March 13, 2005

• Good story: pagan wells, leper colonies, weird camera behaviour and all, and an interesting site. Thanks At Swim, and thanks for reminding me how long it is since I read any Flann O'Brien, an error i shal rectify ASAP.
• Full marks to you for spotting that.
• ))) for a fine monk-y tale, At Swim Two Birds!
• While the topic of great O'Brien is up, how is it you are not At Swim-Two-Birds? And why, on your profile page, do you say a pint of porter is your only man when 'tis plain that's not how O'Brien put it? Just curious, not intending this as criticism,
• I find it hard to believe these are actual crime scene investigators. It quickly degenerates into typical ghost story mumbo jumbo without backing up any of its assertations (the guy from the 70's photographs). Its a fun story but it really stretches the credibility of this "investigation" site.
• how is it you are not At Swim-Two-Birds? D'you know what I am going to tell you, the third policeman stole my dashes, by God. As for the reference to Porter, well, picking your way, there is such a thing as that. Comparable further description of my choice of word-form, part the second: Poetic license. You know yourself that I would be forever fending off the word-torrents of a fool with 'a plain what, now?' until I kick the jaw off his pocky face, so I must.
• *applauds* Heh! I thought ye would have an interesting answer -- never met anyone who likes O'Brien's work to be tongue-tied. I'll look forward to seeing more of your posts.
• A fun ghost story to be sure, but why not just excavate the well? A few archaeologists could shed some light on the subject rather quickly, I suspect.
• Damn, even older than a personal favourite, Sawney Bean.
• Sawney Bean story is great, but many consider it to be an 18th century invention. I've long wanted to see Oliver Reed's role as Sawney Bean, which I heard he undertook years ago, but AFAIK the production was never actually completed. It's not listed on IMDb. Anyone know aught about this?
• Looking at the bottom of this article, At Swim Two Birds, it appears that the movie was never made.
• I'm aware of the controversy, ASTB, but some of the people who've dismissed the idea that the Bean clan ever existed seem to be revisionist historians who've been content to make their claims in order to tidy up some of the ghoulishness in the legends of the U.K. Not being able to provide exact years for events which occurred in the fourteenth century is not surprising, but I don't see that as evidence to declare the matter utter bunk. I don't recall the author, but years ago I read a dark history of Britain which had a lengthy chapter on Sawney Bean. The author recognised the debates but had done much research into the oral history which had led up to the first published accounts of the story, and he leaned toward the idea that the legend was based upon fact, even if some of the details had no doubt been fabricated or exaggerated for dramatic effect. Eh, every culture needs its ghost stories to scare children and the addle-minded into obeying the edicts of 'responsible' adults. Maybe Sawney Bean is one of those, but the tale is certainly plausible and makes for an entertaining read.
• You don't have to be a revisionist historian to be skeptical of a story with no written evidence before the 18th century. Historians, generally, work with written documents; it's what they do. If, unlike the story of the monk, which at least has some 14th century record, there are no contemporary written record, I wouldn't take it as history either. It would be legend, or oral history, which a different thing. Still important - but not the same thing as history based on contemporary sources, it's understood very differently. And with this fitting so neatly into a classic horror story, I would really want to see more evidence than an 18th century folk tale to start talking about it as a real event. The fifteen century is early, so the records aren't as good as they would be later, but it is also a literate culture, and something this big should appear somewhere in contemporary or near contemporary documents, unless there is a serious dearth in late medieval Scottish documents (as compared to English or French, for example). It would have been picked up in chronicles, in bishops' records, something. Also, in the context of British History, "revisionism" usually refers to a specific school of thought on the origins of the Civil Wars. At least it so for the English side - is it in Scottish historiography?
• This is a fairly robust debunkin of the Sawney Bean story. It reminded me of similar tales in Chinese stories of innkeepers who'd poison travellers to rob them and sell their meat. Maybe a global meme?
• Well, I liked the movie. And nice title on that article, A_C. Though I wasn't clear - exactly which century was the story suposed to have taken place? 13th, 14th or 16th/17th?
• ...stripping the body of valuables and dropping it down the well that was just behind the door of the chapel. Hmmm...decaying bodies have a strong and unmistakable (especially back when people ended up dead more often)stench that sticks around for a while. He either had an excuse for the smell, was covering it up, or left an interval between killing the unwary long enough for it to smell chapel-ly fresh again. Also - what evidence is there that any murders happened at all? The guy was charged with some robberies, attempted to murder a woman and her baby, and attempted to murder the sailor. The account states; After his guest had eaten a hot meal, to which had been added a narcotic, the traveller would quickly be rendered semi-conscious. At this point, Robert would draw his knife and stab the victim to death before stripping the body of valuables and dropping it down the well that was just behind the door of the chapel. How would anybody know? If he was doing it, the witnesses would end up dead, down the bloody well, having told nobody. All the sailor could attest to is that buddy tried to stab him. We've got an alleged serial killer without a single body on him.
• especially back when people ended up dead more often Rate's still running at 100%, unless I missed some late-breaking news.
• Just to be clear - I'm not questioning the post, but rather either the legend itself, or how the writer of the piece arrives at the conclusion this dude was a serial murderer. I gotta stop watching that dang L&O, CSI, Cold Case, and half the lineup on TLC. I want hard evidence, dammit!
• Well, we know he was hanged for murder. But that site is really calling for a proper excavation. Even if there are no bodies, a well can have all sorts of archeologically interesting garbage.
• ...unless I missed some late-breaking news Here's the deal; Wolof has no idea that every single other monkey is either a vampire, zombie, or one of those Highlander dudes. Ok...only one of us can be the Highlander dude - anyways Sshhhh! Shut up! shhhh... Wolof! What a delightful surprise! We were just talking about you...martini?
• Plopping dead bodies into wells is guaranteed to spoil the drinking water, and passersby would soon complain of the horrid smells -- such secrets can't remain long hid -- so folk would know someone went and did what he never oughter.
• This period of history didn't have garbage men, plumbing or sewage treatment facilities & people kept their own animals. Pits in which to dispose carcasses were commonplace as were stinking middens. Water sources were often contaminated. Up until the late 18th century sewers still emptied into rivers like the Thames. Considering that this was apparently a remote location, if the well (which may or may not have had clean water in the first place) stank, nobody may have noticed or cared. Excavations may or may not reveal remains in the well or the area. Bones don't last that long in damp conditions. Teeth or other tougher artifacts might. How would anybody know about his crimes? In those days they used to torture people and it's likely he confessed. Whether the extent of the monk's crimes were as great as presented is another matter. I'm not saying the article is true, I'm just saying that moneyjane's objections don't hold particularly well in this instance.

• Up until the late 18th century sewers still emptied into rivers like the Thames.

  Up until last year, unfortunately, and it appears to be systematic (or at least systemic).
• Ugh!
• ASTB - What if it were so wet it preserved? Someone who works on Mayan archeology told me their soil down there is damp and acidic (if I recall correctly), and they almost never saw bones except in cave/tomb burials; the best they could hope for were subtle changes in colour where the body was, and maybe a few teeth. But then bones (and everything else) survive wonderfully in peatbogs. Would a well act like a bog?
• moneyjane's objections don't hold particularly well in this instance. Damn punsters!
• Having no written period evidence is not surprising in the Sawney Bean debate: rural Scotland at the time was at best only partially literate, and resources would have had to been sent from Court in order to lay down any sort of written account. The idea that James I led the search and capture of the clan is probably a royal vanity: had what passed for local authorities been the enforcers, as they almost certainly would have been, what is the likelihood that any would have been literate and bothered to take note of the account. I'm not stating that the legend is absolutely factual. I have read enough on both sides of the debate, though, to state that we don't have enough evidence to dismiss it as bunk or write it into history books without an asterisk. The most strident remarks that the legend is a myth, however, read to me as more than a little wishful and intolerant of oral histories, and more than a little in disagreement with one another. That doesn't bode well for any debunking.
• coppermac - I do understand that the period is not the richest in written records. Medievalists struggle with this. But at the same time, being a historian means having certain requirements for evidence. I wish I could take oral history into account - my research would be so much richer for it (I'm writing a thesis on rural England just a hundred or so years later - still very illiterate, at least among the classes I wish to study). But I'm aware that much of the time I can't, without corroborating evidence. For one thing, oral history has a way of changing to reflect its own time. Also, inaccuracies creep in - when talking to someone who has lived most of her life in the region I study, she was telling me about servants. But what she knew about servants was relevant to the nineteenth century at the earliest - it just wasn't accurate to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, there had been too much change in social relations, though she did not know this. There are times and places when oral history is used - sometimes when it may be the only source. I read an excellent book (Games against Nature by Robert Harms) based heavily on the oral history of the Nunu living in swamps along the Congo. But notably, it was oral history of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century - recollections of what grandparents had told them. There were some origin stories that went earlier, which were correlated with other stories and linguistic evidence, etc. But there was always an awareness that these were narratives, shaped by the needs of the times they were told in, as well as the times they were about. Sorry to go on about this, it's just that history is a much more serious discipline than many people realise (and many of the widely published popular history books or history documentaries just don't reflect academic history). If a scientist didn't have evidence for or against something, they could not endorse it. The ways of working with evidence in history are different (because it is so patchy), but at the same time, they must be held to. And, of course they disagree, if they are academics. The day academics agree with someone else in their field is the day the sky falls down.
• jb: I had a prof who argued that the reliability of oral texts (histories, poems, religious stories, etc.) has changed over time as society has become more literate. She argued that, in pre-literate societies, people's memories were better trained to retain accurate oral texts. As we became more reliant on the written word to remember for us, though, our brains "forgot" how to remember oral texts. Because of this, she was more willing to use (or accept without many grains of salt) oral texts that had been transcribed from pre-literate people than from people who lived in literate societies (whether the individual could read or not is beside the point).
• Fairly readable article on O'Brien over here. (Salon link. If you want to avoid the ads, click here first.)
• meredithea - That makes some sense, but at the same time, people in pre-literate Europe happily created history all the time. Manorial customs, for instance, were always described as having existed "since time out of mind", even when actually they started with a grant only some 60 or 100 years earlier. It didn't really matter to them - they could win their court case if they testified it had always been so. E.P. Thompson, in his article on wife-sales, thought that was likely to have been an example of a custom which was invented in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, but quickly gained a patina of age, so that later commentators though it had always existed. These are different from formal oral histories, of course, because those stories at least have a purpose in maintaining history. The Nunu, as described in the book I cited above, apparently have travel narratives - they described their history in terms of how they moved around the region. But it was a lot more formalised than contemporary European oral history, for example. Oral history is really important, and for so many things the only source, or the best source. But it has its strengths and weaknesses. For learning about customs (with the caveats noted above), life ways, identities, perceptions of history - excellent. For determining the existence of a specific individual in a specific place - not so good.