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December 16, 2002
Bellwether
Who has not had a song in their head?Often in my wanderings, hectic thought subsides and music fills my mind's ear. A popular tune of the day, perhaps, or even some commercial jingle, finding a subconscious route to taunt me. But mostly I hear the old songs, the so-called folk songs, into which our ancestors once poured their wisdom.
I have at times had recourse to these songs here on this page.
They are useful in making certain points, for they contain the very power of Tradition. Their power is accessed through intimacy, through memorization and recitation, be it aloud or in the silent realms of the mind. Some we sing during the Christmas season, of which there will be more to say, but today the song that haunts me will return us to the events of late October, and the rally held in the Park which I mentioned back on Veteran's Day.
What alerted me to the anti-war protest of that day was an unexpected echo of song, not in my head, but drifting across the meadows and up to the Great Hill. Only noise I heard at first, the clamor of a crowd, but then something familiar, not fully intelligible, yet fitting into a well-worn psychic pathway leading to recognition. It was The False Knight on the Road, or so I thought; Child Ballad number three. In fact, it was a modern rewrite, but the pattern and the chorus were the same, and it was the chorus that I finally recognized:
And he stood, and he stood
It was well that he stood...
The song tells of a schoolboy confronting a mysterious "False Knight", who bars the child's path. The knight asks a series of taunting questions, but the steadfast boy has a riposte for each, standing firm, until the Knight is finally dismissed to hell.
To stand firm, to stand against.
A picture of resistance, drawn in song.
I suspect it's through this image that the song appeals to the war resistors, but it's not so much the standing against that interests me as it is the going through.
The False Knight is a very old song, and it's been rewritten before now, but it was once a magical song of initiation. It has been Christianized, and marked by Authority, which perhaps makes it a problematic candidate for a protest song.
It still bears the basic form of the Initiate facing the Guardian, who must be properly addressed before granting access to the Mysteries. This model of spiritual development has not yet been superseded, but in the song the seeker has been reduced to a child, in need of schooling, that is to say, codified learning, rather than the ecstatic understanding of the Mysteries. The Knight is often identified with the Devil. Rather than guarding a spiritual threshold, he tries to keep the boy from getting to school. The school bell that banishes the Knight was once a church bell. They ring with the same Authority, but the imagery has been diminished.
Even so, there is some magic left. The boy vanquishes the Knight by topping every question with a clever answer. The verbal fencing seems rather mild by satanic standards, but that's because originally the Guardian was not truly evil, but rather a manifestation of the resistance which all Life must pass through. The topping contest exists in many cultures, often as a child's game, but it's also closely related to the riddle sequences I alluded to last Spring. The False Knight lacks the wit of Captain Wedderburn's Courtship, or the poetry of Scarborough Fair, but what it really lacks is Love. In those songs the proper answer to the riddle dissipates resistance, winning the acquiescence of the beloved. In The False Knight, the reward for defeating the Devil is to submit to the teachings of books, and the authority of the bell.
Which perhaps makes it a suitable platform for the political after all.
The real lesson is in the riddling and the ripostes, the verbal inversions of expectation, which cause the mind to gape and rhyme, and open itself to possibilities that are not taught in school. It may come as a question; it may come as an answer; it may be a playground comebacker, but the logic is ecstatic, and it teaches us to overcome our own resistance. This we can only do by passing through, not by standing against.
Knowledge thus won is true Gnosis. It marks the point on our road where self-knowledge meets knowledge of the World at large. That meeting is ever humbling, but if it teaches us to move beyond self-righteousness it will be a worthwhile lesson, not least in the worldly realm of the political. If we can get past our habit of seeing the Devil in all those who disagree with us, if we can admit that we are not so innocent as children, then we will have cause to ring the bells of celebration.