[gothic-l] Re: Danparstadir - Reidgotaland

[Francisc Czobor]

Hails allaim

Sometimes such beginning formula are used to give to the account more
authenticity: the author heard it, not invented it.
For instance, most Buddhist sutras and tantras begin with the formula:
Evam maya srutam ekasmin samaye... "So did I hear in an assembly..."
(refering to the assembly of the Buddha and his disciples). This
introductory formula is used to point out that the following text
reproduces a sermon of the Buddha and was not invented by the one who
recite it or who wrote it (the Buddhist sutras, i.e. Buddha's sermons,
were transmitted orally for 500 years until they were written down for
the first time).

Francisc

--- In gothic-l at y..., Alburysteve at a... wrote:
> Hi Dirk:
>
> >
> >  The Hildebrandlied starts with "Ik gihorta dat seggen ...", i.e.
"I
> >  heard them say...", which makes it clear that the story was
passed on
> >  (and distorted) from mouht to mouth.
> >
> >  The same is true for the Nibelungenlied. It also start by
reporting
> >  that "Uns ist in alten maeren wunders vil geseit ....", i.e. "
> >  wonderous things have been told in old tales...".
>
> These formulaic beginnings are part and parcel to most epics and
artifacts of
> an oral tradition.  They don't mean that the teller picked them up
as bits of
> gossip in the fish market.  Understand that there are finely honed
mechanisms
> that allow the tellers of oral tales to work their craft on epics as
> extensive as the Iliad.: metrics, formulas, and a wide range of
mnemonics.
> Albert Lord's classic "Singer of Tales" explains all this and draws
on
> twentieth century Yugoslavian bards for examples and analogies with
earlier
> epics.  When you understand how oral epics work, it's very much
easier to
> pick the wheat out of the chaff.  Yes, they contain many motifs and
themes
> from myth, epic, and folk tradition.  But then so do some
"histories".
> Livy's history of Early Rome is replete with mythological themes
because he
> too relies on the oral tradition in his account of events from which
he is as
> chronologically removed as Homer was from the Trojan war.
Naturally, he's
> taken seriously while Homer is discounted.
>
> Rgds,
>
> Steve O'Brien
> Albury, Ontario



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