Cultural Journal 14 - Two Options For History

At historical sites like the Hill of Tara we would often have tour guides to show us around and explain things to us. Many times the guides would begin by telling the group that they were going to give us two different explanations: the historical/scientific, and the mythical; they would then suggest that we choose for ourselves which one we preferred. That threw me for a loop at first; I often found that, listening to our Irish guides, I wondered why they were bothering with academic information when there was such a wealth of interesting mythological information, and why, if they had accepted the scientific, they bothered to mention the mythical – that seems like a job for a pamphlet or visitors center. As a student, I guess I’ve gotten used to the idea of “the correct answer.” Even though I know that not every question has one, I do often conceptualize that there is an answer preferable or more correct than any others, and as a general rule I lean towards the non-mythical explanations; even as a Religious Studies major, I always sought a historical explanation for beliefs and creeds. It’s something I watch for in my students’ writing, but not something I ever thought to watch for in myself.
It took me some time to wrap my mind around it, but once I did I found it easy to just sort the bits I found most interesting and file them away for later. It’s hard to say why the park rangers all seem to take this tactic, but since so many of them do it I assume that it is systematic. I wonder if it is an expression of the importance the Irish place on their own history. The “navel gazing” we’ve talked about in class seems to find expression here, as our Irish guides offer us two explanations that should be treated as equally important: the scientific/historical explanation enhances our understanding of the natural world we live in, and the mythical explanation embodies the Irish history and culture. Culture is shaped by where a people live and the geographical and man-made features they encounter on a daily basis. If we emphasize the mythical side, we rob ourselves of scientific understanding of phenomena and history. If we only focus on the historical explanation, we miss out on the rich mythology of Ireland. It seems like the Irish have taken that fact to heart, and chosen to express both these perspectives in equal measure.