Re: Clan Questionnaire

From: Andrew Barton <AndrewBarton_at_...>
Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 13:02:47 -0500


> It did make me think, though. How much history does your typical
Glorantha hero know? My family has no
> legends going farther back than about 200 years, and much of that
information is suspect.

My family has a legend that we're descended from a fourteenth century historical character in Scotland (I'm named after him, and he has his own, highly inaccurate, folk song).

A drunken Scot was yelling insults at me last week for being English (I didn't attempt to explain my Scottish ancestry) and she seemed quite well informed on bad things the English had done to the Scots for the last thousand years or so.

> Of our old culture, we have only silly (but fun!) reconstructed highland
games in Red Springs and Grandfather Mountain (North Carolina, USA).

A good point. Much of what we currently think of as Scottish culture was invented by Sir Walter Scott. In Glorantha, I think that process would have been a heroquest and magical rituals based on the invented myths would have genuine power ...

> Even admitting that the Orlanthi have a much stronger oral tradition than
lazy Americans, a timeline of the last two centuries seems much more reasonable.

North Americans seem to have a different attitude to history from Europeans. Most people in England know about the Norman Conquest in 1066, everyone knows about Alfred the Great burning the cakes, there are physical remains from the Roman period. For those who can read the symbols there are historical records in the stonework of the great cathedrals going back many centuries.

Andrew Barton (anyone who bought the pirate songbook at Bucconeer will find the ballad of that name as the first song)

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