Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature by John D. Niles (review)

REVIEWS Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature. By John D. Niles. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 1999. ix + 28opp. $45; ?33.50. Homo Narrans is a tribute to what John Niles calls the 'strong tradition bearer', the poet-singer who draws upon a long-standing tradition yet modines it according to personal values and in response to a particular audience. Niles resists any tendency to sentimentalize folk artists. As he argues, after a biting account of the packaging of Appalachian folklore, 'the "folk" are not the people who used to inhabit mountain cabins sixty or seventy years ago. They are our neighbors, ourselves' (p. 45). His primary examples are modern Scottish travellers, including Jeannie Robertson, whose 'discovery' in the 1950s marks the Scottish folk-song revival, her daughter Lizzie Higgins, Lizzie's cousin Stanley Robertson, and the enthusiasticDuncan Williamson. They are dedicated and often competitive performers and critical listeners. Raised in communities in which everyone is expected to be able to sing and tell stories, these men and women have been born with exceptional abilities which they have cultivated assiduously. A fuller appreciation of their art, Niles argues, can illuminate the Old English term giedd, which is not quite modern English 'poetry', but a broad term for heightened language and one that always retains strong associations with orality. This in turn will illuminate the art of Beowulf, a written poem that draws on oral traditions. Niles provides a well-documented and unusually readable and sensible synthesis of much of the work that has been done on oral culture. Admittedly, many of his conclusions will be relatively familiar. That the notion of a pure oral folk art that can only be corrupted by writing or by print is romantic nonsense; that the oral performer reinforces communal values; that the audiences play a crucial role in passing on a tradition; that oral performance is a somatic art, grounded in the performer's body: all this is widely accepted. There is, however, much fresh material in Homo Narrans, including lengthy interviews with Duncan Williamson and Stanley Robert? son, going back to the 1980s. These give new insight into the relation between songs and social fictions, as when Williamson describes his show of anger at his daughters' elopements, which were carried out according to well-establishedcustoms ofthe kind echoed in many ballads. The interviews also show the powers of critical listening and memorization of the skilled singer. These abilities are described most fully in the case of Williamson, who actually visualizes the singers he has learnt from, as they go through their songs word by word, just as if sending him a phone message, to use his own metaphor. Many of Niles's informants do not just imitate earlier singers, but have a strong sense that in singing they commune directly with the dead who taught them, often parents and grandparents. Here too, Niles's detailed interviews turn what might now seem the commonplaces of the field into something far richer. Homo Narrans is more or less equally divided between two of Niles's great loves, Scottish folk-song and Beowulf. Like many scholars, Niles favours a late date forthe poem's composition, some time during the tenth century, when there was a revival of vernacular learning and a political need to integrate Angles, Saxons, and Danes. He sees Beowulf as a work that combines the older tradition of ritualized discourse or giedd with tenth-century statecraft. For the reader of Beowulf, Niles provides a deeper understanding of what such a cultural transition might have entailed. He also helps bring the figure of the scop to life, showing just how far traditional singers may vary in their practice, how they combine their individual taste with their role as the guardians of a communal tradition, how eagerly, even greedily, they reach for new stories, which for them are as valuable as currency, and how they negotiate through periods ofimmense technological and social changes. At the same time, Niles offersan MLR, 97.4, 2002 925 eloquent tribute to Scottish folk-song, not as the artless expression of some primitive innocence but as a modern form of giedd. University of Ottawa Andrew Taylor The...

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