In
a previous essay about American Gnosticism, we drew attention to the
differences between the North and the South and how this influenced the
relationship between the two. Since both
continue to reside within a common (forced) union, and since both continue to
antagonize one another, it is a good idea to explore further why those
differences exist and what they portend for the future.
Deep within the Past
In
order to rightly understand both Yankees and Dixiefolk, we need to study the
origins of both peoples. Though there
has been a large admixture of other kin-groups since their original colonial
births, those foundings set the patterns that have continued to the
present: New England being settled by
immigrants from East Anglia and Essex in England and the South by immigrants
from Wessex and elsewhere in southwest England.
New England’s forefathers of the east coast of England, having received
a fair amount of Vikings/Scandinavians into their society over the centuries,
developed a different way of looking at the world than the other English
peoples round about them. To properly
trace the contrasting worldviews of Essex and Wessex, we need to go to the very
beginnings of the recorded history of each kin-group.
The
pre-Christian Scandinavian mind of Essex/East Anglia has left a number of works
available for study. And what they show
is an intense preoccupation with man’s interaction and struggle with the gods,
and most notably with Ragnarök, the violent cataclysm at the end of time that
will destroy the whole cosmos. For these
reasons we may say that the East Anglian worldview is predominantly
eschatologically oriented. The
Scandinavian ‘Voluspo’ provides a good glimpse into this mindset. Here is only a small part of it:
40.
The giantess old | in Ironwood sat,
In
the east, and bore | the brood of Fenrir;
Among
these one | in monster's guise
Was
soon to steal | the sun from the sky.
41.
There feeds he full | on the flesh of the dead,
And
the home of the gods | he reddens with gore;
Dark
grows the sun, | and in summer soon
Come
mighty storms: | would you know yet more?
42.
On a hill there sat, | and smote on his harp,
Eggther
the joyous, | the giants' warder;
Above
him the cock | in the bird-wood crowed,
Fair
and red | did Fjalar stand.
43.
Then to the gods | crowed Gollinkambi,
He
wakes the heroes | in Othin's hall;
And
beneath the earth | does another crow,
The
rust-red bird | at the bars of Hel.
44.
Now Garm howls loud | before Gnipahellir,
The
fetters will burst, | and the wolf run free;
Much
do I know, | and more can see
Of
the fate of the gods, | the mighty in fight.
45.
Brothers shall fight | and fell each other,
And
sisters' sons | shall kinship stain;
Hard
is it on earth, | with mighty whoredom;
Axe-time,
sword-time, | shields are sundered,
Wind-time,
wolf-time, | ere the world falls;
Nor
ever shall men | each other spare.
46.
Fast move the sons | of Mim, and fate
Is
heard in the note | of the Gjallarhorn;
Loud
blows Heimdall, | the horn is aloft,
In
fear quake all | who on Hel-roads are.
47.
Yggdrasil shakes, | and shiver on high
The
ancient limbs, | and the giant is loose;
To
the head of Mim | does Othin give heed,
But
the kinsman of Surt | shall slay him soon.
The
combination in the soul of the Essexmen of the belief in angry, warlike, and
deceitful gods who ruled mankind rather harshly and the nervous energy created
by the foreboding of Ragnarök would go on to form the basic characteristics of
the modern New England Yankee, which we will look at in more detail
shortly: rejection of divine authority,
war against God, and the desire to control nature and history themselves in
order to thwart fate. This created a
rather grim sort of man – cold-hearted, miserly, judgmental, narcissistic.
When
one examines the earliest literature of the pre-Chrstian Anglo-Saxons outside
the east coast of England, something quite different meets the reader. Theology and eschatology are mostly muted in
favor of more mundane things: a jilted
wife, gold, funny riddles, the hall, and so on.
The divinity in their worldview seems rather distant and
impersonal. The ordinary, the expected,
the traditional is thus the dominant theme in the Wessex mindset. The customary has been elevated to quasi-divine
status: For instance, it is referred as
‘Saint Use’ in the traditional Englishman Maurice Hewlett’s long poem The Song of the Plow (published in
1916).
Here
are two examples of the Wessex soul from early English literature to illustrate
all of this. The first is from the
elegiac poem, ‘Wulf’:
Prey, it’s as if my people
have been handed prey.
They’ll tear him to pieces
if he comes with a troop.
O, we are apart.
Wulf is on one island, I
on another,
a fastness that island, a fen-prison.
Fierce men roam there, on
that island;
they’ll tear him to pieces
if he comes with a troop.
O, we are apart.
. . .
--The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology, trans. Kevin Crossley-Holland,
Oxford UP, New York, 2009, p. 59
The
second comes from a set of maxims after the coming of Christianity to the
English. However, one will note the
calmness and restraint present in the invocations of Christ and God, as set
over against the violent, intense interactions with the gods of the
Scandinavians, as well as the focus on the earthly, the contentment with the
ordinary, of the passage:
Wind in the air is
swiftest,
thunder sometimes is
loudest, the glories of Christ are great,
fate is strongest, winter
is coldest,
spring the frostiest – it
is cold the longest –
summer brightest with sun,
sky is hottest,
autumn most glorious –
brings to men
the fruits of the year
which God sends them –
truth is clearest –
treasure is dearest,
gold to everyman – and an
old man most prudent,
wise with distant years,
who has experienced much.
--Mark Atherton, Complete Old English (Anglo-Saxon),
McGraw-Hill, 2010, p. 64
From
this comes the typical Southern gentleman, whose concern is mainly with what is
here below, women, war, family, farm; ready to entertain kin and kith at his
table laden with the fruits of the earth, living intimately and happily with
the cycle of the seasons - ‘at nature’s pace’ as the saying goes, in no way at
enmity with God and his creation.
We
have jumped from the beginning to the end, however. There are still some gaps that need to be
filled in to show the continuity of thought of these two peoples.
The Colonial Settlements
For
the sake of shortness, we will pass in silence over the upheaval of the Great
Schism, the Norman Invasion, and all the chaos that followed upon them.
The
next time period we will examine, then, is that of the colonial era, when the
Eastern English settled New England and the Southwestern English settled the
South. It is noteworthy that the character
of the two peoples did not change appreciably even over this long and
tumultuous era, as we will now see.
The
coming of Calvinism to England in the 16th hundredyear completed the
Yankee character. After his forebears
absorbed John Calvin’s teaching of the wrathful Father-God and double
predestination, his career as self-ordained savior and re-creator of the world
was set. But the traditional ways
inherited by the Southern gentlemen would be defended and retained by the
high-church Anglican (and at times Roman Catholic) establishment. A good representative of this latter is the
Anglican priest Richard Hooker (1554-1600), who was born in Devon County (which
lies in southwestern England). It is his
disputations with the Yankees’ immediate predecessors, the Puritans, that
developed into his book Of the Laws of
Ecclesiastical Polity. And it is
there, in that book, where the continuity of both Northern and Southern types
may be clearly seen.
The
Puritan he describes in all his self-righteous, narrow-minded delusion:
The Book of God they
notwithstanding for the most part so admired, that other disputation against
their opinions than only by allegation of Scripture they would not hear;
besides it they thought no other writings in the world should be studied;
insomuch as one of their great prophets exhorting them to cast away all
respects unto human writings, so far to his motion they condescended, that as
many as had any books save the Holy Bible in their custody, they brought and
set them publicly on fire. When they and their Bibles were alone together, what
strange fantastical opinion soever at any time entered into their heads, their
use was to think the Spirit taught it them. Their phrensies concerning our
Saviour’s incarnation, the state of souls departed, and such-like, are things
needless to be rehearsed. And forasmuch as they were of the same suit with
those of whom the apostle speaketh, saying, “They are still learning, but never
attain to the knowledge of truth,” it was no marvel to see them every day
broach some new thing, not heard of before. Which restless levity they did
interpret to be their growing to spiritual perfection, and a proceeding from
faith to faith. The differences amongst them grew by this mean in a manner
infinite, so that scarcely was there found any one of them, the forge of whose
brain was not possessed with some special mystery. . . .
Their own ministers they highly magnified as men whose vocation was from
God; the rest their manner was to term disdainfully Scribes and Pharisees, to
account their calling an human creature, and to detain the people as much as
might be from hearing them (Preface, ch. viii, 7, https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hooker-the-works-of-richard-hooker-vol-1).
Nonetheless,
he does not leave the reader without a description of the traditional
Englishman’s view of the orderly world held together by various goodly laws to
which all should submit. And to do this,
he uses a subject that is humorously altogether fitting for the homely
English/Southern man, food. Part of the
passage reads,
For
the better inuring therefore of men’s minds with the true distinction of laws,
and of their several force according to the different kind and quality of our
actions, it shall not peradventure be amiss to shew in some one example how
they all take place. To seek no further, let but that be considered, than which
there is not any thing more familiar unto us, our food.
What
things are food and what are not we judge naturally by sense; neither need we
any other law to be our director in that behalf than the selfsame which is
common unto us with beasts.
But
when we come to consider of food, as of a benefit which God of his bounteous
goodness hath provided for all things living; the law of Reason doth here
require the duty of thankfulness at our hands, towards him at whose hands we
have it. And lest appetite in the use of food should lead us beyond that which
is meet, we owe in this case obedience to that law of Reason, which teacheth
mediocrity in meats and drinks. The same things divine law teacheth also, as at
large we have shewed it doth all parts of moral duty, whereunto we all of
necessity stand bound, in regard of the life to come.
But
of certain kinds of food the Jews sometime had, and we ourselves likewise have,
a mystical, religious, and supernatural use, they of their paschal lamb and
oblations, we of our bread and wine in the Eucharist; which use none but divine
law could institute.
Now
as we live in civil society, the state of the commonwealth wherein we live both
may and doth require certain laws concerning food; which laws, saving only that
we are members of the commonwealth where they are of force, we should not need
to respect as rules of action, whereas now in their place and kind they must be
respected and obeyed (Book I, ch. xvi, 7, https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hooker-the-works-of-richard-hooker-vol-1).
Once
Puritan and Anglican settled their respective territories in Massachusetts
(1620) and Virginia (1607), the character types of each section crystalized
quickly. One of the South’s ablest
defenders, Richard Weaver, did an excellent job of contrasting the beliefs and
ways of the two peoples in his essay exploring the diaries of William Byrd II
of Westover, Virginia (1674-1744), and Cotton Mather of Boston, Massachusetts
(1663-1728), entitled ‘Two Diarists’ (In
Defense of Tradition, ed. Ted Smith III, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, Ind.,
2000).
Prof
Weaver details the traits of New England by way of Mather. There is severe narcissism, the belief that
God has great plans for them (pgs. 723-4).
Because of this chosenness, they felt they were permitted to press
others into the mold of their way of life (p. 727). Relations with other people are marked by
‘anxiety, fear, and self-accusation, along with the imputation of the spirit of
lying to others’ (p. 730). There is also
‘the almost total indifference to nature’ (p. 730). ‘The great sensible world loses its office of
mediation, . . . nature was not regularly suggestive of God; . . . the way is open
for the prying, experimenting, and controlling which come to their fruition in
modern science’ (pgs. 731-2). Summing
up, Prof Weaver gives the New England worldview the name of demonism: ‘Demonism is definable as that habit of mind
which judges everything and apperceives nothing. . . .
The demon has one view of the world, and according to that he must make
his will prevail’ (pgs. 732-3).
It
is otherwise with William Byrd and the South.
. . .
The
rest is at https://www.geopolitica.ru/en/article/still-vikings-still-hobbits .
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England,
South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð,
unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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