I certainly think so.
Mythology is popular. Filled with magic, gods that walk the earth, virtuous death and grisly fates for slighting the gods in the meagerest way. We think of ancient Greece, Egypt, Norse mythology, and so on. And they're all super interesting.
But mythology is, basically, religon. The scales and tales are on par with Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism and so on; grand stories of people, mighty unearthly magics, punishments and ideology. The only difference is that these three belong to existing cultures, while ancient Greek, Egyptian, Norse etc have long been pushed out, and some others have survived longer than all where others did not, usually due to geographical location. The sea and wind currents, after all, kept Japan basically a secret to the wider world until the 15/1600s. These mythologies dictated the values and the laws and the ideas of entire cultures of people.
Folkore, on the other hand, is limited instead to regions, not countries - areas as small as villages - and deal with fear and safety and explaining away strange phenomena.
Strange creatures in the forests?
This was the case before science was wide-spread. What could a Leshy have been? Or Wendigo? Someone goes missing in the forest at night, or comes home injured - physically or mentally - and stories form of what was to blame. Great beasts that roam, a single creature, that didn't seem like anything they'd seen before. What could it have been?
1: a creature lesser seen, new to the science of the time, whose path happened to be crossed, or perhaps wandered into new territory as their species expanded, or human settlements did.
2: a bear, a wolf, a stag, larger than average or more aggressive than usual. A large bear; a lone wolf, a stag with mature antlers, rearing on its hind legs against the moonlight.
3: injured or deformed creatures. A three-legged bear. Or a 5-legged, maybe. A deer with deformed antlers. A wolf with a tumor. An albino. Something that survived when nature would usually dictate otherwise, keeping it from wider sight and knowledge.
4: the night, and the forest, playing tricks on a tired mind, or one frantic by displacement.
5: human pride - jumped by bandits and ashamed of it, or fled the area for a better life somewhere else, or perhaps even committed suicide and their remains were lost in the forest, reclaimed by nature.
6: nothing was seen, but something was heard. Back then, the sound of a fox would have been known, but even then, under the right conditions, it would still have been chilling. Imagine one now with a more unique, signature call, like a cat with a raspy voice. But, keeping to foxes, most people today don't know what a fox call sounds like, it's been lost in our industrial world, and stories have popped back up about demons in cityscapes where foxes are domesticating themselves.
Regardless of the actual reason, the stories persist in those areas and keep people out of the forests after dark, both keeping people safe, but also keeping the actual creature - if there was one - a mystery.
Explanations of natural phenomena
A castle in Germany, for example, filled with insects one day a year that then die shortly afterwards. Folklore and legend dictate the actions of a knight that covered a man in honey to encourage insects to eat him alive, because he lured the knight's wife away with romantic words. Every year hence, the insects reappear, and a storm follows. Is it possible that the story came after repeated sightings but set far enough into the past to explain it? And, more to the point, why are they actually appearing?
1: nature. There's something on that sight that draws them in. A scent for insects, or built upon a migratory route for butterflies, or a bright light in an otherwise dark place pulling moths in.
2: a safe space for a breeding boom. We know that flying ants appear usually one day a year. How do they co-ordinate that? Natural pressures and movements within weather.
And why does the storm come? Because the same meteorological pressures and changes that lure these animals in also herald the coming of a storm. A natural barometer.
And why the same day every year? Well, is it the same day? Or were the calendars poorly kept by the locals, on was their sense of time dictated other details? We have an astrological and meteorological beginning of the seasons, usually 3 weeks apart, but we are often heard to say even now that "summer came early" or "winter has come late" or even "we didn't get spring this year." These remain valid points and feelings to this day.
Witches?
For single women who never got the plague, witchcraft was the only feasible explanation back then. Women were possessions, and if one was single, "unowned", and not suffering where men and families were, they must have been up to something. Witches. Witches, with cats.
1: the plague is widely believed to have come from the black rat flea. Cat = no rats. No rats = no fleas. No fleas = no bites. No bites = no plague.
2: it has also been suggested, with good evidence, that the Black Plague was airborne. The black rat was run out of Europe after the Black Death by the Norwegian brown rat. Black rats are rare to non-existent in the wilds of Europe. They all fled onto ships and went to the Americas and the fleas went with them. But the Black Death was over. So how would single women be immune to that if it was airborne? Cats can't do much to help with that. But it's just as simple: strange women, as a single woman was considered back then, would have been avoided by society, and the idea that she was a witch would have helped keep people away if just to save their own social status. Nobles would have needed to maintain their standing and outward appearance, and lower castes wouldn't have wanted to risk losing what little they had by consorting with her either. No visitors, no plague.
And outside of the plague, a woman with knowledge of healing - because women did more in the garden and the kitchen - was considered a witch also. First a healer, most likely, until the wrong person had adverse effects. Allergies, misunderstood instructions, an unfortunate combination of things, and of course the fact that plants can't reverse tumours, all of this could put the healer in bad favour and turn her reputation in a heartbeat.
It was also a pretty good way to destroy the reputation of a woman who spurned a conceited man.
Ghosts
This is an interesting one. Haunted houses are everywhere, but have you noticed that they are always old houses? Old by European standards are centuries. Old by American standards is a century. And why is the age important? Because of history. The older the building, the more feet have tread its floors, the more voices have filled the rooms, and the more scenes the walls have witnessed. The more hardship, the more abuse, the more regret, and the more murder. It makes sense.
But there is an additional detail within old buildings, and the clue is in the phrase. Building. The structures, the foundations, the joints, the walls.
It just so happens that old buildings vibrate. Many do, regardless of age: minor adjustments to temperature and movement within and without, such as along the roads outside, hot water running through pipes, doors closing, etc. But older houses wear down. And different cultures build in different ways. Many American houses are built from wood, for example, while European are built from stone. This is why American old and European old present the same things, but within a different time frame.
The vibrations are important. Older buildings in both senses tend to vibrate at a frequency similar to our ocular muscles - it's called Infrasound. This leads to extra activity in our vision centres that lead to seeing things, especially in our peripheral vision. So we imagine we see something just at the edge of our sight. But equally as interesting, is that infrasound is also the same frequency of vibration in the air as thunderstorms and tornadoes - things that fill us with fear even now, and to a greater degree in our primal ages. So these frequencies also trigger a fear and, more notably, a flight response, telling our bodies to leave and find shelter elsewhere away from the vibrations, because we sure as hell can't fight a tornado.
So, infrasound, of 20Hz or lower, is caused by vibrations found in old houses and storms, causes us to see things at the edge of our vision, and fills us with fear and flight despite nothing tangible being there. It's a trained response in our safety. And old American houses and old European houses, though different ages, all deteriorate to the same thing. And, equally, when that starts to happen, the houses also need to be better maintained. But, as is human nature, when we learn that a building is haunted, even once those structural issues are addressed, that "knowledge" will override the lack of infrasound and keep that fear alive by imagination alone. And so the haunted house persists. Even if you knock the building down and rebuild on that same site, the history and stories will continue.
This can also contribute to haunted locations where nothing still stands.
It's also a good fear to feed on for people who are up to no good: claim an area is haunted by a ghost to keep people away while you conduct underhand business. It's also a good, fool-proof way to keep people away from a location known for bandits and such. It's scarier, just in case the truth isn't enough to put people off. It also comes from religious ideas of spirits lingering on. If someone has a bad death, their ghost is said to continue to roam in that location. It may or may not be true, but it would keep people away from that spot in case they, too, fall victim to murder.
Our brains are also not wired for the night. When melatonin production increases in the dark, our ability to regulate cortisol, the stress hormone, decreases, leaving us more prone to fear while our brains get tired. This is why nightmares can be so chilling, and why, at night, we become more jumpy. We aren't able to rationalise things as easily when we are tired, and when we are flooded with cortisol and don't have the necessary resources to process it, our fear gets higher. And so, though a rational mind would know as a fact that that is a pile of clothes on your bedroom chair, or the shadow of a tree from outside the window, our tired, cortisol-filled minds convince us that it's a monster, and that sleeping with your foot hanging over the edge of your bed is a risk.
Fear of the unknown.
This is self-explanatory. It's human nature to fear what we don't understand, and human nature also to look for something to blame when bad things befall us. Sometimes the most obvious answer is the correct one, but equally the most outlandish and horrific is the most favoured, just the same as "you hear what you want to hear" even though what we imagine hearing is usually an insult. If we can blame a ghost or a demon for cancer, then it's someone's fault, but still nothing we can do anything about. And that can also be easier to accept than the fact of a poor lifestyle, bad luck, and the Universe simply being unfair. We do it today with astrology. If we can't explain something, some people blame a planet just to have something to blame, or perhaps to deflect from our own bad choices, but all the same feeling some semblence of control or victimisation.
All of this, pulled together, gives us folklore.
It explains strange things, keeps people safe, protects our pride, and offers reason where there is none. And the interesting thing, also, is that I could easily offend someone today with what I've written. Suggesting that Christianity is mythology, or that astrology is just looking for something to blame, while the same people offended would agree that Egyptian mythology is just colourful stories and that wendigos aren't real. Why? Because Christianity and astrology are still in favour today, while we know that there aren't any monsters in the forest. Probably.
It all comes down to finding a way to survive in our communities, to stay safe, to stay sane, and to find some comfort behind closed doors and, in some cases, comfort in things we can't control. And that is the role that folklore has always filled: stay away from the danger, even if that danger is misunderstood, ill-conceived, or completely imaginary as a threat. It's about fear for one's personal safety, not about faith or conduct. Folklore is humanity, perfectly imperfect.
--------------------------------------
Disclaimer: Believe what you want to believe. I believe in spirits. I believe in luck. And I believe that, until science can debunk things, everyone is free to believe whatever they want. Arthur Conan Doyle, writer and physician, author of Sherlock Holmes, believed in fairies. We have no proof that they are real, but equally we have no proof they aren't. If it makes your life brighter, follow it. Just don't hurt anyone in the process.
0 comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.