Open Writing

I became familiar with Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of archetypes many years ago. Jung held that each of us had lurking within the dark corners of the mind, race memories of prototypical human beings upon whose precedents we fashioned ourselves subconsciously. Apart from finding them fascinating, along with many of Jung’s other theories, I found them impossible to accept because they seemed the stuff of romance, and there was no positive way to demonstrate their existence or effect on the development of human personality in determining temperament, intelligence, or character.

The Recapitulation theory of human embryonic development was also intriguing. Following a hard day’s work when a person was slipping into the comforting arms of Morpheus, the posited process in which an embryo was supposed to reproduce the successive forms of the organisms that preceded it in the line of evolutionary development, could, provided that exhaustion was almost reached, sound reasonable. However, in the cool light of morning when the body and mind are rested, it sounds as implausible as it really is.

I was briefly attracted to Atavism, the theory of the reappearance of the characteristics of a remote ancestor in its descendant. I had stumbled upon one or two people who gave credence to the theory, but eventually I was compelled to reject it as mere whimsy. Considering this on a personal level, I felt there were too many missing links to rely on the notion that the appearance of characteristics in my personality and occupations not evident in preceding generations were the manifestation of primitive forms of behaviour that belonged to my unknown, unhonoured, and unsung forefathers even further back in time than of those I had been fortunate enough to know.

In spite of my rejecting the Doctrine of Atavism, it would not go away. With the insistence of that ridiculous tune, “Little Red Monkey,” atavistic ideas invaded my consciousness and so I reluctantly looked deeper into it, assured that simply shining light on it would result in the slow ding-dong of the funereal bell to the hypothesis.

I began with Robert Louis Stevenson’s dark tale of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and immediately saw that the book’s premise was a fictional atavar generated out of nothing more mysterious than alcohol abuse. I was the child of a man whose personality could be changed twice in one quaffing session and was, therefore, no stranger to Hyde’s excesses.

My Jekyll had three distinct personalities, each dependent on the amount of alcohol in his system. In its absence he was quiet, sometimes broody, but little trouble. A moderate amount and he became the life and soul of the party, playing, singing, cracking jokes, and with one of the most wonderful and warm smiles I have ever seen. But once he went over his ‘jolly-limit,’ he became the “Loch Id Monster” and moved well beyond the reach of human reason. At those times, he was best avoided.

Stevenson had the transforming potion made in the doctor’s own laboratory, but its effects are clearly those of the common alcoholic beverage sold in the ale houses in every town in Great Britain. Jekyll’s dramatic change, his utter disregard for and abandonment of his moral compass, the commission of deeds that when sober he would shudder to think about, the eventual wearing off of the brew leading to a diminution of its unpleasant effects, and the doleful remorse after sobering are the unambiguous indices of the drunkard.

There are some ways which admit of my having some of my father’s characteristics, and even some of his father’s if all the reports are true. But humanity shares a limited pool of possibilities and so these characteristics are found in many who are not related to me, so that shoots the theory in the foot. How could I possibly have within me the traits of long gone ancestors? What, if anything, suggests that this could be so?

There is no evidence to tie me to any of the multitude of past suppliers of my genetic endowment. Except, perhaps in similarity, but the accident of common humanity and limited scope for expression ensure that behaviours and trends in others will demonstrate themselves in us. However, such correspondences, while they decorate it, do not assist the theory.

I will be honest. My heritage comes, by and large, from wandering sea peoples who travelled far from their old homes to make new ones. I am mostly descended from Viking invaders who scrambled ashore in Yorkshire over a thousand years ago and decided to stay put after their tasting Yorkshire Pudding and Dandelion and Burdock. Their first taste of Lancashire Hot Pot almost sent them straight back, but a quick rub down with a Yorkshire Pudding spread with mucky dripping cured their fever!

The blood of potters and painters courses through my veins from my maternal grandmother whose family worked in the mire of the Five Towns of the Staffordshire Potteries. Through her husband I am connected to the Derby engineers that produced the world’s finest steam locomotives, the world’s finest car - the Rolls Royce - and my mother’s father.

On the non-distaff side, I inherited the blood of poets, cooks, storytellers, lyricists, musicians, singers, at least one comedian, mill workers, foundrymen, and both journeyman and master cordwainers. Earlier in that same line are fancy cloth manufacturers, weavers, brewers, woollen traders, cloth merchants, and a succession of strong women from such distant places as Scarborough, Saddleworth, and Greenfield.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution my people were peasant farmers who took up arms at the behest of their liege lords when war was necessary, but whose delight was to return to their land, and to their sheep and cows, to till and beautify the loam of their stewardship by which means to feed their bodies and spirits.

Now, and this is my chief contention, if atavism was true science, some of these characteristics would have emerged in my life. Well, I don’t see them. It is true that I have held the stage as singer, comedian, actor, and Master of Ceremonies, and that I have been employed as soldier, foundryman, brewery hand, and mill worker. I must also concede that I am a gifted chef, a passable songwriter, lyricist, poet, storyteller, engineer, artist, pot maker, Dandelion and Burdock quaffer, and that I have had brief but unscintillating careers in the woollen industry, and have had the good fortune to be married to strong women of noble characters, and I have travelled to Scarborough, Saddleworth, and Greenfield and felt very much at home there.

I have not only gazed across the Danelaw and seen, as it were in vision, the seafarers landing places and settlements, but I was also born and nourished on its broad acres. Is my rugged streak of independence and resoluteness anything to do with my Viking heritage? Or is it mere coincidence! My ultimate proof relates to the peasant farmers that grew out of the early Viking and Saxon settlers under the baleful eye of the Normans.

I have never been a farmer! I did harvest potatoes and an acute backache at Farnley Tyas once as a lad, and I have walked across fertile farm fields in Meadomsley fearing for my life from a black bull the size of a Conqueror Tank that turned out to be the dark shades of shrubbery in the twilight interpreted by my fearful and fertile imagination, but I have never depended on my tilling the soil and other pastoral enterprises for sustenance. I do have a grand passion for gardening and horticulture, but to suggest that this is drawn from previous centuries is absurd.

I live in the desert of Arizona where water is scarcer than hen teeth and chicken lips. I grow a scrubby patch of grass, plant flowers, shrubs, and the odd vegetable. Each morning I stand with feet astride and survey the land, my two faithful working sheepdogs by my side: one a focused and eager English Border Collie, the other an extremely protective Belgian Groenendael.

The patch of grass might be interpreted by some as symbolic of an ancient meadow; the garden strips suggestive of the feudal farms of my mediaeval peasant ancestors. But, it is not really a farm, not really a meadow, I have no flocks of sheep, cows, pigs, or hens, although I do have the dogs to work flocks, course the meadow, and guard the farm, and my garage is filled with machinery and implements to till, dig, trim, spray, kill, trap, rake, hoe, sweep, aerate, tidy and beautify the land.

Perhaps I had better take another look at that theory! In the mean time, it is time to walk the dogs round the entire Bray estate to check on the crops and chase off any lurking predators!

© RONNIE BRAY

Other stories at:
http://www.2theheart.com/author_ronnie_bray
http://www.meridianmagazine.com/voices/011024summer.html

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.
~Albert Einstein