Find Page One on APPLE PODCASTS or STITCHER.

Season 2 Episodes

The theme for this week’s Page One is myths and legends as Charles Adrian digs out tales of gods and heroes from his uncle’s library and shares with you a little of his love for these stories. Suggested further reading, as explained in the podcast: John Keats’ Hyperion, Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Ted Hughes’ translation, and both Ka and The Marriage Of Cadmus And Harmony by Roberto Calasso. None of this is compulsory; no extra marks will be awarded.

It is not true, by the way, as Charles Adrian asserts, that the story Death and the Soldier from Russian Tales and Legends is about boot soup. That must be a different story.

This episode has been edited to remove music that is no longer covered by licence for this podcast.

A transcript of this episode is below.

Episode released: 5th November, 2013.

Book listing:

The Myths Of Greece And Rome by H. A. Guerber

Scottish Folk Tales And Legends by Barbara Ker Wilson

Irish Sagas And Folk Tales by Eileen O’Faolain

Russian Tales And Legends by Charles Downing

Tales Of The Norse Gods And Heroes by Barbara Leonie Picard

Links:

Charles Adrian

Episode transcript:

Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 57th Page One. This is the second hand book podcast. I'm Charles Adrian and this week I'm looking at myths and legends. So here to start us off is Aaron Neville with Hercules.

Music
[Hercules by Aaron Neville]

Charles Adrian
That was Aaron Neville with Hercules.

I'm starting with the Greeks and Romans today, obviously. Perhaps I should really start, though, by explaining that all of these books come from my uncle's library and that they're all part of the Oxford Myths and Legends series – except for the first one, which is from Harrap's The Myths series. It's called The Myths of Greece and Rome and it's by H. A. Guerber [/geəbə/], or Guerber [/gweəbə/], or... I don't know how to pronounce that. But it's been revised by Dorothy Margaret Stewart. It contains forty-nine reproductions, from famous pictures and statues and cost ten and six net. I think that represents value for money. It was composed in Plantin type and printed by William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles. I have no idea what Beccles is. So. This book that I have in my hands is from 1953, Guerber originally published his book in 1907 and the first edition of the revised edition – there must be a better way of putting that – came out in 1938.

I know that that's all rather dry information but it might help you make sense of what I'm about to read you because I thought I would start with a couple of paragraphs from the PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION.

DURING the thirty years which have passed since the publication of the first edition of this book many once widely accepted theories concerning the origin and meaning of Greek and Roman myths have been discredited, and much new light has been thrown upon their archæological background ; but the importance of classical mythology from an educational standpoint has never been more generally recognised than it is to-day.
It is not only in the field of literature that the myths of Greece and Rome constantly appear and reappear ; they are implicit in the everyday speech of educated men and women all over the civilized world, and even in the most casual and ephemeral branches of journalism we find the song of the Sirens, the shirt of Nessus, the vultures of Prometheus, and the heel of Achilles. In the field of art, architecture, and sculpture ignorance of classical legend makes much meaningless which would otherwise be charged with familiar significance ; and in commerce also the old gods are made to serve modern ends.

I heartily agree with that. I have always been fascinated by myths and legends – for as long as I can remember. And I think when I was about eleven or twelve I started reading everything I could get my hands on, starting with Greek and Roman myths and obviously including this book. Sadly, I'm incapable of remembering anything in detail for very long, which is frustrating and might make all of that reading seem like wasted time, but on the other hand it does mean that I can keep going back to these stories like a child asking about family history or something like that. They're half-remembered stories about people with familiar names and they've never stopped being fascinating for me. And they have informed my appreciation for all kinds of other pieces of art and literature and... oh, I don't know. Anyway, everything that was mentioned in those two paragraphs.

Now, I don't usually include any kind of further reading instructions in these podcasts but in case you are also interested in this stuff, make sure you read John Keats's Hyperion and Ted Hughes' translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses and also a book called The Marriage of Cadmus And Harmony by Roberto Calasso. I'll just tell you that now while I remember because otherwise I'll forget to do it. I'll write all the titles in the text that goes with this podcast. The last one, actually, is a really intriguing book and Roberto Calasso... I recommend another of his books, which is called Ka - k a - and subtitled Stories of the Mind and Gods of India. They're totally worth reading and even if you know the myths and legends very very well they'll give you a new view on them.

Sorry. I'm getting sidetracked. I'm supposed to be concentrating on my uncle's library. So let me read you the first page of H. A. Guerber's The Myths of Greece and Rome.

CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING

MYTHOLOGY is the science treating of the legends and fables of the ancient world. Though we now call these ‘ myths,’ which is practically the same thing as calling them fairytales, we must not forget that to the Greeks and Romans they were part of their religion. Among all the pre-Christian races who were sufficiently advanced to think, speak, and write about their religious beliefs the Jews alone claimed to have received a direct revelation from God, and the Jews alone declared that there was but one God, eternal and almighty. Other nations “ deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the violent water, or the lights of heaven to be the gods which govern the world ” ; and to those gods they gave a great diversity of names, and round them they wove an immense variety of fables.
These fables were handed down by word of mouth, from one generation to another, long before the art of writing was invented. Many of the earliest showed that men soon began to wonder how the world around them, the sky over their heads, the birds, the beasts, all the wonders of Nature, and especially they themselves, came into being. They were not slow to realize that none of these things ‘ just happened,’ and their ideas upon the subject were clothed in mythical language.
A Greek poet called Hesiod, who lived about eight centuries before Christ, wrote down many of the myths current among the Greeks of his time.
Among the Romans, at the beginning of the Christian era, a poet called Ovid put into verse the views then generally held by thoughtful pagans :

Ere land or water was, or circling sky,
Throughout the world Nature was uniform,
What men call Chaos, shapeless and obscure,
Where seethed the germs of things as yet to be.

Not yet the pure light of the sun shone down,
Not yet the moon renewed her crescent horns ; [...]

And on! The next two books can be taken together, I think. They're Scottish Folk-Tales and Legends by Barbara Ker Wilson and Irish Sagas and Folk-Tales by Eileen O'Faolain... I think. I don't know how to pronounce that, I'm afraid. There are, of course, differences between the two but one of the things that I noticed when reading these books is that both traditions seem to be concerned with two things above all others: on the one hand mischievous creatures of one sort or another who give either luck or trouble, and on the other hand heroes from the past who may or may not have a historical basis but who could probably be termed memories of a vanished glory. With the creatures, it seems to me that the Scottish and the Irish folk – and presumably the English and the Welsh folk too, I don't have those books so I can't tell you – are doing exactly the same thing as the Greeks and the Romans but under the jealous reign of Christianity. So instead of imagining all-powerful gods they imagine brownies and fairies and leprechauns who must be continually appeased if you don't want your milk to curdle or your baby to be swapped for a monster.

Some of the stories are incredibly sad, I think, especially if you imagine that they might simply be ways of coming to terms with very difficult circumstances: what to do if you're being oppressed by bigger and stronger people, what to do if there's barely enough food to feed your family, what to do if a child mysteriously sickens and dies. But at the same time there's a lot of joy in these stories and on the whole even the hero tales are less about strength and bravery, and more about cunning and intelligence. I think a lot of them must have been stories that were meant to make people laugh.

The first one from the Scottish collection – I'm only going to read you from the Scottish collection, I'm not going to read you from the Irish one today – is called MacCodrum of the Seals and if I were to attempt an interpretation of this I would say that the story is about how to explain the loss of your beautiful wife.

MacCodrum of the Seals
BEFORE the first sailors turned the prows of their ships seawards to discover what lay beyond their own homelands, the King and Queen of the sea dwelt below the waves in peace and happiness. They had many lovely sea-children, brown-eyed and straight of limb, who spent the livelong day playing with the wild sea-horses and swimming through the groves of purple sea-anemones that grow on the ocean bed. They loved to make music, these fabulous people who lived in the sea, and wherever they went there was a sound of singing like the laughing of the waves.
But one day a great sadness came to the King of the sea and his carefree children, for the Queen their mother fell ill and died, and was buried with much sorrowing among the coral caves of their kingdom. And when she had gone, there was no one to look after the sea-children, to comb their beautiful hair and lull them to sleep with soft sea music. The King saw their uncombed hair that hung like the matted seaweed, and he heard them tossing restlessly at night when they could not get to sleep; and [...]

And you'll have to read on yourselves if you want to know more.

Another piece of music now, which is also a hint. This is From Russia With Love by Matt Monro.

Music
[From Russia With Love by Matt Monro]

Charles Adrian
Matt Monro there with From Russia With Love.

My penultimate book for today is Russian Tales and Legends, as you might have guessed. It's by Charles Downing and it's described on the flyleaf as “one of the liveliest and most varied in this highly successful series”. Which is the Oxford series, of course, in case you've forgotten. This was first published in 1956 and appears to be a first edition. It's got some lovely illustrations in grey and black and red both inside and on the dust jacket.

And what are these stories? It's quite a long time since I last read these but if my memory serves – which it doesn't always, of course – there are stories of forests, stories of wild animals, stories of witches, stories of rulers and cunning peasants. I seem to remember lots of stories of cunning peasants, sometimes being outwitted by good-natured hearty folk who are travelling through. Actually, there are a lot of travellers as well, I think. And a lot of soldiers. Looking at the contents, there's a story called The Soldier Who Did Not Wash. I don't remember that at all but I do remember Death and the Soldier. That's a story which probably a lot of you guys know about making soup out of boots.

The first story of the collection is one of a series about knights and rulers – knights [/knaɪts/], that is, knights [/knaɪts/] and rulers – and in this one there's a certain amount of shapeshifting. We're not going to get that far because I'm only reading the first page but you'll get an idea of the atmosphere.

Volga
As the red sun sank behind the dark forests and the broad sea, and the stars in their myriads spread over the clear heavens, then was Lord Volga Buslavlevich born in Holy Russia. And when Volga had grown to the age of five years he walked over the land and Damp Mother Earth trembled beneath his feet, beasts fled to the forests, birds started up among the clouds, and the fish in the blue seas scattered in terror. And Volga Buslavlevich went and learned wisdom and skill and all the diverse tongues of men for the space of seven years, and when he had attained the age of twelve years, he assembled a trusty druzhina in Kiev—thirty bogatyrs but one, and the thirtieth was he.
‘Good and brave druzhina,’ said Volga, ‘listen to your elder brother, your ataman, and do as I command. Weave me nets of silken cord, set them in the dark forest on the damp earth, and hunting for three days and three nights, catch for me martens, sables, foxes, white hares, tiny winter weasels, and all manner of wild beast.’
The druzhina obeyed their elder brother, their ataman, and did as he commanded them. They wove nets of silken cords, and setting them in the dark forest close to the damp earth, they hunted for three days and three nights, but not one single beast fell into their snares. Then Lord Volga [...]

I'll cheat and tell you that the sentence continues "Buslavlevich turned himself into a great lion", which is not a bad skill to have in your pocket, I would say.

Okay, so that's the Russian Tales and Legends. Now, my last book for today was always my favourite. This is Tales of the Norse Gods and Heroes retold by Barbara Leonie Picard. So we're back among gods here but northern gods who are somehow less all-powerful than their Greek and Roman cousins. They are powerful, don't get me wrong, but it's just possible to come out on top if you find yourself in a tussle with them. They're closer to heroes than gods, I think.

My favourite of these stories tells of Thor's Journey to Utgard in which, among other things, he's defeated in a wrestling match by an old nursemaid. But all is not as it seems because it turns out that the crone is actually Time and who can beat Time? That the god of thunder caused the woman to totter a little during the match was actually pretty terrifying for the people who are watching. They don't acknowledge him as a god, though. He doesn't reveal himself in his splendour as Apollo or Zeus might do. He's just a guy who has to fight to prove himself and I love that. And I love the other characters. I think probably Loki is my favourite of the gods. He's a joker and he does various things to annoy the others. Eventually he goes too far and is cast out by the other gods and he finds himself chained up with snake venom dripping onto his face. And then there's The End of All Things, which somehow is present in all of the stories, I think – even in Loki's punishment.

I would say, for all their splendour, the Greek and Roman gods live in an essentially unchanging world. I don't know... When Hephaestus, for example, catches Ares and Aphrodite he binds them up in a net but then he's forced to let them go again and things continue as before. The world must continue to turn, in a sense. But Loki is thrown out. He's thrown out and he stays out. And then the end comes. That's the impression given by this book at any rate, and I like that. It appeals to something morose and melancholic in me, I think.

I'm going to read you the whole preface to this edition. It's going to tell you a little bit about what I've just told you about but it'll also tell you about the hero tales, which I haven't said anything about. And then I'm going to read you the first page of the first story.

In this book are some of the stories told by the Norsemen who lived in Scandinavia from about 2,000 to 1,000 years ago. We know them better, perhaps, as the Vikings, who sailed their ships along the coasts of Europe, plundering and laying waste, and, finally, settling and making their homes in France, in the Netherlands, in England, Ireland, and the Orkneys, and in bleak little Iceland. Even as far as Greenland they sailed, and to America, long before Columbus.
The people of the northlands were a nation of bold warriors and fine courageous women, who admired above all things strength in battle and bravery against great odds, and considered themselves disgraced forever if they let a wrong to themselves or to their families go unavenged. They were a simple people, too, who enjoyed the simple things; good food and plenty of it, good ale to drink, and a crafty trick that could make them laugh.
In the first part of the book are the stories of their gods; gods who were even such as every Norseman longed to be, brave, dauntless warriors or cunning tricksters, with their lovely, loyal wives; forever striving against the hated giants who were the pitiless northern snows and frosts, and the grim northern mountains.
In the second part are tales of some of the Norse heroes, tales such as the Norsemen loved to tell and listen to on the long winter evenings of the northern lands.
Svipdag and Menglod may be considered as a fairy story. It has all that a good fairy story needs: the brave young prince, the enchanted princess, and the wicked stepmother. And even if Svipdag's difficulties do solve themselves a little easily in the end, it is none the less a good tale for all that.
The story of Völand was carried by the Vikings into many lands. In England we know him as Weyland Smith who had his forge in a cave close to the White Horse in Berkshire.
Siegfried is the great hero of the German people. Many hundreds of years ago they were already telling how he fought with the dragon and owned a magic sword. The tale of his exploits travelled northwards into Scandinavia, where some details were lost and others added; and as Sigurd, Siegfried became the best-loved hero of the northlands, whose deeds were told and sung wherever men enjoyed a good tale or a fine song.
Ragnar Lodbrok really lived and was a Viking. Though little enough is known about his life, many stories grew up around his name, though most of them were no more than legends. Two of these legends are told here: his slaying of the dragon, and his marriage with Sigurd's daughter.
The last story in the book, The Tale of Nornagest, although itself a legend, touches history; for one of the characters in the story is King Olaf Tryggvason, who lived from about 996 [sic] to 1000 and converted Norway to the Christian faith. He's supposed to have been baptised by a hermit in the Scilly Isles while he was plundering along the English coast.
Some of the Norse names in the stories may seem a little difficult, both to spell and to pronounce; but at the end of the book there is a note on the pronunciation—it would be wise to read it before the stories—and also an alphabetical list of all names mentioned in the tales, with a note about each one. With the help of these, the difficulties should be much less.

I have read the note and I will bravely read The Beginning of All Things.

THIS is the story the Norsemen told of how the world began. In the very beginning of things there was only a vast chasm, Ginnungagap, with, to the north of it, Niflheim, the home of mist and darkness, and to the south, Muspellheim, the home of burning fire.
When it touched the cold that rose from the chasm, the damp mist from Niflheim turned to blocks of ice which fell like [sic] a terrible sound into Ginnungagap; and as the fiery sparks from Muspellheim fell upon these ice blocks they sent up steam which turned to hoar-frost as it rose into the cold air. And thus with blocks of ice and with rime, the chasm was slowly filled.

There. Everything is just beginning but we have to end. This has been the 57th Page One. I have been Charles Adrian. You have been listening – thank you for that. I'll be back next week with more Page One but here to finish, from bleak little Iceland, is Björk with Play Dead from her first album Debut.

Music
[Play Dead by Björk]

[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]