

Following our AGM, we will be looking to recruit a new team for the 2016/17 academic year. Keep an eye out for opportunities to become involved on our Twitter and Facebook pages as well as on our website, www.retrospectjournal.co.uk!

Mathew Nicolson

Academic.

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Retrospect Journal.

Wicked Women:

The Stepmother as a Figure of Evil in the Grimms’ Fairy Tales

By Anahit Behrooz

The recent scholarly resurgence of fairy tales and folklore, and the litany of rewrites, spin offs and adaptations, prompts a reexamination of many of the genre’s characteristics and tropes. The character of the wicked stepmother has gained notoriety as one of the most evil villains to be found in fairy tales, frequently set up as a foil to the innocent and virtuous step daughter whom she mistreats and who ultimately gains victory over her. Indeed, the evil stepmother was the first antagonist to be portrayed in a Disney feature-length film, and since then her terrifying presence remains one of the key features of many fairy tale adaptations. Yet why did this particular figure gain such popularity as a literary villain, and what role specifically did the fairy tales of the Brother Grimm have to play in this? By referencing four specific tales within the Kinder- und Hausmärchen collection – Aschenputtel (Cinderella), Hänsel und Grethel (Hansel and Gretel), Rapunzel and Sneewittchen (Snow White) – this essay sets out to explore these questions: Why did a stepmother provide such a suitable figure of evil? In what ways did the Brothers Grimm set out to emphasise her brutal and malevolent nature? And, finally, whether, despite these strategies of characterisation, the figure of the stepmother in fairy tales arouses any sympathy as a character who is more complex and multi-faceted than a simple, two-dimensional foe.

Firstly let us begin by examining the reasons behind why the stepmother was selected as an appropriate antagonist within the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. The term ‘selected’ is apropos here as, through an examination of the editorial changes made by the brothers throughout their various editions, it becomes clear that the stepmother was not always the original villain of the story. This is not to say that the Brothers Grimm invented the stepmother as a fairy tale antagonist; if we examine earlier versions of the tales, such as Perrault’s Cendrillon, written in 1697 and equivalent to the Grimms’ Aschenputtel, we see that the stepmother is a key character who behaves in the malicious, cruel way that modern readers have come to expect of her. This is not the case for all the tales, however, and a comparison of the Grimms’ original edi-

tion and their later editions quickly reveals this: while all the later versions of Sneewittchen - that is, from 1819 onwards - begin by describing a queen who longs for a daughter and dies in childbirth, only to have the father remarry, the 1812 version depicts a queen who longs for a daughter and quickly becomes jealous of her when the child grows and is deemed fairer than her. Thus in the original version, the role famously played by the stepmother is played by Sneewittchen’s real, biological mother. Similarly in Hänsel und Grethel, it is not until the 1840 edition that the mother who encourages the father to abandon the children in the woods becomes a stepmother. It is therefore evident that the decision to make the stepmother a villainous figure in the tales was a conscious one. What is less clear is why such a selection was made.

Critics have offered various explanations as to this deliberate change: Bruno Bettelheim takes a decidedly psychoanalytical approach in arguing that ‘the typical fairy-tale splitting of the mother into a good (usually dead) mother and an evil stepmother serves the child well - the fantasy of the wicked stepmother not only preserves the good mother intact, it also prevents having to feel guilty about one’s angry wishes about her’. Thus the child is able to compartmentalise and justify their negative reactions to a maternal figure without becoming overwhelmed by what they consider at that stage to be unnatural feelings. Although it is unlikely that the Brothers Grimm would have had a similarly Freudian rationale for making the change, it could be argued that they did not wish to disturb young children with tales of murderous parents, or destroy the ideal of a close family unit: an outsider to the family would be far simpler to villainise. Yet it must be pointed out here that, particularly in the case of their first few editions, the Grimms’ intended audience was not small children, but rather scholars and academics, who would presumably be far less easily horrified by tales of a wicked mother. Perhaps then the key reason for this change was in order to reflect the social reality of the period. Given the high mortality rate for childbearing women, the presence of a stepmother in a family would have been far more common than it is today. Furthermore, older widowed

Legend & Folklore men would often marry much younger women as their second wives, thus radically reducing the age difference between the daughter and the stepmother and creating a dynamic which is open to much of the jealousy and competition seen between the female characters within fairy tales.

We can therefore begin to understand why the figure of the stepmother was vulnerable to appropriation and transformation into an evil character. But what narrative and characterisation strategies did the Brothers Grimm employ in order to emphasise her wicked nature within the tales themselves? One of their most striking strategies is to draw parallels between the character and actions of the stepmother, and other malevolent figures and creatures of folklore. One such example is the stepmothers’ tendency towards cannibalism, which draws direct links between her and the ogres of tales such as Blaubart (Bluebeard). In Sneewittchen, the stepmother demands that the huntsman bring back Sneewittchen’s lungs and liver: ‘Der Koch mußte sie in Salz kochen, und das boshafte Weib aß sie auf und meinte sie hätte Sneewittchen’s Leber und Lungen gegessen’ (‘The cook was ordered to boil them with salt, and the wicked woman ate them and believed she had eaten Snow White’s liver and lungs’). The jarring simplicity with which this horrific deed is told, combined with the Grimms’ judgement of her as a ‘boshafter Weib’ (‘wicked woman’) serve to underline the almost unnatural, evil nature of her act. In Hänsel und Grethel meanwhile, the witch in the gingerbread house - who I argue is strongly implied to be the stepmother, given her malevolent attitude towards the children, and the mysteriously convenient death of the stepmother at the end of the tale - cruelly plays on the starvation of the children in order to lure them into her house and eat them. Moreover, she forces Grethel to aid her in her attempts to eat Hänsel, and would have thus made her complicit in the crime if her attempts had succeeded.

There have been many different interpretations of the stepmothers’ urge to cannibalise her stepchildren: it could be argued that the stepmother in Sneewittchen believes that by consuming the girl’s body, she will somehow imbibe her beauty, while Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar defend that the act symbolises an attestation of power, pointing out that by ‘thinking she is devouring her ice-pure enemy, the Queen consumes instead the wild boar’s organs; that is, symbolically speaking, she devours her own beastly rage, and becomes (of course) even more enraged’. I would add that the act of cannibalism is specifically used in this context as it defies all the characteristics normally associated with a maternal figure: one who is nurturing, caring and protective. As Maria Tatar states, ‘cannibalistic female villains withhold food and threaten to turn children into their own source of nourishment, reincorporating them into the bodies that gave birth to them’.

Thus by going against their intended maternal natures, these women transform into something monstrous and ogre-like.

Another way in which the Brothers Grimm emphasise the evil nature of the stepmother is through her association with witchcraft. Witches, as evidenced by the large-scale witchhunts and trials which took place particularly throughout the Europe of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries, were considered to be figures of great terror and misfortune. In the fairy tales, it is the power which the witches wield what sets them apart as characters to be feared. In the majority

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of the editions of Rapunzel (those from 1837 onwards), the first mention of the stepmother cum witch describes her as ‘[eine]...Zauberin...die große Macht hat, und von aller Welt gefürchetet wurde’ (‘A witch with great power who was feared by all the world’). By immediately making the second clause follow the first, the Brothers Grimm imply causality. This is to say, the fear with which everyone reacts is a direct cause of her great power. This is also evident in the true parents’ reaction: the father is so frightened by the witch’s presence and her anger that he agrees to give up his own child to her immediately rather than risk her wrath. In Sneewittchen, meanwhile, the queen uses her witchcraft to kill Sneewittchen not only once, but three times, thereby highlighting her great power. Alfred David and Mary Elizabeth David also draw attention to the queen’s reaction to her supposedly successful murder as the glee with which she reacts is more pronounced in the Brothers’ last editions. So, while in the first ones, the reader is simply told, ‘sie freute sich’ (‘she was pleased’), in editions of 1837, her pleasure has become sadistic: ‘[sie]...lachte überlaut, und sprach »weiß wie Schnee, roth wie Blut, schwarz wie Ebenholz! diesmal können dich die Zwerge nicht wieder erwecken’ (‘she laughed aloud and said: “white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony! This time the dwarfs cannot wake you.”’). By taking pleasure in the evilness of acts brought about by dark magic, the queen reveals herself to be irredeemably wicked.

Furthermore, the way in which this power manifests is noteworthy. The evil stepmothers are not the only beings who have magical abilities in the fairy tales, the virtuous characters can have them too. In Aschenputtel, the eponymous character calls to the birds to help her sort the lentils as her stepmother has ordered, and when her stepmother abandons her at home, she goes to the tree next to her mother’s grave for aid and says: “Bäumchen, rüttel dich und schüttel dich/ wirf Gold und Silber über mich” (‘Little trees, rustle and shake, throw gold and silver over me’). Written in this rhymed form, Aschenputtel’s words becomes almost incantation-like, and the results are certainly magical - they cannot be explained in any rational or scientific way. The profound difference between this type of magic and that of the evil stepmothers is that Aschenputtel’s magic is linked firmly to nature - to the work of the birds and animals and plants. This positive representation of the power of nature is perhaps a reflection of Romantic ideology, and provides a strong contrast to the magic of the stepmothers, which is unexplained, unnatural and dark. Thus, it is not only their link to witchcraft which paints the stepmothers as evil beings, but the way in which they harness and use this power.

This article is continued a retrospectjournal.co.uk

Retrospect Journal.

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‘This world fareþ as a Fantasye’:

Folklore, Christian Belief, and the Imagination in Sir Amadace.

By Anna McKay ‘To inquire into what God has made is the main function of the imagination’ George MacDonald The late medieval literary imagination was inexhaustibly concerned with understanding man’s existence as God’s creation.

In the little known Middle English popular romance Sir Amadace, elements of folklore, religious ideology and hagiography are fused to explore and delineate man’s position within the divine cosmos. The tale focuses on male experience in combining otherworldly, and often brutal, aspects of folktale with the religious ideals of hagiography, offering a critical commentary on the homosocial ideologies dominant within medieval culture, and reflecting a subversive discordance between earthly society and spiritual reality.

In recent years, scholars have outlined key connections between Christian ideology and traditional folklore. Redefining popular religion and folklore as ‘unofficial beliefs’, Carl Watkins rightly argues that ‘we need to think of medieval religious culture as commingling of unofficial and official belief that varies over space and time – forming not a series of cultural compartments, but a spectrum.’ Stephen Knight explores this more specifically in relation to the medieval Celtic nations; reminding us that ‘the Celtic can also be fully Christian’, he includes Amadace in his exploration of ‘Celtic-Christian condensation’, or ‘the interrelationship of the Celtic and the Christian’.

Constructing a romance world in which spiritual reality is emphatically tangible, Amadace fuses folkloric patterns with Christian ideology to test and moderate the exercise of aristocratic power. The tale’s central motif of the Grateful Dead, E341 in Stith Thompson’s seminal Motif-Index, is instrumental in this fusion. Forced to leave his lands in great debt, Amadace, the traditional ‘Spendthrift Hero’ of folklore, generously sacrifices his last forty pounds to pay for the ‘Cristun beriinge’ of a merchant who died in circumstances similar to his own exile. This merchant returns as the White Knight, an agent of divine providence who offers Amadace hope, declaring, ‘Thowe schild noghte mowrne no suche wise, / For God may bothe mon falle and rise, / For his helpe is evyrmore nere.’ His words remind the knight, and reader, that God dictates the fortunes of men, offering aid to the ‘mon that geves him to gode thewis’. Amadace’s reward for his ‘gode thewis’ comes in the form of the shipwreck to which he is directed by the Knight, and from which he finds the knightly accoutrements which are necessary to win the hand of a rich princess in tournament. At the end of the tale the Knight explains, ‘I besought God schuld kevyr the of thi care, / That for me hade

made the so bare,’ emphasising his role as the grateful dead, and simultaneously connecting the motif ’s ruling logic to the workings of divine will. The romance’s folkloric drive is thus imbued with Christian didacticism to present a world governed by divine providence, in which good deeds are rewarded with good fortune.

This becomes clearer when the tale is juxtaposed with its emphatically sexual analogues. As often occurs in supernatural wish-fulfilment tales, the otherworldly offers aid at a moment of desperation; however, unlike other romances such as Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal, in which the poverty-stricken knight is offered feminine and magical succour, the White Knight provides homosocial and divine aid. As in Launfal, in which supernatural help arrives as the hero sits ‘In the schadwe under a tre, / Ther that hym lykede beste’, assistance arrives as Amadace wanders through the typically otherworldly setting of the forest. However, the White Knight appears only after they hero prays ‘Jesu as thou deut on tre, / Summe of thi sokur send thou me’, placing the occurrence within a strictly Christian context. A curious combination of seraph and fée, he materialises in the ‘milke quyte’ garb traditionally connected to both supernatural beings, with a steed of the same colour.

The white mount is conventionally associated with otherworldly figures, from Dame Tryamour’s ‘whyt comely palfrey’ to the ‘snowe-white stedes’ of the fairy company in Sir Orfeo; however, the whiteness of the fairies themselves in these Breton lays, particularly in Launfal, is erotically charged, associated with the beauty of women’s bare skin. Launfal is led by two ladies, ‘whyt as flour’ to Dame Tryamour, the daughter of the Fairy King, whom he finds ‘uncovert…as whyt as lylye yn May, / Or snow that sneweth yn wynterys day’. In comparison, the whiteness of Amadace’s helper is far from sexualised; more ‘angell’ than fée, he is resolutely male, bearing as he does the ‘conciens of a knyghte’, and provides only practical advice, rather than the sexual ‘play’ offered by Dame Tryamour. The Book of Tobit is generally accepted as an important influence in the composition of Amadace, and indeed parallels with the story of Tobias emphasise the narrator’s choice to masculinise and Christianise the otherworldly intruder. As described in The Golden Legend, Tobias instructs his son to seek the aid of ‘some true man’ in his search for Gabael. The youth unwittingly enlists the help of the archangel Raphael, ‘A fair young man… not knowing that it was the angel of God’, as Amadace accepts the divine support of the Knight. In this way, the narrative transforms the otherworldly, erotic allure of the fairy romance into a tale of Christian morality, predicated upon homosocial relationships.

In accordance with the fourteenth century religious lyric cited in the title of this article, the narrative suggests that ‘þis world is fals, fickle and frele, / And fareþ but as a fantasye’, juxtaposing this Christian, spiritual interpretation of existence with the secular, materialistic ideologies held by its mercantile antagonist. Amadace’s fall from wealth marks his denigration in a society which regards riches as signs of individual worth. The hero recognises society’s ruling that he has no right to rule without wealth, and observes the hypocrisy of such tenets, explaining: A m[o]n that litul gode hase, Men sittus ryghte noghte him bye; […]

Evyr quyll I suche housold hold,

Legend & Folklore For a grete lord was I tellut.

His reputation as a great lord was contingent solely upon his possession of wealth. Predicated upon the primacy of economic values, earthly society exiles those unable to engage in its mercenary commerce; insofar as Amadace has lost his riches and place in society, he must disappear. The religious implications of this worldly ideology are made evident through the second merchant who appears in the story. Refusing to permit the burial of the first on account of his unpaid debt, he draws a perceptible connection between material wealth and spiritual wellbeing. Declaring, ‘God gif him a sore grace, / And alle such waisters as he wasse’, he reveals his assumption that God defines ‘waisters’ in accordance with his own mercenary values.

Declaring that ‘hownndus schuld his bodi todraw, / Then on the fild his bonus tognaue’, he places importance in the power of material goods in enabling access to the heavenly afterlife.

The tale, however, undercuts this conception of human experience, suggesting that, in the words of the White Knight, worldly ‘gud his butte a lante lone’. It may seem paradoxical that Amadace’s Christian generosity is rewarded with ‘londus brode’ and ‘castels hee’; however, the hero invests no more value in riches at the end of the tale than he does at the start.

When asked to honour his agreement with the White Knight ‘evyn to part betwene us toe / The godus thou hase wonun and spedde’, Amadace is happy to hand over half of his ‘rich londus dele and dighte’. Only once it is clear that the Knight requires ‘Half thi child and half thi wyve,’ does Amadace object, begging, ‘For him that deet on rode. / Ye, take all th[at] evyr I have, / Wythe thi that ye hur life save.’ Love triumphs over riches, as the hero is, yet again, willing to sacrifice his worldly goods for the sake of another. Far from reducing morality to wealth, the poem ends with a final proof of the insubstantiality of material possessions.

This message gains potency through the dead merchant’s representation as a memento mori image. His corpse, ‘Stingcand opon his bere’, invades the romance environment, a visual reminder of the sinner’s potential future. Amadace’s recognition that ‘He myghte full wele be of my kynne’ alludes to their shared values in life, and more broadly highlights the body’s horrifying representation of the potential afterlife for any Christian within materialistic society. In the late Middle Ages the decaying body became a central image in memento mori ideology; for example, Chastellain wrote that, even before death, ‘There is not a limb nor a form, / Which does not smell of putrefaction.’ Rather than warning Amadace against excessive expenditure, the corpse acts as his double; symbolising the unhallowed human condition within a world governed by materialistic values, it provokes his generosity. With its Christian burial the physical sign of the body disappears, drawing a direct connection between the materialistic cruelty of the creditor and unsettling ‘stinke’ of the afterlife. The tale maintains its logic and gains didactic force when this ‘dede cors’ is replaced by ‘the fayrist knyghte’. As the fearsome afterlife faced by those who do not live in accordance with Christian charity is figured through the decaying body, the heavenly reward in store for those who uphold God’s tenets is made equally tangible, an image of hope.

This conception of the transience of earthly goods bears a potentially subversive significance in its exposition through the White Knight. Offering the individual a heavenly reward

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for acts which receive no recognition in the earthly sphere, the romance undermines and criticises the laws of society. Earthly prowess is replaced with earthly virtue in the dead merchant, who finds religious reward in his transformation into the White Knight after death. He embodies the concept that, in the divine cosmos, social status (specifically knighthood) is performative. Explaining her husband’s debt, the dead merchant’s wife derides his extreme generosity as beyond his mercantile status, decrying that: ‘He didde as a fole: / He cladde mo men ageynus a Yole / Thenne did a nobull knyghte’. According to her definition, his foolishness resided in his performance of kind acts that were retained as the prerogative of the knightly classes. His transformation into ‘the fayrist knyghte’ after death overturns her argument, confronting the medieval audience with a divinely arbitrated social hierarchy in which status is assigned according to moral action. The tale thus constructs a fantasy in which class distinctions are reconfigured in the afterlife, presenting the active qualities of virtue, generosity and kindness as true markers of aristocratic bearing. The narrative offers an inherently didactic message for the contemporary aristocratic male, using its fusion of Christian ideology and folklore to motivate compassion for the poor.

Meanwhile, the tale’s Divided Winnings motif (Thompson M241.1) illustrates the arbitrary nature of divine power. The White Knight twice declares, ‘For his luffe that deut on tre, / Loke yore covandus holden be’ in cruelly maintaining the terms of their deal; however he acts within the remit of his role as a divine agent in presenting Amadace with an essentially mercantile understanding that debts to God must be paid.

He ultimately stops Amadace’s sword in a scene undeniably reminiscent of Abraham and Isaac and, relying upon its audience’s literacy in biblical tradition, the tale ultimately illustrates that, while God has an infinite capacity for mercy, man must be prepared to sacrifice all in faith. Folkloric devices are thus central to the poem’s negotiation of earthly and spiritual values, ultimately reminding the aristocratic male that his good fortune is subject to divine will and that he must be prepared to pass such a test.

Fusing folklore, hagiography, and romance in exploring the spiritual and earthly elements of male experience, Amadace elucidates the ways in which the medieval imagination combined folk and Christian narratives with didactic intent. The tale’s spiritual allusions are central to its imaginative perception, as the romance aligns folkloric fantasy with Christian belief to ‘inquire into what God has made’ (MacDonald).

Bibliography and Works Cited Anon., ‘Sir Amadace’, in Six Middle English Romances (London, 1992), pp. 169-92.

Anon., ‘Sir Orfeo’, in Middle English Verse Romances (Exeter, 1986), pp. 185-200.

Anon., ‘This World fares as a Fantasy’, in Religious Lyrics of the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1924), pp. 160-3.

Chastellain, ‘Le Pas de la Mort’, cited in J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (London, 1924), p.132.

Chestre, Thomas, ‘Launfal’, in Middle English Verse Romances (Exeter, 1986), pp. 201-32.

De Voraigne, Jacobus, ‘The Golden Legend’, in Fordham University: Internet Medieval Sourcebook, 2000, www. legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/goldenlegend/ ; accessed 22 November 2015.

Knight, Stephen, ‘Celticity and Christianity in Medieval Romance’, in Christianity and Romance in Medieval England, eds. Rosalind Field, Philippa Hardman and Michelle Sweeney (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 26-44.

MacDonald, George, ‘The Imagination: Its Functions and Its Culture’, in The Heart of GeorgeMacDonald, ed. Rolland Hein (Vancouver, 1994), pp. 416-22.

Thompson, Stith, Motif-index of folk-literature: a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediæval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends (Bloomington, 1955-6).

Watkins, Carl, ‘‘Folklore’ and ‘Popular Religion’ in Britain during Middle Ages’, Folklore, 115 (2004), pp. 140-150.

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Retrospect Journal.

Trident, Cold War History, and the ‘Myth’ of Deterrence Dr. Malcolm M. Craig

In April 1969 – the same month that British troops arrived in Northern Ireland at the start of ‘The Troubles’ – the Royal Navy began Operation Relentless. Since then, not a day has passed without there being a British nuclear missile submarine on patrol somewhere in the North Atlantic or the Arctic Ocean. This is Continuous At-Sea Deterrence (CASD), the ability to strike back without warning – and with terrible force – should the UK or its strategic interests be attacked.

‘Deterrence’ is the cornerstone of debates about Britain’s nuclear future, a word used by politicians, military officers, think-tanks, and campaigners. According to the pro-replacement argument, i f we fail to replace our current V anguard -class submarines and their Trident nuclear missiles we will be exposed to attack from enemies known and unknown. In 2013 the then Secretary of State for Defence Philip Hammond stated that Trident was a ‘tried and tested deterrent’ and that there was no alternative which ‘provides the same level of protection’. A recently published Ministry of Defence fact sheet on the Trident Successor Programme noted that ‘the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent remains essential to our security’ and that it could ‘deter any aggressor’ . To discuss who our nuclear weapons might be used against, however, is to enter a Rumsfeldian world of known and unknown unknowns.

But what do we mean when we talk about deterrence?

And do those arguing for renewal or disarmament understand what the term involves or the ways in which history complicates and confuses the concept? As political scientist Nick Ritchie argues, talking about ‘the deterrent’ assigns an implicit, infallible ability to deter, an ability which stands counter to actual historical evidence. Though it is bad to speak in generalisations as an historian, the level of historical understanding when it comes to the nuclear debate is very poor. Thus, this article offers some historical context for current debates and demonstrates that an understanding of Britain’s nuclear history and the complicated, multifaceted ways in which nuclear weapons affected the Cold War can add to our contemporary discussions.

The touchstone for most debates on deterrence is some variant of the oft-quoted maxim that ‘nuclear weapons kept the peace for 45 years’. Is this strictly true? At the risk of sounding like a woolly- m inded fence-sitter: yes and no. Firstly, it is important to offer some form of definition of what deterrence is in a nuclear context. At its simplest, nuclear deterrence is intended to prevent an adversary taking action against you by retaining the capability to retaliate with devastating force. A s noted above, it is a common belief that the existence

of nuclear weapons and their deterrent effect stopped the USA and USSR engaging in major war during the decades of the Cold War. However, t he reality of the situation is more complicated.

In 1989, political scientist John Mueller proposed a controversial theory. Nuclear weapons, Mueller argues, were irrelevant to the superpower antagonism that characterised the Cold War. According to Mueller, the Cold War would have remained cold even if nuclear weapons had not existed. He argues that the vast devastation caused by major war between states in the twentieth century made any such future wars inconceivable. Thus, nuclear weapons merely sat atop a pre-existing trend towards the avoidance of major interstate conflict.

In the nearly three decades since he proposed it, Mueller’s hypothesis has b een the subject of almost constant debate and modification. While his argument for the almost total irrelevance of nuclear weapons is untenable, he does have a point about chronology. Nuclear weapons did collide with an evolving sense that industrialised total wars of the kind seen during 1914-18 and 1939-45 caused such destruction that even the most aggressive leaders would think twice about embarking on such a venture. T his complicates the notion that nuclear weapons alone kept the peace.

There are, however, instances where the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons did have a demonstrable influence on world affairs. The Cuban Missile Crisis (or the October Crisis as the Cubans called it) was a case where the threat of nuclear devastation caused the leaderships of the USA and the USSR to step back from the brink. The awesome destructive potential that had emerged in the era of the hydrogen bomb and the ballistic missile gave Kennedy and Khrushchev pause for thought. For proponents of deterrence, Cuba demonstrates that nuclear weapons can stop wars. The problem is that nuclear weapons were al so a component of starting that crisis, in both gross and subtle ways. More importantly, the crisis came very close to nuclear war through means other than the decisions made in the Kremlin and the White House. Accidentally stumbling into nuclear war was a very real danger.

There are many instances where nuclear weapons actually increased the risks of war. Although nowhere near as famous as the October Crisis, the events of late 1983 were arguably even more dangerous. November 1983 saw a NATO war-readiness exercise code named Able Archer ’83 take place.

This was part of a regular series of tests, but this one came at a time of heightened Cold War tension. The Soviet shoot-

Legend & Folklore ing down of Korean Airlines flight 007, the deployment of US Cruise and Pershing II nuclear missile to Western Europe, Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Evil Empire’ speeches, and the decrepitude of the Soviet leadership each contributed to a dangerous, febrile atmosphere.

What made things even more dangerous was the way in which information was being passed back to Moscow. Fearful of a pre-emptive nuclear strike by the West, the Soviets had instituted Operation RYaN (short for R aketno-Yadernoe Napadenie , or Nuclear Missile Attack), an intelligence gathering operation that sought out ‘indicators’ that NATO was readying for nuclear attack. Should there be a critical number of these ‘indicators’, then consideration would be given to launching a Soviet pre-emptive strike before NATO could get their missiles off the ground. Under pressure from their superiors to provide evidence of these ‘indicators’, KGB (state security) and GRU (military intelligence) frequently fed back incorrect or downright false information about supposed Western nuclear preparations.

How is this relevant to the deterrence debate generally, and the British Trident debate more specifically? In short, it demonstrates that rather than making the situation safer, the fear of nuclear weapons actually made things more dangerous by increasing the chance that a nuclear war might be started through misperception and misunderstanding. The anxiety created by the vast destructive potential of modern Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles dramatically increased the risks associated with those weapons.

Instances of deterrence either functioning or not functioning aside, it is also important to consider Britain’s own nuclear history and the myths and legends which have grown up around it. Again, popular perceptions place Britain’s 194647 decision to acquire an independent atomic capability within a Cold War context. Britain, so the thinking goes, went for the bomb in order to deter the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union. But as many historians have shown, this is simply not true.

The decision taken by a small cabal within Clement Attlee’s government to proceed with a British atomic bomb programme sat at the intersection of a range of complex influences. The emerging Cold War and the ‘Soviet threat’ were simply two threads in a bigger tapestry. For Attlee and his colleagues, regaining US atomic cooperation after it had been cut off in mid-1946 was a vital factor. More ephemeral was the idea of British power and influence in the world. Britain was already in decline as independence movements grew and flourished in the colonised world. Britain without an empire but with atomic capability would at least retain some power and influence in the world.

The UK tested its first atomic bomb off the coast of Western Australia in October 1952, but this was eclipsed shortly t herea fter by the American test of the first hydrogen bomb. On regaining the premiership in 1951, Winston Churchill decided to push ahead with a British H-bomb project.

It was, as he noted, the price that Britain paid for sitting at the ‘top table ’ of international affairs. The Grapple X text of 1957 saw the UK become a nuclear (and not just atomic) power. Following shortly on, the cherished goal of full nuclear cooperation with the United States was realised when Harold Macmillan and Dwight Eisenhower ratified the 1958 Mutual

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Defence Agreement (MDA), a treaty that is regularly updated and which remains the basis of US-UK nuclear friendship.

This returns us to the situation posed at the start of this article, with the first patrol by a British submarine – equipped with American Polaris missiles and British warheads – in April 1969. Since then, f rom t he imbroglio of the ‘Chevaline’ upgrade programme in the 1970s to the purchase of the current Trident system in the 1980s, B ritain’s strategic nuclear ‘deterrent’ capability has been vested in the Royal Navy and its lurking submarines. Has that deterrent deterred?

That is a contentious point. Nuclear missiles certainly did not deter the Argentinian invasion of the Falkland Islands.

CASD sits at the heart of the current Trident successor debate. A belief that nuclear weapons deter and that deterrence is a monolithic panacea for national security needs is central to pro-successor arguments made by individuals and groups at all points on the political compass. But, deterrence is not monolithic and the myth that it served to keep the Cold War from heating up is just that: a myth. As any student of history knows, things are always a lot more complicated than they seem and are not easily reduced to simple, easily expressed ideas.

The ritualization of ‘deterrence’ serves to ignore the many complexities of the nuclear age. If you support deterrence, so it goes that you should therefore be willing to use nuclear weapons. After all, effective deterrence relies on the other side believing that you will pull the trigger at some point, hence, the recent castigation of Jeremy Corbyn as a threat to ‘national security’ when he declared himself unwilling to order the use of such weapons. However, those criticising Corbyn and believing in deterrence must face an uncomfortable truth. The warheads that sit atop our leased missiles (we do not actually own the delivery systems) are strategic weapons.

By their very nature, strategic nuclear weapons are – despite advances in targeting technology – indiscriminate and practically guaranteed to kill and maim large numbers of civilians.

For example, a single warhead from one of our Trident missiles detonated over the University of Edinburgh would kill approximately 160,000 people and seriously injure at least that many again.

This article does not argue for or against a Trident successor. It is, however, vital that we equip ourselves with the information necessary to make genuinely informed decisions about such a serious matter. The world is full of complex security challenges not easily resolved by a Cold War-esque reliance on the fearsome spectre of nuclear weapons. In the end, to make complex decisions, we must understand our nuclear history, myths and legends included.

Bibliography Degroot, Gerard, The Bomb: A History of Hell on Earth (London, 2005).

Hennessy, Peter, The Secret State: Preparing for the Worst, 1945-2010 (London, 2010) Ministry of Defence, ‘Successor Submarine Programme: Factsheet’, <www.gov.uk/government/publications/successor-submarine-programme-factsh eet/successor-submarine-programme-factsheet> ; accessed 20 January 2016.

Mueller, John, Retreat from Doomsday: The Obsolescence of Major War (New York, 1989).

Ritchie, Nick, A Nuclear Weapons Free World?: Britain, Trident, and the Challenges Ahead (Basingstoke, 2012).

Schlosser, Eric, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Safety (London, 2013).

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Retrospect Journal.

‘At nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning, the 17 of September, neatly dressed in a white jerkin and green bonnet, with her hay-raik over her shoulder’, a girl called Mary Burnet went missing. It was, as noted by the narrator of her disappearance, ‘a memorable day in the fairy annals’. Mary Burnet it the creation of the Scottish Romantic writer, James Hogg (1770-1835), best known as an exponent of the dark fantastic in Confessions of a Justified Sinner; but she belongs to a long tradition of young women who vanish from woods and other green spaces, near wells or trees. Abducted by fairies, they inhabit a vast body of Scottish ballads, legends, and tales which survive from the medieval period in both Highland and Lowland cultures. Scottish balladry is famous for its examples of heroic deliverance from fairyland, as in ‘Tam Lin’ whose male abductee is saved by a redoubtable maiden called Janet.

Of course, fairy abduction is not an exclusively Scottish phenomenon —the traditional belief systems of almost all cultures contain spirit worlds who claim human abductees — but it takes especially tenacious root in traditional Scottish folk belief, and in the literature nourished by it. Accounts of fairy abduction are found in historical documents and transcriptions, especially in the first-person testimony of those cruelly tried for witchcraft in the early modern period. When imaginatively absorbed into literary materials, these become powerful stories about ‘the missing’ — those lost and presumed dead. And when the hinge between folklore and literature opens up like this, we encounter experiences of loss and love in powerful ways.

Traditional Scottish fairylore has always been hospitably dark. Far removed from modern culture’s notion of fairy enchantment, the ethereally winged delicacy and sweetness of some late Victorian fairy depictions, or the litanies of good and wicked fairies who exert their magic accordingly on the protagonists of fairy tales, it’s fairy world has always been proximate to that of the dead. The early modern custom of leaving offerings of milk and meal in places associated with fairy activity was intended to soothe relationships between the living and the dead. Those accused in witchcraft trials of trafficking with the fairies often reported seeing neighbours or friends who had recently died. In his treatise on fairy belief (c1689), Robert Kirk , minister of the parish of Aberfoyle, depicted the fairies as our ‘co-walkers’, unnervingly quiet, conjoined co-presences from a heterogeneous spirit-world.

From the medieval period onward, Scottish writers work with these dark enchantments. A late fifteenth-century Scots reimagining of the Orpheus and Eurydice legend by Robert Henryson darkens even further Chaucer’s famous portrayal in ‘The Merchant’s Tale’ of Pluto and Proserpina as the king and queen of fairy. In a re-enactment of the traditional fairy abduction motif, Henryson’s Eurydice is taken to a dark fairy underworld where, deprived of her beauty, she comes to resemble ‘ane elf ’. In late fifteenth and sixteenth-century Scots usage, this is synonymous with the term, ‘fairy’, but also strongly imbued with connotations of the corrupt, the devilish, and the ugly. Fairyland holds no reprieve for this Eurydice, unlike its Middle English precedent, Sir Orfeo.

Early modern Scots poetry is full of parodic dream visions which take grotesque pleasure in fairy conjurations, revelling in their demonic wonder and in an underworld associated with excess and anarchy. Scottish Romantic writers keenly seize on

Ghosts in Fairyland: Tales of the Missing in Scottish Fairylore and Literature

By Dr Sarah Dunnigan the idea that fairies are always already creatures of the Gothic.

In 1797 Walter Scott sent his version of Goethe’s ‘ErlKing’ to his aunt Christian Rutherford, suggesting it was ‘a goblin story‘ ‘[t]o be read by a candle particularly long in the snuff ’.

Though he later recanted his allegiance to the world of ‘German faery’, his version still manages to be a beautifully effective tale of child abduction where the voices of child, spirit, and father fluctuate between stanzas‘ “O Father! my Father! and saw you not plain / The ERL-KING’s pale daughter glide past thro’ the rain?”’ — until the last when the boy is cradled dead in his father’s arms. The poems and ballads of another, far less well-known Borders writer, John Leyden (1775-1811), revel in a Gothic paraphernalia of Germanic elves, marmoreal maidens, and an ‘ice-congeal’d’ goblin crew reanimated in order to steal mortal knights. This is a wintry, frost-bound world of semi-pagan, Druidical rituals where ‘fays’ and ghosts share the same space of the undead.

In the history of Scottish literature, perhaps fairyland’s most famous visitant is J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Barrie’s beloved creation, celebrated across global stages and screens, first took benign visual incarnation in Arthur Rackham’s famous illustrations to Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens ( 1906), appearing as a cherubically plump but aerial baby. Its fairy world chimes with earlier Scottish incarnations, and the folk belief that fairies steal children. The gardens where these beautiful and vengeful fairies live with Peter are also a graveyard, the potential burial ground for those lost children whom Peter has not successfully rescued. In Barrie’s play version, too, the relationship between death and the realm of fairy enchantment has further room to grow. When Peter blithely tells Wendy that the fairies ‘are nearly all dead now’, it sets in motion the play’s association between childhood belief and fairy survival (famously celebrated in the child audience’s resurrection of Tinkerbell via their clapping).

However, it also foregrounds the incomprehensibility of death (as a word, a concept) to the children in the texts ‘To die will be an awfully big adventure’, proclaims Peter; Curly

Legend & Folklore remarks, ‘I thought it was only flowers that die’ on Wendy’s apparent death. Above all, the Lost Boys are those children who have fallen out their prams, been stolen by fairies and (sometimes) rescued by Peter; but, in each instance, to their parents in the non-enchanted realm they are dead. Barrie’s ‘ghost children’ encode fears of child mortality. In the ‘old nursery’ of the play’s final scene, Mrs Darling sits waiting by the deliberately open window, a symbol of parental bereavement. This is a temporary state for her children do return, like revenants from Neverland. The Lost Boys too are ‘found’, or adopted – fairyland’s ghosts restored to life. Barrie created something new and unique in Peter Pan; it, too, like a revenant, keeps coming back in our cultural imagination. In an age when cinema’s ‘lost object of desire, origin, and vanishing point’, as Emma Wilson argues, has become ‘the missing child’, it is apt that Barrie’s work should be a source of explicit and implicit allusion for one of the most notable recent examples of cinematic Gothic, El Orfanato/ The Orphanage (2007), co-produced by Guillermo del Toro. Its heroine, Laura, returns to the now derelict orphanage of her childhood with her husband and adopted son, Simón, intending to restore it; but Simón vanishes and a series of hauntings begin. In the final tender, expiatory scene, Laura (herself now a ghost) is seen reading to Simón, framed by the window, with all the other ‘lost children’ who have come to listen to this grown-up ‘Wendy’, as they call her, because they recognise her from ‘the story’. Speaking about its ‘fairytale tones’, its director, Juan Antonio Bayona, confirmed its inspiration in Peter Pan, ‘especially the sadness of Wendy waiting every night by her window for her kids to come back. Laura is Wendy yearning for her Lost Boy to return’.

Elsewhere, too, Barrie explored the shared imaginative terrain between fairy tales and ghost stories. In a far less wellknown ‘fairy play’, Mary Rose, its titular heroine is stolen by the fairies as an adolescent girl and returns as a spirit returns to haunt the living — her parents, her husband, and especially her son, Harry, newly returned from the war to his childhood house. The play ends with an exorcism: Harry’s new understanding ‘releases’ her back to fairyland. In Mary Rose, traditional Scottish fairylore seems to be melded with the cultural influence of the spiritualist movement which, as Jennifer Bann has suggested, fostered the empathically imaginative potential of the late nineteenth-century ghost story. Arthur Conan Doyle, Barrie’s friend (and famously fascinated by the fairy occult), observed how spiritualism seemingly allowed the bereaved to be reunited with their loved ones in all their physical and emotional particularities. In Barrie’s hands, the fairy tale and ghost story become interchangeable by bringing the dead into healing communication with those whom they have left.

Fairy stories mean many things; but when their folkloric seedbed is the belief in abduction, they carry the power to unpick the emotional and psychological consequences of inexplicable loss. This can be seen in Hogg’s ‘Mary Burnet’, with which this piece began. First published in Blackwood’s Magazine in February 1828. The story of ‘the youngest and sole daughter’ of an ‘old shepherd’s family’, its narrator exclaims, ‘What a beautiful moral may be extracted from this fairy tale!’

Mary Burnet, betrayed by her suitor, John Allanson, in a mésalliance with a fairy woman, has thrown herself into a loch. Later discovered in bed that night, by her parents and Allanson,

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with her clothes ‘dry, neat and clean’, Mary is suspected to be a changeling. She vanishes once more only to return amongst seven beautiful women, all delicate, ‘clothed in green and as lovely as a new blown rose’, who come to haunt Allanson. The tale’s narrator is flummoxed by its ‘turnings and windings’, confessing that ‘ if [Mary] was not a changeling, or the Queen of the Fairies herself, I can make nothing of her’. Yet perhaps neither Allanson nor Mary are the tale’s chief protagonists, though they are the centre of its unnatural happenings. The day that ‘Bonny Mary Burnet was lost’ records the actions of her grieving parents: ‘Her father and mother knew not what to say or what to think, but they wandered through this weary world like people wandering in a dream’: ‘Everything that belonged to Mary Burnet was kept by her parents as the most sacred relics, and many a tear did her aged mother shed over them. Every article of her dress brought the once comely wearer to mind. The handsome shoes that her feet had shaped, and even the very head of her hay-raik, with an M and B cut upon it, were laid carefully by in the little chest that had once been hers, and served as dear memorials of one that was now no more. [...]

Many a weary day did he [her father] walk by the shores of the loch, looking eagerly for some vestige of her garments [...] He had a number of small bones collected, that had belonged to lambs and other minor animals, and, haply, some of them to fishes, from a fond supposition that they might once have formed joints of her toes or fingers ...’

In a narrative devoted to unnatural and inexplicable events, this gruesome reliquary is wholly realistic and understandable as a testimony of grief. In the end, Hogg makes his ‘ancient fairy tale’ work a redemptive and healing magic. Seven years to the day that Mary vanishes, her father, Andrew, meets a little old creature by the loch. ‘He bade Andrew a good evening, and asked him what he was looking for. Andrew answered, that he was looking for that which he would never find’. Just as the ballad of Tam Lin grants its heroine a once-only opportunity to rescue her beloved from fairyland, so the tale allows Mary’s parents one last irrecoverable chance to ‘embrace[their]beloved daughter’. Dressed as if time had stopped her father in his ‘Sabbath-day claes [clothes]’ and her mother in her ‘bridal gown’ they are reunited with Mary, ‘so splendid a creature’ and happy, who now has two sons. Like a fairy godmother, Mary bestows wealth and gifts and, in a tender reversal of parent-child roles, ‘watched over them till midnight, when they both fell into a deep and happy sleep’. On the hinge of tradition, folklore, and myth, ‘Mary Burnet’ ends as a spiritualised fairytale. A daughter is resurrected, and parents reassured that she lives on in an afterlife which resembles the fairy world but which, in the double secular-spiritual coinage of Hogg’s story, also stands for the heavenly place of reunion which awaits them too. It makes the most fundamental of wishes come true, as all these stories do, the longing to restore the dead to life, and the hope that the missing can always be found.

Bibliography Barrie, J. M., Peter Pan and Other Plays, (Oxford, 2008).

Barrie, J. M., Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens and Peter and Wendy, (Oxford, 2008).

Bayona, J. A., The Orphanage (California, 2007) Henryson, Robert and Barron, W. R. J. (eds.), Selected Poems, (Manchester, 1991).

Hogg, James, The Shepherd’s Calendar Vol. 1, (Edinburgh, 1829).

Kirk, Robert and Land (eds.), The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies, (Mineola, 2008).

Leyden, John, The Poetical Works of Dr John Leyden (London, 1875).

Scott, Walter, The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott (London, 1858).

Wilson, Emma, Cinema’s Missing Children (London, 2003).

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Retrospect Journal.

The Improvers and Romantics:

Creating Highland Legacy

By Georgia Vullinghs Often the act of preserving what is thought to be an ancient legacy contributes to the creation of a new one. The history of Scotland has been plagued with such cycles. Through studying the seemingly anomalous relationship between the preservation of the culture of Gaelic music and poetry and, the further development of Highland society and economy through Anglicisation, we can gain an understanding of the production of Scotland’s romanticised Highland culture. While the re-emergence of Celtic culture was promoted by the romanticisation of the Highlands in the late-eighteenth century, the everyday use of Gaelic language was in decline. Music and song collections produced at this time sum up the romanticisation of the Highlands, reflecting the lament felt for the passing of ‘traditional’ culture. However, it could be argued that, despite revealing regret at the decline of the seemingly ideal Highland society, song collecting did little more than preserve a corrupted memory of this age in Britain’s past. Romanticism ultimately failed to truly become a cause to preserve Highland society, character and the idyllic life thought to be found there.

The Highland Society of Scotland was formed in 1784 by a collection of gentlemen and women from, or connected to, the Highlands. Committed to the improvement of the region through economic and social change, the Society was active in researching the conditions of the Highlands and producing essays for landlords and farmers on how to make improvements. Alongside these aims, however, the Society agreed to promote and preserve some cultural aspects of the Highlands amidst other changes, committing to ‘pay proper attention to the preservation of the Language, Poetry and Music of the Highlands.’ This seems anomalous with other aims of the Society; the improvement of Highland Scotland largely – though not universally – required a progression away from an older way of life. Enlightenment theory, concerned with the progress of mankind ‘from rudeness to refinement’, linked Gaelic culture with a backwards society. Part of the improvement’s ‘civilising mission’ was to bring English language into the Highlands as the main language of commerce and education.

During this period, the term Anglicisation could be interpreted interchangeably with ‘civilisation’, highlighting how important English was for the development of the region and its integration into the wider British nation. The Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SSPCK)

was a body which worked towards this aim. They enforced the use of English in their charity schools as the best means of civilising Highlanders. This was not simply improvement imposed from outside, however; Durkacz argues that Highlanders themselves were beginning to see Gaelic as a constraint to upward mobility, agreeing that English was the language of commerce and development. Those involved in migratory labour to the Lowlands in particular noted the stigma attached to the Gaelic language as backward, and linked English with economic mobility. Gaelic was reserved for the home and religion, ‘the language of the hearth’. In doing so, Highlanders maintained their language to an extent, however, its political or economic significance was relegated to one of sentiment and nostalgia. Gaelic was the language of childhood and the heart, but English was the language of change and economic fortune.

However, the method of total Anglicisation came under criticism as others felt that it was not a thorough means of education. The Edinburgh Gaelic School Society encouraged the use of Gaelic in conjunction with English in order to allow pupils to fully understand the meaning of the language, rather than merely to learn the words. There were also those who aimed for the improvement of Gaelic as a language in its own right. While Samuel Johnson did not hold much regard for Gaelic culture, he was an advocate of Gaelic as a language to be standardised and documented. Rather than condemning the language completely, Johnson’s problem with Gaelic was that it had lost its purity; among others, he urged that speakers should be taught its proper use. Captain Donald Smith also wrote an essay for the Highland Society of Scotland on the ‘corruptions’ which had lately been introduced into Gaelic pronunciation, and the methods by which they could be fixed, ‘restoring the Purity of the language’. In some schools, prizes were awarded to pupils for knowledge of ancient texts and for writing poetry in the Gaelic language; however, this was limited to grammar schools and largely to the study of literature, as with Latin or Greek. Therefore, it could be argued that learning Gaelic was acceptable as it belonged to the realm of the already civilised and educated. It is arguably in this context that we should read the Highland Society’s proposal to preserve the language of the Highlands.

Improvers clearly made a distinction between the use of Gaelic in everyday life and its use for culture and art; while it was discouraged in the economic and political sphere, Gaelic as a cultural tool was maintained by both Improvers and Romantics. Gaelic was thus allowed to become part of a romanticised memory of the past without significant tensions with English for dominance as the language of power. The new-found respectability of the Gaelic language in the cultural realm allowed Gaelic poetry and song to become popular among the fashionable. Being relegated as an outdated, sentimental language, it became ideal for use in art; Johnson was able to listen to Gaelic songs ‘as an English audience to an Italian opera, delighted with the sound of the words which [he] did not understand’. Scottish song collections reveal the topics which were most appealing to late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century bourgeois audiences. The themes included in collections both stemmed from and fuelled romantic ideas about Highland society and are therefore a good example to use to summarise the romanticism of Highland Scotland.

Legend & Folklore They reveal a fashion for a portrayal of Highland life which emphasised melancholy but also contentment and love, as well as an understanding that it was a society under threat from change. It is important to acknowledge the selective nature of these collections, which likely reveal what the collectors and audience wanted to believe about the past, rather than reality.

In this way, we come towards an understanding of the creation of new legacies alongside the attempt to preserve old ones.

Collectors produced their libraries with a stereotypically primitive society in mind. Authenticity was a major concern; collectors wanted to know that songs came from the peasant mouth, rather than being elite inventions. Tunes were stripped down to the simple accompaniments perceived as their original forms, reflecting the idea that the Highlands was a simple society, uncorrupted by frivolous material possessions. The simplicity of these tunes was meant to represent both their humble origin and purity of character. Metaphors which connected the origin of these songs to nature continued the theme of the Highlands as a society closely linked with nature, under threat from modern development. Walter Scott believed that the threat posed by changes in farming methods to the natural setting from which these songs came meant that the old tradition was also at risk, while Norman Nicolson’s song ‘It’s unlikely I will ever climb again’ laments a lost life after changed laws on poaching and the end of ‘traditional’ relationships with landlords. Songs set in exile or post-clearance were particularly popular. Intertwined with sentimental love songs, these airs expressed longing for the homeland or the Scotland of the past, and resentment towards landlords. Music was also seen as a way in which poor Highlanders could alleviate the hardships of their lives; waulking songs sung by women hard at work and traditions like the taigh céilidh made a hard life tolerable. Overall, Romantics used these songs to reinforce their understanding of an idyllic Highland society which was in decline. Nostalgia was central to creating this image. Backward looking, it was only in this way that songs and poetry which lamented the past with sorrow rather than anger could become romantic, removing any political threat.

It can be argued that romantic enjoyment of Highland music and poetry failed to become a cause to actually preserve this society, and to some extent, could only exist in conjunction with its decline. Womack states that the ‘moral regrets of romanticisers never amounted to effective political ideology to challenge Improvers’ frame of reference’. Perhaps the very thing which drew Romantics in, the melancholy and lament found in songs, was only possible at the expense of ‘traditional’ Highland society. Waning Highland culture was met with nostalgic regret rather than rebellion, as was the case in the Irish nationalist movement. Events such as the Clearances were themselves romanticised in this way, rather than protested against; sentimental longing for home is emphasised in these songs, as well as the creation of a new life, rather than anger at the circumstances. Donnchadh Bàn’s poem ‘Farewell to the mountains’ tells the story of a man returning to the place of his childhood only to find that it has changed because of Clearances. The themes of nostalgia and melancholy, which created emotive music and song, relied on sad events to be conveyed; Romantics enjoyed the stories that these songs told but did not campaign against the root problems which precipitated them.

14

To an extent, Romantics saw Highlanders as an inherently melancholy people, doomed to be faced with difficulties, which they would bear but would also always be burdened with. It could be argued that music collecting and appreciation for Gaelic culture did little more than to encourage this as a by-product of the concept of Scotland as an improving nation within Britain. After all, Pennant felt the need to record the Highland customs and superstitions he encountered on his travels, not to preserve their use in society, but to save their memory and to ‘teach the enlightened in the future’ of the old ‘wild’ superstitions to avoid. MacInnes further argues that bagpipe and poetry competitions were about creating a Scottish identity within Britain, rather than of its own. As a result of romanticism, Gaelic language was protected for posterity through the cultural domain (rather than in the political or economic). Yet, this was done in a way by which the culture and society it came from was enjoyed in certain circumstances and temporarily, much like the way in which the social elite enjoyed ‘simple Highland life’ during their summer retreats.

Overall, Gaelic language and music became something used by both Improvers and Romantics in the cultural domain, giving evidence for the close relationship between the two ideas.

While Improvers aimed to Anglicise and civilise, demoting Gaelic from the political and economic spheres, its maintenance as a language of art and of high culture did help to preserve the language and made it acceptable in certain contexts.

Romantics fully embraced Highland music, language and poetry. However, romanticism also reinforced the idea of Gaelic as a language of culture rather than everyday communication, aiding Anglicisation. The music collections produced in this period are heavily influenced by these attitudes, and in turn themselves influenced the prevailing image of the Scottish Highlands. In aiming to preserve the cultural legacy of the Highlands of Scotland, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romantics and Improvers also contributed to the creation of a new legacy for Scotland. This was one which sustained notions of the Highlands as the home of a melancholy, yet contented, noble race and ancient society in the face of profound social changes, a legacy which still influences perceptions of Scotland today.

Bibliography Primary: Highland Society of Scotland, Prize essays and transactions of the Highland Society of Scotland.

To which is prefixed, an account of the institution and principal proceedings ... Vol 1-6, (Edinburgh, 1799).

Johnson, S., To the Hebrides : Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, ed., R. Black, (Edinburgh, 2007).

Music : NLS Glen Collection of printed music; Scottish Minstrel, 1814; New musical vocal cabinet, 1820; Caledonian musical repository, 1811; Pocket Songster, or, Caledonian Warbler, 1823.

Pennant, T., A tour in Scotland : MDCCLXIX, (London, 1772 : printed for B. White).

Secondary: Durkacz, V. E., The Decline of the Celtic Languages: A Study of Linguistic and Cultural Conflict in Scotland, Wales and Ireland from the Reformation to the Twentieth Century, (Edinburgh, 1996).

Gillies, A.L., Songs of Gaelic Scotland, (Edinburgh, 2005).

Kidd, C., ‘Gaelic Antiquity and National Identity in Enlightenment Ireland and Scotland’, in English Historical Review, Vol. 109, Issue 434 (1994).

MacInnes, A., Clanship, commerce and the House of Stuart, 1603-1788, (East Linton, 1996).

McAulay, K., Our ancient national airs: Scottish song collecting from the Enlightenment to the Romantic era , (Ashgate, 2013).

McKean, T., ‘Celtic Music and the Growth of the Féis Movement in the Scottish Highlands’, in Western Folklore vol. 57, no.4, Locating Celtic Music (and Song), (1998).

Shields, J., ‘Highland Emigration and the Transformation of Nostalgia in Romantic Poetry’, in European Romantic Review, Vol. 23 Issue 6, (2012).

Strabone, J., ‘Samuel Johnson: Standardizer of English, Preserver of Gaelic’, ELH, no. 1, (2009).

Withers, C. J., Gaelic Scotland: The Transformation of a Culture Region, (London, 1988).

Womack, P., Improvement and Romance: Constructing the Myth of the Highlands, (Basingstoke, 1988).

Features.

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Retrospect Journal.

Bosnia: Myth and the Modern State

By Enzo DeGregorio

Walking along the pavement of a wide, empty Sarajevo street on a hot September afternoon, my friend and I turned away from an interesting work of graffiti resembling Picasso’s Guernica to listen to what his father was saying. Indicating a patch of the concrete below, he said: ‘Pave this thing over.

Move on’. That particular patch of pavement bore the imprint of a shell fired at the city during the Bosnian War of 19921995; the site of impact was filled with a red-resin. This is known as a “Sarajevo Rose”, it is one of many hundred such markers throughout the city.

Travelling to Bosnia-Herzegovina last year, decades since the collapse of Yugoslavia, and the subsequent ethnic conflict that followed, I was often left with the impression that the 1990s war had reached almost legendary status in both Bosnia-Herzegovina’s history and its tourist industry As my friend and I were taxied around Sarajevo on the ‘Times of Misfortune Tour’ by Nermin, a veteran of the conflict, it seemed that no part of the city had been left untouched by the horrors of war.

Large Muslim and Christian gravesites, pushed up against each other on the hills surrounding the valley in which the city centre was found. Bijela Tabija, a white fortress believed to date back to the middle ages, stood stalwartly looking out into the countryside, greying and crumbling since its bombardment during the siege of Sarajevo. The Tunnel Museum, a converted two-floor house that stood next to what had been the United Nations Safe Zone, displayed a portion of the eponymous tunnel that supplied Sarajevo with medicine, electricity, and water during a several year siege.

The city centre, juxtaposed by its fluorescent, looming shopping malls and prison-like diplomatic compounds, was similarly focused on the war in many regards. I noticed buildings still peppered with bullet holes, whether out of penury or as a badge of pride, it was unclear; whilst market stalls sold empty ammunition cartridges converted into various odds and trinkets. At the core of this manifested grief was Bosnia-Herzegovina’s personal nadir: three adjoining rooms on the second floor of an indiscriminate building, their only adornment the faces of those perished, and a repeating documentary

that tries to tell the viewer what went wrong. This was the Srebrenica museum, which marks the genocide of over 8000 Muslim Bosniaks (a Balkan ethnicity), the first genocide to take place in Europe since the Second World War. With so many ‘Tales of Misfortune’ to tell, Bosnia-Herzegovina’s war seemed ubiquitous, and, most disturbingly, unfinished. Indeed, with the predominantly Serbian region of Republica Srpska to potentially hold a referendum for its independence from Bosnia-Herzegovina in the next few years, the legend of war may be reinforced further yet. But this was not my lasting impression of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s history. Bosnia-Herzegovina stands among a very small group of Eastern European nations in mixed Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian, Monarchical, and Communist history, and in its majority Muslim population: these are the legacies that persevered in my mind after leaving.

Nearer to the river Miljacka, away from the commercialised hub of Sarajevo, my friend and I seemed to traverse continents in minutes. One moment, hugging the Miljacka, we seemed to be in Vienna on a bright summer’s day, greeted by brightly-coloured town houses and civic buildings asserting themselves with Greco-Roman pillared façades. Prime among these was Vijećnica, now a museum to Bosnia’s history from the Ottoman period to the present. It was this former city hall that Archduke Franz Ferdinand left only to be shot by Gavrilo Princip on a nearby street. Mere minutes’ walk from there, we then seemed to be in Istanbul, the lightly coloured cobblestone of the Ottoman quarter providing the canvas on which lower, red-tiled buildings were painted. This is the domain of religion. A mosque and accompanying Ottoman madrasa are nearby, the latter now a museum that looks at the Ottoman and Muslim history of Sarajevo. This is not to mention the Eastern Orthodox churches in Sarajevo, the distant riverside town of Mostar with its strong Mediterranean influences, and Bosnia-Herzegovina’s national park Sutjeska, where the ghostly monuments of Communist engineering are still on display. In the end, I left Bosnia-Herzegovina with a strong impression of the history outside of the War: it only needs to be let in.

Legend & Folklore

16

The Narnia Effect: A Legendary Trip to the Highlands

By Francesca Street and Helena McNish Edinburgh is a place of beauty - we all know it - and it is not hard to feel pretty lucky to study here. However, as four fourth years chained to our desks at the University Library, it is also not hard to feel like you want to escape from time to time.

So it came to pass on one fine February day that we decided that the confines of the city bypass could constrain us no more and we simply needed to get out. Armed with a brave Norwegian friend (‘I have a winter driving certificate’, he assured us knowledgeably), Google Maps, a very small car that Scottish renters Arnold Clark assured us should probably not leave the motorway, and a heady appreciation for the Starz television show Outlander (and its dreamy leading man, Highlander Jamie Fraser), we headed North to explore what the rest of this country we fondly call home has to offer.

The car journey covered all seasons: from the classic Edinburgh rain in the morning, a veritable north-of-the-wall snowstorm between the Forth Bridge and Perth, to, when we reached the furthest point of our journey six miles west of Braemar village, sparkling snow and sun more reminiscent of a trip through an ageing wardrobe to Narnia.

Our first stop: Scone Palace, Perthshire: the legendary crowning site of Scottish Kings, from Macbeth to Robert the Bruce, the home of the famed Stone of Destiny and, Francesca was somewhat saddened to discover, completely unrelated to the British teatime treat. Only an hour or so from Edinburgh and already we were struck by how the landscape had changed: huge, towering and dramatic trees frame the neo-gothic castle, ones that you would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere in the UK. In the off-season, the interior of the castle is closed to visitors, but the stunning grounds remain open for walks, picnics and exploring. Heeding rumours of a famous maze, we headed off into the woods to find it, marvelling at the forest as we went. Perthshire is not called big tree country for nothing: around 90,000 hectares of its land are covered in trees.

Scone’s Palace grounds’ biggest tree is the famed Douglas Fir named after David Douglas, an eighteenth-century Scone gardener turned explorer, who brought the fir seed from America back to Scone. Now, it stands majestic even amongst the other striking shrubbery. After several (ill-fated) attempts to climb the Fir, we got lost in the maze for half an hour before we were back on the road, singing along to Tarzan and photographing the landscape out of the back window.

Our second stop: The Queen’s View. Whilst not all of our council of four were completely on board with this detour - 15 minutes out of our way down a windy road in our very small city car - it was a truly breathtaking stop. The recent snowfall only heightened the beauty of this panorama. The Queen’s View takes its name from two famous Queens who have frequented the viewpoint, Queen Victoria in 1866 and Isabella, the fourteenth-century wife of Robert the Bruce. The panorama boasts a long view west all the way up Loch Tummel, banked by highland hills covered in snow and lit with beautiful blue skies. We climbed up and down the banks, took photos, ran through the snow like children, and posed proudly with a Scottish flag borrowed from some neighbouring tourists who (oddly) were unable to tell us where exactly they had got it.

Perhaps this is one of the legends of this place: a flag will always appear to those who most need it for their Instagram profile. Either way, whilst sitting in the sun together, looking west towards the mountains of Glencoe, it was hard not to forget all and any library based troubles and just focus on the moment. Queen’s View had a tranquil allure.

From Perthshire we headed north, not quite ‘over the seas to Skye’, as the Outlander theme song sings (next time), but off towards the Cairngorm National Park. This is the largest national park in the British Isles, complete with the eponymous mountain range, gorgeous lochs, wildlife worthy of inclusion in this year’s BBC Winterwatch and some of Scotland’s most stunning scenery. As soon as we approached the park, the roads narrowed and the views widened. The combination of the sun, periwinkle blue sky and powdery, gleaming snow was staggering. We seemed to be in another country, another world. There is a mystical air to scenery such as this; as we drove for over an hour through the hills and gorges, Helena’s iPhone played the appropriately dreamy orchestral Outlander score. Eventually, we could take it no longer: we had to get out the car and feel the mystique of the mountains in person.

Leaping out the door, we danced around the empty Highlands road, laughing; it was a truly magical moment.

Onto our third (and final stop): Braemar village, very much at the heart of the Cairngorms as well as a busy stop on the tourist route extending East past Balmoral Castle to Aberdeen. This was a well-received discovery, boding well for our plans to stop there for chips and coffee. Nonetheless, for now our adventure had to continue, and after a brief and informative stop at the Visit Scotland information centre and a quick walk through the snow around the Winter Wonderland village, we headed off west down one of the snowiest roads yet on the hunt for a reportedly ‘spectacular’ waterfall.

Of course this was no trouble for our army-trained driver, and we spent a glorious 20 minutes driving along the River Dee in the afternoon sunshine to stop at Linn O’Dee, where the river narrows into a swift flow and drops five feet through a rocky gorge to continue on below. You can get up close and personal with these waters if you climb - carefully - down the banks and under the bridge, as well as stroll up to calmer tides to see the river bend away over the horizon. Here is where the ‘Narnia’ effect really came to light, sunshine sparkling through the thin trees that showered snow on us from time to time and giving us a real sense of freedom that we hadn’t realised we had missed until then.

The journey home became slightly more perilous as dusk fell, but that is when the deer came out and we hopped out of the car in sub-zero temperatures to admire the stars and the way the light was fading behind the mountains. Our cameras couldn’t capture the stags or the stars, but they were great, and they had certainly captured every other moment of our trip. And, as we reminisced over the following weeks - ‘That was just so fantastic’, ‘I feel so refreshed!’, ‘Does anyone know where that flag came from?’ - the trip itself provided us with happy memories that have, so far, been more than enough to lift the doldrums of library life.

17

Retrospect Journal.

Breaking Down the Myth of ‘Jefferson’s University’

By Sarah Thomson

‘This institution [the University of Virginia] will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind.’

Thomas Jefferson, 1826.

The University of Virginia (UVA) prides itself on being founded by Thomas Jefferson. As an exchange student at UVA, I am continually struck by just how invested the University is this tie with its ‘founding father’. There are statues of Jefferson scattered across the campus. The ‘Rotunda’, the famous centrepiece of the University, can be found on virtually every promotional item in the university shop (including UVA-branded pasta shapes. Yes, really). Even on his tombstone Jefferson requested to be described as the ‘father of the University of Virginia’.

Two major aspects of the modern-day University are attributed to Jefferson: the system of ‘student self-governance’, and the stunning ‘Jeffersonian’ architecture. However, much like Christopher Columbus in America’s original ‘founding myth’, the role of Jefferson in the early years of UVA is based more in legend than fact. For example, a lesser-known fact about UVA is that on the 8 April 1850, two students consumed copious amounts of alcohol and attempted to ride their horses into Jefferson’s Rotunda. So much for student self-governance and respect for the Jeffersonian architecture…

This incident, along with countless others, has been uncovered in the University’s archive as part of a new research project, ‘Jefferson’s University: the Early Life’ (JUEL). Since arriving at UVA, I have become part of this team of undergraduates, PhD students and academics working on JUEL. We primarily use old documents from the University archive to figure out what life was like during the first 50 years of UVA’s history. This is a multidisciplinary project, involving staff and students from across the University, including history, archaeology, architecture, computer science and art history.

The first part of the project is an ambitious digital reconstruction of the University. When people think of UVA they think of the original dormitories and classrooms designed by Jefferson, which still form the heart of the modern Universi-

ty. But what about the storage rooms, kitchens, hotels, chicken coops, and all of the other buildings necessary to bring a nineteenth-century university to life? UVA’s future architects, archaeologists and computer scientists are working together to build a digital recreation of the University, as it would have looked during its first fifty years. The finished model will be interactive, a learning tool for visitors to the University for years to come. Much of the original University architecture has been modified over the years, but this new model will offer a more realistic picture of how Jefferson originally intended his University to look.

JUEL are currently transcribing thousands of pages of musty nineteenth-century manuscripts to try and find stories that will bring the early University to life. So far our findings have thrown up a variety of anomalies including a travelling circus elephant, riots on the lawns, and many, many parties!

UVA is proud of its tradition of student self-governance; undergraduates are at the heart of disciplinary procedures in the University. However, the students who arrived in 1826 were not all hard-working, well-behaved young gentlemen any more than any modern class of undergraduates are. Charles Ellis was a student at UVA in the 1830s, and his diary has been shedding some light on what student life was really like at ‘Jefferson’s University’. There is something reassuring about reading the diaries of students who walked the lawns of this university centuries ago, discovering they shared the same anxieties as any modern day undergraduate. Ellis stressed out over tests, skipped classes, complained about dining hall food and procrastinated by writing it all down in his diary.

The most recent passage of his diary I transcribed featured a lengthy passage in which he was sulked about a girl not turning up to a party he had organised!

Finally, a less frequently acknowledged fact is that UVA, like virtually every university in the southern states founded before the Civil War, was built and run at least partially by enslaved workers. All too often the histories of these establishments overlook these individuals, focusing instead on the lives of the academics and students who worked and studied at these institutions. JUEL’s work forms one part of the University’s current effort to resolve the ‘whitewashing’ of its history. The first ‘serious’ academic endeavour to come out of JUEL’s research will be a book on the experiences of enslaved workers at UVA, the manuscript for which is currently being prepared. Of course, this small effort to shed light on the otherwise whitewashed history of an institution is only a tiny step towards improving our understanding of antebellum US history. However, it is undoubtedly a step in the right direction.

The University of Virginia is a historic university, but it does not need to cling to its association with Jefferson to assert this fact. The ‘real’ history of UVA is far too rich, and far too complex, to be boiled down to one man and one feat of architecture. I hope that JUEL’s continued work, and similar projects across the US, can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of life in antebellum America.

Legend & Folklore

18

The Mystery Author of Beowulf

By Isobel McConville

ITV’s sumptuous new production of Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands reveals the continuing obsession with this classic legendary tale of monsters and magic. Opening on a grey and misty Scandinavian shore, the young Beowulf is introduced to the Thane of Heorot, a man of power in the Anglo-Saxon age, who tells him that ‘people will remember your name’. And indeed, centuries later, we still remember this ancient hero. So what is it about this tale that makes it so enduring? In a defining piece on the poem, ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics’, J. R. R. Tolkien called it a perfect study of the ‘mood and thought’ of the period, one that is as useful to the historian as it is to the literature student. Beowulf continues to inspire and fascinate because of what it can teach us about ourselves, about the development of the English language, of our religion and our history. Beowulf is set at a moment of transition, from the mythical Anglo-Saxon past to the Christianised Britain of today. The poem takes place in the lord’s halls and fantastic hills of heroic Scandinavia, and yet the anonymous English author infuses the poem with Christian imagery which forces us to recognise the triumphs of Beowulf as a nostalgic expression of a culture that belongs to the past.

The Beowulf poem was composed in England sometime between the seventh and eleventh centuries, situating it within the long history of the development of Christianity on the island. Unlike the unified nation we know today, the England of the Anglo-Saxon era was a landscape divided into multiple kingdoms, so while Christianity had become the dominant religion by the late seventh century, the process was far from straightforward. Missionaries from Rome had converted several kingdoms, but the Roman tradition was competing with the Ionan Christianity, coming from Celtic Ireland. Religion in England was far from homogeneous, and this allowed for differing interpretations of the faith, and the incorporation of elements of the old pagan traditions, a fluidity of religion which Beowulf so well illustrates.

The Beowulf tale itself centres on a heroic protagonist who battles a triad of monsters, only to be overcome by a wound sustained by his final defeated foe, the dragon. Some scholars have interpreted this dragon not as a mythological villain, but as a personification of the materialism and greed of the Germanic pagans, and cast Beowulf as an allegorical Christ like figure, his defeat of the monsters of the pagan past symbolic of the ascendance of Christianity, ending with his ultimate sacrifice for his people. And yet, Beowulf ’s final act centres on this materialistic glory, as he promises to ‘pursue this fight for the glory of winning’, and he is comforted in death by reflecting on his worldly status, ‘my going will be easier, for having seen the treasure, a less troubled letting-go, of the life and lordship I have long maintained’, which, as Eric John notes,

seems a far cry from a call on the mercy of God. The complex relationship between pagan and Christian culture have also been widely debated with regard to the ‘Finnsburg episode’. Celebrating his defeat of the monster Grendel, Beowulf is thrown a lavish feast, and treated to a tale from the bard about Finn, the Frisian king who defeats the Danes but is eventually overcome by his enemy. The poem within a poem, with its beautiful lyrical language is evocative of the importance of orality in the Anglo-Saxon period, as a way of preserving history and telling tales. Seamus Heaney sees this episode as a relevant part of the main story, an example of the warrior code of the pagan past that Beowulf is participating in, in which the Danes take revenge on King Finn for the blood of their kin. This episode is also governed by the omnipotent force of fate, retribution piled on Finn for his slaughter of the Danes, for whom ‘the fate they had suffered, all blamed on Finn’. This powerful figure of fate alludes more to the pagan deities than the Christian god. However, other historians have discounted this argument, suggesting the allusions to fate are simply a linguistic expression, part and parcel with the oral culture it is seeking to represent.

The value of the Beowulf poem to the understanding of the Anglo-Saxon past has been ensured by the marriage of the legend to the archaeological find at Sutton Hoo, East Anglia, where an Anglo-Saxon burial ship was uncovered in 1939. The Sutton Hoo burial, with its ceremonial battle garments, weapons and personal treasures, seems in parallel to the traditions described in Beowulf, when the dead king Shield Sheafson is buried with Far-fetched treasures… piled upon him, and precious gear, I never heard before of a ship so well furbished, with battle-tackle, bladed weapons, and coats of mail.

Roberta Frank has discussed this interweaving of fact and fiction, which has perhaps over-exaggerated the pagan elements of the tale. Nothing in the Sutton Hoo burial suggests that the deceased was a Christian, but then again, nothing proves he was not.

Debate surrounding the authorship of this epic tale continues to this day. While most historians accept that the author was a Christian, perhaps even a monk, the significance of the pagan influences remain in question, with some suggesting the work was an old pagan tale with Christian elements added, and others defending the inherently Christian nature of the piece. We will probably never find a definitive answer to these questions, but the legend of Beowulf will remain as a fascinating insight into the competing religious tensions of the Anglo-Saxon era.

19

Retrospect Journal.

The Legend of Lost Edinburgh: From the Elephant Parade to Ziggy Stardust

By Charlotte Lauder Edinburgh is known around the world as a city of culture. Its New Town and Old Towns form a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city is blessed with an incredible array of architecturally important and historically significant buildings. Wellknown examples include the Robert Adam buildings, designed

by Scotland’s foremost architect of the eighteenth century. In Edinburgh, Adam designed striking buildings including the City Chambers, Register House (now the National Records of Scotland), Old College (before the addition of the Dome), and many of the townhouses that form Charlotte Square at the west end of Princes Street.

Amongst these architecturally important buildings, Edinburgh is also home to more modern constructions. These were erected during the 1950s and 1960s in the place of older buildings, as part of a growing desire for modern and commercially functioning cities. Areas of Edinburgh such as Greenside Place have seen huge change over the past 60 years due to the erection of buildings such as the Omni Centre and the St James Shopping Centre, set to be refurbished again this year. St James is now considered unfit for purpose; its Brutalist architecture, which lead it to be named ‘Edinburgh’s Most Unloved Building’, has finally taken its toll on the city’s architects. The existing 1964 Centre will be completely rebuilt as a three-storey, glass-roofed, crescent-shaped building, renamed St James Quarter. The project is estimated to cost £850 million. Sadly this rejuvenation is yet another example of ‘modern’ structures replacing predating historical buildings and consuming money and manpower. This is a never ending cycle of modernity, taking place at the unfortunate expense of architectural history.

In an effort to preserve much of the spatial history that Edinburgh has lost, one Facebook page is leading the way. Lost Edinburgh is the creation of David McLean, who shares rare

and illuminating pictures of Edinburgh’s past. The photographs range from time-lapse comparisons of buildings that have undergone dramatic change to images of intriguing events that took place in Edinburgh. For anyone with an interest in the historical life of Edinburgh, the site is a must-‘like’.

David was kind enough to give up his time to be interviewed by me. He explained that the origins of Lost Edinburgh are very close to his heart. The site began as a sentimental project with his grandad, Mr Andrew Boyd, an Edinburgh native who in the last years of his life suffered from dementia. David spent time with his grandad reminiscing about his past by bringing together a collection of old images of Edinburgh in a digital slideshow. David was inspired by his grandad’s work in Princes Street Station, which used to function at the west end of Princes Street. Today, The Waldorf Astoria Edinburgh The Caledonian Hotel remains on the site of the demolished station. The loss of an integral part of his grandad’s personal history highlighted to David the importance of protecting such memories, as they sadly pass on with those whom they belong to.

Coming from a family who made their living in Edinburgh’s Cowgate, I can relate to the timelessness of old family stories.

My maternal family immigrated to Edinburgh from a village in northern Italy in 1923. From this era to the 1980s they were prominent in the catering business. What began as a fish and chip shop on the Royal Mile turned into Edinburgh’s first cash and carry which then culminated in my great-uncle’s Presidency of the Ice Cream Alliance of the United Kingdom and Ireland, 1970-71. Family stories from the past are impressionable and transportive. David explains that they are worth protecting and treasuring. In the current field of history, oral history has become an important source of evidence. The practice of interviews is now the inspiration for many research projects

Legend & Folklore seeking to investigate many aspects of social history not accessed by more traditional research methods. Mr Boyd’s lively picture of an Edinburgh unfamiliar to contemporaries made David realise the importance of carrying on his grandfather’s tales. By setting up the Lost Edinburgh site, David became a custodian of his grandad’s memories and began sharing these stories and memories with others.

Thanks to the ease and popularity of Facebook, the page has been a great success: on the first day of its launch in 2011, Lost Edinburgh achieved 25,000 likes. It now has over 120,000. The easy format of Facebook allows David to upload photographs he is already aware of and those he has found online. The majority of his photographs come from email submissions from the public and followers of the page and are often accompanied by personal stories. One of my favourite Lost Edinburgh posts is a picture of The Elephant Parade which marched up North Bridge sometime in 1900. It is a funny and bizarre image even for Edinburgh’s Festival reputation. The images range from the very historical to the very famous: Lost Edinburgh featured a Cecil Beaton photograph of a view of Edinburgh Castle shrouded in industrial smog taken in the 1950s.

The comments that are left on his daily posts are invaluable, David explains. The more likes an image receives and the more shares and comments that are acquired, the more new photographs and stories David can collate and share. Such an occasion occurred when Lost Edinburgh shared a photograph of the construction of the Forth Rail Bridge. A Lost Edinburgh follower commented with her own picture of her grandfather posing in front of the bridge: he had worked during its construction as a deep sea diver on the bed of the Forth. David replied with a link to the South Queensferry Museum where the said grandfather’s knife and photographs are displayed. His view that the comments ‘add colour to monochrome pictures’ could not be truer. He also relies on contacts he has made with the City Library and other sites of information such as the Daily Record archives. This helps add to the layered history that Lost Edinburgh is uncovering. In this way, it truly is a community page and David is extremely grateful for the support he receives online.

Picturing images of vintage Cath Kidston kitchenware and retro posters, I ask David if he feels his page is part of a growing trend to recapture the past, a sort of ‘nostalgia boom’? He agrees with this; after the immediate success of Lost Edinburgh, David was able to recreate a parallel page for Glasgow.

Lost Glasgow currently has over 100,000 likes. There are other sites in Scotland, including a Lost Dundee and a Lost Dunbar, but there are also international sites such as Lost New York and Lost Melbourne. The appreciation for all things historical is not exclusive to Scotland, but it is certainly inspired by David’s successful work with the Glasgow and Edinburgh pages.

Indeed, in the outpouring of appreciation for David Bowie following his death early this year, David featured three photographs of Bowie in concert in Edinburgh. On 19 May 1973, Ziggy-era Bowie played at the Old Empire Theatre, now the Festival Theatre on Nicolson Street. David’s ability to marry very historical images of changing Edinburgh landscapes with cultural anecdotes such as Bowie’s tour in 1973 keeps Lost Edinburgh relevant to a wide-reaching audience.

In the wider Edinburgh community, Lost Edinburgh is also involved in current projects within the city. For example, the

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page took part in an active petition campaign to reinstall the R. W. Forsyth sphere to its former building on Princes Street, which now houses Topshop. Forsyth’s was a prominent department store from 1906 to 1981. Under acclaimed architect J. J. Burnet’s design the building is a unique example of Edwardian baroque style in Edinburgh. Since March 2012 the armillary steel sphere has been missing atop the building, and Lost Edinburgh promoted a petition to have it reinstalled after its repairs.

This nostalgia for the treasured pieces of Edinburgh’s skyline can also be seen in the comments on pictures of the Bristo Square area. Images of Bristo Square in the 1960s before the University’s occupation are staggering when compared to Potterrow, Appleton Tower and the Dugald Stewart Building, the modern buildings that now occupy this space. Upon looking through the comments on these pictures, it becomes sadly obvious that many followers of Lost Edinburgh are negative towards the major changes the University implicated upon the area. The iconic Parkers Department Store, which featured a mock-Tudor style front, once stood on the site where Potterrow is now and was completely demolished – as were many Georgian buildings around George Square – to make way for the expanding University. Among students today there is much negativity towards the current redevelopment of Bristo Square. Gone are the skater boys who showed us their moves and the ease of pedestrian access that the square provided.

From a top window in the Teviot Student Union one can see a moat style trench being dug up around McEwan Hall, where the University plans to place a glass façade. It is important for students to remember the phases of development that have preceded the current situation of construction. Such sentiments are still very real for many people who built their lives in buildings where the Big Cheese now parties on a Saturday night.

Currently, David is working with two admin staff to continue adding to his digital archive. He has worked with Professor Richard Roger of the History Department, whose project MESH (Mapping Edinburgh’s Social History) explores spatial transformations within the capital. David tells me his dream is to one day have a physical archive of all his pictures in the City Art Centre or a community run gallery. Visitors to the city will be able to appreciate the unknown history of Edinburgh, a history as significant and hidden as that of the popular Mary King’s Close.This would certainly be a fruitful addition to Edinburgh’s cultural and curatorial scene.

Through Lost Edinburgh David has created a wonderful testament to the memory of his grandad. In a loving tribute, Lost Edinburgh’s cover photo on Facebook is a picture of his grandad working as a wheeltapper outside the Princes Street Station, itself now a lost part of Edinburgh’s physical space.

However, David’s poignant project keeps this memory alive and enlightens a new generation to an Edinburgh that was almost unrecognisable one hundred years ago. Not only does Lost Edinburgh show the value of digital images in historical research, but with the global connectivity of Facebook, and the importance of oral history, David has added to the historiography on the relationship between space and society which informs the way Edinburgh has developed as a city.

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Retrospect Journal.

The fairy tale The Snow Maiden has been retold in many different incarnations over the last two centuries and these different adaptations have come to influence one another. In Communist Russia for example, The Snow Maiden was used to reinforce the political ideology of the regime. As with many fairy tales the narrative was transformed from a beautiful fable into a tale imbued with sinister meanings.

Alexander Afanasyev first published the Russian tale in his collection The Poetic Outlook on Nature by the Slavs in 1869.

Originally, the Snow Maiden (or ‘Snegurochka’) was associated with the celebration of Christmas but this later changed because the Communist culture encouraged the celebration of New Year in place of the religious holiday. Alexander Ostrovsky’s 1873 play The Snow Maiden was based upon Afanasyev’s story, portraying the maiden as the daughter of supernatural beings, Spring and Father Frost, who longs for human contact. After begging her father to allow her to associate with humans, the Snow Maiden joins with a group of young peasants and delights in singing and dancing with them. When they return to the village she meets a merchant and falls in love with him, despite his betrothal to another. Realising that her cold heart cannot fully love she runs into the woods, pursued by the merchant, in order to ask her mother to warm it for her. Despite her mother’s warnings of the dangers of a warm heart, it is thawed and she feels the full extent of love for the first time. The heat of love melts the Snow Maiden; this leads to her death and the suicide of her beloved.

Afanasyev and Ostrovsky’s Snow Maiden is closely related to different tales of ‘snow children’ in other cultures. In these stories a childless couple’s discovery of a child made from snow often ends unhappily with the warmth of love and human contact that they show the infant melting its otherworldly heart. The Bukovinian version of this tale places the ‘Snow Daughter’ at odds with a ‘Fire Son’; after the son accidentally kills the daughter’s husband, they engage in a fight which melts and burns the respective siblings out of existence. The tale of ‘Yuki-Onna’ in Japan casts the Snow Maiden, instead of an innocent figure, as a malevolent supernatural being who kills men. Afanasyev’s story, although sad, is gentler and contains less conflict than either of these variations.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky composed incidental music for Ostrovsky’s play and this score has since provided the inspiration for a ballet. There is not enough material for a full ballet, so productions by companies including the London Festival Ballet and the Moscow Art Ballet have been supplemented by music from his First Symphony, alongside other unrelated compositions. The State Ballet of Siberia’s 2016 production includes material from Tchaikovsky’s Seasons and the ‘Russian Dance’ from Swan Lake. The first record of Tchaikovsky’s Snow Maiden as a ballet can be found in June 1961, when the London Festival Ballet performed using original choreography by the Russian Vladimir Bourmeister. At the time, the performances were criticised as a ‘mild disappointment’, amid claims that it could not compare to Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets: Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker.

When placed alongside these staples of the ballet tradition, it could be argued that The Snow Maiden should have remained an orchestral suite. However, Tchaikovsky’s music and the fairy tale setting do create an enchanting, festive experience, with a more child-friendly plot than his three original ballets.

Fairy Tale Russia: The Snow Maiden

By Ciara McKay It is notable that the first performances of Tchaikovsky’s ballet took place during the era of Communist rule, rather than in Imperial Russia. In this context The Snow Maiden can be seen as a cautionary tale, warning the people not to entertain ideas which are above their station, not to hope for things which are beyond reach. In the Snow Maiden’s tragic end, the people are reminded of the consequences of taking on the powers that be and challenging the natural order.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov also used the play as inspiration for his 1881 opera The Snow Maiden, which in turn inspired a further adaptation of the tale. In 1952, the Soyuzmultfilm studio in Moscow created an animated film using Ostrovsky’s play and Rimsky-Korsakov’s score as its basis. Although the cartoon is aimed at children, it is heavy handed in its adherence to Soviet ideology. When Father Frost first appears he sings about targeting the bourgeois households with his wrath: ‘When the cold cracks the timber and the walls of the bourgeois houses I enjoy that to the fullest’. As the Snow Maiden leaves the forest to join the peasants there is a feeling of foreboding; she is literally leaving the Fatherland. This leads to her downfall. She is identified as the cause of the village’s disfavour with the sun god, and inexplicably becomes associated with vanity and envy, representing a metaphor for the capitalism and excesses of the West. In this film, the Snow Maiden melts from the warmth of the sun, rather than her heart. The final scene shows the village engaged in communal singing (an activity much encouraged by the Communist regime) in praise of the sun god. This praise, coming after the sun has killed the Snow Maiden, makes sense in the context of a Soviet dictatorship; a punishment has been inflicted upon the people, and the regime is then appeased by a fearful public. Some of these elements were included in Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera, and it was just a coincidence that they sat so well with Soviet ideology.

The Snow Maiden is a tale which unites many conflicting subjects. Set to music by Imperial Russian composers, it was then used as propaganda by the Soviet regime. A beautiful ballet was later created from disparate sections of a composer’s output. The influence and cross-fertilisation of ‘snow child’ tales from many countries is apparent, so perhaps it is fitting that Tchaikovsky’s ballet was patched together in a similar way.

Legend & Folklore

In the Wake of Slavery:

Haiti’s Case for Reparation

By Eva Colley

In the midst of the Age of Revolutions that took place in various locations around the world between 1789 and 1848, one stands out in particular. By 1791, Saint Domingue was a hugely profitable French colony, its success being in part due to the particularly barbaric slave system that was exercised by its colonial masters. The revolution was successful and the country renamed itself Haiti. It has been said that the Haitian Revolution was the only successful slave revolt in history and as such it has become legendary within a wider human narrative that has seen the oppressed confront their oppressor. As has become glaringly obvious recently, slavery and abolition continue to shape and be shaped by current events.

In official visits to Jamaica and Haiti, both David Cameron and François Hollande respectively have been confronted with demands that they repay the debt that these countries are owed after the effects of slavery ravaged by their European colonisers. David Cameron has recently negotiated with Jamaica’s Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, and a solution appears to have been found: Britain shall finance the construction of a new prison to which the 600 or so Jamaican citizens currently in Britain’s prison system shall be repatriated to.

The debate between those in Haiti who are seeking reparation and the French State does not yet seem to have been resolved however. This is due in part to the very nature of the debt that Haiti want repaid.

When, in 1804, Haiti declared independence, theirs was not celebrated by other countries such as America and France that had similarly led successful revolts against their previous political system. As a colony of slaves that had previously been denied the status as sentient human beings capable or deserving of agency, the fact that they not only threw off the chains of slavery but also managed to establish the land their own country stunned and angered France. Saint Domingue, as it had previously been named, then went on to add insult to France’s injury and organised themselves with an incredible military prowess that made them able to defeat the French Republican, Spanish, British and Napoleonic armies in their various attempts to take control of this country and its citizens alike. Previous to this startling turn of events, France had run a lucrative slave state within which labour provided huge profits of sugar and coffee for the motherland.

Enlightened thinkers in France had managed to recognise the injustice of slavery as a political state yet had also justified it in terms of a liberal, laissez-faire notion of property rights: slaves were property, the state’s right to interfere with property was an indefensible relic of the Ancien-Régime. Nonetheless, many individuals contemporary to the events deserve credit for their eloquent critiques of the horrific circumstances suf-

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fered by the slaves. When slaves and other people of colour on the island of Saint Domingue did manage to secure their own freedom, the powers in Europe and the Americas were shocked to say the least. As it has been noted before, this revolution was truly unthinkable in a world whereby commerce, international relations and politics were so deeply entangled in the racism required to preserve this brutal labour system. Even historians have had a difficult time coming to terms with it, often consigning it to the footnotes within texts about France during the revolutionary period.

In the aftermath of the revolution, Haiti was slighted by France and other slave-owning countries. Being reluctant to justify slave emancipation, the world powers saw fit to impose a naval blockade on Haiti which became effective in the very first year of its self-declared emancipation. This was a blockade that was only officially ended in 1863. In the meantime Haiti saw itself sink further into poverty; the once wealthy ‘Pearl of the Antilles’ saw its lustre diminish due to other countries’ determination that Haiti not become the symbol for enslaved people elsewhere. No doubt it is this fact that pushed the Haitian government to enter into a deal with France in 1825, a deal whose repercussions are still felt by the impoverished citizens of Haiti today. In April of that year, Charles X claimed that he would recognise Haiti as an independent state were it to pay an indemnity of 150 million gold francs, an amount that equates almost 31 billion dollars today. In addition to this, France requested that there be special custom levies for French trade on the island and they retained their right to withdraw their recognition at will. In the face of what can only have been worse alternatives, Haiti agreed to the deal.

In 1838, the indemnity was reduced to 90 million gold francs, a fact that nonetheless still saw Haiti repaying this debt to France via US banks until 1947.

The closest that Haiti’s case for reparations came to recognised legitimacy was arguably the case that was made under Jean Baptiste Aristide’s presidency. In 2003 a legal team drew up a case for reparations from France that was rejected on moral and legal grounds by the Debray report in 2004.

The report’s main case for not repaying Haiti was based on a few points, the most notable of which was the claim that they had already provided Haiti with financial aid and that it is not good practice to impose contemporary laws and values on past events, no matter how immoral they seem in hindsight. A principle that they seem to have misplaced in light of Ontario’s recent formal apology for banning French in 1912. Nevertheless, it is important to note that Sarkozy’s government did cancel all of Haiti’s debt in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake and Hollande promised more investment in Haiti following his state visit. Haiti, being one of the world’s poorest countries, has still got a long way to go before its people have all their basic needs fulfilled.

It is a certainty that Haiti will not see the full extent of reparation that many had fought so hard for. One can say that understandable economic prudence prevents France from repaying Haiti, but what is it that prevents them from issuing an official apology that countries such as Britain have issued?

History too can be colonised: admitting guilt is a risky diplomatic venture that could be potentially humiliating. Yes, contrition is an unpleasant state, but both resentment and guilt are even more corrosive substances.

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Retrospect Journal.

The Legend of Omukama Kabalega:

The Last King of Bunyoro

By Kyomugisha Penina

Kabalega was born in 1850. His father was Omukama IV Kamurasi and his mother was a Muhuma lady of of the Abayonza clan called Kanyange Nyamutahigurw, originally from Mwenge. He spent his early days in Bulega where his mother had taken refuge when his father had been temporarily usurped from the throne. It is believed that when he went back to Bunyoro, he was named Alana Ka Balega, meaning ‘one from Bulega’, and later shortened to Kabalega. Before Kamurasi died, he had indicated his preference for Kabalega as his successor, however, the younger brother of Kamurasi, Kamuhanda, preferred Kabigumire. Kabigumire had much support from almost all Babiito and other important people in the kingdom, whereas Kabalega was supported by the commoners and soldiers.

Only two Babiito, Nyaka and Kabagonza backed Kabalega, and of the important chiefs only Nyakamatura, saza chief of Bugahya supported him.

The state of affairs resulted into successor disputes and wars after the death of Kamurasi in 1869. Kabalega managed to win the succession war of 1870, not without the support of the army and the commoners. As the victorious heir of the war, many members of the aristocracy had to transfer their support to Kabalega and by 1871, he was the undisputed king of Bunyoro and adopted the name Chwa II Rumomamahanga, meaning ‘the one who conquers nations’. Kabalega was a popular soldier who demanded implicit obedience, strict discipline and efficiency. He tolerated no useless arguments. He could mercilessly punish any officer who misbehaved. He spoke various languages including runyoro, Kiswahili, luo and Arabic.

Similarly, in the early years of his reign, Kabalega set out to establish order. His opponents had either to cross to his side, flee or wait to be destroyed. He accepted whoever promised to be loyal and work with him.

Moreover, Kabalega desired to restore the glory of the empire and this made him spend much of his time and resources in creating a powerful standing army, which would be called

‘Abarusura’. He divided this army into ten major battalions, each consisting of 1500 soldiers. Some of his commanders were Ireeta, Kikukule and Rwabudongo. In an effort to bring national reconciliation and unity, Kabalega encouraged intermarriages between the commoners and aristocrats. He himself married a Mwiru girl called Achanda from Chope. By doing this, He managed to reduce rebellions during his regime and a period of peace and stability was established.

Furthermore, he did his best to correct the destruction, the diseases and the famine that had become rampant during the Succession War. He began by creating the Oruharo or public workers on state farms where he commanded chiefs to mobilise people for the cultivation of food crops. The surplus would be stored underground and outside granaries to serve during the time of famine. Once firmly enthroned, Kabalega set out to fulfil his intentions of territorial expansion. He began by effectively controlling Chope and Bugungu. In 1876, he conquered Toro. He had influence through his army over areas like Bulega, Mboga, Busogora, Bubira, Karagwe and Buronjo. This included Katwe salt mines, which were controlled by the Abarusura and often raided Ankole, Karagwe. Although he failed to establish effective control in Rwanda, his influence also extended to Teso, Acholi and Arua land. In 1886, Kabalega defeated the Ganda forces at Rwengabi and he himself killed Kangawo, the Ganda commander. Many people on both sides died or had serious injuries. Kabalega occupied some parts of Buganda and it is estimated that by 1890, the Abarusura passed through northern Buganda to raid Busoga to make it a tributary state.

By 1890, Kabalega had reached the peak of his power. He continued to strengthen his army by getting arms and ammunition from Zanzibar Arabs and Khartoum traders in exchange for items like ivory and slaves. With such power, he even had some factors to help his friends like Kalema in Buganda’s religious conflicts. At one time Kabalega aided Kalema

Legend & Folklore

with 3,000 well trained armed Abarusura to defeat the Christians led by Apollo Kaggawa. Another army was sent under Rwa Budongo to help Kalema, but Kalema was defeated by the Christians in February 1890. When Kabalega was expected to become stronger and expand his empire, European imperialism encroached into the region. His progress was cut short and more over his name had been spoilt on the European side by reports by Stanley on the Baganda. In 1891, Lugard set out for Toro through Ankole, he met some resistance from Kabalega’s forces at Muhokya, Katore and Butanuka which was crushed aside. In Toro, on 10 August 1891, Lugard reinstated Kasagama to the throne whom he had brought along with him from Buganda where the latter had been a refuge since he was deposed by Kabalega.

After signing the treaty of protection with Kasagama, Lugard continued at Karalli at the southern end of Lake Albert.

Here Lugard’s forces, armed with modern weapons found it easy to defeat an unprepared force of Kabalega out of Toro.

Lugard decided to build a line of forts along the Toro-Bunyoro border and stop Kabalega from entering Toro again. Kabalega didn’t keep quiet in Bunyoro but kept on attacking British forts on the Toro-Bunyoro border, interrupting communication and stopping the British and their agents from obtaining the necessary supplies. When Lugard returned to Britain, Gerald Portal came in and pursued a policy of withdrawing the troops from Toro. This gave a chance to Kabalega to re-invade Toro and expel the British puppet, Kasagama, into the foothills of Rwenzori. Unfortunately, Portal was succeeded by Major Macdonald and Col. Colville who disregarded Portal’s policy. These officers were determined to restore British prestige wherever he captured and burnt Kikukule’s strong hold.

Colville entered Bunyoro in 1893 with eight European officers 400 Sudanese and 15000 Baganda led by Kakungulu.

Kabalega would have staged a serious resistance but he made a mistake of dividing his forces into scattered divisions.

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The first to guard Toro-Bunyoro border and the fourth to serve as a general force. After making this mistake, Kabalega was forced to abandon Mapco, his capital. He retreated to Budongo forest to reorganise his forces. He then returned to Mparo and fought the Baganda at Kisabagwa. Kabalega was later chased across the Nile into Lango from where he began a guerilla war. Though a member of the Abarusura officers had been forced to surrender in 1894, many others resisted in hideouts, under Kabalega were forced into running away leaving behind his property and followers. Kabalega continued his guerilla warfare throughout 1897, and returned to the North of Bunyoro to provide a rallying point for all those opposed to the British. Those included the Sudanese mutineers, the muslims and Mwanga. Kabalega’s forces were led by Kikukule, Ireeta and Jasi, the climax of Kabalega’s resistance of 1898 was the destruction of the British post at Hoima. Kabalega and his friends gradually had to withdraw to Lango.

In March 1899, Lt. Col. Evatt moved into Lango and was in April helped by some Langi to discover where Kabalega was.

When Mwanga realized that things were worsening he suggested that they should surrender but Kabalega said that everything has its time appointed. On 9 April 1899, the two leaders were discovered at Oyam near Kangai in Dokoro county in Lango and driven into a swamp by Evatt’s troops. Kabalega still handled his gun and was only forced to drop it after bullets had struck him in the right arm and his left thumb. They were captured, taken at Kismanyu and later exiled in Seychelles islands where Mwanga died in 1903. In exile Kabalega learned to read and write and was baptised as John. He was also allowed to return to Bunyoro in 1923 but unfortunately, he died of heart failure in Busoga on his way back. His body was brought and buried at Mparo (Hoima district).

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Retrospect Journal.

The Legend of the Assassins

By Matthew Mitchell

Sometimes the story begins with three friends. An early history records how, at school together in eastern Persia, they made a pact as blood-brothers that whoever reached eminence first must help the other two. These friends were the astronomer-poet-philosopher, Omar Khayyam; the vizier and scholar, Nizam al-Mulk; and Hassan-i Sabbah, who became the first Grandmaster of the Assassins, and whom this legend is about.

When Nizam al-Mulk was made a grand vizier of the Seljuk Empire in 1063, he offered Khayyam and Sabbah provincial governorships. Khayyam, the scientist, declined and instead took a modest pension and returned, content, to his studies.

Meanwhile Sabbah, not happy for long with his appointment, sought higher office and began to undermine his old friend and benefactor. At last, al-Mulk was forced to exile Sabbah.

The story, although unlikely to be true, unfortunately, comprises one of many sprawling legends surrounding the Assassins and their founder, Hassan-i Sabbah. But like many legends, it hints at a real history. It conveys something of the character of the real Hassan-i Sabbah - a darkly brilliant politician and scholar, held up by these two shining luminaries of the age. Sabbah actually left his hometown in 1076 after becoming enthralled by Isma’ilism (a branch of Shia Islam) which was outlawed there. After journeying across the Middle East he returned to Persia, a full missionary, landing amongst the great splendour of Isfahan in 1081 before moving on to the mountains of Alborz in the northwest. By this time he lived solely for his mission and was widely revered for his knowledge and piety, but also hounded by those who sought to destroy Isma’ilism. Chief amongst them was the grand vizier, Nizam al-Mulk, who, hearing of the conversion Sabbah was leading of the people in the mountains, dispatched soldiers to capture him. Sabbah evaded them and went further into the mountains, in search of a place to base himself and his mission.

In 1088 he found the fortress of Alamut, built atop a high rock. Sending his followers to win over the villages through religious rhetoric and intimidation over a period of two years Sabbah was eventually able to take over the fort bloodlessly in an infiltration by his converts. One tale, likely apocryphal, tells how Sabbah offered 3000 gold dinars to the fort’s owner for an area of land that would only fit a buffalo’s hide. When the terms were agreed, Sabbah cut the hide into strips and linked them together into a ring that around the fort’s perimeter. Thus the owner gave in, undone by his own greed. It is said that Sabbah never left the fortress again in his lifetime but spent all his time in one room producing religious works and developing the doctrines of his Order.

From then on Sabbah began to establish his secret order of assassins, arranged in a hierarchical structure with Sabbah at the top as Grandmaster. The dedication of the Assassins to their order and their Grandmaster became legend in their

own time. Marco Polo offered the most famous explanation.

His story recounts the tales he heard of the ‘Old Man of the Mountain’ who would drug his young followers in an enclosed garden with hashish, lead them to ‘paradise’, and then claim that only he possessed the means to allow for their return. His followers then became committed to Sabbah’s cause, believing him a magician or prophet who could deliver paradise. It is from the word hashashin (drugged on hashish) that the name Assassin comes. The story has since been called into question but the myth remains powerful.

Typically those carrying out the assassinations, or Fida’in (self-sacrificing agents), were young so that they had the strength and stamina to carry out their missions. They were trained to be patient, cold and calculating as well as knowledgeable about their enemies languages, territories and cultures, so as to be able to blend in. They became masters of disguise, able to sneak into enemy territory entirely unnoticed.

They were highly effective. Amongst their targets were Nazim al-Mulk, stabbed in his litter as he left his audience chamber, two caliphs of Baghdad, a Seljuk sultan and the Crusader Count Raymond of Tripoli. They could wait for years living amongst their enemy, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

The ruler of Damascus, fearful for his life, surrounded himself with armed guards who turned out to be Assassins.

Another legend tells how Henry of Champagne, returning from Armenia, spoke with Grand Master Rashid ad-Din Sinan.

The Count boasted to the Grandmaster that his army was ten times larger and far more powerful, but Rashid disagreed and said that his own was more powerful and that he could prove it.

And he did by ordering one of his men to jump from the roof of his castle and the man did so with hesitation. Surprised, the Count admitted that Rashid’s army must indeed be the more powerful as they would do anything Rashid commanded.

Soon, however, was to come the last of the Grandmasters.

For a century and a half the Assassins expanded, taking many castles in Syria for themselves, and were considered unbeatable until an enemy they themselves found unassailable - as have many in history - came upon them. In 1256 the Mongols descended, led by Hulagu, grandson of Genghis Khan. The last Grandmaster of the Assassins, Rukn ad-Din, walled himself up inside his fortress, hoping the hard winter would drive the Mongols away and choke the valley with snow. The Mongols however, marched on. At last the Grandmaster gave in and told his men to surrender.

So ended the time of the Assassins. Shortly afterwards, in the words of a contemporary historian, Rukn ad-Din was: Kicked to a pulp and then put to the sword… and he and his kindred became but a tale on men’s lips and a tradition in the world.

One more legend.

Reviews.

Legend & Folklore

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The Revenant

By Flo McMullen

The King in the North:

The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria

By Liska Crofts Many things can be justified on the basis of a superb cover design. This includes snatching a book, before you have established a clear idea of topic, or even style, and despite internally sworn oaths to leave a bookshop as book-less as you had entered. In this case they had gone for devastating simplicity.

The title was in a warm, ornate lettering that instantly evoked the painstaking work of Medieval monks toiling over candlelit manuscripts. I had just left Lindisfarne and thus was exactly in the mood for toiling monks; happily both my uninformed impulse to take the book and the stylistic choice which prompted it turned out to be on point.

As per the title, it traces the fortunes of the northern nobility of Bernicia and Deira, their enemies, allies, and the emergence of statehood in Britain. The climax comes with the rise of the once princeling exile, Oswald ‘Whiteblade’: his astonishing seizure of power brings him both Kingship of the region now known as Northumbria, and sets him as the overlord of many British states.

And just as crucially, amid these political and military struggles of the ruling warrior classes emerge the conditions that finally establish Christianity, transported from Ulster and Rome, throughout the British Isle. It is the writings of Bede which document this conversion, tackling his Ecclesiastical History of the People of England in a time shortly after the events of the period. This work provides a basis for Max Adams’ account, which he has made neither patronising nor inaccessible, and he untangles it to describe a backdrop of extraordinary depth for the many social and political movements of this Medieval age, in times that have too often been mistaken for ‘Dark Ages’.

These events teeter on a verge when record of the past began to shift out of the form of dim recollection and was increasingly retained through the writing of contemporaries. It marked the end to the mystical, folkloric age that could give birth to legends and their champions, but at the same time fixed them in a written memory of the time. Y Gododdin, a Welsh poem of the thirteenth century, and another of the sources for this book, has as its theme these wars which formed Northumbria, and amongst that history is also the first surviving mention of King Arthur, epitome of all British legendary figures. The King in the North describes a time when legend had not yet divorced from history.

In one of this year’s most successful releases, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu transforms an old piece of frontier mythology into a piece of pure cinematic excellence. The Revenant is an epic story of revenge, following the fur trapper Hugh Glass’ journey to avenge his son’s murder in 1832 after he was left for dead following a brutal bear attack.

Set in what is now Montana and South Dakota, Leonardo DiCaprio delivers an exhilarating performance as huntsman Hugh Glass, trekking across the beautiful wilderness. The immense physicality of DiCaprio’s performance means that Mark L. Smith and Iñárritu’s screenplay often takes a backseat, although it deftly and subtly adds to the film’s realism, furthering the viewer’s immersion into American frontier history.

The gruelling nature of filming on location is made evident in DiCaprio’s performance, in which we can almost feel the searing pain of his character’s wounds and the chill in his bones. He is accompanied by a wealth of talent, most notably in the form of Tom Hardy as the sinister John Fitzgerald who not only left Glass for dead, but also killed his son. However, attention should also be brought to Will Poulter’s performance as the troublingly innocent Jim Bridger, through whom the harsh realities and endemic violence of the lives of the frontier huntsmen are made clear.

With an array of gruesome scenes, such as when Hugh Glass guts out a deceased horse within which to shelter, this film is not for the faint-hearted. This can also be seen in the pivotal moment of Glass’ bear attack, which is not only a shocking and intense episode within the story, but also displays the realism created by extremely impressive special effects.

Despite these special effects, the impressive costume design and the wintry wilderness which transport us into a different world, The Revenant really comes down to a story about relationships. The underlying narrative is driven by Hugh Glass’ unconquerable love for his son in the most strenuous of circumstances. This is supported by the touching recurrent motif of Glass’s late Native American wife, who offers him guidance through his subconscious, willing him to continue despite extreme adversity. Additionally, this film highlights the way in which social issues can transcend history. Significantly, DiCaprio tells his mixed-race on-screen son ‘they don’t hear your voice; they just see the colour of your skin’, highlighting the issues of identity and racism that still exist in our society. It is clear therefore, that many of the relevant issues emphasised in The Revenant still resonate today.

Although The Revenant is largely an embellished frontier legend, it is highly successful in bringing an old snapshot of American history to life. Aiding this is the stunning cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki who illuminates beautiful sweeping landscapes. And with Leonardo DiCaprio’s obvious dedication, Hugh Glass is arguably his most exciting performance to date, a role for which he is well-deserving of his host of recent accolades.

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Retrospect Journal.

Rebecca

(Festival Theatre, Kneehigh Productions)

By Francesca Street

‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’ So begins Daphne Du Maurier’s best-selling 1938 gothic romance Rebecca, famed for its heightened atmosphere of foreboding and the omnipresent, never-seen legend of the eponymous Rebecca, who oversees the proceedings from beyond the grave.

Kneehigh’s Rebecca is an inspired, creative production that services Daphne Du Maurier’s original whilst also providing a new take on the classic tale, likely to appeal to fans of the novel and newcomers alike.

Cornish theatre company Kneehigh is renowned for imaginative, multimedia adaptations of classic stories. In 2008, the company produced its 1930s music hall-influenced Brief Encounter, which ingeniously intermixed film, puppetry and music with live performance. Artistic director Emma Rice, who became artistic director of the Globe Theatre in January, has reimagined Rebecca in a similar vein, creating a highly sensory production.

The show opens with the evocative sounds of waves crashing on a rocky beach, establishing a recurring motif of the sea.

A chain-smoking, glamorous femme fatale then takes centre stage to speak the novel’s famous opening words.

As the dream-like mist clears and the curtain is lifted on Leslie Travers’ striking set, a mysterious corpse is lowered from the ceiling, followed by a damaged boat. The boat lands on stage, forming the centrepiece of a set which otherwise resembles the interior of a country house, albeit one with a distinctly gothic shade. The influence of the sea is omnipresent: the house is painted in greys and blues. Structurally, it is more akin to a shipwreck than a mansion.

Rice expertly balances Rebecca’s required suspense with Kneehigh’s trademark humour and heart. Imogen Sage as

the second Mrs de Winter provides the emotional core of the production, beginning as waif-like ingénue before subtly conveying her character’s descent into jealousy and gradual loss of innocence. Playing opposite her is Tristan Sturrock, a Kneehigh regular who smartly conveys the contrast between Maxim’s outward charm and his secret inner life.

The production provides plenty of good-natured humour to balance out the darkness: the servants, particularly Richard Clews as Frith and Katy Owen as Robert, are consistently fun, ensuring the audience remain entertained throughout. However it is Maxim’s dog Jasper, depicted via puppetry, who gains the biggest laughs of the night – and also breaks the fourth wall.

The multi-talented cast act, sing and play musical instruments, melding into the background when not needed to form a Greek chorus of Cornish fisherman, wordlessly watching the action and occasionally providing a musical accompaniment of traditional Cornish folk songs and sea shanties. The cast also ingeniously interact with the set: the epithet ‘six weeks later’ is emblazoned on a plank of wood and, later, a similar message is held up on a series of handkerchiefs.

Kneehigh’s Rebecca is an inspired, creative production that services Daphne Du Maurier’s original whilst also providing a new take on the classic tale, likely to appeal to fans of the novel and newcomers alike. While it never reaches the dizzying theatrical heights of Kneehigh’s earlier Brief Encounter, it remains a must-see, fun and entertaining piece of theatrical innovation.

An earlier edit of this review was originally published on BroadwayBaby.com.

Fiction.

Legend & Folklore

The Vengeance of Lodbrok

By Lewis Twiby

Jorvik, 867 The shaft of the axe felt heavy in Eluf ’s hands. His iron helmet even felt perilously heavy on his brow. All around him warriors were smashing their swords and axes against their wooden shields. A nearby berserker growled and started biting his shield in furious rage; his face had turned blood red to match his temper and he could see the bulging veins in his neck ready to burst. Thank the Gods that the berserkers were on his side; he would hate to be a Saxon going against a berserker filled with rage and thirsty for blood. He knew not how they worked themselves into such a vehement rage but it was scarily effective. Not even the boldest of warriors dared to cross them.

‘Ostmen!’ He had finally arrived. Their legendary leader, the son of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok: Ivarr the Boneless.

It was told that his father was descended from Odin himself, that he was one of the greatest warriors, that he had amassed rivers of gold from raiding the Francians and Angles only to be struck down in treachery by Ælla of Northumbria. His son was equally impressive. He was so fast with a blade people wondered whether he had the bones which hindered mere mortals. His grizzled features, stern stare and air of authority made him seem half a legend already.

‘Ostmen! I care not whether you are Danes, Swedes, Norwegians or even Irish. I care not whether you came for the arable land or the gold of the monasteries. All I care is that you slay as many of those Saxons coming to wrest Jorvik from us. Will we let them?’ All around there were shouts and screams of ‘No!’. The berserker smashed his sword so hard into his shield that several splinters flew everywhere. ‘Exactly. They fear us so much that they have sent two kings after us! One is the treacherous Ælla of Northumbria! The same one who threw my father into a pit of snakes! What shall we do to him?’

‘Blood eagle! Blood eagle!’ the hoards around him chanted.

‘For revenge!’ Ivarr yelled, waving his sword in the air. ‘For land! For Ragnar Lodbrok and Odin! I will see you either covered in the blood of Saxons or drinking in Valhalla. Either way, make sure they know when to stay defeated!’

Blood boiling, he held his axe in the air, screaming with the rest of them.

Eoforwic, 867 He could see Ælla and Osbricht eyeing each other suspiciously. The threat of the heathens had brought them together but what would happen when the heathens were defeated? If they were defeated. He could hear their incensed cries clearly from a mile away.

‘Their leader claims to be the son of Ragnar Lodbrok’, Ælla’s speech gave off an image of fear masquerading as bravery.

‘A heathen whose legend overextended his abilities and died screaming.’

The speech was not going as planned. Lodbrok must have done something to earn such a reputation and it did not help that the Northmen seemed fully convinced that Lodbrok’s son was the real deal.

‘These Northmen have come because we allowed our faith

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to become corrupted through decadence and greed. We have allowed our faith to falter and the Northmen now strip the Lord’s churches and defile them. We must stop them. We must stop them for Northumbria. We must stop them for the Lord. I shall see you on the other side, men of Northumbria!’

The air became filled with the rhythmic footsteps of his fellow soldiers and the occasional thud of metal against wood.

He felt perilously hot in his restrictive chainmail. He felt like he was being cooked. Suddenly they were ordered to stop and raise shields. In a blink of an eye an arrow had embedded itself deep into the wood of his shield. Before he knew what was happening a bear leapt upon them. Why was a bear in the middle of a battle? It roared and in a flash it had disembowelled several people nearby. Its claws cut through them like their armour was made of mere parchment. Then he realised it was not a bear but a berserker…

Eluf felt his axe reverberate as the blade smashed down against a helmeted Saxon. The Saxon never got up. All around him the sounds of metal against metal, wood splintering and yells of anger and pain in various tongues echoed. A Saxon boy around his age started waving a sword pitifully in front of the berserker from earlier. He had no chance. He had just seen the same berserker decapitate and disembowel several other skilled Saxon warriors. The boy tripped and fell onto his back.

He was shocked at what happened next. The boy in a blind bit of luck swept his sword at the berserker’s leg sending him tumbling to the churned up earth, another swing and his neck had turned crimson. A boy had killed a berserker! Soon after he had forgotten the boy as he was swept up in the battle.

Later that day Eluf looked curiously at the gold ring which he had taken from a slain Saxon warrior. The warrior was most likely in Valhalla now. A few rows of prisoners were having their hair forcibly cut to show their newly acquired status as thralls while emboldened crows pecked hungrily at the bloodied corpses. Crows, scavengers who hungered for war more than the berserkers. Just then he recognised one of the thralls: it was the boy who slew the berserker. He had somehow survived with nothing more than a black eye to show that he had just partaken in a battle.

‘Two slain kings. Shame I missed the opportunity to incise an eagle onto Ælla’s back!’ He turned around to see Ivarr the Boneless being carried by several warriors on several shields.

Full of ecstasy he jumped down. ‘Today I brought vengeance to my father and forged a new legend. Northumbria is mine.’

Historical Note Ragnar Lodbrok was a Viking who lived sometime during the ninth century, although most of his life is a mystery with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler and the Icelandic saga adding much embellishment to his life. Some of his actions have been attributed to various kings of Denmark. What is known is that he was executed by King Ælla of Northumbria and was the father of Ivar the Boneless. In 865 Ivar the Boneless was one of the several leaders of ‘the Great Heathen Army’ who captured the city of York (called Eoforwic by the Saxons and Jorvik by the Danish) in 866 and the following year won a battle against an army led by two claimants to the Northumbrian throne.

Retrospect Journal.

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The Storytelling

By Helena McNish

‘Can you read people out of memories, Mr … look, is there anything else I can call you?’

The so-called Storyteller – frighteningly no more than twenty-five, if that – folds his hands over his abdomen and smiles at him across the table. ‘Storytelling is my profession, Mr Lenton. Storyteller will do.’ ‘…right.’

It has taken months – months! – of digging in the darkest parts of London to be sitting here at this desk. Weeks more of sitting with an address in his fingers, gathering the courage to visit a street in Whitechapel that he used to pass every day.

Absolutely too normal to house a veritable fortune-teller.

The Storyteller either doesn’t notice or is unperturbed by his reticence, and his friendly smile endures. He looks much like those salesmen had in Whiteleys, pleasantly drawing his wife in whilst he rolled his eyes and attempted to pull her on. ‘But, to answer your question, indeed I can. Stories are stories, no matter what form in which they are told. There is a power in them that can rarely be matched.’

He’s not sure that there could be anything like that in just his simple voice telling tales, but equally there’s something in the Storyteller’s voice that makes him kind of – sort of – believe it. He takes a few steadying breaths.

‘Whom do you want me to read out for you?’

‘My … my wife.’ Saying it out loud is actually less ridiculous than he’d imagined it would be. The Storyteller nods, as pleasantly as if he had commented on the weather.

‘She has passed?’

‘She’s gone.’

Not exactly the answer to the question, but the Storyteller doesn’t challenge him. The only sign that this man is as observant as he seems is a slight tightening at the corner of his eyes; he shifts, stiffening his shoulders, like he wants to protect something — still though by coming here he’s given up on all that.

‘Well, then.’ The Storyteller leans over the table; he resists the urge to shunt back his chair, away from all this. ‘In order for my methods to work, you must tell me your stories of her, Mr Lenton. All and any you can think of. I need your words, your memories. It’s what keeps her alive, and what can possibly bring her back to you.’

‘Should I start with the one of how she never believed in magic?’

The Storyteller smiles, ‘Perfect.’

He holds back for one final moment, observing the young man across the table from him like he’s an old lady about to pull back her lips to reveal pointed teeth. What kind of power is he giving him, in the stories he is obviously so keen to hear?

‘If you didn’t at least want to believe me,’ the Storyteller says, softly. ‘You wouldn’t be here.’

He takes a deep breath, then nods. This is the first night in a long time that air hasn’t hurt his lungs.

The Storyteller nods too. ‘Now, I must remind you that if there is anything of her left alive in this world, the process will not work. My methods are not rooted in the physical.’

What can he say? Should he stop this now? Would it hurt more to know that she is still somewhere out there, away from him

by choice and not by fortune?

‘I … I understand.’ He doesn’t, but there’s little he really understands anymore.

The Storyteller spreads his hands, and the words flow very easily after that. Quickly he loses himself in them, starting at the beginning when he first saw her, lifting her parasol to look up at the pillars of Tower Bridge, admiring what she saw as a triumph of modern architecture. From there he can trace the entire story easily; through their honeymoon in Venice, her trailing behind to catch one more glimpse of the cathedral; across the black and white worlds of the photographs she was so fascinated by, hanging them all over their drawing room; all the way to the final moments where he left her, smiling up at the sun as the smog finally lifted, light splashing across her face.

‘And the end, Mr Lenton?’

‘She … she disappeared,’ he says, though it hurts to say it and he doesn’t like to give that up to a man who looks barely capable of growing a beard, let alone read a person out of words.

‘She went out one day and never came home.’

The Storyteller doesn’t reply, only looks at him in silence; then he closes his eyes.

He can’t help but speak again. ‘Is that enough? Will it work?’

No reply.

He sits silently for a full minute, watching. He doesn’t know what to expect to happen. Nothing could be anything. But it certainly seems like nothing.

His suspicions – his fears – are confirmed when the Storyteller opens his eyes again, barely a minute after he closed them, and there’s nothing new in them.

‘You can’t find her?’

The Storyteller shakes his head. Charlatan? Failure?

‘No.’ This could kill me, he thinks.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Lenton. Truly, I am.’

‘I … I should go.’

The Storyteller watches Mr Lenton, another in a long line of disappointments, struggle out the door like he can’t get away fast enough, and shakes his head.

He sighs, then reaches into one of his many desk drawers to pull out a thick, leather-bound diary, lifting and letting the pages scroll against his thumb until he reaches the correct date. Mr Lenton’s name is there, picked out in neat script, and, with a sigh, he reaches for his pen and scratches it out in one solid sweep.

He flips back to the last page: another scratched-out name. He knows when he turns back even further there will just be more black lines, etched deep enough that they sink into the paper.

He puts his head in his hands. ‘Damnit.’

A whisper begins at his ear, travels down the back of his neck; the Storyteller darts back up, alert.

‘John…’

His eyes dart down to the diary, still open on his desk. Under that black line, four of the ten letters seem to be edging out, tugging at their bonds.

He shakes his head, grips his chair arms. ‘It … it can’t be…’

The J, O, H, and N escape, shooting off the page and flying over his shoulder; the Storyteller turns, and his mouth drops open.

Legend & Folklore

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Retrospect Journal.