From Rebecca East-Oda:
We’ve seen it before in creative arts settings, especially storytelling. If you think about what is going on in a storyteller’s mind when he or she spins a fictional yarn, what they are trying to do is to come up with a story that did not actually happen, but that seems as if it might have happened. In other words, it has to make sense and to be plausible. Typically such a story makes use of real places, historical events, characters, etc. but the events of the story itself seem to take place in an alternate version of reality.
The conventionally accepted explanation for this is that storytellers have a power of imagination that makes them good at inventing counterfactual narratives. In the light of everything we’ve learned about Strands at DODO, however, we can now see an alternate explanation, which is that storytellers are doing a kind of low-level magic. Their “superpower” isn’t imagining counterfactuals, but rather seeing across parallel Strands and perceiving things that actually did (or might) happen in alternate versions of reality.
I think you can see where this is going, Mel. Even if Tristan smacked the burglar with the oar on only a single Strand, it’s possible that storytellers in other, nearby Strands were able to sense it or perceive it and tell the story in a compelling, convincing way. From there, the story could propagate to other Strands—including ours, where just this morning I found an entry on St. Tristan of Dintagel in Alban Butler’s original (1759) edition of Lives of the Saints, which is in our library.
From Dr. Stokes:
Holy crap he’s on Wikipedia now too.
NVM he’s gone now.
From Dr. LeBrun:
I don’t have time to translate all of the documents from Latin and medieval French into English, but I’ll post a few snippets.
From Dr. Roger Blevins:
Just became aware of this thread and am skimming it.
Am I to understand that changes have occurred, recently, on the pages of a 250-year-old book in our library!?
From Dr. Stokes:
Yes. There are faint traces of GLAAMR around it, according to Erszebet.
From Dr. Blevins:
I see. That is troubling. Not the first time diachronic magic has been troubling.
From Dr. Stokes:
How so, Dr. Blevins? The entire point of DODO is to change the present by doing things in the past. History books and Wikipedia entries are naturally going to change accordingly.
From Dr. Blevins:
Dr. Stokes, I am taking this offline, as the expression goes. Please see me in my office.
From Dr. LeBrun:
Here for example is a translation of a letter in clerical Latin from a village priest in Normandy to his bishop, dated 1063:
The struggle against pagan beliefs and practices in this parish is never-ending, and tests my faith every hour of every day. Of late some of the village wives have been filling their children’s ears with a story that has spread like a grass fire from one household to the next. It is nothing more than an old saga of the Vikings, so far as I can discern. Its hero is one Tristan, a roaming Anglo-Saxon warrior of enormous strength and stature who comes to sojourn in a Norman village for a time. Peaceable by nature, he is roused to action when the village is raided by brigands, and makes an heroic stand on the shore, laying about him with a boat oar until all of the attackers have been slain. Then after accepting the gratitude of the villagers he wanders away to pursue other adventures. As you can see it is just the sort of lay that appeals to the simple minds of the common people and as such is nearly impossible to eradicate.
There is a response from the bishop in which he says that he has heard the same story from other villages in the area, but that in some versions Tristan is a Christian man who is defending the parish church from pagans who have come to defile it and steal its reliquary. He goes on to suggest that rather than trying to stamp out this popular story, the priest should instead co-opt it by re-telling it to his flock as a tale about Christian virtues.
Jumping forward a hundred years I found a fragment of an obscure chanson de geste. I’m dating it by its form, which fluctuates between the early style (ten-syllable assonant rhyme, in this case on short “i”) and the later one (twelve-syllable monorhyme, in this case long “i”). Here’s a few stanzas just to convey the flavor of it, although of course I’m translating for meaning not nuance. Stanzas are of variable length and most of them too water-damaged to make out. Can go back and do a more careful translation if required, including seeking possible encoded messages/references, not unheard of in this tradition:
By the banks of the peaceful Dives Tristan reclines,
Broad-shouldered with noble carriage and proud spirit,
Flaxen-haired knight of Tintagel, new-pledged to Charlemagne.
He’s come to serve our king, the servant of Jesus Christ . . .
(about six stanzas illegible)
Look! From the loins of his enchanting mistress at dawn he leaps
To the alarms of the invading baleful-eyed heathens
Who come to steal the village’s beloved relics of St. Septimus
To dishonor its Christian spirit, a woe much worse than sin . . .
(two dozen unreadable stanzas)
. . . And now does noble Tristan, Charlemagne’s new paladin,
Clap hand on oar and calling upon Our Lady’s virtues
Use the humble oar as staff, to smite the unsanctified chins
Of seven pagan warriors in buckram suits,
While their gleaming wicked swords no target hit
On Tristan’s manly, bold, courageous side . . .
There’s about another nine hundred verses, but most are too water-damaged, and at a glance, the rest seem to be about Tristan’s service at Charlemagne’s court and later his adventures against the Moors, which presumably would justify his canonization. Will now peruse that section and let you know if anything leaps out that might click for Magnus.
From Dr. Stephen Moore:
Sorry to be a johnny-come-lately to this thread, but the Bodleian Library was closed yesterday and so I’ve only just been able to visit the rare books room. I was able to find traces of the Tristan legend in a letter written in 1071 to William the Conqueror. The original is, of course, in Latin but I have supplied a hasty translation, copy/pasted below, with apologies for infelicities in language.
Greetings to my beloved monarch and cherished brother William, by the grace of God King of the English and Duke of the Normans.