Английский язык спецтексты для филологов
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Lesson 13. Folk songThe knottiest problems are those relating to the creation of folk music. In the 19th century lively dispute raged over the question: Is folk music communal in origin and created by a community or group rather than by an individual? Cases are attested in which a company of North American lumber-jacks or Rumanian frontier guards may have whiled away a winter evening round the stove by the collective creation of a song text and even, though more rarely, a tune. However, this method of composition seems rather the exception than the rule. The modern state of studies indicates that a more usual role for the collection is not so much one of creation as of re-creation. Hypothetically, the process might be illustrated thus: Under stress of emotion or to divert his mind from a dull task a man sets about making a song. He may take a ready-made tune as it stands, or he may adapt that tune, or he may make a melody that seems to him entirely new. To this tune he sets his words. And per- haps at evening, in the kitchen or the tavern, among congenial company, he tries out his song. Someone in the group may like the song and wish to take it into his own repertory. But when this second singer comes to reproduce the song, he may find that some passages are imperfectly remembered and he must somehow fill the gaps in text or tune. Moreover, he may feel that he can improve the song in certain details, and so he brings his individual fancy to the task. Thus his version comes to differ from the original. A third singer may learn the song from the re- creator and submit it to a similar process. So, in the course of time and transmis- sion, many variants will come into being, some remaining close to the original while others differ from it to such a degree that they may be considered as quite separate songs. Inevitably, in this process of communal re-creation, some variants are improved while others are marred and “sung to tatters.”
Lesson 14. Myths and TalesIn societies where myth is still alive the people carefully distinguish myths – “true stories” – from fables or tales, which they call “false stories.” The Pawnee differentiate “true stories” from “false stories,” and include among the “true” sto- ries in the first place all those which deal with the beginning of the world; in these the actors are divine beings, supernatural, heavenly, or astral. Next come those ta- les which relate the marvellous adventures of the national hero, a youth of humble birth who became the savior of his people, freeing them from monsters, delivering them from famine and other disasters, and performing other noble and beneficent deeds. Last come the stories which have to do with the world of the medicine-men and explain how such-and-such a sorcerer got his superhuman power, how such- and-such an association of shamans originated, and so on. The “false” stories are those which tell of the far from edifying adventures and exploits of Coyote, the prairie-wolf. Thus in the “true” stories we have to do with the holy and the super- natural, while the “false” ones on the other hand are of profane content, for Coy- ote is extremely popular in this and other North American mythologies in the character of a trickster, deceiver, sleight-of-hand expert and accomplished rogue. Similarly, the Cherokee distinguish between sacred myths (cosmogony, crea- tion of the stars, origin of death) and profane stories, which explain, for example, certain anatomical peculiarities of animals. The same distinction is found in Afri- ca. The Herero consider the stories that relate the beginnings of the different groups of the tribe “true” because they report facts that really took place, while the more or less humorous tales have no foundation. As for the people of Togo, they look on their origin myths as absolutely real. This is why myths cannot be related without regard to circumstances. Among many tribes are not recited before women and children, that is, before the uniniti- ated. Usually the old teachers communicate the myths to the neophytes during their isolation in the bush, and this forms part of their initiation. Whereas “false stories” can be told anywhere and at any time, myths must not be recited except during a sacred period. The distinction made between true stories and false stories is significant. Both categories of narratives present histories – that is, relate a series of events that took place in a distant and fabulous past. Although the actors in myths are usually gods and supernatural beings, while those in tales are heroes or miraculous ani- mals, all the actors share the common trait that they do not belong to the everyday world. Nevertheless, the people have felt that the two kinds of stories are basically different. For everything that the myths relate concerns them directly, while the tales and fables refer to events that, even when they have caused changes in the world (cf. the anatomical or physiological peculiarities of certain animals), have not altered the human condition as such. Myths narrate not only the origin of the world, of animals, plants and man, but also all the primordial events in consequence of which man became what he is to- day – mortal, sexed, organized in a society, obliged to work in order to live and working in accordance with certain rules. If the world exists, if man exists, it is because supernatural beings exercised creative powers in the “beginning.” But af- ter the cosmogony and the creation of man other events occurred, and man as he is today is the direct result of those mythical events, he is constituted by those events. He is mortal because something happened in the mythical time. If that thing had not happened, man would not be mortal – he would have gone on exist- ing indefinitely, like rocks; or he might have changed his skin periodically like snakes, and hence would have been able to renew his life, begin it over again in- definitely. But the myth of the origin of death narrates what happened in illo tem- pore, and, in telling the incident, explains why man is mortal. Similarly, a certain tribe live by fishing because in mythical times a supernatu- ral being taught their ancestors to catch and cook fish. The myth tells the story of the first fishery and, in so doing, at once reveals a superhuman act, teaches men how to perform it and, finally, explains why this particular tribe must procure their food in this way. It would be easy to multiply examples. But those already given show why, for archaic man, myth is a matter of primary importance, while tales and fables are not. Myth teaches him the primordial “stories” that have constituted him existen- tially; and everything connected with his existence and his legitimate mode of ex- istence in the cosmos concerns him directly. Moreover, what happened ab origine can be repeated by the power of rites. For the man of archaic societies, it is essen- tial to know the myths. By recollecting the myths, by reenacting them, he is able to repeat what the gods, the heroes or the ancestors did ab origine. To know the myths is to learn the secret of the origin of things. In other words, one learns not only how things came into existence but also where to find them and how to make them reappear when they disappear.
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