ABOUT BARD’S APPROACH TO MYTHIC HISTORY
One of the central areas of focus with Bard Mythologies is Mythic History. This approach is based on a belief of the importance of cultural stories and myth in shaping collective emotions. These shared emotions then can be seen as latent forces that can be shaped by those who seek power or those who have power. One of our main interests is the use and abuse of these cultural myths.
In this section of our site we particularly look at the Mythic History of Ireland. As we will see for most of Ireland’s past what really mattered to the people was their “Mythic History”. It is a very interesting story. Meanwhile do enjoy our Video which was put together with assistance from Professor Dáithi ÓhOgáin from UCD Folklore, Michael Barker-Caven, Creative Director of the Civic Theatre and Bill Felton, one of Ireland’s leading Creative Directors.
THE MYTHIC HISTORY OF IRELAND
Right up until the 19th Century, what mattered to the Irish, when they were to consider their origins and identity, was a compendium of Stories contained within their ‘great book’, their ‘myth of origins’, LEBOR GABÁLA ÉRENN (LGE), The Book of Invasions. For well over a millenium, LGE was extremely influential and it was accepted as canonical history by both poets and scholars. This book mattered!
Ireland’s legendary history was contained in a disparate collection of poems by a number of authors. In the late 11th Century an Irish Scholar pulled together these in to a unified account of the origins of Ireland and the Gaels. However, whatever these origin stories may have been they did not survive the arrival of Christianity in tact. The new religion had its own story of “origins” and the “true” creation of the world and this was the one to be found in the first few chapters of the Old Testament, the Genesis story of creation. Indeed LGE can be seen as having been written to bridge the gap between the Christian chronology and the native pre-history of Ireland.
Today scholars argue as to whether the Irish pre-history is an unmodified repository of Celtic Myth (De Jubainville) or that there are Biblical antecedants for virtually all the aspects of the system and world view (Kim McCone and others). At Bard we find ourselves persuaded by the Rees Brothers iconic book Celtic Heritage where there is an acknowledgement of the importance of Christian attitiudes and learning but that “the text’s underlying structure was in many respects governed by pre-Christian patterns of thought.”
Indeed there is so much that is ideologically so different from the Greco Roman linear, centralising world view. This is clearly pointed out in the Rees Brothers work and in other important books like philosopher, Richard Kearneys The Irish Mind. Here are the traces of a shamanic (Fintan and Tuan) and a goddess culture (Danu, Brigit etc) and the whole ideology of distributed power and the Cult of the Sacred Centre. The path of those that jumped on Noah’s Ark is very different from that taken by those that took the Arks created by Cesair after she realised in her rejection by grandfather Noah that she was one of the “not chosen people”.
