No poets? What are you asking for? A Homer? You are not a tribe. When Homer smote (as Kipling phrased it) “ ’is bloomin’ lyre,” he was declaiming to people gathered by firelight. At leisure and with the working daylight behind them, his listeners were present for more than a tale’s entertainment. They had gathered to be reminded who they were; out of what past they stemmed, and what they collectively knew.
The bard, we may learn from Eric Havelock’s Preface to Plato, was the tribal memory, custodian of such lore as we nowadays look up in our notes or a handbook: how to beach a ship (as it were, adjust a carburetor), how to address a priest, under whose leadership the ships (and how many) of each Achaean city had converged upon Troy of the horsepeople.
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