DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 169, 7 October 1927, Page 14

DR. FRANK CRANE’S DAILY EDITORIAL

THE GROWTH OF MYTH (Copyright 1927) f)NE of the best established data in history is the principle of the growth of myth. Whenever a popular hero appears there grow up about him, usually after he is dead, a number of startling tales. Somehow he attracts a certain class of stories to himself. Many stories are attributed to Lincoln of which he was probably innocent. They sound like him and the teller likes to attribute them to him although he probably never heard them himself. So about every famous character myths accumulate. Kitchener’s body was supposed to have been found the other day somewhere in Norway, and they will probably be finding his body in Norway and Sweden and England and France for many years. Moses was supposed to have been spirited away, and the power of myth is such that many people suppose that he simply got lost and died in the mountains. King Arthur never really died, they say, but just went away, and about every hundred years the people in a certain section hear faint music which they trace to a cave where King Arthur’s spirit is supposed to abide. The same is true of that picturesque character, Marshal Ney, who is supposed to have escaped from France. So the supposed stories of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf, and of William Tell shooting an apple off of his son’s head, and George Washington chopping down a cherry tree, are considered by many historians to be myths. This is based upon the fact that most people would rather be interesting than to tell the truth. In fact, to make what you have to say interesting was the rule of literary people up to the time of Niebhur and only since then have historians carefully dug around to find out the truth. Attention has often been called to the fact that whatever things you see in the newspapers are not typically true. It may be specifically true, but it has no versimilitude. The reason is that the newspaper aims to print news. Whatever is unusual is news. Whatever is common is not 116 “If a dog bites a man that is not news, but If a man bites a dog, that’s news.” . . _ Usually a common state of things in a community is just the opposite of what you see in the newspapers. A similar truth holds in regard to history. A thing must not be too interesting if it is to be accepted as the truth. The trouble is that people’s desire to tell an interesting story is stronger than their desire to adhere strictly to what is so. One kind of work takes only imagination and the other one takes trouble.