The Symbolism and Sources of Outlander by Valerie Estelle Frankel

Author:Valerie Estelle Frankel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2015-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

Jamie emphasizes the growing conflict between rationalism and the old myths when he tells Claire on the show: “I’m an educated man, mistress, if I may be so bold. Maybe not as educated as you, but I had a tutor, a good one. He taught me Latin and Greek and such, not childhood stories of fairies, devils, waterhorses in lochs. But I am also a Highlander, born and bred, and I dinna believe in tempting fate by making light of Old Nick in his very own kirkyard” (Episode 103). After he hunts, he faithfully says the gralloch prayer, “so old that some of the words were no longer in common use,” for any animal killed that was larger than a hare (The Drums of Autumn, ch. 15).

As Roger notes, most of the history of the Highlands is oral, up to the mid-nineteenth century or so. “That means there wasn’t a great distinction made between stories about real people, stories of historical figures, and the stories about mythical things like water horses and ghosts and the doings of the Auld Folk” (Voyager, ch. 3). Gabaldon adds, “Whether Highlands or Lowlands … they’re story-telling cultures, both in terms of the Highlands’ rich oral tradition, and the Lowlands’ remarkable literary heritage of the 19th and 20th centuries” (Brittain).

Writing was considered a sacred act by many early people including the Celts. It is for this reason that the Celts had a strong bardic tradition, even among their magical folk, as very little was believed safe to commit to paper.

Gaelic bards and historians prided themselves in the cultivation of memory for the oral transmission of information and records, a task which they accomplished with the aid of poetic conventions, thematic paraphrase and aphoristic formulas of stock idiomatic cultural meaning (the phrase “be literal” had no meaning prior to the coming of the literate Christians). The spoken ire of a poet would maim a king through sympathetic magic, while his blessing could bring prosperity [Cairney 7].

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