myths and the merlin conspiracy

I'm re-reading (for the zillionth time) The Merlin Conspiracy, because I don't have a to-read list going this summer. And I keep sighing over its wonderful complexity, and the huge range of myth and folklore Diana Wynne Jones manages to cram into that book.

I taught it in Myth & Folktale class, where it was either not read, or read and reviled by those philistines. It was crushing for me, because I always want my students to enjoy their readings; because I love DWJ and can't abide criticism of her books; and because it includes so many aspects of myth and folktale that we'd already talked about in class.

Some of the myth/folklore elements in the book, in no particular order:

• Arthurian legend (The Merlin, the Count of Blest)
• Welsh legend (Gwyn ap Nud)
• British faerie beings (Little People, the invisible people, etc)
• Geoffrey of Monmouth's Red and White Dragons myth (which, yes, is related to Arthurian legend, but is also its own thing)
• flower lore (speedwell, mullein, purple vetch...)
• city lore (Salisbury, Old Sarum, Manchester in a red dress)
• totem or spirit animals
• standard magic lore (earth magics, etc)
• basic fairytale motifs (things happening in threes, especially the "rules" of the dark paths)

The abundance of magics and folklore in the book sometimes makes me think it's an even richer, more complex text than I already know it to be, as if perhaps somehow Diana Wynne Jones was able to work an actual spell into or with her book, that perhaps the combination of all those elements works like alchemy to produce something Else, something Other, something beyond the everyday alchemy of fiction and reading.

a brilliant metaphor

I've been struggling with this Myth & Folktale class; I tend to create unrealistically high expectations for myself as a teacher, especially with classes where I don't feel completely at home, and Myth & Folktale has turned out to be the most uncomfortable class I have ever had. It's not that I don't know the material; I don't really know how to teach it effectively. I think. And I don't have the level of expertise and depth of knowledge that I should have to do justice to the class. I have spent more time on this class - reading, preparing, researching, planning, agonizing, worrying - than I have on any other class. I'm probably putting in a good 30 hours a week on that class alone.

But one great thing has come out of it: one of my students suggested a metaphor for adaptation and transmission of myths/legends/stories over time that I think is brilliant in its simplicity and its aptness.
We were talking about the way an historical event or personage becomes the basis of a folktale, and the ways that tale changes over time, until it bears very little resemblance to the truth. The context for this was, I think, the Paul Revere myth; we read Ray Raphael's chapter from Founding Myths about Revere, and Longfellow's dreadful poem. And someone had asked: how did we get from the true story of what happened the night that Revere (and others) tried to alert the colonists about the approach of the British troops, to the wildly heroic, and historically inaccurate, myth we now have.
I tried to say something about adaptation and transmission and distortion and distance, and it probably made no sense at all. And then one of the seniors in my class raise his hand and said: "So it's just kind of like that game "Telephone"?"

And the more I've thought about it, the more this is just the best metaphor, or analogy, for how stories are passed along through time. It's also a great metaphor for evolution, which another student noted: as the story is passed along the "Telephone," the best bits get preserved, and the parts that don't excite or interest the teller/listener, get stripped away. Adaptation. Evolution. Storytelling. Mythmaking. Gossip. Telephone.

It's brilliant.