Cynthia Sally Haggard's Blog: Cynthia Sally's Blog, page 48

Graham Anderson’s FAIRYTALE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

[image error]Did the familiar children’s fairytales of today exist in the ancient world? Were there ancient Cinderellas, Twelve Dancing Princesses, Sleeping Beauties and Pusses in Boots?

The answer: Maybe.

In FAIRYTALE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD, Graham Anderson gives a scholarly account of the parallels between ancient myth and fairy tale.

Let us take the tale of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. The King, their father, discovers one day that their slippers are worn to pieces, as if they have been dancing all night. He invites the young men of the kingdom to find out. The successful candidate will marry the eldest princess. But if they fail, the penalty is death.

The one who eventually succeeds follows the princesses through a trap door, and down down to a forest, where they pass through a grove of jeweled trees to a lake, where twelve boats are waiting. Each princess is rowed across the lake by a waiting prince, and they arrive at a castle where a ball is being held. There, they dance the night away, returning just before dawn.

The illustrations usually show pretty young people dressed either in the fashions of the fifteenth century – with those tall conical head-dresses and floating veils – or in the fashions of the eighteenth, with those enormous hair styles, and flouncy dresses.

In any event, the whole thing has a medieval European feel to it. So how could it possibly be connected to an ancient Empire of the Middle East?

The first clue is the jeweled trees, a feature of an ancient tale about Gilgamesh, that also occurs between a dark tunnel and a lake of death.

The second clue is the lake that they are rowed across, which is very reminiscent of the River Styx, and it’s shadowy boatmen Charon who rows the souls of the recent dead across it.

Then there is the Aeneid, where Aeneus has to pluck the Golden Bough to follow the aged Sibyl across the Styx. Once there, he finds lost women who are dead heroines.

The princesses have to descend downwards to get to their destination, which is reminiscent of the capture of Persephone by Pluto.

Lastly, those slippers. Were those princesses merely dancing courtly dances at a ball, or were they in the grip of some uncontrollable frenzy?

If this sort of thing fascinates you, then you should read this book. Graham Anderson is Professor of Classics at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Five stars.

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Readings Sundays: THE NON-AFFAIR (Part 2) a short story by Cynthia Sally Haggard

My parents had reluctantly granted my request to go to University, provided that I continue to live with them. When I’d finally gathered the courage in my first year to ask Father why it was necessary to continue living at home, he put down the sermon he was working on and immobilized me with his disapproving look.

“Isn’t it obvious, Caroline?” he said, the tone of his voice making me curl up inside. “Unchaperoned young people get up to all sorts of—unsavory doings. I do not want you to be mixed up in all of that. Your mother and I have certain—expectations.”

Then he cast his eyes down to the sermon on his desk, picked up his fountain pen, and made a note in the margin.

I stood there in that silence, hands clasped in front of me. I knew what his expectations were, to catch a husband. His agreement to my university studies had been bought with Mother’s promise that a prospective suitor would find an educated young woman more interesting. But what were my expectations? I wanted to do something bold—

“Shut the door quietly behind you, please,” he remarked without looking up.

Now, I was completing my final semester at university [image error]with few friends there, or indeed anywhere. The friends I’d known since Kindergarten when my family arrived here from Pennsylvania were leaving, marrying, and having children. The few that were left were trying to find husbands, or embarking on careers of their own, mostly nursing, or secretarial, and their lives had become very different from mine. It was captivating to find, at last, such a friend in Professor Szczepanski. I was greedy, wanting him to teach me everything he knew, not just about sociology, but about life and the world he lived in.

And so our friendship began, with regular visits to the office hours he used to hold once a week for each class. It wasn’t hard for me to become his star student. When I wasn’t taking class, I was either perched on a chair in the library, or sitting at home with my parents in the deadening silence Father demanded, working. [To be continued.]

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BABYLON: Mesopotamia & The Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek

I found this book both fascinating and inspiring. As someone who is NOT an expert on Mesopotamia, but looking for background material for a possible forthcoming novel, I found this volume to have just the right amount of detail. I would have wilted before a blast of Academic jargon and detailed discussions of various theories about the dating of events. Instead, Paul Kriwaczek’s BABYLON possessed gorgeously written prose with detailed descriptions of what life might have been like for the inhabitants of the area between the two great rivers, the Tigris & Euphrates, which both empty into the Persian Gulf.

Due to the geography of the region, the southern part of Mesopotamia, near the Persian Gulf, developed first, with cities such as Eridu rising to prominence over 6,000 years ago (before 4,000 BCE.) To understand why a dusty backwater in Iraq[image error] (as the site of Eridu now is) was a prominent place, we have to reimagine the geography of the region. Eridu was much closer to the Persian Gulf than it is today. It was beside a great river (the Euphrates,) which is now distant and out of site. There were extensive salt marshes teeming with fish and game. The currently bleak sandy landscape was a steppe populated with grasses, shrubs and sparkling lakes.[image error]

As waves of conflicts surged and ebbed, the centers of power moved north to the cities of Nineveh, Mosul and Ashur. Here, the region is hemmed in by the Zagros Mountains,[image error] which rise up to 14 thousand feet and run along a 1,000-mile stretch beginning in what is now north-western Iran along Iran’s western border, before curving around to take in south-eastern Turkey. These northern cities were vulnerable to hordes of Steppe Nomads sweeping down onto the fertile plain, where some of them (like the Amorites) stayed, changing the language and culture of the previous inhabitants.

Paul Kriwaczek knows his Bible, and points out the fascinating differences between Biblical accounts of what happened to Father Abraham and his Amorite tribe, and what the Assyrians had to say about them. Five stars.

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WHORE OF BABYLON by Azaria Frost

[image error]I really didn’t know what to expect when I picked up this book. I hated the title, but loved the cover (designed by the author herself.) One thing I was curious about was how the author would handle Sumerian and Babylonian names. Anyone who has dipped a toe in the ancient history of Mesopotamia knows the names are not kind to English readers. Names such as Marduk-mussalim, Ereshkigal or Messkiaggaser are almost impossible to pronounce and instantly forgettable.

But Azaria Frost did a wonderful job of finding names that both sounded Sumerian/Babylonian while being easy for English-speakers to digest. Sometimes she shortened names (Samsu’s name was originally Samsu-Iluna. Eshu’s name was Abi-Eshuh.) Sometimes she used place names (Mari or Susa) as names for her minor characters. Others, I assumed she had to make up (like Eliana) but in any event she somehow managed to find names that were easy on the reader while conveying Ancient Mesopotamia.

As for the story itself, it was gripping from the start. We see a terrified 19-year-old (Kisha) being married off to the conqueror of her city (Samsu) after a Bride Show. Eliana (the protagonist) is Kisha’s younger sister, and has to watch helplessly as her sister is hustled away to her raping at the hands of her new master.

From then on, it is hard to put this book down. I should warn anyone reading this (in case it is not obvious) that there is a great deal of violence and brutality in this novel, so it is NOT suitable for the faint of heart or for children. Even so, I still give it 5 stars for vivid characters and interesting plot.

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She could write…3,800 years ago (SHE WROTE ON CLAY) by Shirley Graetz

[image error]It is approximate 1,800 BCE. We are in the city of Sippar on the banks of the Euphrates in ancient Sumeria. In those days, people who needed to communicate wrote cuneiform characters on clay tablets. (Imagine how heavy it must have been for the postman:)

Iltani, our protagonist, is about 15 years old. Like many unusual women, she has a father who gives her an education, and encourages her to think about becoming a scribe. The problem? She is a woman, and this profession is dominated by men.

Naturally the male scribes are allowed to lead a normal life, have a wife and family as well as scribe. But if you are a woman, you are compelled to make a choice – at the age of 15 – between having a normal life (husband and family) OR becoming a celibate for the rest of your life, living in monastic surroundings, seeing your family only rarely.

But Iltani is fascinated by things and naturally curious. The mundane does not seem right for her. And so she chooses…to become a celibate so that she can become a scribe.

Of course things do not go according to plan.

This is a well-written piece by someone who is an expert in this area. Four stars.

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Reading Sundays: THE NON-AFFAIR (Part 1) a short story by Cynthia Sally Haggard

Spring Semester, 1960

By itself it was unremarkable, a boxy desk made of cheap materials with a fake wood veneer, a standard issue object that populated countless offices in college campuses. What was odd was the way it stood in the professor’s office, turned sideways, so that one short side met the wall just inside the door. Any student entering that office to meet with the professor would push the door open to the right, while to the immediate left squatted that huge desk, with two plastic chairs positioned primly underneath its cavernous opening, a grudging invitation for the student to sit, perhaps with a friend. On the other side, the private side where the drawers and compartments were, slouched the professor.

He taught two of the classes I was taking for my final semester, Introductory Statistics and History of Social Sciences. He had an unusual name, Matthias Szczepanski. The other students gave up struggling with his name after the first class and called him “Professor S.” But I was curious. Where was he from? One day, after class, I surmounted my natural shyness, and, ignoring that forbidding desk, I seated myself on the prissy plastic seat to ask him how to pronounce his name.

“SHUH-CHAY-PAN-SKEE” He made me repeat it several times, until I was rewarded by a smile that wasn’t exactly a smile, a suggestion of a curve in those thin lips, while his light-brown eyes claimed me.

I went home that day, my mind wrapped around my professor, as if I were a snug piece of velvet hiding a jewel. I lived a few miles away with my parents. Father was the minister of the Lutheran church, [image error]Mother was a homemaker. My parents had reluctantly granted my request to go to University, provided that I continue to live with them. When I’d finally gathered the courage in my first year to ask Father why it was necessary to continue living at home, he put down the sermon he was working on and immobilized me with his disapproving look.

“Isn’t it obvious, Caroline?” he said, the tone of his voice making me curl up inside. “Unchaperoned young people get up to all sorts of—unsavory doings. I do not want you to be mixed up in all of that. Your mother and I have certain—expectations.” [To be continued.]

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THE SHIELD RING by Rosemary Sutcliff

[image error]This is the story of the last stand (or shield ring) that the Vikings made (with their Saxon friends) against the Normans who’d conquered England in 1066, and now wanted to make all of it under their control. This shield ring was created in what we now know as the Lake District, near Buttermere, named after Jarl Buthar, one of the characters in the story.

Ms Sutcliff writes stories of day-to-day life set a long time ago, either in the time of the Romans (as in the case of EAGLE OF THE NINTH, her most famous book) or in the early Middle Ages (as in this book). But what sets her books apart and prevents them from being dull is her superlative prose, which raises her novels above the mundane. 5 stars.

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THE ORACLE by William J. Broad

[image error]William J. Broad’s THE ORACLE is a fascinating look at the science behind the Delphic Oracle. Blending ancient history, recent modern history and the scientific disciplines of anthropology, geology and archeology, the author pieces together a fascinating account of what may have caused the Oracle at Delphi to be so well-regarded throughout the ancient world, that extra something that seemed to lie behind those Delphic prophecies. The priestess would sit on a metal tripod, her legs dangling, and that tripod was positioned over an X-like fault in the limestone bedrock through which seeped ethylene, a sweet-smelling gas that in small doses can cause a trance-like state, that quickly wears off with the entranced person remembering little afterwards.

In this scientific age, it is easy to feel that the explanation just given explains everything about what being the mouthpiece of the Delphic Oracle was like. It’s easy to think that she was equivalent to a glue-sniffer, or someone high on Mescalun or some other substance.

But that would miss the point about what the women took themselves to be doing as they sat on that tripod. They had prepared carefully for the event (which took place once a month during the warmer part of the year). They had fasted. They had gone through various purification rituals. And as they sat on that tripod, in that darkened room, with a laurel held in one hand and a small bowl of water in the other, they expected that the god Apollo would reveal himself to them, and give sage advice to whoever might appear.

Strangely enough, it mostly seemed to work. It probably helped that the women chosen for the task were well-educated and intelligent, so that in their semi-inebriated state they were able to reply in classical hexameters. It was probably necessary to have the priests of Apollo hovering nearby should something go wrong. But what I am trying to say here is that it is unfair to dismiss these women as akin to glue-sniffers. People sniffing glue are not usually planning to meet the god Apollo and use his wise counsel for the benefit of society.

What is key here, is people’s expectations. Because, as I am fond of reminding my friends, we all possess an extraordinarily powerful machine in our heads. And the expectations produced by that over-powerful machine filter experience. Expectations can turn a tawdry quest for a high into something profound that still resonates thousands of years after the event. And William J. Broad is careful to spell out that point at the end of his wonderful book. Five stars.

 

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THE HORSE GODDESS by Morgan Llywelyn

It is 700 BCE. We are in what is now Hallstadt in what will become Austria. We are in a wealthy village of weapon-makers, traders who acquire luxury goods from what is now Tuscany in Italy, and tall women with yellow hair who walk around, their heads held high, and contribute to the discussion.

We are, in short, amongst the Celts (Keltoi). THE HORSE GODDESS is a YA novel told from the point of view of a teenaged girl named [image error]Epona, who has powers. However, she doesn’t want to use them, certainly not in the service of Chief Priest and Shape-Shifter Cernunnos, whose very presence makes her skin crawl.

So she escapes…into a totally different culture.

I have never read anything by Morgan Llywelyn before, and I am awed by the amount of research she has done to dramatize a time in history when the Celts (the ancestors of most Northern Europeans) acquired horses from the Scythians (a loose group of nomadic tribes) who roamed the grasslands of the Steppes.

If you need something different to distract your teen (or tween), maybe some truly ancient history is in order. Five stars.

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Reading Sundays: LADY OF SPADES (Part 4) a short story by Cynthia Sally Haggard

The wind carries their reaction to me. “Perhaps if we were to write verses to her beauty,” says one, “then she could choose the fellow she liked the best.”

“How would that help?” says another with a deep voice.

“The husband would go with the verse.”

“Best not to mention that part,” says de Tosny the wind carrying his irritating reedy voice, “lest that lass turn tail, and make for the hills.”

I smile as I ride quickly down to the river, and climb into a boat. My servants are there with all my presents. We set sail, catching the tide to the sea, to a remote island sanctuary,[image error] where I can live out my days in the company of the person I love most in this world, my niece and bedmate, in a convent founded by her mother.

I have left instructions with my scribe. The land that I inherited is to go to my niece’s eldest brother, in return for my freedom—shut up in his mother’s convent.

I shall never have to go through the pain of bearing a child, and dying in agonies, at an early age.

I shall never have to deal with a man I detest, who will beat me for not being good at bed-sport.

I am sixteen, I am free.

THE END

Lady of Spades first appeared in Story Shack.

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