No myth without history and no history without myth

steddyeddy

I didnt take history in college but a professer at the univeristy used that term a lot. How true is is and are there any examples of stories once thought to have been myths but have been found to have truth in them?

The first one that springs to mind for me is the crucifixion of a canadian soldier often referred to as Canada's Golgotha which has since been found to have merit.

Any others you can think of?

slowburner

Great idea for a thread.
I can't think of any offhand, but St.Patrick sprang to mind.

CDfm

Is what you are asking about folklore that turned out to be true ???

slowburner

Which reminds me, isn't a myth a tale which has no basis in truth or history (the Celtic Tiger for example) - a legend, on the other hand, could possibly have a certain amount of historical fact as its origin (Cúchulainn)?

tac foley

steddyeddy wrote: »

I didnt take history in college but a professer at the univeristy used that term a lot. How true is is and are there any examples of stories once thought to have been myths but have been found to have truth in them?

The first one that springs to mind for me is the crucifixion of a canadian soldier often referred to as Canada's Golgotha which has since been found to have merit.

Any others you can think of?

That, Sir, is neither myth nor legend, but an allegation of a war crime - although the definition per se did not actually exist in WW1.

Strange though it may be, not a single one of my Canadian family who had been though WW1 and survived long enough to talk to me ever mentioned it. Perhaps it belongs in the same propaganda pile as that of the Germans bayonetting Belgian babies and eating nuns?

tac

CDfm

tac foley wrote: »

That, Sir, is neither myth nor legend, but an allegation of a war crime - although the definition per se did not actually exist in WW1.

Strange though it may be, not a single one of my Canadian family who had been though WW1 and survived long enough to talk to me ever mentioned it. Perhaps it belongs in the same propaganda pile as that of the Germans bayonetting Belgian babies and eating nuns?

tac

Would an example be Col Tim Laurence's speech.

http://journal.dajobe.org/journal/2003/03/collins/

In the newspapers it was reported that it was very uplifting and it was a great piece of prose and reported worldwide.

I have seen individual soldiers write that it mentioned death etc which spooked them.

So the myth is that the speech was inspiring but whether it was or not can only be verified by the facts of what individual soldiers thought .

St Brigid is a "legend" and there is debate as to whether she existed. So the stories that grew up around her are myths . She may be a composite.

St Patrick existed. There are accounts of his life etc. There are myths that grew out of the cult of St Patrick in the Middle Ages.

Of course a war crime allegation as Tac says is a different matter and in modern history we can usually check sources and facts.

The best example I can think of is General Custer and the Little Big Horn where the myth took over. The history has taken over again as historians have verified the facts and known accounts .

dubhthach

St. Brigid is probably a christianisation of the goddess Bríd (Brighid -- old Irish), You see the same with christianisation of wells dedicated to "St. Ann" in Munster. These are generally regarded as been connected to the goddess Áine.

CDfm

dubhthach wrote: »

St. Brigid is probably a christianisation of the goddess Bríd (Brighid -- old Irish), You see the same with christianisation of wells dedicated to "St. Ann" in Munster. These are generally regarded as been connected to the goddess Áine.

Very interesting . Can you explain this in a bit more detail.

Are the druids involved ?

The town of Youghal is Eochaill in Irish and translates as Yew Wood and everyone knows how the Druids were into their yew's .

slowburner

CDfm wrote: »

Very interesting . Can you explain this in a bit more detail.

Are the druids involved ?

The town of Youghal is Eochaill in Irish and translates as Yew Wood and everyone knows how the Druids were into their yew's .

Slight divergence here, but I've always had a fascination with Yew trees.
Is the fact that they are always planted in graveyards a throwback to the sighting of graveyards on earlier sites of significance - Iron/Bronze age or Neolithic?
The Yew has some interesting properties: the heart wood doesn't rot and is remarkably hard. It's flexibility made it the wood of choice for the infamous English longbow - without the Yew tree, England's history could have been quite different.
The wood burns like wax, and might be the origin of the Yule log. Yew is toxic to humans - animals might be capable of eating the berries (could be wrong on this, so don't feed Yew berries to your pet calf :eek:).
Recently, a drug in the fight against breast cancer has been extracted from the Yew (Taxol/Paclitaxel) - the Yew is from the genus Taxus, our native Yew is taxus baccata.

CDfm

I am wracking my brains here for Irish examples of something well circulated..

The "myth" of the Mayor of Galway hanging his son and sources emerging ?

steddyeddy

Sorry for my absense I had a tough weekend! My aim for this thread was to try and think of a few histortical events or peoples who were original thought to have been myths or legends but now have their place in historical fact to some degree.

Bannasidhe

Grace O Malley would be a prime example of the blurring between myth and history. Irish folklore is rich with stories of the 'Pirate Queen of Connacht', tales of her defiance of English rule inspired Pearse to rewrite Óró, Sé do Bheatha 'Bhaile - for example he changed the original Jacobean version from

'Sé mo léan géar nach bhfeicim
Mur mbéinn beo 'na dhiaidh ach seachtain
Séarlas Óg is míle gaiscidheach
Ag fógairt fáin ar Ghallaibh'

(Alas that I do not see
If I were alive afterwards only for a week
Young Charles and one thousand warriors
Banishing all the foreigners)

to

'Tá Gráinne Mhaol ag teacht thar sáile,
Óglaigh armtha léi mar gharda,
Gaeil iad féin is ní Gaill ná Spáinnigh,
Is cuirfidh siad ruaig ar Ghallaibh.'

(Gráinne O'Malley is coming over the sea,
Armed warriors along with her as her guard,
They are Gaels, not French nor Spanish...
And they will rout the foreigners!).

Anne Chambers continued the mythology but with a feminist twist making 'Grace' an exceptional woman who pushed the boundaries and stood up to sexism.

Recent scholarly research has unearthed a very different picture of a living breathing woman named Gráinne Ní Mháille who was not a queen of any description but the daughter of one of the Uí Máille sept chieftains ( never the chieftain of all the Ui Máille as the myth states), who married firstly an Uí Flaithbhertaigh Tánaiste and after his death a high ranking member of the Búrcs of Burrishoole whom she helped become the Mac Uilliam Íochtar in 1580.

Yes - she commanded a fleet of ships. She appears to have inherited these from her father. She also had undoubted sea faring skills - no doubt taught to her by her father. She was groomed to be a sea trader and pirate - unlike her half-brother Domhnaill Na Piopa (Westport House was built on the ruins of his tower house) who was better know for his ability as a musician.

Yes - she led men in 'battle' (more skirmishes really as there were few actual 'battles' at the time) - but so did her contemporaries Fionnuala Inion Dubh Nic Dhomhnaill and Agnes Campbell. The former is recorded as having swum out to a crannoig to slit the throats of about 9 men who had 'insulted' her...the latter used her considerable personal army to prevent the Tudors - spearheaded by their poster boy Hugh O Neill - getting a foothold in Ulster in the 1580s.

Yes - Ní Mháille came into conflict with Tudor administrators when they tried to take what she felt was her's or threatened her large extended family -specifically Richard Bingham. But she also allied with Tudor administrators when those who were threatening her family were Gaelic Irish - she allowed Conyers Clifford use of her fleet against Áodh Ruadh Ua Domhnaill in the late 1590s (Red Hugh was trying to exert control over Mayo) and allied with Nicholas Malby in the early 1580s during a succession fight among the Búrcs - her side won).

So from 1584-1595 she was in direct conflict with Richard Bingham and his policies in Connacht but she was pardoned by both Lord Deputy John Perrott and Elizabeth I for her activities and pledged the use of her fleet to Elizabeth in 1593. Hardly Gráinne Mhaol coming over the sea with her Gaels to fight the foreigners of the myth.

As for pushing the boundaries of what her gender could do - that is to apply an Anglo concept of what was fitting for a woman to a Gaelic world in which women could and did enjoy independent wealth, were often the main advisers to chieftains, were frequently the main negotiators on behalf of the clan, held the clan pursestrings and had a veto over any of her husband's decisions which would negatively impact on the Clan.
Tudor commentators such as Edmund Spenser were horrified by the 'freedom' allowed to Gaelic women - who routinely interrupted the menfolk's important talk with not just personal opinion but advice and expected to be listened to. Spenser didn't know which was worse, that the women were 'allowed' to do this or that the men not only actually listened but often followed the advice given.

Ní Mháille did not push against the boundaries of what women could and could not do in Gaelic Ireland - she fulfilled exactly the role assigned to the wife of a Chieftain. But in her case she had a personal source of income (trading and piracy) which was difficult for any outsider (be they English or Irish) to interfere with so the influence she was able to wield was out of the ordinary.

The myth of Gráinne Mhaol/Grace O Malley kept this redoubtable woman's name alive, but at a huge cost. The reality of Gráinne Ní Mháille was lost in the legend- it is now being uncovered.

The historical evidence suggests such a disconnect between the myth and the reality that at this point it is easier (and more accurate) to consider them to be 2 different people - 'Grace' - a fictional character whose story is very loosely based on 'Gráinne' - a woman of her time.

TG4 did an excellent documentary on her a few years ago where serious historians did some excellent myth busting but for the life of me I can't remember the name of the doco - even though I was one of the talking heads (I was the very un-serious historian )

tac foley

Very interesting stuff there, Sir.

And all so recent, historically speaking.

Now what about the age of heroes and our old pal Cúchulainn? Who might HE have been based on? and the Cattle raids of the Cooleys - did they actually happen at some time as a distinct event, or were the stories a conglomerate of older stories?

tac

Bannasidhe

tac foley wrote: »

Very interesting stuff there, Sir.

And all so recent, historically speaking.

Now what about the age of heroes and our old pal Cúchulainn? Who might HE have been based on? and the Cattle raids of the Cooleys - did they actually happen at some time as a distinct event, or were the stories a conglomerate of older stories?

tac

According to Donnchadh Ó Corráin The Cycles of which the Cú Chulainn tale is part of the Ulster Cycle are Heroic Myths similar to those of the Greek and Norse tales about their Gods.
Meab etc being Gods of a Gaelic pantheon - Cú Chulainn being a 'Herculean' type figure.
The tales were originally part of the oral tradition but were transcribed by monks who on the whole sought to preserve these important parts of Gaelic culture but also wished to Christianise them so inserted comments on sexual morality (Bad Meab!!!) and tweaked them a bit - not least removing any reference to them being Gods.
A careful reading of the Tain , for example, demonstrates that many scribes were involved in compiling the tales - some were content to leave them alone while others were compelled to editorialise according to Christian doctrine.

P. Breathnach

tac foley wrote: »

Very interesting stuff there, Sir....

You don't read enough of Bannasidhe's posts.

baalthor

slowburner wrote: »

. Yew is toxic to humans - animals might be capable of eating the berries (could be wrong on this, so don't feed Yew berries to your pet calf :eek:).

It IS very poisonous to animals - including cattle !

Fratton Fred

St Kevin throwing an amorous young lady to her death after rolling naked in stinging nettles is one that amuses me.

I presume there is dome truth there, but it has since been amended to suit the agenda of modern Christianity.

dubhthach

Bannasidhe wrote: »

According to Donnchadh Ó Corráin The Cycles of which the Cú Chulainn tale is part of the Ulster Cycle are Heroic Myths similar to those of the Greek and Norse tales about their Gods.
Meab etc being Gods of a Gaelic pantheon - Cú Chulainn being a 'Herculean' type figure.
The tales were originally part of the oral tradition but were transcribed by monks who on the whole sought to preserve these important parts of Gaelic culture but also wished to Christianise them so inserted comments on sexual morality (Bad Meab!!!) and tweaked them a bit - not least removing any reference to them being Gods.
A careful reading of the Tain , for example, demonstrates that many scribes were involved in compiling the tales - some were content to leave them alone while others were compelled to editorialise according to Christian doctrine.

Meḋḃ Lethderg (Meadhbh for those who can't do punc's) specifically was a sovereignty goddess with regards to Tara. Thence "Rath Maeve" which is bout 1km south of Tara.

Some have alluded that they represent a mytholgisation of a possible war between Ulster and the Connachta (specfically the ancestors of the Uí Néill). Given that Meḋḃ Lethderg is connected to Connachta kings there might be an allergorical usuage of the name in the Táin.

Emhain Mhaca was abandoned by the 1st century AD, the nearby site on Cathedral hill in Armagh had radiocarbon dating in it's ditch from the 2nd century AD. Of course they pseudo-history has it that the Ulaid were defeated by the three Colla's who are said to be ancestors of the Airghialla. These were given a false genealogy later connecting them with Connachta/Uí Néill by claiming they were descended from Cairbre Lifechair (son of Art Mac Cuinn -- grandson of Conn).

More then likely the nine hostages in Niall's title were from each of the nine tuatha of the Airghialla. Who more then likely were subject/military vassals who switch allegience from the Ulaid to the rising Uí Néill power in the 5th century.

dubhthach

CDfm wrote: »

Very interesting . Can you explain this in a bit more detail.

Are the druids involved ?

The town of Youghal is Eochaill in Irish and translates as Yew Wood and everyone knows how the Druids were into their yew's .

Well druids would be like hindu brahmin priests. An elite learned class who communed with the gods. Characters like Lugh, Nuadha, Brighid, Áine etc would be deities.

CDfm

dubhthach wrote: »

Well druids would be like hindu brahmin priests. An elite learned class who communed with the gods. Characters like Lugh, Nuadha, Brighid, Áine etc would be deities.

Here is a site covering both traditions.

http://www.brighid.org.uk/index.html

steddyeddy

I thought there was found to be some truth in the crucifed soldier? I saw a documentary (I forget the name unfortunatly) which Identified the soldier through a letter wrote by a nurse detail her treatment of a man who had been crucified.

CDfm

steddyeddy wrote: »

I thought there was found to be some truth in the crucifed soldier? I saw a documentary (I forget the name unfortunatly) which Identified the soldier through a letter wrote by a nurse detail her treatment of a man who had been crucified.

Check out the POW thread . I read something on a link and here.

In March 1943, Fusilier Timothy Kenneally, from Bishopstown, and Private Patrick Fitzgerald, from Kilmeadon, broke out of their work camp, along with Sergeant Francis Joseph Kelly, and Sergeant Edward Reay from England.
Around two weeks later they were recaptured after being betrayed by Thais supposedly guiding them. The four soldiers were taken back to their POW camp, interrogated, tortured, and then taken away to be executed. Witnesses later saw the men being led away from camp by three Japanese officers and thirty-two Korean guards.
No one, except the executioners, witnessed the actual moment of death. Japanese documentation claims that the four men were shot whilst trying to escape. A more compelling account was given by another POW, Sergeant Priestman, who was one of a work detail sent from the main camp about an hour after the execution.
Sergeant Priestman did not use the words crucifixion when he later gave evidence for a post-war war crimes tribunal. But perhaps his description speaks for itself.
“In the undergrowth nearby we found three bamboo crosses, about seven feet by four feet. We also saw another bamboo cross jutting out of the ground. We uncovered it and found the dead body of a British soldier, tied to the cross with his arms outstretched.”


http://irishecho.com/?p=70250

To be history rather than journalism you would need to check the sources.

Reekwind

Surprised that no one has yet mentioned Troy. Schliemann's discovery is almost certainly the best known international case of myth turning out to be history

MarchDub

steddyeddy wrote: »

I didnt take history in college but a professer at the univeristy used that term a lot. How true is is and are there any examples of stories once thought to have been myths but have been found to have truth in them?

The first one that springs to mind for me is the crucifixion of a canadian soldier often referred to as Canada's Golgotha which has since been found to have merit.

Any others you can think of?

This is a really good question for many reasons. One of the important aspects of studying history is to know the sources - in other words, why were the sources written? by whom? when? for what reason? etc.

Many so called 'myths' that get overturned originate in what look like original source material but are in fact propaganda written to give a particular slant to an event. It's frequently only when other sources - sometimes contradictory ones - come to light that the myth is exposed.

Likewise some truths get passed off as myth because there is insufficient evidence - until source material is found that can support the story.

St Patrick is a good example of both - we have original source material on him but there is also propaganda written that embellishes his life. Knowing the difference gives us the real life - as far as is possible to determine - on Patrick.

slowburner

I wonder if genetic research has indicated anything, one way or the other, about the first Irish settlers originating in Phoenicia.

Enkidu

slowburner wrote: »

I wonder if genetic research has indicated anything, one way or the other, about the first Irish settlers originating in Phoenicia.

Irish interaction with Carthage and the rest of Phoenician society is still debated. They certainly traded up around this end of the world, so the people present in Ireland at the time certainly traded with them. There is some theories about their influence on the Irish language, but most likely this amounted to a few borrowings and nothing else.

Enkidu

Bannasidhe wrote: »

According to Donnchadh Ó Corráin The Cycles of which the Cú Chulainn tale is part of the Ulster Cycle are Heroic Myths similar to those of the Greek and Norse tales about their Gods.

I think this would be expected due to their common Indo-European heritage. The Táin is very similar to the Prose Eddas (Snorra Edda), the Iliad and the Rig Vedas. They're all Indo-European oral heroic literature, emphasising the same underlying themes. Not only that but there are linguistic formula present in all of them (Different characters which fulfil the same archetypes in each myth are described in the exact same way.)

Snickers Man

I think the professor quoted in the OP might have been talking more about the way a particular interest group, be it a country, an ethnic group, a section of society or any other group of "like minded people" interprets events from history in a way that suits their point of view, rather than any apocryphal story that attains legendary status.

Considering World War One, for example, was he talking about the "Angel of Mons" legend, or the superstition that the war would not end until a damaged statue (in Ypres I think) finally toppled, which it did in 1918?

Or was he talking about the way the history of it has become mythologised so that it was "the war to end wars" or "to make the world safe for democracry" or that its purpose was to "come to the aid of small nations".

All of these build on selective facts about the time but are manipulated and edited to support a particular outlook.

Other myths might be the way the Australians and New Zealanders view the history of Gallipoli. Only a couple of weeks ago, in Dublin, the Australian ambassador talked about the importance of Gallipoli in the development of New Zealand national consciousness. It was, he said “now viewed as a defining moment in the development of nationhood in Australia and New Zealand”.

A more caustic reading of the record might conclude that the ANZACs originally volunteered for service precisely because they were British as opposed to being representatives of their "own" countries. The subsequent interpretation of that campaign as a great national awakening is a product of the imagination as much as an inference from the facts.

It differs greatly from the Irish consensus view of Gallipoli. It's just another event in our subservient past for us. Even though there were almost certainly more Irishmen killed at Gallipoli than New Zealanders.

Some nowadays level the accusation that subsequent generations of Irish people have "written these men out of history" but that's simply not true.

We just haven't written them INTO a national myth.

And that's not the same thing at all.

CDfm

I wonder if our consciousness was influenced by folk music which nowdays is not a popular media. Eric Bogle's Green Field's of France springs to mind.

steddyeddy

Snickers Man wrote: »

I think the professor quoted in the OP might have been talking more about the way a particular interest group, be it a country, an ethnic group, a section of society or any other group of "like minded people" interprets events from history in a way that suits their point of view, rather than any apocryphal story that attains legendary status.

Considering World War One, for example, was he talking about the "Angel of Mons" legend, or the superstition that the war would not end until a damaged statue (in Ypres I think) finally toppled, which it did in 1918?

Or was he talking about the way the history of it has become mythologised so that it was "the war to end wars" or "to make the world safe for democracry" or that its purpose was to "come to the aid of small nations".

All of these build on selective facts about the time but are manipulated and edited to support a particular outlook.

Other myths might be the way the Australians and New Zealanders view the history of Gallipoli. Only a couple of weeks ago, in Dublin, the Australian ambassador talked about the importance of Gallipoli in the development of New Zealand national consciousness. It was, he said “now viewed as a defining moment in the development of nationhood in Australia and New Zealand”.

A more caustic reading of the record might conclude that the ANZACs originally volunteered for service precisely because they were British as opposed to being representatives of their "own" countries. The subsequent interpretation of that campaign as a great national awakening is a product of the imagination as much as an inference from the facts.

It differs greatly from the Irish consensus view of Gallipoli. It's just another event in our subservient past for us. Even though there were almost certainly more Irishmen killed at Gallipoli than New Zealanders.

Some nowadays level the accusation that subsequent generations of Irish people have "written these men out of history" but that's simply not true.

We just haven't written them INTO a national myth.

And that's not the same thing at all.

Hey sorry for the late reply. The lecturer was actually talking to the resident zoologist talking about animals represented in myth that were later found out to have existed. Like the panda and the komodo dragon. He then used references in history like the crucified soldier in ww1 and how some scholars think it may have a basis in reality.

slowburner

Enkidu wrote: »

I think this would be expected due to their common Indo-European heritage. The Táin is very similar to the Prose Eddas (Snorra Edda), the Iliad and the Rig Vedas. They're all Indo-European oral heroic literature, emphasising the same underlying themes. Not only that but there are linguistic formula present in all of them (Different characters which fulfil the same archetypes in each myth are described in the exact same way.)

Isn't there a common theme about tasting the flesh of a particular animal, and being transformed as a consequence?
For Cúchulainn it was the breadán feasa and for the Vikings, it was (I think) the salmon eating otter.