Cats and Dogs, Trolls and Devils: At Home in Some Migratory Legend Types
2010; Western States Folklore Society; Volume: 69; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-811X
Autores Tópico(s)Linguistics and language evolution
ResumoIn 1922, toward the beginning of his long and illustrious career, Archer Taylor published an article - a short monograph really - on Northern Parallels to the Death of Pan. Felix Liebrecht had been the first to point out such parallels (1856: 179-80, esp. fn. 26), and Wilhelm Mannhardt and others had followed this lead (Mannhardt 1877:132ff ; see 1915a, 1915b, 1916 and Wassmann 2003:1-33 for research history). All those scholars regarded the few German legends that Liebrecht had pointed out as evidence of the diffusion of the myth of the dying god. god who dies is of course in this instance Pan, and we know his death from a little narrative in Plutarch's De defectu oraculorum The obsolescence of oracles, Chapter Seventeen (first century CE; Moralia 3:41 9b-e in the traditional Stephanus pagination; text and translation in Babbitt 1936:347-501). Put in the mouth of a certain Epitherses, Plutarch's story says that a voice called out three times from the island Paxos to a becalmed ship, addressing by name its Egyptian pilot, Thamus. Thamus responded, the voice said: When you come to Palodes, announce that the Great Pan is the ship was later becalmed off Palodes, Thamus carried out his commission, and the passengers on the ship heard many voices lamenting.To this may be compared the following little story from nineteenthcentury Denmark:Christen 0stberg, som var den fjerde mana, der boede, hvor SoTen Madsen nu bor, kom en often med sild fra Nibe. Da han var naet til Tisted mark mellem to sma hoje, der nu er sl0jfede, kom der en lille en til ham og sagde, om han ikke vilde sige til AHs, at Vatis var d0d. Dengang han nu kom hjem og havde sat sig til bords og fik noget at leve, af fortalte han, at da han kom til Hesselhoj, var der en lille en, som sagde til ham, al han skulde sige til Atis, at Vatis var d0d. Da blev der en jammer oggrâd i stuen, og de rabte: A, Vatis er d0d, Vatis er d0d! Men der var intet at se. De boede under deres ovn. [Collected by Nik. Chistensen e. 1863 in Ellebjerg, Tisted sogn, Himmerland. D.F.S. LV 546. Boberg 1934:18]Christen 0stberg, who was the fourth man to live where S0ren Madsen lives now, was coming home one evening with herring from Nibe. he had reached Tisted field, between two small mounds that have now been demolished, a little fellow came up to him and asked whether he would not tell Atis that Vatis was dead. he got home and sat at table and got some food into himself, he recounted that when he came to Hesselh0j, a little fellow told him he should tell Atis that Vatis was dead. Then there was weeping and wailing in the room, and they cried out Oh, Vatis is dead, Vatis is But nothing could be seen. They lived under the stove. [My translation, as throughout]It is difficult to see Vatis as a deity here, and Taylor's main aim was to break the connection between the myth of the dying god and such recent legends. He compiled 246 recordings, about half from German-speaking territories, the rest from French, English, Celtic, and Scandinavian traditions. In place of a diffusion of a myth of the dying god, Taylor argued that the modern legends derived from sounds made by the wind (1922:10-11). If this explanation seems tenuous, let us recall that it was not unusual for that era of folklore scholarship. Carl Clemen (1925), Inger Boberg (1934), Oskar Loorits (1937:10), and Martti Haavio (1938:126-28) accepted it or a variation of it, although more recently William Hansen referred to it, deep in a footnote, as odd (2002:135, fn. 22). More importantly, Taylor was the first to enforce a distinction between legends in which the message passes between anthropomorphic characters, as in the Danish story above, and legends in which the message passes between cats.When she wrote on this well-known legend type, Inger M. Boberg followed Taylor and called her monograph Sagnet om den store Pans d0d [The legend of the great Pan's death] (1934) - although of course she adduced no recent legends with Pan - and the name quite naturally has stuck. …
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