Steve's question is a good one. I just have one book by Karpeles, and I wouldn't say off the top of my head that she tried much to go back far.

I haven't read Some Conclusions, only FSE, and the one song I looked at in detail was Lady Isabel, where Lloyd was trying to argue that there were pictures of somebody delousing somebody on sword-scabbard ornaments in Leningrad. It isn't clear whether this is original research on Lloyd's part, or whether he has taken this from a Russian Language piece he cites as a reference. I doubt he could read Russian, though it is claimed in Arthur that he could read it. Lloyd then makes vague claims about shamanistic duels. I looked up shamanistic in wiki and decided this word was far too vague to be useful, as well as questioning how reasonable it was to describe the stuff in the song as looking 'shamanistic'. And because I cannot read Russian I cannot check what Lloyd says; I just find the whole sweep of the argument rather 'grandiose' and 'romantic' and not very convincing.

But the question that passage and Steve's email raises for me is one about 'methodology' ie knowledge about how to do this tracing. What criteria are to be used in deciding that two songs with some similarities, and in some cases similarities as small as a 'motif' are actually linked 'genealogically', as opposed to having similarities because they are both about human relationships, or whatever. Nowadays if you do a thesis you are supposed to start off as often as not with a section about your methodology, so that readers can see where you are coming from (and I guess to impress your supervisors with your intelligence, and to show you are not just setting down subjective impressionistic ideas). In some cases a relationship seems clear, in others (eg sword scabbard ornaments) it might seem less so.

The next thing would be to present thoughts about origins as what for me they have to be, theories, arrived at via the application of a methodology, whether or not this methodology has or has not been clearly thought through and articulated.


just putting out ideas for consideration.