Manse Everard was off-stage in 372, 1935 and 300 but returns with elder statesman status as recounted by Carl Farness in 1980. Of course, there could have been many Time Patrol stories that never mentioned Everard. However, we will learn that he is always present even if only in a supporting role.
Farness wrote papers on Deor and Widsith. His mentor in the Patrol, Herbert Ganz, wrote a paper on the Gothic Bible. Ganz's paper was published in Berlin in 1853 and Farness read it before joining the Patrol. In 1858, pp. 399-404, Farness shows Ganz the hologram recording of his meeting with Ulfilas. Farness tells us that Ulfilas translated the Bible but see the link to "Gothic Bible" above.
Farness tells Ganz that he has found:
"'New poems; lines in them that definitely look ancestral to Widsith and Walthere.'" (p. 404)
I cannot find Walthere. We get a sense of the scholarship involved in the Patrol's researches into past periods.
3 comments:
The fact that early-medieval narratives in southern Germany and in Iceland shared themes, incidents and stories indicates that in the Dark Age/Migration Period Germanic oral poetry was still a single interaction sphere, with bards traveling between groups and stories migrating hundreds upon hundreds of miles and enduring for centuries.
Most of this vanished during the process of conversion to Christianity and the introduction of full literacy (rather than the partial runic version).
You see the same thing in Ireland, but not as drastic.
Christian chroniclers -- usually Christian clerics, too -- were selective about what they were willing to write down, or even mention. In particular, they tried to "de-sacrilize" stuff involving the pagan deities and supernatural beings; look at the difference between the Icelandic Volsungasaga and the German (and post-conversion) Niebelungenlied.
Likewise, Christian clerics in Ireland wrote down the old stories, but they Euphemerized them, translating gods and demigods into ancient kings and warriors.
The Patrol would have access to the whole corpus of Germanic "literature", including the oral parts that didn't happen to get written down.
(From SM Stirling. Should have come before the previous comment.)
Or at least they acquire access, as we see them doing.
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