Bard Mythologies:
The Bardic Tradition, The Story of the Stories
These briefing notes are intended to be an aide to participants on
Nine Waves VIII: The Bardic Tradition, the Story of the Stories
Briefing Note 1
About Cultural Myths
The Bard Mythologies methodology is based on belief in the primacy of story, especially the cultural myths that are/were passed on from generation to generation. In this regard, we, as humans, can be viewed as narratively constructed. We have within us an internalised compendium of stories that we have heard since before we can even read and write. These stories are also the stories through which we do learn to read and write. We have heard many of them over and over, and, importantly, we don’t tire of them. In part this is because they take us on an emotional journey that leaves us feeling secure, proud, brave, loved etc., when we might have feltabandoned, hurt, shamed, frightened, or lonely.
It is the starting point of these eight weeks that these cultural stories are very important, and particularly so as a means of understanding culture and history/herstory. We call them mythographics and those of a particular country, cultural mythographics. Within these stories are a subset that relate to the creation stories of the culture. These answer the important questions of: Who are we? Where did we come from? And why are we the way we are? These are cultural creation myths, and also a means by which we understand the world, make sense of the world, create meaning and shape our identities.
What we have found through working with these stories on the Bard over the last decades is that these cultural myths have an uncanny sense of familiarity, even if the listener has not actually heard the story. In short, they feel that they are my story, they are my culture’s stories. And what is more is that they are a powerful way to get an understanding of the culture and especially the myths that shape the culture.
The great Canadian media commentator Marshall McLuhan used to say that “the one thing about which the fish knows exactly nothing is water”. He was talking about culture.
The really important point is that if a culture does not know its own myths, the culture will tend to be like the fish, knowing exactly nothing. And if these stories, these cultural mythographics are a central means by which we understand, shape meaning and identity, and our knowledge of them is scanty or absent, the danger is that we are unconscious to many of the forces that shape us. In short, the myths can have us. They can influence us, pull our strings, but not in a way that we have agency. The challenge then is to “know the myths you live by”and to “choose the myths you live by”. This understanding of the role of cultural myths, and specifically Irish cultural myths, is a central task of the Bard Mythologies project and journey.
The cultural myths we begin to look at are those that speak to how it all got started, the creation myths. What we will learn is that in the great book that tells of these matters, Lebor Gabála Erenn, the Book of Invasions, we have two very different mythologies: one Native, and the other Universal, sitting side by side. It means that we can know the “myths we live by”, know the water we swim around in. The fish does not know the water, as McLuhan puts it, “since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in”. The promise of the first evening of the Story of the Stories is that we can, as participants, know the water (culture) because of two myths of creation, juxtaposed, one the anti-environment of the other! And that gives us choices: it gives us agency.
Briefing Note 2
About Mythic History
One other important aspect of this 8 week journey is that we are adopting what we are calling a Mythic History approach. This approach to history is built on an understanding of the past as being shaped more by emotion, and deep emotion, than any of the facts of history. This is based on the experience of working with Bard with story and myth over the years. It is also confirmed by recent discoveries in fields such as neuroscience, decision science and behavioural economics. Of particular importance here are the findings that we as humans “feel before we think” and that “you can’t change feelings with facts”. And building on these observations, the best way to understand these feelings is the cultural myths that do most to address these feelings. Myth can be seen as a ‘language of the emotions’ but especially those emotions that are most central in shaping our behaviour, values and world view.
So a Mythic History looks at the past through the lens of the cultural myths that were so core to shaping the perceptions of the collective. In doing so it is looking at the past through the ‘big emotions’, those that are felt viscerally, like fear or terror, shame and guilt, envy and hatred, sadness and anger, joy and pride.
This approach has some affinity with the Annales School. This French School of History stresses the importance of taking into account all levels of society and not just the winners, and also of addressing what is called ‘mentalité’ which means the ideas, values and beliefs widely shared by a community or culture. The Annales School draws heavily on cultural data, censuses, marriages, births/deaths etc. The Bard’s Mythic History focuses more on the cultural mythographics and how they change in subtle ways over time. This is an excellent way of getting an insight into the emotions of a culture. The promise of this approach is that it will help uncover patterns of culture. Mythic stories, by their nature, help uncover these patterns.
f Fantasia. It is the faculty that allows us to access knowledge that goes beyond
the simple report of facts. Thanks to the imagination, we can enter the order of meanings that connects
the signs with the meanings of each culture. This understanding is not to be understood as a
description from a detached and objective point, but it is an understanding that is similar to
identification. Vico’s fantasia is indispensable to his conception of historical knowledge; it is unlike
the knowledge that Julius Caesar is dead, or that Rome was not built in a day, or that thirteen i
f Fantasia. It is the faculty that allows us to access knowledge that goes beyond
the simple report of facts. Thanks to the imagination, we can enter the order of meanings that connects
the signs with the meanings of each culture. This understanding is not to be understood as a
description from a detached and objective point, but it is an understanding that is similar to
identification. Vico’s fantasia is indispensable to his conception of historical knowledge; it is unlike
the knowledge that Julius Caesar is dead, or that Rome was not built in a day, or that thirteen i
Fantasia. It is the faculty that allows us to access knowledge that goes beyond
the simple report of facts. Thanks to the imagination, we can enter the order of meanings that connects
the signs with the meanings of each culture. This understanding is not to be understood as a
description from a detached and objective point, but it is an understanding that is similar to
identification. Vico’s fantasia is indispensable to his conception of historical knowledge; it is unlike
the knowledge that Julius Caesar is dead, or that Rome was not built in a day, or that thirteen is a
prime number, or that a week has seven days; nor yet is it like kno
This approach to Mythic History also is influenced by the thinking of Giambattista Vico, the Italian philosopher and historian, and his epic work The New Science. It was Vico who asserted that ‘the first science to be learned should be mythology or the interpretation of fables”. Of particular interest is his concept of‘fantasia’. Vico was interested in the experience not of individuals but of entire societies.
These societies could be understood through a collective self-awareness that was shaped by the shared
myths, ceremonies and images of the culture. He argued that it was possible to enter the world of the ancients through the application of the imagination, fantasia. Original thought, Vico suggested, was mythopoetic in nature. And it could, with effort, be understood. It is suggested then that the different phases of Irish History/Herstory can be similarly understood with the application of fantasia.
The Bardic Tradition – The Story of the Stories will be working with a Mythic History approach. It will be ambitious in endeavouring to cover a lot of ground – some five millennia. It will be multi-perspectival in looking at the past through the lens of different levels of society and culture. It will be relational in the sense of exploring the related history of the English and its huge significance on Irish History/Herstory. It will also be a co-created experience. The Bard Team and all the participants have an important role to play in building a shared picture of the role of the Bardic Tradition over the millennia.
Briefing Note 3
The Foundation Stories of the Irish
We learn from the great Celtic scholars Alwyn and Brinley Rees that the ‘Celtic Tradition has preserved no native stories of the creation and the world and of man’. (Celtic Heritage p95). There is no story, like in Babylonian Myth, of the coming together of male sweet water Apsu and salty water Tiamat to create a family of gods who became unruly, so much so that Apsu resolved to kill them. They hear about it and kill him. The furious Tiamat creates an army of monsters, dragons, demons and serpents in a vengeance quest. It is the many-eyed, strong man Marduk who cuts the goddess up to create the world. In Nordic Myth it is the coming of the elemental fire, Muspelheim, with elemental ice, Niflheim to fill the void Ginnungagap to create Ymir: godlike and destructive, but still able to reproduce asexually. In Hebrew Myth, it is God who creates the world in six days. There is no such story for the Irish.
There is, however, a Native Tradition that tells of the five peoples who took Ireland before the arrival of the Celts or the Gaels. These are the five invasions of Ireland that are outlined in Lebor Gabála Érenn (LGE), The Book of Invasions. This outlines the stories of Ceasair, Partholón, Nemed, Fir Bolg, and the Tuatha Dé Danann. This native tradition has been an important focus of Bard Mythologies over the years. What is discernible from these tellings is a body of stories with a coherent world view, with recognisable elements of shamanic and goddess cultures, and with archetypal inhabitants, distinctive features to which Bard participants respond very favourably: that this feels right, this feels Irish.
Most significant of the elements from the native body of “in the beginning” stories are:- the essentially feminine nature (Ceasair and the Mothers, The Tuatha de Danann, the triple goddess Eriu, Banba and Fodhla, the judgement around Delgnat)- the relationship of humans to each other, to the animal world (shape-shifting), and to nature- the distributed power system (Settling of the Manor of Tara) and the qualities of each province- The idea of the Sacred Centre (Tara and Uisneach)- The image of the kidney (balancing function in the body) as symbol for the centre- The precarious nature of wo/man’s relationship with the cosmos (floods, plagues, wars etc.)
What happened to this native body of stories, as the Rees Brothers point out, when the new Christian faith arrived was the “severing of the stem of the native tradition….And grafting it on to the Christian roots”. The new religion had its own myth of origin to put forward. There was a need to place the Irish within the universal system that was at the core of Greco-Roman historiography and it was based on biblical authority. In this systemthe creation of the world and of man was that contained in the first chapters of the book of Genesis in the Old Testament. This meant placing the Irish among the stories of God’s creation of the world, Adam and Eve in the Garden, Noah and the Flood, and importantly the Dispersal of the Nations.
The Dispersal was after the flood when the instruction from God to populate the world had been ignored and instead man decided to build a city and a huge tower, the Tower of Babel. God sees them united and speaking the same language and rebellious. Unhappy, he scatters them to the four corners of the world –
a strategy of divide and rule!
The LGE then, is a laborious attempt (Rees Brothers) at national myth making. Christian scholars at the start of the 7th Century grafted Hebrew Mythology on to the Native Tradition. When we hear these two bodies of stories together as we do at the Bard events, it is very clear just how different these two Mythologies are. This early work of ethno-genesis then evolved in to a number of poems by various authors that were brought together by an Irish scholar late in the 11th century. It is this text that came down to us as LGE.
However, there was a problem. There were no Irish at the Tower of Babel. The solution, through a bit of medieval legend-building, was one Fénius Farsaid, a legendary King of Scythia. He travelled to the Tower with his son Net, but found the speakers had dispersed. Net was trained in many languages and had with him scholars who were sent out to 72 nations. When they returned they crafted out of these languages the “language of the Gael”. The world now had four alphabets: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and the newly created Ogham. The Irish then were the first to make a language of their own. And as the scholar Donnchadh Ó Corráin put it, “the Irish were the first Europeans”.
A Comparison of the Two Mythologies
In Bard Mythologies we have told the stories of the two Mythologies in the same program. Here are some of the key differences that emerged in the discussions that followed the tellings:
Comparing the Two Foundation Mythologies in Lebor Gabála
Highlighting just how different are the two mythologies grafted together in LGE
| NATIVE MYTHOLOGYKey characteristics, values, beliefs | UNIVERSAL MYTHOLOGYKey characteristics, values, beliefs | |
| The Divine | Gods and Goddess | Monotheistic God |
| The Elements | Air and Water | Fire and Earth |
| The Gender (dominant) | Feminine | Masculine |
| The Gender(Qualities) | Wise MenStrong Women | Strong MenPassive Women |
| The Gift(of the divine) | Perception- Silver Branch | Guidance- 10 Commandments |
| The Style of Justice | Restorative | Retributive |
| The Organization | Distributed Power | Hierarchical |
| The Emotions | Fear and Respect | Terror and Awe |
| The Centre’s Role | Balance and Coordination | Control and Consolidation |
Briefing Note 4
Applied Mythology: Fantasia and Mythic History
Two founding figures of the field of history are rooted in the world of fifth century BC Athens. They are Herodotus, who was described by Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero as the father of history, and Thucydides, who is seen as the father of scientific history. Their respective works, Histories and the History of the Peloponnesian War, are seen as iconic in the field. What is relevant here is to gain a brief insight into their historical method.
Herodotus saw his task as the systematic investigation into historical events – to report what he saw and what he was told. He did however include legends and fanciful accounts. Thucydides stressed applying strict standardsof research, impartiality, and the gathering of evidence. He was particularly interested in the analysis of cause and effect, and has been described as a political realist who saw political behaviour as motivated by both fear and self-interest. Thucydides was explicit in not including matters that concerned the intervention of the deities, the Greek gods and goddesses. Clearly, what both men were doing was seeking to establish a rational and objective approach at the heart of their historical method – a foundational approach to history then and since.
Moving forward some two millennia we can see that the primacy of this rational approach was still central to that important intellectual movement that was the Enlightenment, and specifically the French Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Here the hope and belief was that the rational methods that had been applied so successfully in mathematics and the natural sciences could be applied not only in history, but as a way of addressing the moral, social, political and economic problems of humankind.
One of the central hopes of the Enlightenment had to do with the subject of myth – the issue being that the matter of addressing mankind’s problems had, as Isiah Berlin put it, became “bedevilled by ignorance and error, superstition and prejudice, much of it deliberately spread by priests, princes, and ruling classes, bureaucrats…who disseminated falsehoods as a means of keeping men obedient to their will”. One key task of the Enlightenment project then was the de-bunking of myths, or what might be called de-mythologising. As that spokesperson of the Enlightenment Voltaire put it, “we must avoid the absurdities of religion and the ravings of idiots and savages”.
At the same time there were, at the margins of mainstream thought, a number of voices who had a very different approach to the myths and legends of culture. Note that the two meanings of the word myth, nonsense and wisdom, were beginning to take shape. One of the most notable of these was the German poet and cultural critic, J.G. Herder. In particular he was strongly against any claims of timeless rationality, be it human values (e.g. liberty, fraternity, equality), Roman Law, or the Code Napoleon. Rather he asserted the richness and uniqueness of culture and cultural institutions. He was against uniformity and universality.
Taking this thinking further was the eighteenth century Italian thinker, Giambattista Vico. He too believed in what we might now call cultural pluralism in that each culture has its own unique vision, values and beliefs. But for our purposes what is particularly important is Vico’s method as outlined in his main work, The New Science. He argued that to understand the world of the Ancients it was necessary to respect their myth and metaphors, their rituals and symbols. These myths then were the key, but in addition he called for us to endeavour to descend into the minds of the Ancients with an act of the imagination. He called this Fantasia. He was particularly interested in the experiences not just of individuals but of whole societies and of collective self-awareness. The common compendium of stories shared in a culture was vital in this act of historical imagining.
Vico was opening up what we might call Cultural History, or perhaps Social Anthropology – the raw material, the sources as it were, being the decoding of myth and legend, rituals and ceremonies, images and symbols and even laws and other institutions. History can be the accumulation of facts and statistics, but it can also be an altogether more imaginative project.
The Bard Mythologies Mythic History method and focus builds on these foundations of Vico and Herder. It will also be informed by discoveries from fields such as neuroscience, decision science etc.
Briefing Note 5
Styles of Rhetoric and St. Patrick
Last week we looked at the Foundation Stories of the Irish as outlined in Lebor Gabála Érenn (LGE). The exploration highlighted that there were actually two mythological traditions in these texts: the Native and the Universal. We learned that the Native Tradition had been “cut off at the stem” (Rees Brothers) and the Universal Myth of Genesis 1 to 10 had been superimposed on the older tradition. The discussion and subsequent analysis highlighted that these were two very different mythologies and world views.
It is now proposed to look at another different but strongly related matter which has to do with rhetoric, the art of persuasion. Of particular interest will be the matter of Ireland’s “conversion” to Christianity by St. Patrick, given that he did not have the support of the Roman Army to help him in his task. How was he successful?
What we know is that Roman culture had a huge influence on European culture as the Roman Empire grew steadily from the early conquests of Julius Caesar in 58 – 51 BCE. Within the Roman civic practices, Greco-Roman rhetoric was a core component of the education program that was taught to anyone who was to play a key role in the government, military or church.
What we also know is that the Roman armies never reached Ireland. Patrick was a missionary, one of the very few to take Christianity beyond the Roman world and its influence. And even after the Irish conversion, the Celtic Church was largely autonomous and run independently from the Church of Rome. The Irish/Celtic religious rituals, cultural practices, mythologies and indeed educational practices were left intact (see briefing Note 6 – Bardic Schools). One thing scholars do agree on is that during this first millennia Irish culture was left largely alone, and as a result has a relatively continuous history.
What was Greco-Roman rhetoric? The best reference in modern parlance would be the kind of argument a barrister, politician or academic might put together. The setting would typically be a law court or a political chamber. The apprenticeship might be a debating society at a university. The underlying assumption is that people are persuaded by the logic of the argument and that the better argument wins the day. Let’s call this blue rhetoric. It is a skill anyone who has studied to third level or beyond has had to learn and apply.
Ancient and medieval Ireland had a very different approach to rhetoric and the task of persuading what were largely small agricultural villages/tribes run by local kings. Their rhetoric was narrative-based. It was no surprise given that they were an oral culture that only had writing when it was introduced by the monks. These narratives (myths and legends and other stories) guided how they conducted their civil affairs, kept alive what mattered to them culturally, and educated their young and their future leaders. Let’s call this red rhetoric.
At the core of this style of rhetoric is an important term: identification (Burke – A Rhetoric of Motives). It is the ability of a storyteller, a myth teller, to leave the listener feeling s/he understands me, they get what I am feeling, I identify with them and with their story. The natural effect is that this style of storytelling builds cohesion among the group, unites teller and listener in a strong emotional bond. When a body of mythic stories is shared among a population it can be the cultural glue that unites a people – India with its Brahmin class and the compendium of stories that is Hinduism is a good modern example. Ancient Ireland with its Bardic class was very similar.
Moving on to Patrick and his influence on the Irish world of the fifth century. Patrick was a captive from an Irish raid at age 15, after which he was sold into slavery. His grandfather was a priest and his father a local magistrate and church deacon. Someone with that privileged background would have certainly been trained in the skills of Greco-Roman rhetoric. But while tending sheep in Ireland, he is very likely to have been steeped in a very different rhetorical tradition: that of the oral telling of the cultures, myths and legends. He completely missed the classical rhetorical training.
We see that this left him feeling inadequate. In his confessions he begins by stating “I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated”, and his letters, “I Patrick, a sinner, very badly educated”. In his writings he constantly refers to his lack of education. It seems to have been an obsession.
What this apparent ‘lack’ would have done is make him extremely well-equipped for his ‘conversion of the Irish’ task. He could ‘identify’ with the Irish. He would have known them, known their inner emotional world, their pains and sufferings and their joys. And importantly, he would have known their compendium of myths, their mythographics, and what is likely, they could identify with him.
He would also have known the common ground between the stories and symbols of his Christian mythology and the Irish’s. Likely he would have had a sense of what he could go with and what not to touch. Getting it wrong might well have got him killed!
In short, we can suggest that the reason Patrick was successful was precisely because he was so badly educated in the Greco-Roman blue rhetoric sense and so well educated in the Ancient Irish red rhetoric sense. But maybe this is fantasia at work (see briefing note 4). It seems a number of extremely successful politicians of the 21stcentury have also travelled the Patrick path. Some are truly masters of the arts of red rhetoric!
Rhetoric: Indo-European and Greco-Roman
| Irish / Indo European | Greco Roman | |
| Civic | Tribal Community | Institutional Bureaucracy |
| Education | Polymath | Specialist |
| Political | Decentralised andConcept of Unity / Fifth Province | Centralised and Democratic |
| Focus | Truth (Shared) | Truth (Precision) |
| Method | Narrative and Storytelling“Identification” | Deliberation and Forensic“Argumentation” |
| History | Mythological | Chronological |
| Style | Intimate and Subjective | Detached and Objective |
| Culture | Community / Tribal | Fragmented and Individualistic |
| Delivery | Oral (Story and Symbol) | Written (Text and Numbers) |
| Key Profession | Druid / Fili / King | Politician / Warrior |
| Gods | Polytheistic | Monotheistic |
| Logic | Inductive | Deductive |
| Preference | Concrete and Specific | Abstract and Generalised |
| Leadership | Charismatic, Just and Generous | Efficient and Professional |
| Priority | Pathos – Kairos – Ethos – Logos | Logos – Ethos – Pathos – Kairos |
Briefing Note 6
Bardic Schools and Ancient Irish Rhetoric
“The art of storytelling is coming to an end”, the great German cultural critic Walter Benjamin once said,“because the epic side of truth, wisdom is dying out”. At the height of the Enlightenment, scholars described mythology as a ‘disease of language’, as ‘primitive science’. Even Sir James Frazer, he of The Golden Bough,described the field as a ‘worthless’ subject and ‘the melancholy record of human error and folly’. The ancient Irish thought very differently. These myths and legends were absolutely at the heart of their culture, their education, their world.
What we do know is that the ‘nature of Irish storytelling before the 12th century remains obscure’ (Zimmerman – The Irish Storyteller, p16). What this surely means is that there is a place for some of Vico’s Fantasia. We must use our imagination, our own related experiences of storytelling, comparative data, and relevant facts to piece together a picture.
What we know from scholars is that the poet was not the eccentric outsider but rather ‘members of a privileged order within the learned class’, and that ‘their profession was largely hereditary, their apprenticeship was both long and arduous, and an essential part consisted in learning hundreds of tales to narrate them to kings’. (Rees Brothers – Celtic Heritage p 16). From Zimmerman’s work (The Irish Storyteller) we learn that ‘a future fili had to undergo a long rigorous course of training in the required skills: up to twelve years for the highest rank. He has to learn many tales… the conventional number was said to be seven times fifty’. (Zimmerman p 34). Clearly very significant educational effort was focused on the development of a highly valued professional class and competence. We also know Irish learning included many elements of Classical cultures, and the Irish priests and monks were to introduce many elements of the European intellectual tradition to Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire.
In addition we learn that these stories were told at all the key seasonal festivals: Imbolg, Bealtaine, Lughnasa and Samhain. They were told at assemblies, feasts, courts of law and on the eve of battle. But they also were a big part of domestic and community rituals, wedding nights, funerals, wakes, warming a new house, bringing out ale, and sporting occasions such as setting out on a hunt. And if an individual or community were to set out on a voyage, that too was a time for storytelling.
And the Bard/Fifi would select the story for the occasion. The stories were classified not in terms of cycles but in terms of subject headings: Cattle Raids (Tana), Courtships (Tochmarch), Adventures (Echtrai), Voyages (Immram), Destructions (Togla), Elopements (Aithid).
We know from many of the myths that the central role of storytelling is the education/initiation of the character or indeed the tribe. To join the Fianna was to be successful in many tests and trials but also, importantly, to learn twelve books of poetry. Fionn is a warrior but also strongly associated with wisdom – the Salmon of Knowledge. The education set up by Brigit was long and arduous as well – said to last for three decades. One of triple goddess Brigit’s core skills was poetry, along with craftsmanship and healing.
Each of the three greater gods of the Tuatha de Danann has association with the poetic kind of rhetoric. The Daghda was particularly accomplished as a poet and with the harp, a king of musical storytelling. He was able to evoke all manner of emotion. Lugh the Samildánach, the all-rounder, clearly included poetry and music in his repertoire. And Ogma, about whom we know little, was a god of ‘eloquence, poetry and rhetoric (Scherman – Flowering of Ireland p 34). Satirist Lucian of Samosata tells of Ogma as ‘drawing a willing crowd of people, fastened to him by slender golden chains, the ends of which pass through his tongue’ (Scherman – p 35).
We will, at a later time in the Story of the Stories program, address the secular Bardic Schools associated with the Gaelic Nobility, which were to play a very significant role in the 13th to 18th centuries before the eventual demise of the Gaelic order. What was clear was that the Bards came to be seen as a threat and as agents for disturbance as we move forward to the times of the Tudor Conquest.
For now what we can focus on is the apparent respect there seems to have been between Pagan and Christian worlds. Acallam na Senórach, the Colloquy of the Ancients, tells of the meeting of Patrick with survivors of the previous pagan world, notably Fionn MacCumhaill’s sons, Oisín and Caílte. Patrick praises Caílte’s narrative skills: ‘victory and blessing wait on Caílte for thy stories and thyself are very dear to us and where is Broccánthe Scribe. Here holy cleric be that tale within by thee’. Perhaps under the influence of Patrick, spiritual and temporal authorities were well-disposed towards the storyteller.
We can then reflect (Fantasia) on the hugely significant role Irish culture played in the period following the fall of the Roman Empire in 476. Was the Irish influence in part connected to a culture that acquired scholarship and a highly respected education system, but had still not lost its connection with an older rhetoric, its own indigenous mythic tradition, its mastery of red rhetoric?
It is surely time to reconnect with the Bardic tradition, in no small part because many of its contemporary masters are tyrants, dictators and autocrats. These skills can be used and abused.
