Our oldest stories are myths, usually creation stories of some sort. Myths relied on natural symbols to express ideas difficult to prove.
To go one step further, the purpose of religious liturgy is to allow people to share a common story by actually reliving it together. Religions develop a liturgy for this purpose, to relive the religious story in order to keep the memory of it alive in the present.
History, high story, is another thing: an interpretation of our past, selectively remembered events and people, whose story is told for effect, to share an experience in memory which we did not share in fact. What effect, is up to the historian. It depends on what the historian wants you to experience. That is the magic of high story. It allows people to share a common past without actually having lived it.
THIS WEBSITE concentrates on the central moral problem of the medieval period, using stories from northern Europe and the British isles. The theme of this site? To be simple, it is the contrast between good (efforts to cultivate a civilised world) and evil (efforts to control through violence), which is no different from the central problem of our own time.
The power of the state must be upheld because it alone suppresses the power of the gangster, the natural born killer, attack from without.
However, the warriors, the police, those who live by the sword, are a living arsenal which once unleashed will take off in unpredictable directions. Any strong state leadership is capable of inflicting great horrors upon people through the sloppy application of military orders. And yet, a very weak state leadership is incapable of controlling military orders at all, which is always dangerous for the public, armed or not.
If there is a shred of hope for a civil resolution to a great threat, most of us will cling to that hope to the bitter end rather than turn outlaw. Which is why most of us love the idea of civilised behavior and work towards learning and cultivating a civil society. Certainly the people of medieval Europe for the most part worked very hard at participating in the creation of a Christian culture which promised for them a universal community of peace and kindness. They never quite pulled it off, but we have inherited from them the hope of a better world.......
Writing
High Story
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I. And so can any man.But will they come for you when you do?
This dialogue written by William Shakespeare in the late 1500's highlights the gulf between our wish to command the forces of nature, and silent nature's disregard.
Perhaps the presence of shaman and charlatan in all societies, subsistence and industrial, points to the popularity of Glendower's optimistic world view. Nevertheless, the wisdom of experience will back Hotspur, particularly when the issue is put to the test.
Without the benefit of a direct revelation from God, people find their own way of explaining life's mysteries to each other. Expressing the hope and meaning of life takes many forms, but it always depends on lending your own voice to dumb nature, and to speak for her, letting our wisdom stand for us as nature's own.
As an example, found in the Hebrew book of Genesis is the story of the garden of Eden. It is borrowed from the earlier mesopotamian Gilgamesh Epic, in which a man and his wife are the only two people on earth, and they live in a paradise of delight at the mouth of two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.
Genesis incorporates this myth in a modified form to present its own vision that man is doomed to death as a result of his rebellion against God. Adam and Eve, whether they are seen as historic figures or as symbolic figures representing man and woman as created by God, are tempted to "be like God"; by eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and in choosing to disobey God's will for them they discover personal guilt, and hide from God.
Myths are stories which interpret the universe, and infuse it with personal meaning. That is the purpose of myth.
And now for something completely interesting...
Click here to view Simon Schama discussing
Neolithic Britain
(from the BBC series "A History of Britain")
Real people, real stories and clips from your favourite BBC History programmes.
