Pertaining to wisdom Haida storytelling, Bringhurst argues you to:
For the 1900 a young anthropologist, John Swanton, transcribed a few mythology and you may reports – called qqaygaang regarding the Haida words – told through the property owner Haida storyteller Ghandl. This new stories give reports out of creature and you will people changes, out-of heroes who get married birds, away from birds taking from other skins and become female, out-of mussels who reveal brand new spirit form of whales, and of posts mounted with the heavens.
Perhaps even more significantly to have sociologists, the latest google search and you will get together lifestyle of Haida including provides a different link to the brand new natural business in order to this new non-peoples pets and you may plant life in which they coexisted
Immediately following she’d given your something you should eat, Mouse Lady thought to your, “As i is delivering just a bit of cranberry straight back off my berry patch, you helped me. ”
She presented a package. She drawn out four so much more packets contained in this packets. Throughout the innermost package is actually your skin layer regarding an effective mouse with small curved claws. She said to him, “Place this into.”
Small although it is actually, the guy got into it. It absolutely was effortless. The guy ran up the wall and you will onto the rooftop of one’s house. And you may Mouse Lady believed to your, “Do you know what to do while wearing they. Get on your path” (Ghandl, cited for the Bringhurst, 2011).
To the ear of contemporary Canadians, these types of reports commonly see perplexing. It do not have the standard inner mental characterization out of protagonists and you can antagonists, the latest “realism” of natural options and you may chronological date sequences, or even the spot devices off child against guy, guy against himself, and you may child up against character. not, while the Robert Bringhurst (2011) contends, this is simply not because tales commonly high literary works otherwise have not completely “progressed.” Inside the quote, Ghandl is going to be thought to be one of the most smart storytellers does mamba work who’s previously lived-in Canada. Rather, simply because brand new reports talk to, and you may off, an essentially more experience of the world: the experience of nomadic search and you will event some one as compared to the brand new inactive people of modern capitalist societies. How does how we share with reports mirror the organization and you may social structures of communities we are now living in?
Ghandl’s reports are advised within an oral customs as opposed to a good created or literary lifestyle. They are intended to be paid attention to, maybe not comprehend, and thus the brand new storytelling expertise involves weaving inside refined reps and you may mathematical activities, and plays on Haida terminology and better-known mythological images as opposed to performing page-turning dramas out of psychological otherwise conflictual suspense. Bringhurst shows that even versus Indo-Eu oral society time for Homer and/or Vedas, the new Haida reports don’t rely on the newest auditory exhibitions regarding verse. Whereas verse relies on acoustic devices instance alliteration and rhyming, Haida fairytale storytelling are a type of noetic prosody, depending on habits out-of details and you may pictures. The brand new Haida, as the a good preagricultural some one, didn’t select a description to provide overt tunes qualities in order to its use of words. “[V]erse in the strictly acoustic sense of the definition of will not play the same character from inside the preagricultural communities. Human beings, generally, do not beginning to farm its language until he’s started so you’re able to till the world and influence the growth out-of plants and you may dogs.” Once the Bringhurst leaves they, “myth is the fact sorts of vocabulary where poetry and you may songs haven’t so far diverged“(Bringhurst, 2011, italics inside the brand-new).
Profile cuatro.dos. A beneficial Haida ceremonial rattle in the way of the fresh mythical thunder bird. (Images due to British Museum/Wikimedia Commons)
This is exactly manifest on reports away from creature-human-heart transformations plus in their ethical coaching, and that caution against managing the world having disrespect.