Balder Ex-Libris

Author : Ashe Geoffrey
Title : Mythology of the British Isles
Year : 1990

Link download : Ashe_Geoffrey_-_Mythology_of_the_British_Isles.zip

Preface. This book follows the arrangement admirably devised by Robert Graves for his Greek Myths and Hebrew Myths. Each section deals with its topic first as presented in legend or story-telling or speculation. Then a commentary discusses the sources, the facts, the underlying ideas, the rehandling in subsequent tradition and writing. Is ‘mythology’ justified here ? Much of the material is unlike myth in the classical sense, being more miscellaneous and often closer to history or literature. Yet when all these things are assembled and considered together, it seems clear to me that they have an interrelatedness which is seldom realised, and that their significance goes beyond entertainment or the weaving of individual yarns. Whatever their precise nature, they have a mythic dimension. They express ideas about a certain territory and how it came to be as it is: about its place in the world, its landscape, its inhabitants, their society and government. The time-span of the survey extends from prehistory to the ninth century AD. It ends where it does, not because there are no myths applicable to later times, but because, with the movement into better-recorded history, their character alters. We get tales that simply embroider the well-known lives of well-known persons, such as the heroes of Scottish independence, and Francis Drake. We get conscious fictions, such as Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The difference is sometimes one of degree rather than kind, and with Robin Hood, for example, the older type of myth-making is still at work. But a line must be drawn somewhere, and I hope the ninthcentury ending will be seen as a logical conclusion, beyond which it would be difficult to go without a loss of consistency. ...