(blog post by Joakim "Oskorei" Andersen in 2006, English translation)
Our Indo-European, or Aryan, ancestors have been subject to the inquiry of researchers from several different perspectives. Their religion and myths have been explored, their expansion from the urheimat has been traced and their language has been studied. One special area which has come to be known as comparative Indo-European poetry, studies the way Indo-European poets have worked throughout history. What stories did they tell, how did they tell them, which rhythmic meters did they use, and so on?
Professor Calvert Watkins addresses these questions in his in-depth work ‘How to Kill a Dragon’, notably examining one of the oldest Indo-European myths, that of the dragonslayer, and how it has evolved through history in various Indo-European societies.
Professor Watkins' description of the dragonslayer myth will be the subject of a future post - today's will cover his writing on the standing of poets in Indo-European society.
The Bard Castes
Watkins describes poets/bards as a hereditary caste. This is a recurring feature of traditional societies, since one single generation was not enough to produce genuine specialists (in practice, social mobility often takes two to three generations even in our time). The Irish poet, the ‘fili’, would ideally belong to a hereditary line of poets since at least three generations. But you didn't simply become a poet by birth; the profession required extensive formal training.
The role of the Indo-European poet differed a lot from that of today's poets, who mostly write poetry. Instead, the role was to preserve and pass on the culture and traditions of society, and to look after its language. Part of a poet's great responsibility was to master myths, laws, prayers, the genealogy and origin of the people, and more. Watkins describes a bard school of 17th century Gaelic Ireland. It accepted as students only reputable men of poet families in good standing among their own kin. The training took six or seven years, a considerable amount of time in its day.
The contemporary bard Robert N. Taylor speaks in an interview of the traditional idea of the inspired poet and his muse, and Watkins also mentions that poets were often inspired and creative, but did not always have a muse. To preserve the lineage, tales, laws and traditions of his culture was sufficient, and a muse would rather be considered a bonus (or sometimes a curse?).
The Bard in Society
The bard's role as the ‘living library’ of a nation, tending its collective memory, was dearly appreciated. Watkins writes that the poet was the highest paid profession in Indo-European society, and that the bard school was precious to its neighbors, invoking a sense of pride. Therefore, food and other gifts were regularly extended to these schools, and even local nobles would invite students to their homes.
The Indo-European poet always had an employer. In prehistoric times this would have been a nobleman, later it could have been the Church, or there could be traveling bards. Indo-European society was imbued by reciprocity; poets were given gifts as well as other types of payment from their employers, reciprocated by flattering or beautiful poetry (as a matter of fact, Watkins refers to a special poetic genre of thanksgiving, called ‘danastuti’, from Sanskrit). In a way, the poet's employer was ultimately the nation, even when the nobility acted as middlemen, at least as long as the nobility remained true to their responsibility as the people's protectors and representatives.
In addition, the poet could also have the gods as employers. By authoring their praise, he believed that he was given something in return according to the principle of reciprocity which permeated society. The ancient Indo-Europeans also viewed uttered speech as very powerful. If you said something in the right way, it could affect reality. An example of this belief is that the Iranians equated lying with murder in terms of punishment. So the difference between poet, wizard and priest was not always clear.
Consequently, the bard was an organic part of traditional society, even into the 17th century Gaelic world. But modernization shattered the traditional world into pieces. Watkins recounts the grievous lament of an unemployed bard after the Gaelic world was destroyed. The function of poets had lost its former prestige, and the living tradition of bards had been dealt a severe blow. The 2007 raising of professional artists' unemployment insurance fee in Sweden, or the fact that Joanna Rytel sees the spread of zoophilia and ethnomasochistic garbage as her calling, are but two steps among many more in a development spanning several hundred years.
In our time, there is a great need for bards and poets wanting to be the memory of their nations, to remind them of their history and identity, and motivate them to defend what they are. Such bards face a much more difficult situation than their ancient Indo-European counterparts. There are practically no bard schools today, no lineages of professional poets, and the number of nobles willing to pay for the preservation of the national memory is limited to say the least. Therefore, the bard of our time needs to establish a connection directly to the people without the wealthy middleman. A bard-people relationship of this kind reemerges after a centuries long hiatus as modern bards play a prominent role in the struggle to awake the European peoples' desire to live, and in the presentation of alternatives to the materialistic, inanimate and rootless way of life. It is perhaps no coincidence, in this context, that Odin was also a god of poetry.
#Aryandom
Motpol.nu
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