Imagining the Pagan Past: Gods and Goddesses in Literature and History Since the Dark Ages

264 Pages·2013·4.806 MB·English

by  Marion Gibson

IMAGINING THE PAGAN PAST
ImaginingthePaganPastexploresstoriesofBritain’spaganhistory.Thesetaleshave
been characterised by gods and fairies, folklore and magic. They have had an
uncomfortable relationship with the scholarly world; often being seen as histori-
cally dubious, self-indulgent romance and, worse, encouraging tribal and natio-
nalistic feelings or challenging church and state.
This book shows how important these stories are to the history of British
culture, taking the reader on a lively tour from prehistory to the present. From
the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, Marion Gibson explores the ways
in which British pagan gods and goddesses have been represented in poetry,
novels, plays, chronicles, and scientific and scholarly writing. From Geoffrey of
Monmouth to Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare to Seamus Heaney and
H.G. Wells to Naomi Mitchison it explores Romano-British, Celtic and Anglo-
Saxon deities and fictions. The result is a comprehensive picture of the ways in
which writers have peopled the British pagan pantheons throughout history.
Imagining the Pagan Past will be essential reading for all those interested in the
history of paganism.
Marion Gibson is Associate Professor (Reader) in Renaissance and Magical
Literatures at Exeter University and works on paganism, witches, magic and the
supernatural in literature c.1500–present. Her previous publications include
Mysticism, Myth and Celtic Identity, co-edited with Shelley Trower and Gary
Tregidga (2012), Witchcraft Myths in American Culture (2007), Possession, Puritanism
and Print: Darrell, Harsnett, Shakespeare and the Elizabethan Exorcism Controversy
(2006) and Reading Witchcraft: Stories of Early English Witches (2000).
IMAGINING THE
PAGAN PAST
Gods and goddesses in literature
and history since the Dark Ages
Marion Gibson
Firstpublished2013
byRoutledge
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p.cm.
1.Folklore–GreatBritain.2.Mythology,British.3.GreatBritain–Sociallife
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GR141.G482013
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ISBN:978-0-415-67419-5(pbk)
ISBN:978-0-203-06830-4(ebk)
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byTaylor&FrancisBooks
The book is dedicated gratefully to the memory of
Mary Jacobs, who gave me my first teaching job
and, generously and inspiringly, so much else besides;
thank you Mary.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Breaking the pagan silence: from Geoffrey of Monmouth
to William Camden 7
2 ‘Gods of every shape and size’: pagan deities from the
antiquaries to the Romantics 38
3 Something old, something new: pagan deities from
the first Celtic Revival to the mid-twentieth century 71
4 ‘I wonder what Wotan will say to me’: ‘heathen men’
and northern deities from the Middle Ages to the
mid-twentieth century 100
5 New ages: melting the ice-gods 128
6 ‘Find me in your own time’: three schools of
contemporary god and goddess fiction 149
Notes 176
Select bibliography 208
Index 243
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Many people have helped me think through the ideas in this book, shared their
enthusiasm for prehistory, paganism, archaeology or historical literature with me
or facilitated my sharing my enthusiasms with others. The book would not have
been possible without them. Many thanks, then, to: Harry Bennett, Ronald
Hutton, the University of Leicester archaeology department for their excellent
courses onprehistory, theArtsandHumanities ResearchCouncil for itsgenerous
funding of the ‘Mysticism, Myth and “Celtic” Nationalism’ project, Shelley
Trower, Garry Tregidga and Samantha Rayne for their collaboration on the
project and the speakers at the Mysticism, Myth, Nationalism conference (July
2010), especially those contributing to the edited collection Mysticism, Myth and
Celtic Nationalism (Routledge, 2012), Adam Stout, the University of Plymouth’s
Peninsula Arts team for the ‘Sacred Footprints’ lecture series, Tate St. Ives for the
‘Dark Monarch’ exhibition, Chris Faunch, Jessica Gardner and Sarah Jane at
Exeter University Library’s Special Collections Department, audiences at the
Cornwall Centre, Redruth, the du Maurier Festival, Fowey, the Tremough
Campus Culture Festival, the University of Sussex and University Campus
Suffolk, especially Louise Carter and her husband Paul and David Gill, Regenia
Gagnier, Philip Schwyzer, Nick Groom, Ayesha Mukherjee, Tim Kendall,
Sarah Moss, Joanne Parker and Alex Murray from Exeter University’s English
Department for discussions of the book and suggestions of further reading,
Jo Esra, Alyson Hallett, Nicola Whyte, Catherine Brace Leyshon, Dave Hosken,
Andrew Thorpe, Matthew Evans and Steve Rippon for talking over ideas and
sending me more material, my excellent research assistant Charlotte Campton,
Michael Wykes, Ashley Tauchert for approving the budget for my archaeology
courses, James Mulholland for letting me read two pieces of unpublished work,
my students each year on the module ‘Witchcraft and Magic in Literature’
and ‘Renaissance, Reformation and Rebellion’ who worked through texts from
Acknowledgements ix
‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ to The Wicker Man with me, the
NationalTrustatSuttonHoo,SteveTrussel,BenBeck,DanielJackson,JessicaV.
Tomaselli for allowing me to read her unpublished thesis, Ros Cleal at the
Alexander Keiller Museum, Avebury, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural
History Society and Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes, Guildford Museum,
Cornwall Archaeological Society, the Witchcraft Museum at Boscastle, Judith
Higginbottom, Jacqui Wood at Saveock Water Archaeology for sending me her
novel, Ipswich Museum, Colchester Castle Museum, the National Museum of
Wales, the National Museum of Scotland, the National Museum of Ireland, the
National Roman Legion Museum at Caerleon, Buxton Museum, Creswell Crags
Museum and Visitor Centre, the National Museum of Archaeology (France) at
St-Germain-en-Laye, Brading Roman Villa, Fishbourne Roman Palace, the
Royal Cornwall Museum and Courtney Library, Truro, the Great North
Museum, Hancock, Janice Rayment of Roundhouse Indexing for her help with
the bibliography, Doranna Durgin, James Lovegrove, Mum and Dad and Hoppy.
Hello to Jason Isaacs. Among inspirations for the book I must thank Richard
North and Joe Allard for editing Beowulf and Other Stories (more academic books
should be as passionate, challenging and funny as this one), Tony Robinson and
Time Team, especially for the Athelney episode that showed my 24-year-old
self how legible the past really might be with a little geo-phys and imagination,
and Dad for buying books about gods, graves and scholars in the 1970s. At
Routledge,manythankstomyeditorsVickyPetersandMichaelStrang andtheir
wonderful senior editorial assistant Laura Mothersole. I would also like to thank
Robert J. Wallis, Ronald Hutton and Chas S. Clifton as well as an anonymous
reader, who reviewed the book proposal and final manuscript and made helpful
suggestions.
INTRODUCTION
In the 1964 British comedy Carry On Cleo we meet the ancient Britons and their
gods. But the Britons are called Hengist and Horsa, officiously incorrect Saxon
names for characters dressed as cavemen, and their gods are identified by the
puzzled Romans as the great deities ‘Tea Up’ and ‘Crumpet’. When these are
named, they notice, everyone leaps to attention. Clearly the Carry On writer
Talbot Rothwell is teasing, but his screenplay provokes questions.1 When did
British people first start to tell stories of their long and confusing pagan past?
What kinds of deities did they imagine their ancestors worshipped – in caves,
roundhouses, longhouses and temples? How clearly differentiated were various
periods of pagan activity, from the stone ages through to pre-Roman and then
Anglo-Saxon times? How did people learn about these in factual and fictional
works – especially onesthat, like the Carry On film, are designed to entertain but
bring with them all sorts of cultural baggage? Jim Dale and Kenneth Connor
(playing, respectively, Horsa and Hengist) displayed no interest at all in these
matters as they went off to Rome to save the life of Julius Caesar, but in this
book I hope to fill up the competing British pantheons with rather better-
researched deities than Tea Up and Crumpet.
The first stories of British deities came as traveller’s tales, geographical
and military reports. Roman writers working in the period that they knew
as ‘700 to 850 years after the founding of Rome’ created descriptions of
British pagan practices from the viewpoint of outsiders. The Romans were,
of course, pagan themselves and although their accounts refer to specifically
northern European practices, they also point to the fusing of Roman and British
paganisms that was to come when their empire extended to Britain. But no
‘Briton’ left any trace of his or her beliefs from the same time and after the
Romans withdrew, the first records of renewed storytelling about paganism
inBritaincomefrom thesixthcentury AD.Theletters AD(AnnoDomini,‘theyear
2 Introduction
of Our Lord’) tell their own story, about the situating of Britain as a Christian
ratherthan apagan place,part ofwhat seemed tobetheChristiangod’suniverse.
Whatever was to be said in the first indigenous writings about Britain’s tribal
history would be framed by Christian notions about a chosen people to whom
this god had eventually revealed himself. That revelation, however, was the
endpoint of an indefinite period of unknowingness and unchosenness, which was
difficult and potentially embarrassing for writers to imagine.
Indeed, depending on which area of the then-non-existent entity ‘Britain’ one
was discussing, the notional end of paganism could be as early as the second
centuryADoraslateasthetenth.Largeareasofwhatwasthenbecoming‘Anglo-
Saxon England’, such as Mercia and the Isle of Wight, remained pagan well into
the seventh century. Other pagan beliefs later to be named ‘Celtic’ probably
survived unchallenged beyond the areas of former Roman influence in the north
and west of the archipelago. Because they were unchallenged, they were also
unrecorded. Then in the ninth century, some of the peoples later known as
‘Vikings’ brought their own paganism into Scotland, Dál Riata, Man, Gwynedd
and the north-west and also into long-Christianized areas in the east of
England from Northumbria to East Anglia. Since the writing of indigenous
history began with Christian monks and scholars as paganism waned in each
area – or long after it had gone – in many places paganism and the silence of
prehistory lingered together or after a brief interval of Christianity the pagan
silence reasserted itself with new colonists.
Each kind of paganism thus left complex and highly localized remains of
information and artefacts for writers to draw upon, from temples and their brief
but decisive altar inscriptions ‘to the goddessX’through tohighly cryptic texts in
manuscript books. Later the complexity was greatly increased by the rediscovery
and popularization of the Roman texts, a process that went on from the early
medievalperiodintotheRenaissance and beyond, and byfurther rediscoveriesof
Anglo-Saxon texts up to the nineteenth century. Finally, in Britain’s imperial
period, from the sixteenth century onward, the remains of British paganism were
illuminated by greater engagement with non-Christian cultures all around the
world, each of which offered comparisons to bemuse the most acute observer.
It is those remains and the vast accretions of re-imaginings that have been
shovelled together with them that this book will explore.
Imagining the Pagan Past concentrates on literary accounts of paganism from
the sixteenth century onward, with an introductory chapter on those from the
sixth century to the sixteenth. By ‘paganism’ I mean ancient non-Christian faiths,
not living religions such as Islam or Judaism – this is the definition that the book
will use throughout. Most of the religions discussed are imagined as native British
ones, but often these are mixed with or compared with other faiths by their
chroniclers: Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Scandinavian, Indian and so on. Because
religion is often syncretic, this blurring of boundaries is inevitable, and it runs
alongside a persistent interest in the national origins of the British peoples that
imagines them coming from places as far apart as the Himalayas, Troy and Africa.