by Neil Vodavzny

Structural linguistics & semiotics are typically technical topics with an innate tendency to get complexified. The origins, from Greek drama and its Hegelian dialectic of ‘thesis, antithesis, synthesis’ are easier to comprehend.

While it’s easy enough to follow that people think in terms of binary opposites (human and animal, male and female etc), and that those structures permeate language, it’s subsequent extension in terms of semiotics or study of signs (notably by Umberto Eco) is another matter. The essential theory (Saussure) is that signs in language are arbitrary, and that they refer to external objects which give them meaning - language has a completely relative or arbitrary meaning in itself. Eco qualified this to the extent that, in his scheme, cultural convention denotes some signs as significant in themselves, ie, their content has cultural significance unrelated to the external world. He calls this iconic.

This is obviously useful enough for writing best-sellers (Name of the Rose), but there is also a sense in which iconic words are related to ‘non-culture’ - I’m taking a cue from developments in structural anthropology by Levi-Strauss. These words are again opposites, and they are words frequently associated with myth - sun and moon, life and death, male and female, predator and prey, marriage and solitude. These words are iconic in nature (there is the myth that swans will pair for life or ‘marry’) and cross-cultural. But, since they apply to nature as a whole, you can also say they are non-cultural. So, there are non-cultural signs (and portents) that occur in myth.

The point is, some signs are more equal than others. Some signs are actually unique - there’s only one sun, one moon, one life etc. All myths contain these particularities, so these particularities are iconic in nature. In other words, they’re also identified with Jungian archetypes of the unconscious, and relate to the mythical structure of the world.

Once you’re arrived at that conclusion, it’s possible to extend their meanings. For example, the moon is associated with the sea, and sometimes with serpents (Joseph Campbell). Cosmic serpents of sexual chaos may represent the uncontrolled Id which a warrior figure (the Ego) has to slay, to rescue a maiden in distress. In such stories, a lot of things are mixed up in there - chaos, swords, blood red, the champion, moon, huntress.

What I want to do in my initial post is to identify these signs in folk music - in this case from Liege & Lief by Fairport Convention (electric folk-rock pioneers, 1969). I will develop the idea of mythic-culture, and particularly related to ethnicity.

Folk-lyrics and sounds

A brief intro …

Fairport Convention’s Sandy Denny was instrumental in steering the band away from American roots and into British ballads. The album Liege & Lief has sounds that are completely original, played on modern instruments, applied to songs of archaic vintage. Folk songs are simple songs of lasting recollection, narratives of fairy tale-like clarity, so visual signs & portents are plain to hear. Add to that Denny’s reed-like vocals which are very true to the idiom, the sound has an instrumental mesh that feels natural and spontaneous.

The point here is the visual/sonic signs you get in folk are distinguished by their simplicity. You get refrains whereby the signs will recur time & time again. This isn’t linguistic theory where you study a text, they’re distinctive sounds, and let’s not forget speech came before written language. So, it’s not like you’re analysing a text, you only have to point out some phrases here and there in a narrative.

From border ballad Matty Groves:

A holiday, a holiday
And the first one of the year
Lord Donald’s wife came into the church
The Gospel for to hear.

And when the meeting it was done
She cast her eyes about
And there she saw little Matty Groves
Walking in the crowd.

“Come home with me, little Matty Groves
Come home with me tonight
Come home with me, little Matty Groves
And sleep with me ‘til light.”

“Oh, I can’t come home, I won’t come home
And sleep with you tonight
By the rings on your fingers
I can tell you are Lord Donald’s wife.”

“But if I am Lord Donald’s wife
Lord Donald’s not at home
He is out in the far cornfields
Bringing the yearlings home.”

And a servant who was standing by
And hearing what was said
He swore Lord Donald he would know
Before the sun would set.

And in his hurry to carry the news
He bent his breast and ran
And when he came to the broad mill stream
He took off his shoes and he swam.

Little Matty Groves, he lay down
And took a little sleep
When he awoke, Lord Donald
Was standing at his feet

Saying, “How do you like my feather bed
And how do you like my sheets
How do you like my lady
Who lies in your arms asleep?”

“Oh, well, I like your feather bed
And well, I like your sheets
But better I like your lady gay
Who lies in my arms asleep”

“Well, get up, get up”, Lord Donald cried
“Get up as quick as you can
It’ll never be said in fair England
I slew a naked man”

“Oh, I can’t get up, I won’t get up
I can’t get up for my life
For you have two long beaten swords
And I not a pocket knife”

“Well, it’s true I have two beaten swords
And they cost me deep in the purse
But you will have the better of them
And I will have the worse”

“And you willstrike the very first blow
And strike it like a man
I will strike the very next blow
And I’ll kill you if I can”

So Matty struck the very first blow
And he hurt Lord Donald sore
Lord Donald struck the very next blow
And Matty struck no more

And then Lord Donald he took his wife
And he sat her on his knee
Saying, “Who do you like the best of us
Matty Groves or me?”

And then up spoke his own dear wife
Never heard to speak so free
“I’d rather a kiss from dead Matty’s lips
Than you or your finery.”

Lord Donald, he jumped up
And loudly he did bawl
He struck his wife right through the heart
And pinned her against the wall.

“A grave, a grave”, Lord Donald cried
“To put these lovers in
But bury my lady at the top
For she was of noble kin.”

… there’s marriage token, sun, water, swords, death by sword, death by love or jealousy.

From Crazy Man Michael:

Within the fire and out upon the sea

Crazy Man Michael was walking
*He met with a raven* with eyes black as coals
And shortly they were a-talking

“Your future, your future, I would tell to you
Your future, you often have asked me
Your true love will die by your own right hand
And Crazy Man Michael will cursed be”

Michael he ranted and Michael he raved
And beat at the four winds with his fists-oh
He laughed and he cried, he shouted and he swore
For his mad mind had trapped him with a kiss-oh

“You speak with an evil, you speak with a hate
You speak for the devil that haunts me
For is she not the fairest in all the broad land?
Your sorceror’s words are to taunt me”

He took out his dagger of fire and of steel
And struck down the raven through the heart-oh
The bird fluttered long and the sky it did spin
And the cold earth did wonder and start-oh

“Oh, where is the raven that I struck down dead
That here’d lie on the ground-oh?
I see but my true love with a wound so red”
Her lover’s heart it did pound-oh

Crazy Man Michael, he wanders and walks
And talks to the night and the day-oh
But his eyes they are sane and his speech it is clear
And he longs to be far away-oh

Michael he whistles the simplest of tunes
And asks the wild woods their pardon
For his true love is flown into every flower grown
And he must be keeper of the garden.

..there’s fire and sea (antagonism), raven (maybe shapeshifting intermediary between predator/prey), wound so red (caused by raven’s trickery).

Plain, poetic imagery of antagonism found in nature propel the narrative jocularity or tragedy - the ethic, or maybe immorality - of the ballad. It has to be fairly easy to pick up on because, after all, these are popular ballads where imagery is everything. The sound is there to immortalise the imagery - that’s why they’re popular. Finally, a maybe more ambiguous one in Quiet Joys of Brotherhood:

I can’t believe that it’s so cold
As gentle tides go rolling by,
Along the salt sea strand
The colours blend and roll as one
Together in the sand.

And often do the winds entwine
Do send their distant call,
The quiet joys of brotherhood,
And love is lord of all.
The oak and weed together rise,
Along the common ground.

The mare and stallion light and dark
Have thunder in their sound.
The rainbow sign, the blended flower
Still have my heart in thrall.
The quiet joys of brotherhood,
And love is lord of all.

But man has come to plough the tide,
The oak lies on the ground.
I hear their tires in the fields,
They drive the stallion down.

The roses bleed both light and dark,
The winds do seldom call.
The running sands recall the time
When love was lord of all.

..there’s antagonism of oak (strength) and weed (weakness), light & dark, plough the tide (antagonism of land & sea), blood, light & dark (antagonism).

It struck me you may think much of this biased in favour of urban peasant culture? Yes, because they’re attuned to land, landscape, harvest (agriculture is associated with life and livestock and Levi-Strauss). In so far as urban culture has an organic interplay between town & country (Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie, the novels of Jane Austen), the two are related. Incidentally, the French also have a robust tradition of folk-songs by the likes of George Brassens.  Then there is Jacques Brel, who is Belgian. The latter’s Amsterdam is typical since it relates to the sea from the standpoint of an ancient port. That may be why the song has a mythic quality (similarly, can you imagine Tintin without Haddock? Corto Maltese is another maritime wayfarer of ports of call).

I quite like French chansons, sitting here on the Channel where you pick up French signals. Serge Gainsbourg has a nice line in tres sophistique chansons with an international flavour yet which remain unmistakably French (Bonny & Clyde, say, with Bardot on vocals). Truly a master of genre. He happens to be Jewish and La Bardot happens to have Franco-centric views. But musically they are equally French (or inculcated with Frenchness - you only have to look at the photo on the album sleeve), and are equally defenders of French values against the troglodytes. You can take that how you like, but I propose to refer to various cultures on the basis that we know what we’re talking about – authenticity.

Before things get too digressive, it might be a good idea to state clearly that mythic-culture obviously has ethnicity in so far as folk-culture is ethnic. A universal or non-ethnic mythic-culture is a contradiction in terms.

Pulp fantasy is a reliable indicator, probably because (like folk-songs) it has to be popular. The two pioneers of sword & sorcery (or heroic fantasy) and sci-fi fantasy respectively – Robert E Howard and Edgar Rice Burroughs – bear this out. Howard was himself a Celtic-Nordic mix and his most popular hero, Conan, hails from the northwest land of Cimmeria. His Hyborian age is chronicled meticulously as Conan wanders vast swathes of land and sea, from Turanian steppes to Kitae in the far east to Kush in the south and Stygia in the south east, corresponding quite largely to pre-historic Russia, China, African bush and Egypt.

Theology is also worked-out. Cimmerians have Crom, a grey god of battle, Stygians worship Set, the serpent god, Blacks in the south have voodoo religions. In a prehistory world where there is no cross-cultural influence, Conan is of north-west European origin, no doubt about it. Incidentally, in Milius’s 1980 film, Conan is portrayed as more Nordic and less Celtic, but it’s still much truer to the spirit of Hyboria than the 2008 remake, which resembles a rock video production.

That’s pretty much stating the obvious, unless you’re a believer in a world of (pre) historical revisionism and utter chaos! Or is that today? The Hyborian age is based on Howard’s formidable knowledge of medieval Europe and the East, only creating Conan for Weird Tales in the 30s when the market for tales of Crusader-era heroes dried-up (there’s little to choose between them - just some added sorcery & weird cults). In fact, his historical tale The Shadow of the Vulture, set on the walls of Vienna (if you know what I mean) and featuring Russian swordswoman Red Sonya of Rogatino, was adapted by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith for a Conan tale (23, 24, 1972), Sonya becoming Sonja and the rest is prehistory.

This kind of transcription goes a long way to explaining why the Hyborian age translates so well to the comic page, since comic artists rely on sources they need look no further than medieval city-states, vaguely eastern architecture and barbaric armoury. Windsor-Smith developed a line in art-nouveau which gave the strip an even more medieval, romantic presence.

So, this world is realistic-medieval, in the sense of romantic. What I mean is that medievalism was an age of independent city-states, holy patrons of towns, ritual combat and, above all, a belief in a weird cult which inspired all of its activities from the field of arts to war. I’m talking about Christianity. For too long has the Christian right been defending its beliefs in the face of modern advance. Every belief is a belief in an ethical construct and has a lot is to do with signs and portents. The myth becomes true if you believe in the signs. That’s what religion is and why that should be is fairly obvious, even from listening to folk-music. It is to do with reconciling opposites.

As to what constitutes signs & portents, I suppose it comes down to interpretation and doctrine, a priestly caste. Maybe these take on a folkloric aspect, ie, a popular aspect founded on centuries of belief. All that malarkey isn’t just fairy-tales for kids – the universe isn’t Hollywood where such things appear démodé. That isn’t to say I am a believer, just that it’s how belief works – it ain’t realism but is just as true. Then again, maybe it’s not truth as such? But how about the fake reality of our immediate future - is that true?

The point is no one can say for sure what is true. Live with it or die with it. Medievalism created a system of belief which inspired great things in art, architecture, commerce, with an ethical substructure everyone rode upon. For all its faults, it led to the Renaissance. Where are we headed apart from an endless expansion of people, goods and modern plagues (disguised as medical research)? If that’s the future, what exactly is true about it? Maybe it’s false or fake? For sure, we are told lies about it.

What I’m getting at is the useful relation between fantasy & reality (or vice versa). A colourful, organic, zestful society is born of belief in either case. We’re gradually becoming our machines, ie robotic, because we choose not to believe in signs like, say, storms. It’s also conceivable the media misrepresents, misdirects and misguides public opinion into murky waters. The actual world of active, ethical socio-interrelations (that you get in, say, Jane Austen) is impossible to distinguish from the perpetual blather. Action has moral consequences, everything else is just words.

Incidentally, Davud Cameron did tell us that his faith is like patchy radio reception in the Chilterns?’ (Was it a dream?) Religion has its ludicrous aspects so maybe it’s about embarrassment, but is that not true of most of life? Is that not more true to life than a world of machines? For that matter, every philosophy has ludicrous aspects. Does that imply they’re all crazy? I for one have no time for Ayn Rand and Objectivism and am practically living in her world!