Sometimes the only history we have on an event or a person is in oral stories. This can come in the form of folk tales, folk songs or even folk poems, among other things.
Michele Buchanan, a graduate of UNM’s Los Alamos branch, said she came across one of these strictly oral legends when she began to research the origins of her recently acquired instrument, a harp.
While researching writings about where the harp came from, Buchanan said she learned about many figures in history and their connection to the instrument, like Queen Elizabeth, and at some point she realized she had to write it down to preserve it.
Buchanan returned to UNM Tuesday afternoon to sign copies of her book, “Scota’s Harp,” and discuss the story behind the novel and the history she learned while writing it.
DL: Tell me about your book.
MB: This book is a history of a dozen myths and legends that talk about a tribe of people who are mercenaries that fight the Persians in Egypt, and then move across the Mediterranean, invade Spain and then Ireland, and then a thousand years later, became the Scotti of Scotland, which it was named after. It’s basically about this woman named Scota, that we have no historical record of other than oral myth in both the Scottish culture and the Irish culture.
DL: How would you describe the genre of this book?
MB: It’s an adventure, with an American archaeologist finding some artifacts of Egyptian things in Spain and connecting the dots. It is both the history of real events and legends rolled in together.
DL: How does Scota tie into these combined stories?
MB: The Scots had this thing called the Stone of Scone, which is the stone where they would have coronations of their kings. And this big rock supposedly came from the Middle East … It was sometimes called Jacob’s Pillow. The person would sit on it, and if the person was supposed to be the king, the stone would make a noise. It was a very special rock.
Well, rocks don’t talk unless there’s writing on them. So my premise is that Scota had a rock from Egypt that had hieroglyphics … that said she was a princess. And that anybody who could be the king or queen would sit on the rock and become the next monarch.
DL: So what made you write about all this?
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MB: The reason I started writing about this is because… I retired suddenly and took up the harp, which didn’t exist in Europe at all until the Renaissance, but they’re ancient instruments. So where were they? So I started on this subject because I wanted to find out where harps came from.
DL: Where were all the harps?
MB: People who played harps were called bards. They had phenomenal memories. They remembered every person who was born, every battle that was ever fought, every person who died – all the stories were done by the harpers. They kept the whole culture together because they could remember the history of their clan. But Queen Elizabeth had all the harpers killed, and had all the harps burned. She got rid of every harper in both Ireland and Scotland so she could control the people.
DL: You call these bards harpers instead of harpists. What’s the difference?
MB: A harpist is someone who plays a symphonic harp that weighs 200 pounds. So if you had to carry an instrument around that weighed more than you do, you’d be pissed. Harper is the terminology for folk harpers. A harper is someone who plays folk music on a folk harp, who knows the history of the clan and keeps the history alive.
DL: Going back to what started all of this, how did you get into playing the harp?
MB: It was an accident. I was a special ed homebound teacher … [Some] were very seriously emotionally disturbed kids. I had an assistant that went with me because it’s a liability situation should something happen … The last day of July, I get this letter from central office saying I won’t have my assistant with me anymore … I was not going to put myself in a liability situation … If I had been told before the end of July, I would have already searched for another position. But since they didn’t tell me, I had no choice but to retire that day ... So my husband said, ‘What do you want to do now?’ and I said, ‘I’d like to play the harp.’ It was like a bolt out of the blue.
DL: How did the time you spent writing affect your time playing the harp?
MB: I don’t think the time I spent writing really affected anything. Most of the time I was writing would be from about 6 o’clock in the morning to like 7 or 8, and then I would go do the rest of the things that I do. I found the book was sort of subconsciously coming out of me all the time because I fell in love with my characters… It was just an easy book to write.
DL: What do you love most about playing the harp?
MB: The songs are wonderful. They’re not just what you hear on the radio now. These songs tell about particular people … Because they’re folk songs, they are full of history and love songs and just wonderful stories … There’s a song called "Katie Bairdie," which is a jump-rope song for kids … So kids will learn history by doing their jump-rope songs. The songs just have so much history and that’s what’s so fun about them.
Skylar Griego is a culture reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can get reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
