The Great Flood (the universal myth) and the power of the oral storytelling
There have always been and there will always be what we call an oral storytelling. I am utterly impressed by stories and by that necessity of our civilization and all the older civilizations to retell and tell, to invent and reinvent. Is it not just marvellous to have the possibility to see just a tiny piece of the way those humans used to see the world in 2100-1200 BC in the Epic of Gilgamesh? Just so you could understand how old it really is, please remember that the Bronze Age started approximately around 3300 BC and finished around 1200 BC. I repeat, the Bronze Age! The Epic of Gilgamesh also tells us the universal story of the flood myth.
How many versions have been found of the great flood? There are nine known versions. As a matter of fact, the story of the great flood first appeared in the Old Babylonian period (20th-16th century BC). It can be found in many old civilizations and in almost all continents. In South America, in Incan mythology, Unu Pachakuti was the name of the great flood created by Viracocha to destroy all the people living in the territory of the Lake Titicaca. Viracocha was a great creator, a deity in the pre-Inca and Inca mythology in the region of the Andes. Another example from the South America comes from the Mapuche culture. It tells us the story of a battle between two snakes, TrenTren Vilu and Cacai Vilu. On the other side of the of the world, in Iran, the collection of texts named Videvdad tells the story of Ahura Mazda, the creator deity in Zoroastrianism. Ahura Mazda warns Yima of a harsh winter storm followed by a melting snow and advises him to build a castle and supply it with the food and water, with two of every animal and with the fittest and the strongest men and women. In India it is first mentioned in the Shatapatha Brahmana and then in Matsya Purana. The story is about the catastrophic flood and how Matsya (the incarnation of Lord Vishnu as a fish) warns Manu about it. Manu is a human and it is usually the case that the human is warned by a deity about this massive flood which could be a very blurry clue of some other ideas that circle around in a bit more alternative scientific circles. There seems to be a clue or an idea of a human having been contacted by a deity, which could be a contact outside the planet Earth. Manu is also advised to collect all the grains of the world in a boat. Sometimes, in some versions of this story, he also collects all living creatures in a boat. There are also different versions of the story to be found in Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia. In Europe, in the Baltic area, there is this myth about Vineta, a mythical city at the southern coast of the Baltic Sea and how the citizens of the same city were punished by a flood for their excessive way of living. The city was swallowed to the bottom of the Baltic. In Ireland the myth can be found in the Lebor Gabála Érenn known in English as The Book of Invasions. The Book of Invasions is a collection of poems and prose in the Irish language written as a history of Ireland from the beginning of the world to the Middle Ages. According to this book, Ireland was inhabited with the descendants of Noah! The great flood story can also be heard in Welsh mythology, in Norse and Finish too. There are some amazing stories about the great flood in Polynesia!
Therefore, we go back to the oral storytelling and what an impact this tradition made on the written literature. It is thought that all these stories, or at least the majority of them, come from the period before the written literature. Their impact was so strong that we can freely compare it with the impact of an asteroid hitting the Earth 70 million years ago which, some say, brought to an extinction of the majority of flora and fauna. You just have to stop imagining the old civilizations as something slow and steady and try to understand that some people travelled and moved a lot, they sailed and they walked. But most of all, they talked. They spoke. They spoke many languages and they were curious. The spoken word was all they knew and the whole world was based on, analysed and investigated through a spoken word. The ones who wrote, those were the ones who lived with the gods, the special ones. All the rest of the people only spoke. We laugh at them, we think of them as uneducated lots. That is only because we see them through the knowledge we have today and the culture we know of today. The Epic of Gilgamesh was written between the 2100-1200 BC. It is said to be the earliest surviving complex literature text. Beware, Gilgamesh was written then for the first time or at least we think so, as those tablets are the oldest ones found, but Gilgamesh wasn't born with that first written version. It had lived long before the first written tablet and made a huge impression on the people. They have spoken so much of him that at the end, someone up there who knew the letters decided to carve the story in the stone. Gilgamesh survived some 5000 years not just because of the written word, but because before it, it had been told so many times that it made a collective cut in the flesh of various cultures. That is why it is easy to believe that there was contact between the people from far away corners of the world. It is that collective cut in all the cultures that we can see through only if we do not analyse excessively and see the stories as they are and as they were: a stimulus, an intent to explain and understand, an urge. A clue.
Stories are the children, the abstract children. We procreate and live through our children. We give birth and with that birth we give a word. We are who we are because of the language and because of the stories told in different languages.
Fairy Tales
Somehow this text is all about the Bronze Age. According to some academics, some fairy tales date from the Bronze Age. For instance, Jack and the Beanstalk was also known as Jack the Giant Killer and it goes back some 5000 years into the past. Later it was told by Vikings, in the norse tradition. Beauty and the Beast is said to be 4000 years old. Sleeping Beauty is an echo of an Egyptian tale from the period of the Twentieth Dynasty.
The strange thing that happened with, what we call fairy tales, is that these stories survived thousands of years without actually being written! These stories were told before English or German of French were born! Some of them date back from the Proto-Indo-European society and they might be told in an extinct and long gone Indo-European language. This is why I think that the oral word made a massive impact on all our cultures and the way we see the world today.
In the 18th century we see the rise of certain intellectuals who understand the importance of these stories that come from the oral storytelling tradition. Well-known names such as Jakob Ludwig Carl Grimm, Wilhelm Karl Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Perrault, Joseph Jacobs, Andrew Lang and Ludwig Bechstein represent the list of the people who wrote down or retold stories old as the spoken word. Some of them have incredibly interesting biographies. For instance, Parker Hoysted Fillmore attracted my attention.
Parker Fillmore was born in 1878 in Cincinnati, Ohio. When he finished his studies, Parker went to the Philippines to work as a teacher. There he found out that, as a teacher, he wasn't provided with textbooks, so he had to improvise and started inventing stories about the life in the Philippines and tried to teach English through these stories. After coming back to the US, he was asked to write a textbook especially for the Philippine children. During World War I he lived in New York in a neighbourhood with many immigrants from the Czechoslovakia. There, Parker learnt and heard the folktales from their country which were included in several books he wrote: Czechoslovak Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (1919) and The Shoemaker’s Apron (1920).
What all these intellectuals did was to write down the stories that survived thousand of years. The stories that they wrote down for sure weren't the same stories people told 2000 or 3000 years ago. That is why fairy tales are so magical, they have this morphic tendency to change and reshape, like water. They take certain forms through different periods, lives and people who tell them and memorize them. They adapt according to the general culture or religion, they float in our mouths that have different shapes and forms, teeth and voices. And so they live. Nothing interrupts them. Fairy tales simply flow.
The definition and structural elements of a Fairy Tale
Fairy Tales are not always about fairies nor about beings with magical powers, as some may think. These tales are challenging for a simple definition because they tend to sew a thick tissue of legends, myths, folklore and moral messages. Nevertheless, all of them have some characteristics that help us always understand them as "fairy tales". That means that they do have firm features and qualities of a genre.
Fairy Tales are usually written using short sentences and in whole they tend to be short. They are very direct and straightforward. They are usually set in some far away kingdom. They have repetitive elements of the story, traditionally these elements repeat three times where we see the idea of magical number three in many cultures. All these characteristics are very common for oral culture and reflect the oral tradition.
These are the 31 basic funtions by Vladimir Propp:
1. ABSENTATION: A member of the hero's community or family leaves the security of the home environment.
2. INTERDICTION: A forbidding edict or command is passed upon the hero ('don't go there', 'don't do this'). The hero is warned against some action.
3. VIOLATION of INTERDICTION: The prior rule is violated. Therefore, the hero did not listen to the command or forbidding edict.
4. RECONNAISSANCE: The villain makes an effort to attain knowledge needed to fulfill their plot.
5. DELIVERY: The villain succeeds at recon and gains a lead on their intended victim. A map is often involved in some level of the event.
6. TRICKERY: The villain attempts to deceive the victim to acquire something valuable.
7. COMPLICITY: The victim is fooled or forced to concede and unwittingly or unwillingly helps the villain, who is now free to access somewhere previously off-limits, like the privacy of the hero's home or a treasure vault, acting without restraint in their ploy.
8. VILLAINY or LACKING: The villain harms a family member, including but not limited to abduction, theft, spoiling crops, plundering, banishment or expulsion of one or more protagonists, murder, threatening a forced marriage, inflicting nightly torments and so on. Simultaneously or alternatively, a protagonist finds they desire or require something lacking from the home environment (potion, artifact, etc.). The villain may still be indirectly involved, perhaps fooling the family member into believing they need such an item.
9. MEDIATION: One or more of the negative factors covered above comes to the attention of the Hero, who uncovers the deceit/perceives the lacking/learns of the villainous acts that have transpired.
10. BEGINNING COUNTERACTION: The hero considers ways to resolve the issues, by seeking a needed magical item, rescuing those who are captured or otherwise thwarting the villain. This is a defining moment for the hero, one that shapes their further actions and marks the point when they begin to fit their noble mantle.
11. DEPARTURE: The hero leaves the home environment, this time with a sense of purpose. Here begins their adventure.
12. FIRST FUNCTION OF THE DONOR: The hero encounters a magical agent or helper (donor) on their path, and is tested in some manner through interrogation, combat, puzzles or more.
13. HERO'S REACTION: The hero responds to the actions of their future donor; perhaps withstanding the rigours of a test and/or failing in some manner, freeing a captive, reconciles disputing parties or otherwise performing good services. This may also be the first time the hero comes to understand the villain's skills and powers, and uses them for good.
14. RECEIPT OF A MAGICAL AGENT: The hero acquires use of a magical agent as a consequence of their good actions. This may be a directly acquired item, something located after navigating a tough environment, a good purchased or bartered with a hard-earned resource or fashioned from parts and ingredients prepared by the hero, spontaneously summoned from another world, a magical food that is consumed, or even the earned loyalty and aid of another.
15. GUIDANCE: The hero is transferred, delivered or somehow led to a vital location, perhaps related to one of the above functions such as the home of the donor or the location of the magical agent or its parts, or to the villain.
16. STRUGGLE: The hero and villain meet and engage in conflict directly, either in battle or some nature of contest.
17. BRANDING: The hero is marked in some manner, perhaps receiving a distinctive scar or granted a cosmetic item like a ring or scarf.
18. VICTORY: The villain is defeated by the hero – killed in combat, outperformed in a contest, struck when vulnerable, banished, and so on.
19. LIQUIDATION: The earlier misfortunes or issues of the story are resolved; objects of search are distributed, spells broken, captives freed.
20. RETURN: The hero travels back to their home.
21. PURSUIT: The hero is pursued by some threatening adversary, who perhaps seek to capture or eat them.
22. RESCUE: The hero is saved from a chase. Something may act as an obstacle to delay the pursuer, or the hero may find or be shown a way to hide, up to and including transformation unrecognisably. The hero's life may be saved by another.
23. UNRECOGNIZED ARRIVAL: The hero arrives, whether in a location along their journey or in their destination, and is unrecognised or unacknowledged.
24. UNFOUNDED CLAIMS: A false hero presents unfounded claims or performs some other form of deceit. This may be the villain, one of the villain's underlings or an unrelated party. It may even be some form of future donor for the hero, once they've faced their actions.
25. DIFFICULT TASK: A trial is proposed to the hero – riddles, test of strength or endurance, acrobatics and other ordeals.
26. SOLUTION: The hero accomplishes a difficult task.
27. RECOGNITION: The hero is given due recognition – usually by means of their prior branding.
28. EXPOSURE: The false hero and/or villain is exposed to all and sundry.
29. TRANSFIGURATION: The hero gains a new appearance. This may reflect aging and/or the benefits of labour and health, or it may constitute a magical remembering after a limb or digit was lost (as a part of the branding or from failing a trial). Regardless, it serves to improve their looks.
30. PUNISHMENT: The villain suffers the consequences of their actions, perhaps at the hands of the hero, the avenged victims, or as a direct result of their own ploy.
31. WEDDING: The hero marries and is rewarded or promoted by the family or community, typically ascending to a throne.
Vladimir Propp also made a classification of all the characters in the tales into 7 abstract character functions:
* The villain — an evil character that creates struggles for the hero.
* The dispatcher — any character who illustrates the need for the hero's quest and sends the hero off. This often overlaps with the princess's father.
* The helper — a typically magical entity that comes to help the hero in their quest.
* The princess or prize, and often her father — the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her as a consequence of some evil or injustice, perhaps the work of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, which constitutes the villain's defeat.
* The donor — a character that prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object, sometimes after testing them.
* The hero — the character who reacts to the dispatcher and donor characters, thwarts the villain, resolves any lacking or wronghoods and weds the princess.
* The false hero — a Miles Gloriosus figure who takes credit for the hero's actions or tries to marry the princess.
The horror of the Fairy Tales
It is very difficult to learn well if we don't feel the pain on our skin and the moral messages were there, tucked in the story that sometimes really had to petrify in order to correctly pass on the message.
Indeed, the focus is all the time also on what we call "imagination" and that is why the story always occurs in a far away kingdom with monsters, flying carpets, beasts, villains, potions, evil stepmothers and dwarfs. Between the teller and the listeners there is an understanding that all this is an imagination.
Some of the examples of the most brutal fairy tales:
The Robber Bridegroom, The Juniper Tree, Aschenputtel, Penta of the Chopped-Off Hands, The Strange Feast, Hansel and Gretel , Fitcher’s Bird, The Poor Boy in the Grave and the The Goose-Girl.
Fairy tales have been incessantly censored and rewritten by the adults who were much afraid that the stories weren't "safe" or "nice" and some of them lost their true and primordial nucleus.
As lovers of literature, we cannot approve of this and we will always try to keep the original shades of the stories because only in this way we feel the time when the story was created.
The mystery of fairy tales pulses in a strange way that is not very obvious. It is dark and lurking with all its castles, cottages, woods, magic potions, crones and witches that dance in front of us shamelessly and freely. It crawls and frightens us, it enchants and bewitches us and it sings a long gone melody of something that cannot even be told in words. These tales were not meant for the children or at least they were not meant for any specific age, race or sex, even though some of them really do seem as something meant for the adults. Fairy tales are very symbolic and basic. They are a reflection of what a real story was and is, without tampering.
Tales, at their core, are simple and powerful as magic used to be. They are a sort of spell that includes the magical number and the repetition. Here anything is possible. We see beauty and darkness at the same time and we accept it. In a way, we too become witches and somehow, while listening, we understand how the spell works. There is that loud rhythm that any good mystery has.
Fairy tales retell the most disturbing stories in such a funny way that we tend to accept disturbance as a part of something mundane. All these special characteristics make a fairy tale an extraordinary spell that should be pronounced and kept as a unique literary and artistic expression, as old as the world itself.
END.
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