Stations of the Sun (book by Ronald Hutton)

Subject: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 04:02 AM

I have the book of this name. It is by Ronald Hutton and appears a seriously impressive tome. It may take me some time to read.

Does any body have a view on it?

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Surreysinger
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 07:05 AM

I also have it - have had it for a couple of years (given as a Christmas present) and I am ashamed to say that I have yet to open it and give it a go (not for lack of wanting to - I've just been too busy with other things, and in need of light reading as relaxation)... so would also be interested to know.

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 08:55 AM

Same story here ........... but since I have retired I guess I have no excuse!

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Cats
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 09:41 AM

I have had this for some years and it is an excellent book. Ronald Hutton is an outstanding academic source and internationally respected for his work. It is something which I go to quite a lot for references and verification. Read it, it's quite easy when you get into it as it is well written and an amazing goldmine.

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Folkiedave
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 10:18 AM

Excellent book. Hutton is history professor at Bristol and is therefore only interested in evidence and not myth. He also praises the modern generation of folklorists who are not prepared to accept what people tell them regarding pagan origins (for example) and are prepared to do some research. Generally speaking such material (as he found out) is often not far away.

A link to him and his publications - http://www.bristol.ac.uk/Depts/History/Staff/hutton.htm

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Micca
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 11:14 AM

His, "The Rise and fall Of Merry England: the ritual year 1400-1700" is also very interesting from a Folklore point of view, if you get the chance to hear Prof. Hutton speak on any of these subjects it is indeed a treat!! as is said above He is a Historian and acedemic and examines evidence, Not hearsay,in a clear and scholarly way.
He has also written what is probably the most comprehensive examinatioon of the origins and beliefs of Modern Wicca and therefore Paganism, in "The Triumph of the Moon"

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Anne Lister
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 12:19 PM

One caveat - Hutton's meticulous historical approach means that something is only "evidence" if it's written down somewhere. This means he will not be able to look at traditions that have never cost any money or caused any civic problems, as they won't have been written down. So a surprising number of traditional customs all appear to have only existed as a way of raising beer money for the dancers/mummers/participants. If you're happy with this explanation, then this book is definitely for you! If, like me, you tend to think there were other reasons (as well) for dancing, mumming and singing, you'll find it less than satisfactory.

I've met him on several occasions and tried to raise these points with him, but his reaction has been to suggest he's "pushed my buttons" (somewhat patronising reaction, to put it mildly) rather than to deal with my main point that absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.

For all of that, "Stations of the Sun" does make an engrossing read.

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Folkiedave
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 01:01 PM

Personally for historical research, I would virtually never use a secondary source. A primary source (written down by someone who was there at the time or a contemporary artefact)is all. Anything else is a mere bagatelle,

Much of the mayhem caused by traditions is well-recorded, even when they existed simply to raise money.

The New Year Bonfire at Allendale often described as a Baal Fire Ceremony is an excellent example. It actually started in 1858 and was recorded as such at the time.

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 03:07 PM

Good point Dave, I suspect quite a bit of the "old Tradition" is Victorian re-creations and often creations.

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Anne Lister
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 04:50 PM

My problem with Hutton's book is, quite simply, that there are a number of traditions that might never have caused mayhem and weren't necessarily for the purpose of raising money. A simple example, taken from current practice, is that children in many London schools take sweets in to share with others in their school on their birthday - or workers in offices buy cakes for their colleagues on their birthday. Chances are these events will never appear in contemporary records, but they're traditions all the same.

For Hutton, a dance tradition starts when there's an official record of how much mayhem was caused or when some civic body shells out for their costumes. But - and it's a big but - it's more than likely the dance event had been happening for a while before the year when the mayhem occurred or the costumes were purchased. I know there's no way of establishing a date without a written record and historians love their written records. Hutton, however, is rather too fond of determining that something didn't happen because he can't find the written records to prove it did. When it might simply be a case of the written record not existing, rather than the tradition not existing. Or that we haven't found the written record so far.

Yes, there are a lot of Victorian and Edwardian re-creations and creations. However,that doesn't alter my main problem with his book - that ascribing nearly every seasonal tradition to a method of collecting beer money is probably as far off the mark as ascribing everything to an early nature religion.

And no, I can't prove that statement through any primary sources, just from a certain familiarity with human nature and common sense.

Anne

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 05:24 PM

"I can't prove that statement through any primary sources, just from a certain familiarity with human nature and common sense."

Anne I feel this is powerful stuff and cannot be ignored, the problem is that people will often feel and stay all sorts of things with out much evidence of any kind

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Anne Lister
Date: 30 Apr 07 - 06:39 PM

And Les, I'm tempted to ask whether that matters, really. I just feel traditions are somewhat demeaned by being reduced to collecting cash, and anyway that doesn't explain WHY anyone would decide to black their faces or dance with hankies or wear rags or fight St George rather than do anything more conventional! As I've said to myself on so many occasions, there must be easier ways of earning an honest crumb.

So I suppose I'm still looking for the kind of book that would tell me about the traditions and customs, tell me when they were first recorded as happening AND tell me why the dancers/singers/mummers chose that particular form of self-expression rather than selling copies of the Big Issue. I'm happy for people to feel and say whatever they want about it all, as long as I'm free to have my own opinion as well.

Going back to Ronald Hutton, I just wish he'd been just a tad more able to accept that there are some things that are passed down the generations without being written down. Yes, that means it's impossible to put a date on the tradition, but it doesn't mean it's not a tradition!

Anne

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 01 May 07 - 04:43 AM

Do you remember the episode in Only Fools and Horses in which Trigger, the street cleaner, is explaining that he has had the same brush for 15 years or so. It turns out that the brush has had 5 new heads and 3 new handles but Trigger insists that it is still the same brush. Nothing Rodney, whom he always calls Dave, can say stops him from insisting that it is the same brush.

In some ways the songs, dances and traditions are a bit like Triggers brush and that is one reason why they are so special. I guess I am saying that what ever people do with the tradition is ok and no it doesn't really matter.

The problem is making up past history is pointless and dishonest and people tend to make up what the feel comfortable with on the basis of almost, and quite often, no evidence at all.

When I danced Northwest with Gorton Morrismen around 79-83 we danced in the streets of northern towns and people came out to watch us. I felt we were making a connection with workingclass pride and culture that went back through the Industrial Revolution and throgh a time when working people were poor and oppressed. But as someone who still calls hinself a Socialist - I would think all those things wouldn't I? Nobody from the crowds or from fellow dances ever said so much.

If we have no basis in actual primary source evidence we can all say what we like so long as we accept that it is more like fiction, see all those King Authur connections, than something that might have happened.

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Anne Lister
Date: 01 May 07 - 09:37 AM

I think it depends on what you classify as primary source evidence. Bearing in mind that literacy has only become a normal thing in the past hundred years or so, it's clear that only certain people would have written stuff down and that wouldn't necessarily be the participants or the audience for whatever tradition you're talking about. The same is true, of course, for King Arthur stories! The reason stuff was written down by the lettered minority was (a) if it cost money that needed to be accounted for, (b) if it was unusual behaviour and (c) if it caused a disturbance that needed regulating. Or, in the case of the King Arthur stuff, if it had been worked on to make it a piece of Literature.

Otherwise the much-maligned oral tradition was how this stuff lived and breathed and survived. Professor Hutton dislikes the oral tradition, as do most historians, because you can't date it with precision, but that absolutely doesn't mean that none of it is valid or equally "true". Sure, some stuff has been made up, re-invented, or messed about with. The trouble is that only relying on the written source materials gives a similarly distorted view of what happened in the past, because it throws absolutely no light on WHY a particular custom came into being or survived, and, as I've said, if it didn't cost money or cause a disturbance then according to historians like Hutton it didn't happen at all.

A friend of mine, who was brought up in a small village in North Wales in a family which has kept many traditions also met Prof Hutton. She tried to talk about some of the stuff her family did (stuff which has been going on for at least three generations to her certain knowledge and probably earlier than that - but nothing was written down so nothing can be "proven") and he was extremely patronising and discourteous to her, calling her "primary source material" in a disparaging manner and generally infuriating her.

Written history is only ever an interpretation of primary source materials and what we choose to accept as "the truth" will depend on where we live, where our loyalties lie and who we prefer to believe. I'm not sure why this is preferable to an oral tradition, but then I'm a medievalist looking at medieval literature (where we know for sure that many primary source materials have been lost and we just have to live with that) rather than a historian. I still don't see why Prof Hutton couldn't accept that absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence!

I'll climb off my soap box now - hey, it's May Day!

Anne

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 01 May 07 - 10:25 AM

I still don't see why Prof Hutton couldn't accept that absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence!

I feel sure he would accept that. Oral History is important but notoriously variable. I guess mosst historians would find ways of using both.

Surely almost no evidence of any kind links what people collected in the 19C with "Pre-christian fertility rites" since we have almost no knowledge of PCFR and to pretend to believe otherwise is simply that.

However, I feel good on May Day and I suspect my ancestors did as they did as farmers on other solar and lunar events. Go out on a claer, frosty night away from street lights and agze at the stars.

I guess we will feel awe and wonder as people, I guess, always have. The lack of evidence does not belittle how I feel or the accuracy of my guess. But I would be reluctant to go much further.

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Anne Lister
Date: 01 May 07 - 05:26 PM

Oh, and I thought I was going to stop ...but no, Les, sadly Hutton didn't accept that absence of evidence was only absence of evidence and, as I said in my original post, treated my (genuine) query about this as a way to make a cheap jibe at me ("Oh, I see I've pressed a few buttons here"). Which is why I'm not a wholehearted fan of his work!

But you and I are in accord, for the most part, it seems. We've had a beautiful May Day here even if I was far too sleepy to go out before dawn and bring in the May as I'd originally intended.

Anne

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 01 May 07 - 05:57 PM

It has been a truly brilliant day here in Chorlton and Liverpool have just stopped Chelsea from getting any further, the tradition roles on

Cheers

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Folkiedave
Date: 01 May 07 - 06:11 PM

The problem with oral history is that it is notoriously inaccurate. It's like the things that people know. Hundreds of people will tell you that the New Year's Bonfire Ceremony at Allendale is of pagan origins. The locals will tell you (or at least they used to, it has been a while since I went).

From the Hexham Courant: " ...in 1858, some men of Allendale singing en route to a watch night service at the Methodist Chapel found the tallow candles used for lighting their music kept blowing out in the high wind. It was then suggested that a tar barl might be set alight as a means of illumination for the music. Tar barrels could be easily found, for Allendale was surrounded by farms, where tar was used in sheep dipping."

Now, which do you think is most likely? The oral tradition or the written one?

And I rarely believe anything I read in the papers!!

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Anne Lister
Date: 02 May 07 - 07:12 AM

In the case you quote, Dave, obviously the newspaper. But as you say, there are notoriously ill-informed things printed in papers from time to time as well, and stuff that is just plain wrong. (I have some first-hand stories to tell about these!) And in the case I quoted, with a family tradition going back at least three generations, I'd rather trust the existing oral history than Hutton's approach that if it wasn't written down it didn't happen.

Oh, and anyone who comes up with a definitive origin for anything that uses the word pagan (or - shudder - "Celtic") would automatically be suspect as far as I'm concerned. I'm not particularly bothered about theories about an origin for anything - Hutton seems to suggest that all customs go back to an attempt to raise money - because we can't know, in most instances, when there isn't a helpful and accurate newspaper account to fall back on. But I am concerned that a lot of our (genuinely) old traditions are being lost because no serious scholars will trust oral transmission - to go back to my own example, Hutton made no attempt to pursue the conversation he'd wrecked himself.

Anne

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 02 May 07 - 03:29 PM

"We had joy (nice girl!) we had fun
We had "Stations of the Sun"
But the cause of this rhyme
Is lost in mists of time!"

CHEERS
Nigel

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 12 Jun 07 - 03:30 PM

Ok I have nearly finished Staions of the Sun. An amazing collection of knowledge. I barely feel able to comment, let alone to know where to begin.

I did not understand how powerful the Church had been in controling the pattern and the detail of the ritual year. So all powerful has been that influence for so long it is hardly surprising that little is left of pre-christian anything.

One issue I would like to air is the origin of and the regeneration of the morris. Hutton refers to work by Barbara Lowe ('Early Records of the Morris in England'JEFDSS 8:2(1957).61 -82.) on page 264 -5 of Staions of the Sun,to summarize - the morris came out of courtly spectacles around 1500, it spread across southern and midland England evolving as it went. It seems the EFDSS completely ignoed her work.
Her hypothesis was further supported by Roy Dommet and AG Barrand around 1980.

Morris is good stuff but it seems to be hiding its origins on purpose. I seem to recall much mysogonistic rubbish being cast around by The Morris Ring yet it appears that Sharp actually kept quite about a female morris dancers in the south midlands! (page265)

I guess the point I am making is ......................people can believe in the heart of hearts anything they want but some things did happen in the past thousands of years and some almost certainly didn't. How honest has the EFDSS and it's fellow travelers been and how honest is it now?

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Giant Folk Eyeball (inactive)
Date: 12 Jun 07 - 03:47 PM

Just a quick one to say I thought it was an excellent book. I accept, though don't necessarily agree with, some of the criticisms above, but... seeing as I seem to quite frequently hear the argument that because something seems ancient and strange it must therefore be ancient and strange, it's refreshing to have some of this debunked. I suspect some of the traditions Prof Hutton discusses may be far older than the recorded evidence, but it's useful and fascinating to trace that evidence back as far as possible. Also, I find the idea of many of these traditions being money making - especially when its the poorest trying to make a few bob off their 'betters'- quite heartening. Let's hope they spent it on something useful like vast amounts of ale!

Cheers

Nigel (also in Chorlton!)

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 12 Jun 07 - 06:49 PM

I think the money making has been a bit overplayed - people seem to have done lots of things for all kinds of reasons - making (beer) money being one amongst many

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 14 Jun 07 - 02:04 AM

Just reading the conclsions. The Pan-Celtic ideas seem a bit thin under the sun!

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun (book by Ronald Hutton)
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 Jun 07 - 01:50 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun (book by Ronald Hutton)
From: GUEST,al
Date: 15 Jun 07 - 02:16 AM

A copy of the book is on sale at ebay as I write!
albert

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun (book by Ronald Hutton)
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 Jun 07 - 02:29 AM

Snap it up! It is so rich in well researched information on folklore and the year.

Subject: RE: Stations of the Sun (book by Ronald Hutton)
From: Folkiedave
Date: 15 Jun 07 - 07:23 AM

To anoyone bidding the softback is about £6.00/£11.00 paperback - the hardback is ££25.00. So the hardback is a bargain - the soft back (Buy it Now) isn't really.

HTH

Dave