Dark Origins – African myths and legends: The San (previously Bushmen) Part 1

Posted: January 26, 2022 | Author: robertawrites235681907 | Filed under: Uncategorized | 44 Comments

Introduction

The San peoples, previously know as Bushmen, are members of the various Khoe, Tuu, or Kx’a-speaking indigenous hunter-gather cultures which are also the first cultures of southern Africa. The territories of the San peoples include Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa.

The hunter-gatherer San peoples are one of the oldest cultures on Earth and are believed to be descended from the first inhabitants of what is now Botswana and South Africa. The San were traditionally semi-nomadic as they moved seasonally within certain defined areas based on the availability of water, game, and edible plants. The areas occupied by the San were semi-desert or desert areas, including the Kalahari Desert.

During the colonial period, much of the land occupied by the San peoples was conquered. The pattern of lost land and reduced access by the San to natural resources has continued and is a primary contributor to the current displaced position of the San and the destruction of their ancient traditional lifestyles.

Rock art – human hand

The San are well known for their rock art which is found in caves and rocky overhangs where the San lived. These rock paintings comprise mainly of animals and human figures. On a recent trip to Nieu Bethesda in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, I saw a reddish handprint of a San Shaman. It is believed that the San didn’t view rock as a solid surface and these handprints indicate so-called energy points, where the San believed a person could travel through a cave wall’s illusory solidity.

IXam mythology

IXam, formerly spoken by the IXam-ka peoples of South Africa, is considered an extinct language. Fortunately, some of the IXam stories were recorded by linguists Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd in Cape Town in the 19th Century.

This is the IXam story of the sun’s origins:

“The sun was an old man of the Early Race who lived in a hut on earth. The light of the sun shone out of his armpit and only lit up the space around his house. The earth was dark and cold and the mothers couldn’t dry the ant or termite larvae that they collected to eat. Everybody was hungry and cold because there was no warmth from the sun who refused to share his light.

The mothers gathered the children together and told them to pick up the old man and throw him into the sky. They did this and now he sheds light over all the earth.”

I hope you enjoyed this introduction to the San peoples and IXam story. Next month, I’ll be sharing more about the culture and traditions of the San and another traditional story.

About Roberta Eaton Cheadle

Roberta Eaton Cheadle is a South African writer and poet specialising in historical, paranormal, and horror novels and short stories. She is an avid reader in these genres and her writing has been influenced by famous authors including Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, Amor Towles, Stephen Crane, Enrich Maria Remarque, George Orwell, Stephen King, and Colleen McCullough.

Roberta has short stories and poems in several anthologies and has 2 published novels, Through the Nethergate, a historical supernatural fantasy, and A Ghost and His Gold, a historical paranormal novel set in South Africa.

Roberta has 9 children’s books published under the name Robbie Cheadle.

Roberta was educated at the University of South Africa where she achieved a Bachelor of Accounting Science in 1996 and a Honours Bachelor of Accounting Science in 1997. She was admitted as a member of The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants in 2000.

Roberta has worked in corporate finance from 2001 until the present date and has written 7 publications relating to investing in Africa. She has won several awards over her 20-year career in the category of Transactional Support Services.

Find Roberta Eaton Cheadle

Blog: https://wordpress.com/view/robertawrites235681907.wordpress.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertaEaton17

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robertawrites

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Roberta-Eaton-Cheadle/e/B08RSNJQZ5

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Want to be sure not to miss any of Robbie’s “Dark Origins” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you found it interesting or entertaining, please share.

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Some technical issues

Posted: November 13, 2021 | Author: robertawrites235681907 | Filed under: Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Writing to be Read’s wonderful host, Kaye Lynne Booth, is experiencing some technical issues. Please be patient, she will be back on-line soon. In the meantime, posts by guest bloggers will continue as normal.

Have a great day!

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Dark Origins – The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Anderson

Posted: October 27, 2021 | Author: robertawrites235681907 | Filed under: Uncategorized | 48 Comments

Have you read the story of the red shoes? This is the one fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson’s that I had a lot of trouble understanding as a young girl.

Overview

Karen is a little girl whose family is so poor, she has to wear thick wooden shoes during the winter that chaff her feet and make them red and raw. During the summer months, she goes barefooted. A kindly shoemaker makes Karen a pair of shoes from old scraps of red cloth. The first time Karen wears these shoes is on the day of her mother’s burial. An elderly woman driving past sees the little girl walking after the coffin and takes pity on her. She offers to take Karen into her own home and raise her.

Karen believes her good luck is attributable to the red shoes and develops a passion for shoes in this colour. The elderly lady, whose eyesight is failing, takes Karen to buy a new pair of shoes to wear for her confirmation. The shoemaker and Karen collude so that she can acquire a lovely pair of red dancing shoes. The shoes take over Karen’s thoughts and she wears them to her confirmation, dwelling on her beautiful shoes the entire time. When she comes out of the church, still wearing the red shoes that are the talk of the congregation, an old soldier puts a curse on her shoes.

The elderly lady starts to ail and is dying and relies on Karen for her care. One evening Karen abandons her and goes to a ball wearing the red shoes. Once she starts to dance, she cannot stop and on and on she dances for days and days. Eventually, in desperation, she begs the village executioner to cut off her feet. He obliges and makes a pair of wooden feet for her and a pair of crutches. Karen returns to the church but the red shoes appear and bar her from entry.

In the end, Karen dies and goes to Heaven where no-one cares about her red shoes.

My thoughts

This is a strange and scary story. When I was a girl I attended a convent and went to mass every Sunday. This story often used to plague my mind when it came to confession and I confessed all sorts of strange ‘sins’ to the Father because I was so worried that I’d been vain and made to much of my dresses. I was very fond of pretty dresses.

As I grew older, I wondered why Hans Christian Anderson wrote such a condemning story about a young girl who liked pretty shoes. Research has subsequently led me to understand that the author grew up in a stern and conservative society which condemned dancing, drinking, playing cards, and the wearing of bright colours that drew attention to the wearer. Karen’s sin is not just her vanity about the red shoes, it is also her succumbing to the sin and allowing it to undermine her ethics and morality. Karen choses to dance and ignore her responsibilities towards her benefactor thereby overruling her understanding of what is right and wrong. Having given in to sin, there is no turning back and returning to the way things were before, and her only redemption is in death.

Quite a heavy topic for a fairy story, but then most of the fairy stories are based on dark realities.

Origin

The origin of this story is not as dark as the theme of the story itself. Anderson named the little girl after his own half-sister, Karen Marie Anderson, who he despised. His half-sister was the illegitimated daughter of his mother. She was not raised with Hans but boarded out. It is believed that at one point Karen became a prostitute and Anderson feared throughout his life that she would re-appear and embarrass him in his new wealthier position in life.

The story was based on an incident the author witnessed as a young lad. His father, a shoemaker, was sent a piece of red silk by a wealthy woman to make a pair of dancing slippers for her daughter. His father used some of his own valuable red leather along with the red silk to make a lovely pair of shoes. The woman rejected them, saying they were awful and he’d spoiled her silk. Anderson’s father replied “In that case, I may as well spoil my leather too,” and he cut up the shoes in front of her.

About Roberta Eaton Cheadle

Roberta Eaton Cheadle is a South African writer and poet specialising in historical, paranormal, and horror novels and short stories. She is an avid reader in these genres and her writing has been influenced by famous authors including Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, Amor Towles, Stephen Crane, Enrich Maria Remarque, George Orwell, Stephen King, and Colleen McCullough.

Roberta has short stories and poems in several anthologies and has 2 published novels, Through the Nethergate, a historical supernatural fantasy, and A Ghost and His Gold, a historical paranormal novel set in South Africa.

Roberta has 9 children’s books published under the name Robbie Cheadle.

Roberta was educated at the University of South Africa where she achieved a Bachelor of Accounting Science in 1996 and a Honours Bachelor of Accounting Science in 1997. She was admitted as a member of The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants in 2000.

Roberta has worked in corporate finance from 2001 until the present date and has written 7 publications relating to investing in Africa. She has won several awards over her 20-year career in the category of Transactional Support Services.

Find Roberta Eaton Cheadle

Blog: https://wordpress.com/view/robertawrites235681907.wordpress.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertaEaton17

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robertawrites

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Roberta-Eaton-Cheadle/e/B08RSNJQZ5

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Want to be sure not to miss any of Robbie’s “Dark Origins” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you found it interesting or entertaining, please share.

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Dark Origins – London Bridge is Falling Down

Posted: September 22, 2021 | Author: robertawrites235681907 | Filed under: Uncategorized | 53 Comments

I grew up playing a children’s game to the tune and lyrics of London Bridge is Falling Down. The game I played was similar to the actions for Oranges and Lemons which involves two players holding hands and making an arch with their arms for a single file line of players to walk under. At the end of the song the arch is lowered to ‘catch’ a player.

There are two dark hypothesis for the origins of this nursery rhyme.

The first hypothesis is that the rhyme relates to the supposed destruction of London Bridge in 1014 by the Olaf II Haraldsson, later known as Saint Olaf, who was the King of Norway from 1015 to 1028.

This supposition is derived from the translation of the Norse saga, the Heimskringla, by Samuel Laing in 1844 which includes a verse which is reminiscent of the common version of the London Bridge is Falling Down nursery rhyme as follows:

London Bridge is broken down. —
Gold is won, and bright renown.
Shields resounding,
War-horns sounding,
Hild is shouting in the din!
Arrows singing,
Mail-coats ringing —
Odin makes our Olaf win!

However, this one verse is not corroborated by any other information or accounts.

The second hypothesis relates to the practice of entombing someone within a structure due to the ancient belief that a human blood sacrifice would ensure the stability of the structure. This centuries-old practice is called immurement.

In the context of this nursery rhyme, the immurement is believed to be about starving children who were ‘buried alive’ as the Old London Bridge was built in the 1200s.

A final option, is that the nursery rhyme alludes to the pair of fires that London Bridge suffered in 1633 and 1666. The first fire, significantly damaged the structure and weakened it. The Great Fire of London was different in that the bridge acted more like a fire break and stopped the fire from travelling into the south of London. With its 19 narrow arches, the bridge impeded river traffic and flow and structural changes were undertaken to upgrade it. These changes were not that successful and the bridge needed continuous and expensive repairs. In 1831 the New London Bridge was open and survived until it was replaced in 1972. The bridge was transported and reconstructed in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

Extract from Through the Nethergate

One of the ghosts in my supernatural fantasy novel, Through the Nethergate, is immured. Katherine ran away from her life as a novice in Bungay Priory in 1376. When she was recaptured, she was immured in the walls of the Abbey of Coldingham. This is the relevant extract:

“What happened to you after you escaped? You must have died badly if you are a ghost?”

“I was caught,” Katharine said simply. She didn’t seem surprised by the question.

“My escape became the subject of a denunciation by the Bishop of Norwich, Henry le Despenser, and a consequent order from King Henry II for my capture. Once caught, I was to be forcibly returned to the priory.”

“That didn’t happen, did it?” said Margaret.

“No, I was caught and, when it was discovered that I was with child, I was immured.”

Margaret didn’t recognise the word “immured” and stared at Katharine blankly.

“A small niche was carved out of the wall in the Abbey of Coldingham, where I had been taken. I was given some food and water and then my grave was sealed.”

“If you died in Coldingham, why is your ghost attached to the ruins of Bungay Priory?”

Katharine’s pretty mouth drooped at the corners and her eyes dimmed as if a veil had descended over them. “At the time of my death, I was visited by a great black dog with fiery red eyes. He encouraged me to turn away from the White Light that was waiting for me and remain here on earth. I didn’t know that by choosing to remain, I would become trapped in the Overworld, between Heaven and the Underworld, for all eternity. My choice to walk the path of promised revenge resulted in my becoming enslaved to the black dog of Bungay. The black dog is excellent at
recruiting ghosts who die elsewhere but have a link to Bungay, and placing them in his power. He likes us all to stay near to his home, Bungay Castle.

“I have told you enough about me,” said Katharine, changing the subject. “This meeting has a purpose other than me telling you my life story. “The priory was founded by Countess Gundreda, in honour of the Blessed Virgin and the Holy Cross, for nuns of the Benedictine order. It was built on land granted to the countess on her marriage to Hugh Bigod, First Earl of Norfolk. After Hugh’s death, the land was confirmed to her, and her second husband, Roger de Glanville,
by King Henry II.”

Here it is. The link between Hugh Bigod and the priory. But what does it matter if his descendants established the priory?

About Roberta Eaton Cheadle

Roberta Eaton Cheadle is a South African writer and poet specialising in historical, paranormal, and horror novels and short stories. She is an avid reader in these genres and her writing has been influenced by famous authors including Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, Amor Towles, Stephen Crane, Enrich Maria Remarque, George Orwell, Stephen King, and Colleen McCullough.

Roberta has short stories and poems in several anthologies and has 2 published novels, Through the Nethergate, a historical supernatural fantasy, and A Ghost and His Gold, a historical paranormal novel set in South Africa.

Roberta has 9 children’s books published under the name Robbie Cheadle.

Roberta was educated at the University of South Africa where she achieved a Bachelor of Accounting Science in 1996 and a Honours Bachelor of Accounting Science in 1997. She was admitted as a member of The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants in 2000.

Roberta has worked in corporate finance from 2001 until the present date and has written 7 publications relating to investing in Africa. She has won several awards over her 20-year career in the category of Transactional Support Services.

Find Roberta Eaton Cheadle

Blog: https://wordpress.com/view/robertawrites235681907.wordpress.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/RobertaEaton17

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/robertawrites

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Roberta-Eaton-Cheadle/e/B08RSNJQZ5

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

Want to be sure not to miss any of Robbie’s “Dark Origins” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you found it interesting or entertaining, please share.

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