Y is for Youth and Yeth Hounds

Y

I hated being a Youth - as in "the youth of today", aka teenaged.  Childhood was interesting, but youth was something that didn't agree with me.  What I really wanted was to hibernate for 7 years, from the ages of 12-19 until I turned back into something recognisably human.  If someone had offered me the option to do so, I'd have taken it, but sadly they did not and I had to take my own measures.

These measures included being paranoid, anti-social and cultivating a yak-type hairstyle which still stands me in good stead.  The upside was that since I isolated myself very effectively from my peers, I had a lot of time on my hands and read obsessively.  Bear in mind that I am still incapable of going anywhere without at least two paperbacks stashed in my handbag.  At that stage of my life, I read while walking down the road.  Myths, legends and  fantasy were my areas of choice, and this is where the Yeth Hounds come in.

Illustration by Anne-Marie Perks

Several other A-Zers have dealt with the Wild Hunt of which the Yeth Hounds form such an important part.  Also known as Yell Hounds and Gabriel Hounds, they appear in a number of northern mythologies.  I haven't found any southern instances, but they may exist.

The origins of the hounds possibly lie in flocks of migrating geese.  Human imagination has turned that eerie sound into spectral hounds.  They cannot be turned aside.  If they catch your scent, they will run you down and there is no escape.  Lean white hounds, with baleful eyes and red ears, they race across the autumn and winter skies, led variously by the devil, Herne and Odin.  Typically the hunt is not evil.  It can be summoned for a purpose however, and as a neutral force, will obey a sufficiently powerful caller whether good or bad.

I've got to admit that the first time I read about the hounds, I stayed awake all night jumping at shadows and fleeing under my duvet at all the night sounds I'd never noticed before.  They still terrify me.  Now however, I'm more interested in them for the way they keep popping up in mythology and I'm still curious about why they should be such a northern phenomenon.

All that self-imposed isolation meant that I at least emerged from my teenage years very widely read indeed.  Completely lacking in social skills mind you.  Which may have contributed to my disasterous start in the romance game.

All this is a very long time ago now, but the me that emerged from the youth-phase is still the me I wake up with.  Most of the basic obsessions were in place and while some of them have mellowed, others have evolved and grown deeper.  Maybe the hounds got me after all.  Some things can't be escaped.

U is for Utnapishtim and Universal myths

U

Myths have deep roots.  My own realisation came when I read the Gilgamesh epic for the first time and suddenly there was Utnapishtim right in front of my nose.  "Whoa, that looks familiar ...  man builds boat to avoid flood.  Heard that one before."

(At risk of teaching my granny to suck eggs, Gilgamesh is the hero of one of the first written stories.  His adventures take him all over the place and at one point he visits Utnapishtim, who is the Mesopotamian version of Noah.  Gilgamesh is described as two parts god and one part man and his battle with his own mortality is one of the core themes of the epic.)

There, I think, is the nub of the matter.  With myth, we've all heard that one before.  The stories and the way they work are part of how we operate as human beings. 

If I was asked to define what makes people, people, I might well settle on stories and story telling as our defining characteristic.  Plenty of mammals communicate to share valuable information, but I don't know of any other species that creates history and story for itself as the means to do it.

Stretching that a little further, I wonder at what point this happened.  When did we first start telling stories around the fire?  When did we first start trying to work out what happened after death?  When did we first need heroes?  It feels as if that was an evolutionary turning point.  The need to know combined with the ability to put ourselves into another place or person.

Of course we still do it today.  Drama and games in all their forms are part of this old tradition.  We tell stories to keep ourselves human.