The Passage of Time...

[Imperial Dave]

One thing that fascinates me is that in all of our discussions we rarely discuss the passage of time in terms of history and warfare. Yes, we are acutely aware of the span of time that the ancients period encompasses but do we really drill down into the more 'generational' aspects of time and how that impinges on our understanding of events etc?

For instance, if we want to talk about the change from Romano-Britain to Anglo-Saxon England/Romano-British West/British North then the time period is 250 years depending on your particular line on the sand. This is in reality an awfully long time and by analogy represents the time from the American War of Independence to today or Georgian Britain to today.

I try to remind myself of this everytime I look at battles in a 'sequence' or historical narratives (run and hide its Arthur!) so that I dont lose sight of the effect and context of time. An awful lot of 'history' can occur in a very short space of time but the effects can be huge (think end of WW2 to the fall of the Berlin Wall - effectively only 2 generations) which had and continues to have a profound impact on today's events.

I wont ramble on too much but suffice to say that whenever I read of something historical I try and remind myself that alot can happen in a relatively short space of time...     

[Jim Webster]

We also forget the human life time. My Grandfather could have been dangled on the knee of a man who could have been a drummer boy at Waterloo.
Certainly he could have listened to the story of the Charge of the Light Brigade from somebody who rode in it

[Imperial Dave]

That also fascinates me as I recall being told by my great grandmother how she was 8 months pregnant with my grandmother when the Titanic went down or that she remembered cheering the troops home from the Boer War as a child

[Jim Webster]

In an ancient context as a ten year old boy you could have watched Theodosius the Great ride into Milan in early January 395AD and be reassured that the Empire was as strong as ever.
As an old man of 81 you could hear that Romulus Augustulus had been deposed.
Indeed even if you didn't survive long enough, your son could see it, and your Grandson could ride with Arthur at Badon

Indeed in a British context, it's no great stretch to have one the soldiers at Badon have a grandfather who followed Constantine III to Gaul and made his own way home.

[Imperial Dave]

The elastic snaps beyond about 150 years

[Jim Webster]

The elastic snaps beyond about 150 years

yes that's the limit, but within a family specific memories can come down that far

[Imperial Dave]

it is fascinating though Jim. I think its Halsall (possibly) who uses it as a mechanism for explaining historical 'memories' and 'accuracy' especially in the Post Roman period

[Jim Webster]

it is fascinating though Jim. I think its Halsall (possibly) who uses it as a mechanism for explaining historical 'memories' and 'accuracy' especially in the Post Roman period

Also we may underestimate memory. I remember reading a author who commented that as a girl she spent several years out in Argentina on a ranch owned by the family. The gauchos were illiterate but what struck her was that they could ride through a herd and remember the family history of the cattle they were passing.  Hundreds of cattle were individuals to them and when they were shedding cattle, they would discuss which individuals they were going to shed.

But there are limits as well. I suspect that 150 years is probably a good marker.
After that point you're telling 'tales that came down to you', not 'what my grandmother saw'. So it is probably easier to embroider, especially when there is a current need. So I can well see people remembering genealogies, after all they're just strings of names, there are memory tricks. Hence Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain.
But when a genealogy becomes important, another name can be added. Adding it at the start is easy. Slotting it in is trickier as people might still remember the old list.
Also if you're the one who first writes it down in a chronicle, you can be pretty secure that the people who read it could well be the people who want the changes and the people who remember the old lists are illiterate and irrelevant anyway   

[Imperial Dave]

true...

and your reply reminds me of the line oft quoted that we die twice, once physically and then the last time someone mentions your name (although you could split this into remember vs written/oral lol)

[Jim Webster]

true...

and your reply reminds me of the line oft quoted that we die twice, once physically and then the last time someone mentions your name (although you could split this into remember vs written/oral lol)

The written/oral is also intriguing.
When the leader is illiterate and sits in his hall listening to the bard then the bard plays to an audience who also have long memories and the bard knows his might not be the longest.
I've read comments where the sign of a great bard was they sang the song exactly as you remembered it, but added in verses relevant to you and your household. Nothing changed but new bits were added. New bits that might be repeated in house until they became part of the canon, or might be forgotten.
Once the leader is literate, then the culture changes, and they're just stories and can be changed and improved 

[Imperial Dave]

and hence the importance of scops and bards in the British Heroic Age

[Justin Swanton]

The degree of change can be drastic. Auntie Mona, my mother's aunt, grew up with her father who was a hunter in southern Rhodesia. He had come up with the Pioneer Column in the 1890s and lost his right hand when a Hottentot bit it and it became infected. He remained a crack shot despite that. As a job he spent weeks out in the veldt hunting game for the government. His daughter went with him. Her way of washing (occasionally) was to lie in a flowing stream. She helped strip the carcasses and hang up the meat to dry. She never went to school. Eventually at 18 (I think) she got fed up with the frontier lifestyle and left him to go and live with her mother who had left him years earlier - he wasn't the easiest individual to get along with.

She had one anecdote about her time with him on his hunting expeditions: when about to shoot a buck he would make a sound first to give it a sporting chance and then shoot it on the move. He never missed.

Frontier life until now. Different universes.