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THE CREATION OF MYTH
1. On the Orality of Myth
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1. On the Orality of Myth
The word Myth has come to mean so many different things in such a wide variety of contexts, we shall begin here by setting forth some of the basic definitions, properties and principles underlying our study.
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Used here with close reference to its origin, the English word Myth comes from the Greek noun μῦθος (muthos, or mythos), meaning originally “saying,” “spoken utterance,” “speech,” or “story.”
Derived from the Greek noun μῦθ (muth) — meaning “mouth,” the word muthos appeared frequently in the works of Homer and other poets of Homer’s era, where it denoted true words of “unquestioned validity,” words never presented as fictitious or presumed to be untrue. |
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Myth in Homer’s time, however, did not yet have the special significance or distinct category of being a “legendary” or “sacred” utterance. The corresponding Greek verbs <Greek> (mytheomai) and <Greek> (mythologein) meant purely and simply to talk and tell stories, and not to “mythologize” in our modern sense of the word.
While it remains true that myths in ancient civilizations are known today only by virtue of the fact that they eventually became integral parts of later written traditions — Myths made with the mouth, and handed down by word of mouth, have likely been made on a regular basis since time immemorial. The peoples’ muthos — lacking the special significance it took on later — did not originally constitute a distinct literary category or clearly determined genre at all. In the beginning, myth was all word of mouth. Myths recalled from more primitive places and times — encompassing a wide variety of traditional themes and tropes, ranging from the macrocosmic to the microscopic — are believed to have been popularly narrated, sung, acted out, or otherwise transmitted from mouth to ear for untold generations — long before there was any formal system of writing with which to explicitly write them down. |
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The common root of the Greek words μῦθος (muthos [myth]) and μῦθ (muth [mouth]) — μύ (mu-), meant quite plainly "to sound,” or, “to make sound." Without an articulate mouth there could be no myth; for, to begin with, mouth and myth were inseparable from the start. Myth was made with the mouth. Mouths mouthed the muthos aloud. In the beginning was the spoken word.
The same is true regarding two closely related terms: — Fable (from the Latin fabula), which also meant simply “a tale” received by word of mouth, or the contents of that tale. — Saga (from the Old Norse), meaning “things said” or “what has been said," was likewise often used in a generalized way, to refer to any extended or commonly repeated narrative. Especially those stories passed along like beacons from one generation to the next, prior to the days of written history. |