|
Helmut Birkhan
Born
in Vienna in 1938, Helmut Birkhan took his degree in old-age
Germanistics; since 1972 he teaches ancient German language
and literature at the University of Vienna. Since 1997 he
also is emeritus professor of Celtology. His broad interests
also include Neerlandistics and Arthurian legends. He applies
a comparative method to all these subjects, therefore he
is working on a very wide cultural front, in contrast with
today's tendency to overspecialize in quite narrow, self-contained
small boxes. He is the Author of several books, generally
on topics connected with Germanistics or Celtology.
|
|
| |
|
The
interpretation of the saga according to Helmut Birkhan
Birkhan
begins by stating that the story of Moltina,
the marmot-bride, closely resembles two great themes of the European
legends, that of the "swan's children" and Melusina's
one. The former saga, that appears in the German literature since
the late XII century, narrates of a man who captures (many versions
tell how in different ways) a swan-woman. She is subjected to
many bitter humiliations, but generates him seven children, who
have the capability of turning into swans. One of them loses the
ability to turn back into a man, but leads them all by means of
his prophetic virtues. On this subject, Birkhan remarks that,
both in the German-Celtic cultural environment and in India, the
figures of women-waterbirds usually take definitely erotic features
and occupy a place of some importance in mythology.
Melusina, on the other hand, is a woman-looking fairy, who develops
a fish/serpent/dragon-like tail every saturday. The ancestor of
the house of Lusignan marries her, accepting her prohibition to
look at her in her bathroom on saturdays. The fairy generates
him several children but, when he violates her taboo and discovers
his wife in her semi-animal aspect, she disappears forever, although
she always keeps her supernatural blessing over her descendants
and her husband's house.
The analogy between Moltina's
and Melusina's tradition cannot be considered as a valid parallel
anyway, because in ancient Europe neither snake-goddesses nor
marmot-goddesses are known (with the exception, maybe, of Echidna,
the half-animal woman, ancestor of the Scythians).
It
is worthwhile, on the contrary, to examine the concept of totemism,
against the now obsolete opinion by Lévi-Strauss, who deemed
it little more than "an erudite prejudice". Today totemism,
i.e., the belief that certain animals, plants, objects or abstract
elements, are one's own "relatives", which it is forbidden
to "consume", is considered as "a moral institution
which humanity possessed over thousands of years". It can
be demonstrated that totemism has been widely diffused in Europe
also. One of the most conclusive evidences of this fact is the
high number of tribes whose name can be traced back to animals,
like the Celts Brannovices “Raven fighters ”,
Epidii (People of the horses), Cornavii/Cornovii
(The horned ones), or the middle-Irish Osraige (Co. Ossory)
< *Ukso-rigiom “Kingdom of Deers”, or
respectively the German Ylfingar, Hundingar,
Myrgingas “People of the mares”, Cherusci
“People of the Deer”, Lemovii “The
barking ones”. Indeed, this can be traced back to a heroic
warlike attitude, or to the ecstatic state of a warrior, animal-like
in a metaphorical sense. Totemism can more safely be accepted
when the animals-relatives have no heroic features, like the Britons
Bibroci “people of the beavers”, or middle-Irish
Bibraige, “kingdom, people of the beavers”,
who are clearly corresponding to the hispanic and bithinian Bebrukes.
This way we can also explain, maybe, the Celtic tendency to derive
people and person names from botanical entities: gallic Eburones,
“people of the yew”, Betulius “son
of a birch-tree", etc. We only find a few instances, anyway,
of people names derived from "swan". Moltina's
saga appears therefore to be connected with totemistic concepts
(Moltina's daughters
are "marmots" as well), although her husband behaves
exemplarly, in comparison with later franco-german instances,
and is therefore rewarded with the kingdom. The later breach of
the totem will bring to the Fanes' destruction.
Birkhan
agrees with Ulrike
Kindl in stating that Dolasilla's
warlike character has presumably been exaggerated by Wolff for
the sake of German heroic sagas, and that both Dolasilla
and Lujanta are
marmot-persons. However, Birkhan sharply disagrees from Kindl
when the latter considers Dolasilla
as a huntress instead of a warrior, and therefore turns her into
a lunar goddess. He also heavily criticizes Kindl's
attitude to interpret most of the legend "on the guidelines
of an astral mythology".
The
paper
shortly examines, at this point, the meaning of the "low-mythology"
figures, anguane
and salvani,
with reference to Kindl's
opinion, who sees them as a personification of the local primigenious
powers, water and wood, and to M.Alinei's one, who interprets
them as a wife-husband couple in a structural opposition. But
Birkhan introduces the hypothesis that in these characters the
remembrance of ancestral forms of social aggregation may survive,
"the mythical and ritual roots of which are dispersed in
legends of this type". In popular traditions, myths survive
better than rites, as there are many myths on which no rite has
ever been founded, while practically all rites are backed by a
myth, i.e. they represent the repetition of a primigenious action.
However, it is often impossible to determine whether a popular
legend was derived from a myth or from a rite. The trace of a
rite, in the Dolomites, can better be found in Spina-de-Mul,
who clearly is the result of a masquerade for ritual purposes.
“That legends founded on a myth can convey historical remembrances
over a span of several centuries in the frame of an ancient oral
culture, is seldom historically demonstrated, but surely at least
occasionally". Birkhan quotes some examples of legends based
on historical tales and demonstrated by archaeological findings,
and guesses whether the salvans can be the remembrance
of a historical population, as it happened to the Nordic giants
and to the Finns, seen as a people of wizards.
Birkhan therefore tries to propose, as a counterpart to Kindl's
"meditations", a historical interpretation of the Fanes'
saga. He also takes into account a "political" interpretation
of both totems, marmot and eagle, supposing that the "eagles'
party" were a pro-Roman party. He however rejects this idea,
because the oldest tradition spoke of vultures, not of eagles.
The Ladinian word variöl
has the proper meaning of "piebald animal". The “one-armed
men” can be considered as a demonization. Therefore, we
may be dealing with a "clan of the vultures". Birkhan
sharply criticizes Kindl
when she proposes that the Fanes' legend came from the East with
the barbarian migrations. There is no reason why the myth cannot
be autochtonous, and we cannot understand why an imported myth
should have been so carefully preserved, if we suppose that an
ancestral myth might not! The modest and anti-heroic character
of the marmot directly speaks in favour of the antiquity of the
myth. He concludes: "I see no reason to doubt about the transmission
of the totem along a matriarchal lineage, because in totemism
this is just normal and is thence an evidence of the antiquity
and authenticity of the totemistic tradition", which should
be traced back to "the deep of prehistory of ancient Europe".
The survival of such ancestral concepts "in the myth, and
then in the legend, is the primary source that feeds the currents
of tradition".
|
