Good Morning, Mr. Magpie: On Folklore and Science

Last updated on: April 7, 2019 at 3:35 pm by David Russell Mosley

Good Morning, Mr. Magpie: On Folklore and Science 2019-04-07T15:35:55-04:00 David Russell Mosley

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Sardaka (CC By-SA 4.0)

Lent
7 April 2019
On the Edge of Elfland
Manchester, NH

Dearest Readers,

Recently I came across a BBC about the use of folklore in conservation efforts. A team from the University of Birmingham conducted an experiment to discover what made young students more likely to be in favor of conservation efforts. They chose magpie because they are not “poster animals” for conservation efforts like eagles or pandas. One group was given scientific information about magpie. Another folkloric information. A third was given both and fourth none. The results showed that children who received the folkloric information were those most keen for conservation.

This is something I have noticed myself. In both Ireland and Iceland local belief in elves and fairies has halted potentially dangerous to the environment construction. Why? Why is it that when scientific explanations fail to inspire conservationist efforts, at least in children, do folkloric and mythic explanations? I believe the answer lies in our human nature.

Human beings are inherently poetical, and much of our earliest poetry and song are concerned with telling mythic, comsgonic, and folkloric/Faërie stories. One needs only look at the beginning of Genesis or the Enuma Elish or the Proetic Edda to see that this is the case. Story, therefore, and also poetry, allows us a deeper connection with the world around us. It reminds us that the world is not just what our senses can perceive, but that there is something deeper going on, that there is a real relationship between us and the world around us.

Coleridge understood this when he wrote at the end of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

“He prayeth best, who loveth best
All things both great and small;
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”

For Coleridge there is not a nature-humanity dichotomy. We belong to nature and it to us. We know this not only through our experience of the phenomena of the world around us but also through the stories we tell. And this too is something I love about the book The Lost Words, which I reviewed here. Rather than simply providing definitions or etymologies of the words being excised from the students’ dictionary, Macfarlane wrote poems. He wanted us not to engage with these words from a purely scientific level, but to encounter them as realities. Folklore, myth, fairy-stories help us engage with the world around us more deeply.

Part of this, I think, is because it removes us from the laboratory. Science is often, though by no means always, concerned with removing all the variables and looking a pure object, experimenting with it. Folklore is precisely interested in maintaining the variables. It adds variables. What if ravens, for example, don’t just eat carrion? What if they are also the messengers of Odin? What if it really is bad luck not to greet the first magpie you see on a given day? When I lived in England, I would always do my best to greet the first magpie I saw with a gentlemanly, “Good morning, Mr. Magpie.” I did this not because I feared bad luck, but because I liked how it made me pay attention to the world around me. I was always on the look out. And this helped me to pay attention to the magpie in front of me as well as to come to understanding of magpies in their habitats. I didn’t want the lab’s magpie, or the physicist’s spherical chickens, I wanted the magpie in the park during my afternoon walk.

This attention to story is essential to children’s education, but it is not for children only. We adults too can learn to better engage with the world around us, and thus care for it better, precisely if we pay a bit more attention to myth and Faërie. Perhaps reminding ourselves that four-leaf clovers are lucky will stop us from inundating our yards with deadly poison to keep them at bay. Perhaps the ritual of saying, “Good morning, Mr. Magpie,” will make us more attentive to the destruction of their habitats. Perhaps even a belief in elves and fairies will keep us from building roadways or fracking on lands important to the fair folk. Perhaps a little more superstition can lead us to a healthier engagement with the land. Perhaps better engagement with the land will allow us to turn our eyes to the stars with wonder and not utility. Maybe even then we can find ourselves contemplating the world around us and see the vestige of the Trinity in the world around us. Perhaps treating nature like creation will remind us that there is a Creator.

Sincerely,
David Russell Mosley

Creation

Faeriean Metaphysics

Literature and Poetry

Previous Post

March 25, 2019

Sonnets for the Annunciation

Next Post

April 15, 2019 Notre Dame in Flames: Reflecting on 2 Years of Being Catholic

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Secular Age Advent Apologetics Atheism Beauty Being a Catholic Evangelical Being Catholic Being Deified: Poetry and Fantasy on the Path to God Blogging Book Reviews C. S. Lewis Catholic Imagination Catholic Social Teaching Catholicism Christmas Church Calendar Church Fathers Church Life Community Conferences Cosmology Creation Curdled Words Deification Distributism Easter Economics Education Epiphany Essay Extracts Eucharist Faerie Faeriean Metaphysics Fatherhood Films Folk Liturgy Food and Drink G. K. Chesterton Harry Potter J. R. R. Tolkien Jove King Arthur Language Lent Life Literature and Poetry Liturgy Medieval Theology Music My Publications Mythology On the Edges of Elfland Ordinary Time Ordination Parenthood Parish Patristic Theology Pentecost Politics Prayer Racism Radical Orthodoxy Restoration Movement Sacramental Ontology Saints Science Sex and Sexuality Sophiology Stories The Inklings The Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything Theologians in the Church Theopoetics Thesis Research Uncategorized University of Nottingham What I'm Reading Writing

Select a Month December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 July 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz