Extra Credit Blog: 'Myths, Tales or Stories? : Jeremiah Curtin's Indian and Irish Collections'

*My blog for The Gathering is under this one for any of you interested*

When I first read the name of the seminar 'Myths, Tales or Stories? : Jeremiah Curtin's Indian and Irish Collections' I was expecting a presentation filled with old Irish tales and folklore, I was not however expecting an in depth memoir of Jeremiah Curtin’s life, which I found out was who the building that the seminar was located in was named after (Curtin Hall). Although I was a little disappointed in the lack of storytelling, the seminar was redeemed by the very well presented biography of Jeremiah Curtin, a fascinating man with many vocations. Before I get into the very impressive life of Curtin, I have to mention the most intriguing aspect of the seminar, in my opinion anyway. Arriving a little early to the seminar I was very lucky to witness some of the attendants of the presentation and the speaker, John Eastlake converse in what I can only assume was Gaelic. I do not know about anyone else, but I have never hear people speaking in Gaelic and although I could not understand a single word that was said, I could not stop watching them and listening to the very strange dialect and accent that they were using. I found it really cool, especially because I sometimes forget that the Irish have their own language.

While I am not going to give you a full summary of Curtin’s life and work, being as it would take an entire book to do that, I will discuss some of the things that I found to be the most fascinating about him. Now when I said earlier that Jeremiah Curtin had many vocations, I wasn’t kidding. Curtin was a linguist, translator, author, diplomat, world traveler, folklorist, and ethnologist. While I find all of these professions to by interesting, the one thing that Mr. Eastlake said about Jeremiah Curtin that I find hard to believe was that Curtin was not just your run of the mill linguist, no Curtin was said to have mastered 70 languages! The only question that I have to this statement is, what is your definition of mastered? I ask this because if this was true, Curtin has got to be one of the smartest men of all time. Seventy languages, really, I can’t even list half that many languages.

When in comes to the subject of mythology I learned that what Curtin was most interested in was not just the stories told, but the origin of myths, stating, “All myths have the same origin.” Curtin based most of his work off of his theory of universal mythology. Curtin believed that having a ‘universal spiritual tradition’ would provide a common spiritual appreciation for mankind. In other words, Curtin believed that a universal mythology would act as a kind of universal religion, wiping away religious differences. Unfortunately, it appears that his ambitious endeavor did not pay off, if current events have anything to show for it.

Besides Curtin one other person that was discussed in the seminar, and who I found to be very interesting, was Curtin’s wife Alma Cardell Curtin. Being that Curtin lived during the nineteenth century, I was very surprised to find that Alma played a very active role in Curtin’s work, working almost as an independent partner to Curtin. Seeing as women in those days did not have much freedom, I was very impressed with the extent to which she contributed to Curtin’s work, going as far as to perform her own field work and write her own papers, under Jeremiah’s name of course.

After attending the seminar and learning all that Jeremiah Curtin had accomplished in his life, I think that I have to agree with the women that introduced John Eastlake and say that when it comes to the building that was named after Jeremiah Curtin, he definitely deserved better.