A Persistent Paradox

A Persistent ParadoxAuthor(s): Beatrice WhiteSource: Folklore, Vol. 83, No. 2 (Summer, 1972), pp. 122-131Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1259445 .

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A Persistent Paradox

by BEATRICE WHITE

A glance at the entry Head in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk Literaturex will confirm the assumption that the folklore of the severed-yet-living head is universal from China to Peru, from the Celtic North to the Americas, Africa, and the Antipodes. This widespread folk belief, involving a violent contradiction, found its way in course of time, by virtue of inherent dramatic possibilities lending themselves to rhetorical exploitation, into sophisticated literature. It is Latin authors who provide a long list of models for later medieval writers, but the notion is as old as or older than Homer. The sophist Gorgias produced a related, antithetical image much admired and imitated in later times - that of the vulture as a living tomb.

Aristotle2 discredits the belief and stresses the physical im- possibility of such a phenomenon: 'It is impossible that anyone should utter a word when the windpipe is severed and no motion any longer derived from the lung. Moreover, among the Barbarians where heads are chopped off with great rapidity, nothing of the kind has ever occurred.' The reference to the head-chopping proclivities of the Barbarians deserves to be borne in mind, as well as the firm dismissal of the possibility of a severed-yet-speaking head.

Homer's lines concerning heads severed so quickly from their bodies that they appeared still to be speaking3 find echoes in the Annales of Ennius4 and the Aeneid of Virgil5. The Punica of Silius Italicus is liberally strewed with similar arresting concepts,6 and the Metamorphoses' of Ovid displays the poet's familiarity with the idea and the powerful use to which he puts it. Statius, like

x Rosenkild and Bagger, Copenhagen, 1957. 2 DePartibus Animalium, Book III, Cap. i o. 3 IliadX, 457; Odyssey XXII, 3z9.

4 Fragments 54 and 71. 6 X, 395-6. 6 XV, 467, XVI, 6. 7 V, 103-6.

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A PERSISTENT PARADOX

Ovid, a popular poet in the Middle Ages, employs it frequently and effectively.s The supreme example of the type is the singing head of Orpheus9 which became oracular'0 like the head of Mimir."1

The use of such a startling figure, which involved the skilful presentation of violent juxtapositions elaborating the idea of contrast, was given impetus by rhetorical training. Medieval rhetoricians like Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Matthew of Vend~me, Eberhard, and John of Garlandia exemplified the prevailing taste for sensational contrast by developing and exploring the full range of antithesis. Such a figure of rhetoric and all its variations, based on apparent oppositions of sense, was intended to shock the listener or reader into particular awareness of a certain turn of thought and to reproduce the immediate effectiveness of epideictic oratory.

It appears that the image was still esteemed by the Latin poets of the Middle Ages for it occurs strikingly in the De Bello Troiano of Joseph of Exeter.'2 Hector whirls in the air the severed head of his enemy and it whispers faintly: 'Ultor ubi Aeacides?' (Where is Achilles, my avenger?) It is the voice of Patroclus that speaks from his severed head, and it is at the most crucial point in his narrative that the poet has recourse to so bold an antithesis. Here, perhaps, is the link between the classical and the medieval vernacular examples.

To the Middle Ages such sights as severed heads were familiar in daily life, and when talking, singing, or oracular, were commonly met with in the regions of miracle as well as of magic. In a world receptive of paradox the acceptance of innate contradictions was common both to religious belief and to current superstition. Many instances are given where, after the decapitation of the saint, his head or his body continued to live. The stories of St. Edmund, St. Kenelm, St. Osyth, and St. Sidwell in England, St. Denis in France, St. Melor and St. Winifred in Celtic territory, preserve the pattern and strengthen the link between legend and folklore. In a relevant context the life of the Welsh saint, Cadog, pays

s Thebaid V, 236; VIII, 751 ; IX, 266; XI, 53. * Virgil, Georgics IV; Ovid, Metamorphoses XI. o10 Philostratus,Heroicus V, 3.

11 Ynglinga Saga IV, 7. 12 V, 253.

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tribute to the resuscitating power of sanctity. An Irish master- builder was murdered by jealous workmen and St. Cadog prayed that the truth of the crime might be revealed. 'When it was morning, prayers being now ended, behold, suddenly, the beheaded worker, bearing his head in his bosom and carrying a great stone on his back, wet and bloody, of maimed and horrid aspect, appeared to the venerable man and his disciples. Wonderful to relate, but an easy matter with God, the severed head let loose words of this sort: "Servant of God, fix me upon the neck in the original position, and I will relate to thee all things which are unknown to thee so far in this matter." And he did as he asked. And the murdered workman told him the dreadful crime.' - 'Mirum dictu, verum facile Deo factu, precisum caput huiusce- modi ora resoluit, "Serve Dei, fige me supra collum in pristino statu, referamque tibi cuncta, quae de hac re hactenus tibi sunt incognita." Fecitque prout petiit.'"3 Mirum dictu, verum facile Deo factu, divine miracles were to be admired, not analysed. If saints could hang their cloaks on sunbeams why should not their severed heads speak? The Golden Legend has no hesitation in crediting the severed head of St. Paul with speech: 'Mox ejus caput de corpore exsiliens: Jesus Christus, quod sibi in vita tam dulce exstiterat et tam crebro nominaverat, hebraice clara voce insonuit. Dicitur enim ipsum in suis epistolis Christum vel Jesum vel utrumque quingetis vicibus nominasse.' A fourteenth-century Scottish legendary repeats the story accurately:

In pat sted, gretand rycht sare, tuk lelfe (he) at his brethir pare, and with pe querch (he) hid his face, and sone wes hedit in pat place. and quhen 1e hevid strickene was away, in ebrow clerly cane it say of Jhesu criste, pat all mycht here, pat in pat place stud far or nere.

The fifteenth-century Alphabet of Tales preserves a different and rather more dramatic version. A more famous severed head than

13 Vitae Sanctorum Britanniae. A. W. Wade-Evans. Cardiff. 1944. p. 66.

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St. Paul's steered clear of miracles. No power of speech was imputed to the severed head of St. John the Baptist which gave no hint in the Middle Ages of its subsequent emergence as a powerful symbol in the nineteenth century.

An appropriately terrifying and brilliant use of the speaking severed head image occurs with painful dramatic force in the 28th canto of Dante's Inferno. In the eighth circle of Hell are the sowers of discord and dissension, all of them suffering the pangs of cruel mutilation, and amongst the rest is the troubadour, Bertrand de Born (c. II40--1214), who was said to have set father against son and son against father. He appears, a hideous, decapitated ghost, bearing his head, which, held aloft towards them, addresses Dante and his guide (1. Izi):

E'1 capo tronco tenea per le chiome Pesol con mano, a giusa di lanterna: E quei mirava noi, e dicea: O me!

(And by the hair it held the severed head Swung, as one swings a lantern, in its hand, And that caught sight of us. 'Ay me!' it said. .. .)

Here the horror of family discord finds vivid expression in a paradox at once lucid and alarming. The purposeful gesture of turning the severed head towards an audience suggests comparison in an entirely different and later context with the deliberately compelling and calculated action of the beheaded Green Knight in Arthur's hall in the fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Severed heads abound in the literature of the North. For two closely-related Icelandic tales of severed-yet-speaking heads there may be a rational explanation. The incidents are described in Njdla (cap. 158) and Laxdaela (cap. 67). In the first we are told, 'Kari rushed at (Kol porsteinsson) with his sword drawn and slashed at Kol's neck. Kol kept on counting (silver) and his head said "Ten" as it flew from his shoulders.' In the second, 'porgils now began to count out the money. Aupgisl porarinsson came near, and when porgils had counted ten, Aupgisl struck at him, and all thought they heard the head say "Eleven" as it flew off the

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neck.' According to William James, Principles of Psychology14 'It has long been noticed, when expectant attention is concentrated upon one of two sensations, that the other one is apt to be displaced from consciousness for a moment and to appear subsequently, although in reality the two may have been contemporaneous events .... There is ... a certain difficulty in perceiving the exact date of two impressions when they do not interest our attention equally, and when they are of a disparate sort.' We need not, therefore, refer to supernatural agency these two instances of severed heads appearing to talk. They merely represent an attempt at factual reporting.

In Middle English vernacular literature the most memorable instance of the use of the severed-yet-living head motif occurs in the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The rhetorical training of the Gawain poet is not in question. His debt to the rhetoricians has been sufficiently established. A man so various and sophisticated as his work suggests must have had, like Chaucer, a know- ledge of Virgil, Ovid, and Statius, and possibly, though this is dubious, of Dante. He would, in all probability, have been familiar with the use in classical literature of a phenomenon common in folklore and hagiology, and reminiscences of classical precedent may well have contributed to the following episode. After his beheading by Gawain in the hall of King Arthur, the Green Knight picks up his severed head, turns it towards Queen Guinevere on the dais, the eyelids lift, the head speaks, and the bleeding body, bearing its ghastly burden in its hand, leaps into the saddle and is borne off at the gallop by the green horse:

Be fayre hede fro pe halce hit to pe erye, Dat fele hit foyned wyth her fete, pere hit forth roled... And runyschly he ra3t out, pere as renkkez stoden, La3t to his lufly hed, and lyft hit vp sone, And sypen bo3ez to his blonk, pe brydel he cachchez, Steppez into stelbawe and strydez alofte, And his hede by Ie here in his honde haldez; And as sadly pe segge hym in his sadel sette As non vnhap had hym ayled, pa3 hedlez he were in stedde.... For pe hede in his honde he haldez vp euen, Toward pe derrest on pe dece he dressez Je face,

14 Vol. I, p. 405.

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And hit lyfte vp pe y3e-lyddez and loked ful brode, And meled pus much with his muthe, as 3e may now here... Halled out at ye hal dor, his hed in his hande, IPat pe fyr of pe flynt flage fro fole houes .. .15

The whole scene is carefully contrived for dramatic effect. Rhetorically speaking the episode approximates to a keenly realised, theatrical oxymoron, derived ultimately from Homer by way of Ennius, Virgil, Ovid, Statius and, later, Joseph of Exeter. The harmonising of such contradictions as we are presented with here creates emotive formulas of lasting strength and of universal appeal.

In pious story the antithetical image fulfills a didactic purpose. The Knight of La Tour Landry, advising his daughters to observe the regular fasts of the church, encourages them by means of an exemplum that is apposite here: And yef ye may not fast somoche, fast the Friday in the worshipe of Cristes passion that he suffered for us, and yef ye fast not brede and water, etithe no thing that receiued dethe, for that is a noble thing, as y haue herde a knight telle that yede into bataile ayenst Sarizens, for it happed a cristen man ys hede was smiten of, and (he) deied not tille a prest come to shriue hym, and the prest asked how he might speke withoute the body, and the hede saide,

I haue forborn flesshe on the Wednisday in the reuerens that God was solde that day, and that y ete neuer no thing that suffered dethe on the Friday, therefor God wolde not that he that seruithe hym deye in dedly synne withoute confession, nor to be dampned. (Cap. 7.)

The basic elements of the paradox could be expanded in more secular contexts to admit comedy and social satire in the manner of Lucian. St. Thomas More, in his Dialogue against Tribulation, quotes the story of a provoking wife who dared her husband to chop off her head. Goaded to frenzy

The good man up with his chip-axe, and at a chop chopped her head indeed. There were standing other folk by, which had a good sport to hear her chide, but little they looked for his chance, till it was done ere they could let it. They said they heard her tongue babble in her head

15 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight ed. Tolkien and Gordon. 2nd ed. revised Norman Davis. Clarendon Press 1968.

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and call villain, villain! twice after that the head was from the body. At the least wise afterwards unto the King thus they reported all, except one, that was a woman, and she said she heard it not.

This happening was alleged to have taken place in Buda, in the days of King Ladislaus (1490o), but if it really did occur, it is capable of rational explanation in the same way as the counting incidents related in Njcla and Laxdaela.

Its presence in Oriental tales is further evidence of the great range of the life-in-death image. It is such a challenging concept, and one so instinct with the universal desire for life and dread of extinction that it could confidently be expected to be present in a work where imagination has full play and the supernatural is always within call. The Thousand and One Nights contains the cautionary tale of King Yunan and the old doctor, Duban, who cured him of leprosy and through the jealousy of the Vizir was condemned to die. He asked leave to offer the King a book as a parting gift. 'The execution duly took place. The King opened the book, found that the pages were stuck together, put his finger to his mouth and turned the first leaf. After much difficulty he turned over the second and the third, moistening his finger with spittle at every page. But the pages were blank. "There is nothing written in this book," cried the King. "Go on turning," replied the severed head.' And it must have suppressed a grin as the poison worked and the ungrateful King expired in agony.'6

The original collection from which this story came was made in Persia c. 850 A.D. Somewhat earlier in the 7th century Hsiian Tsang's journey to India to procure Buddhist scriptures for the Emperor of China became the subject of a whole cycle of Chinese legends which was given literary form in the early sixteenth

century by Wu Ch'Eng-En. His lengthy book, remarkable for its good-humoured satire and its appealing mixture of indefatigable invention, fun, nonsense, and seriousness of purpose, describes the pilgrimage of Tripitaka (Hsiian Tsang) and his three devoted but peculiar disciples, chief among them Sun-Hou-Tzu, Monkey, upon whose optimism and endless ingenuity the success of the enterprise depends. At one stage in their journey the four pilgrims

16 The Thousand and One Nights. Translated with an Introduction by N. J. Dawood. Penguin Books. I954. PP. 85, 86.

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arrive at a land where they are challenged to a competition in head- cutting. It is Monkey who takes the initiative, survives the ordeal, and demolishes the severed head of his opponent, leaving the bleeding trunk to expire. There are analogies here to the Beheading Test scene in Arthur's court, though the parallels are tenuous. Monkey and the Green Knight claim the right to endure the first blow and they emerge from it unharmed. In both episodes a severed head rolls away and is kicked and perhaps in this connexion it might be noticed with what alacrity the Green Knight reacts to his grim situation, for prolonged separation of head from body defeated the healing powers of magic, which, in the Oriental tale is both pervasive and spectacular on a grand scale."7

Any consideration of the ubiquity of the severed-yet-living head motif must eventually raise the question of its probable ultimate origin in ancient religious ritual. In this context the locus amoenus convention is especially important. It is here that classical rhetoric and Celtic mythology meet and coalesce in the presentation of a 'pleasaunce' which, in the medieval vernacular romances, is likely to intrude at a crucial point in the narrative disguised as a 'launde' -a clearing in a forest or wild landscape. The mention of a 'launde', in however tedious a romance, is a signal that something, generally sinister, is about to happen. The function of the 'launde' is to intensify the narrative by means of suspense, for it is in these clearings in woods, forests, or savage, rocky country that the supernatural is immanent and most assertive.

Certain assumptions concerning pre-history lie at the back of this provoking sensation of apprehension. They are based on archaeological inference and classical reference and, in the absence of texts, are unverified and unverifiable. The remote origins of the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight lie in a past shared with such Celtic stories as the Fled Bricrend which tell of the testing of heroes. Amongst the Barbaroi, said Aristotle, head-chopping was common enough, and severed heads appear to have been cult objects. The Celts were head-hunters and calcined their trophies to use as footballs, weapons, or oracles. Their religious rituals seem to have taken place in a launde - a nemeton (Greek temenos). The Celtic word nemeton is preserved in place-names, for instance

1 Monkey by Wu Ch'Bng-fn. Translated by Arthur Waley. Penguin Classics. 196I. pp. 277-78.

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Nanterre, in France and Nympsfield, Glos., Nymet Rowland and Nymet Tracey, Devon. Sir Gawain is a central N.W. Midland text, and the area alleged to have produced the poet and the poem has at its centre Buxton, the Roman name for which was Aquae Arnemetiae. In the Roman place-name is embedded the Celtic word nemeton, a shrine in a sacred grove, a 'Chapel-in-le-frith', a consecrated area appropriate for ritual involving severed heads.

It is in a launde that Gawain first sees the moated castle of Sir Bertilak:

Nade he sayned hymself, segge, bot prye, Er he watz war in pe wod of a won in a mote, Abof a launde, on a lawe, loken vnder bo3ez Of mony borelych bole aboute bi pe diches.

It is in a clearing in wild landscape that he finds the mound where he receives his penance:

And penne he wayted hym aboute, and wylde hit hym po3t, And sege no syngne of resette bisydez nowhere, Bot hy3e bonkkez and brent vpon bope halue, And ru3e knokled knarrez with knorned stonez; Die skwez of je scowtes skayned hym jo3t. Penne he houed, and wythhylde his hors at pat tyde, And ofte chaunged his cher pe chapel to seche: He se3 non suche in no syde, and selly hym po3t Saue, a lyttel on a launde, a lawe as hit were.

The milieux and their ancestry are Celtic, and it is in Celtic territories that tales of the severed-yet-living head abound and persist, from the Tain bM Cualgne and the Mabinogion to the works of W. B. Yeats and Sean O'Casey. What began as a startling antithesis entering classical literature as a paradoxical contradiction, a forceful stylistic device to rivet attention, develops as a rich, commanding romantic image exploited to the full by Irish writers.

Yeats used it impressively in his plays. A Full Moon in March (1935) introduces the severed head of a swineherd who has dared to compete in song for the hand of the queen, whose dance, before the severed head, provokes the song. In The King of the Great Clock Tower (1935) a would-be lover is decapitated, a dance

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ensues, and the severed head sings. In The Death of Cuchulain

(1939) the severed head of the hero is relegated to the realms of abstraction, but the Old Man in the Prologue is made to declare his faith in the invincible power of the symbol: 'Emer must dance; there must be severed heads - I am old, I belong to mythology - severed heads for her to dance before.' There must be severed heads because the severed head inspires the dance, and the dance motivates the miracle of life-in-death when the head of the slain man sings to his slayer, the dancer. The dancer and the dance are one, representing the god, the inspirational force which demands a sacrifice. To the god the victim submits and after the sacrifice sings. That is, the poet has to make a complete surrender before he can respond to the divine afflatus.

There is no ritual dance in Sean O'Casey's play Red Roses for me, but in the Stage Directions to Act III there is a nostalgic reference to Ireland's glorious past when Ayamonn's head is described as 'set in a streak of sunlight, looking like the severed head of Dunn- Bb, speaking out of the darkness,' a significant comparison, for the severed head of the pagan hero sang with such inspired melancholy 'that all the host sat weeping at the sound of it'. The poetic and dramatic use of such an ancient and fertile paradox suggests, in its survival into this present age of negation and disintegration, the indestructible richness of those heroic myths and legends rooted deep in mysterious pagan rituals from which, long ages ago, it first sprang.

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Documents

A Persistent Paradox