So…I live in Scotland, and I was brought up by hippies. These are two fairly relevant things in explaining my love of celtic myths. Unrelated to those two things, it is also worth noting that I’m averse to happy endings (I love Thomas Hardy), and the old tales are neither forgiving nor saccharine. After all, sugar was a rare commodity then 😉  … actually I bet you can correlate the availability of sugar in Britain with the ‘lightness’ of current storytelling. We have too much sugar in our diets, and too much perfection in our literature, whether that is the happy ending to the love story, or the world being saved by a rugged hero/intelligent heroine. Pah. I want endless war, I want love stories that end in betrayal and misery, I want fate (or clever gods) to twist the world-saving moment so that the hero has actually condemned us all to darkness. Now that is something I can get my teeth into. You could argue that the YA literature comes closest to this…you could argue that ‘A Seeming Glass‘ does pretty well too.

I’m generalising, and I’m off on a tangent. I’m back now.

Celtic myths, and whether they are still relevant. That was what I was supposed to be talking about.

There has actually been oodles of research done on this very subject by people far more knowledgeable than me, so I’m going to keep it personal (mostly). But I just wanted to fill you in on some background…the earliest written myths include wonders such as the Welsh Mabinogion (yes, I know that’s not the proper name, but it’s the recognisable one), and the Irish Táin Bó Chuailgné. These were both probably transcribed in the 12^th Century, but if you trace back the events they mention (and those that they don’t), the Mabinogion in particular stems from pre-Christian roots. So it is all moderately old.

Psychologists have taken a liking to myths, and Carl Jung linked myths to his theory of a society’s ‘collective unconscious’, saying that myths fitted internal archetypes (the Trickster, the Shadow etc), allowing people to explore the hidden parts of their psyche without risk or recrimination.

Others, particularly André Favat, saw fairy tales as allowing children a non-real method of processing the changes they undergo, and the increasing intrusion of outside forces into the child’s world. He said, and I like this quote, that children “… believe in the magical relationship between thought and things, regard inanimate objects as animate, respect authority in the form of retributive justice and expiatory punishment, see causality as paratactic, do not distinguish the self from the external world, and believe that objects can be moved in continual response to their desires.”

That makes sense to me. I have seen experiments where children readily accepted the animation of supposedly inanimate objects, I have read studies showing that a child’s innate sense of morality is profound, and anyone who is a parent knows that children are essentially egocentric (in a good way).

It also makes sense to me to think of myths, and fairy tales, as a form of teaching. Providing explanations of the unknown (a god did it), and moral/life instruction to children (if you betray someone, you’ll get turned into an owl; don’t wander off into the bog, you’ll drown). They were also history lessons, the oral tradition, passing down memory of war or famine or heroes.

All well and good, but why do we (I) love them so much now, and love all the modern retellings of them (however much I might crave a little less sugar)?

Favat may be right – the world is still a big and scary place for a small child to make sense of. And the monsters and heroes (who invariably die, btw) (and then come back later, if they feel like it) are still good constructs for children to use to make sense of that world. As an adult, reading these tales, I am merrily reverting to my inner child. Which is very good for me, so there.

Jung, I’m not so sure about, although that might be because I don’t quite understand him. A collective unconscious, perhaps – we are a social species and we have a demonstrable cultural inheritance – like the ‘memes’ of Richard Dawkins et al. But does that mean that I read mythical tales because I need to vent my inner bad guy? If I didn’t read at all, would that mean those hidden inner unacceptable characters would become repressed (á la Freud), or pop out? I’d definitely be sad, but become violent, or unfaithful? Not likely.

However, it is kind of fun to explore all that darkness in books, isn’t it? I mean, who actually wants to be the cop in charge of a murder investigation? Not me, thanks. But I love Ann Cleeves. Perhaps Freud has a point…

So, this is what I think, and please let me know whether you agree. Fantasy in general, and mythological tales in particular, give me this: (I like lists)

• Space for my inner child to restructure her world, and make sense of the things that she still finds scary.
• Sight of an older moral society, which actually does not compare too badly with the global society we find ourselves in today.
• Stories to fill my child’s life with magic. Kelpies and selkies and dryads and (kinder than the original) fairies. They make her smile, which makes me smile.
• Hope. Many myths are cyclical. The hero fails, the gods change their minds, a new hero (or the mysteriously re-alive old hero) tries again, and succeeds at something entirely different etc. etc. So there is always hope. Even in the dark places, even after complete and utter failure. Second chances and your own small place in the scheme of things. I’ll take that.
• And, occasionally, dragons.