BUILDING OF MYTHS

WHEN FACTS ARE NOT

Author Marvin Inger states without validation that ghosts have been seen in town of Adams. Finding Marvin's statement to be consistent with his belief system, subsequent author Al Goody states ghosts have been seen in Adams and references Marvin's publication as proof. 

What frequently happens is Charles Dell now uses Al's work as his reference and Pat Fizzer uses Al's, as so on.  When Pat is finally challenged to verify his claim. We often find him stating "Charles, Al, and Marvin all came to the same conclusion. The documentation is overwhelming!"

An alternate version is when Marvin states that there are reports of ghosts in Adams. Then Al says the ghosts in Adams have caused a lot of excitement. Finally, Pat says the ghosts in Adams are the greatest haunting of our time.  Marvin's story is facfual, but by time it is repeated by Pat it has been exaggerated into total fiction.

These examples are the basis of Oral Tradition. In this manner myths become factualized.  Proper research demands tracing all references back to their original source and then carefully validating it as an indendepent and unbiased observation.

How many of us have heard the Swiss story of William Tell shooting the apple off his son's head?  The facts are historians have never been able to verify this event ever occurred.

An interesting example of "bigger than life" fable is the explanation of the origin of the phrase "cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey."   Do a Internet search and you will find thousands on "hits" that authoritatively claim that this phrase originated as a nautical term. When 18'th and 19'th century war-ships used cannon balls, they stacked them in a four-sided pyramind shaped pile of thirty along side the cannon. So that they wouldn't roll away, the bottom layer was placed in a rack called a "monkey" and was made of brass, in lieu of wood which would break or of iron which would rust to the balls.

In very cold weather it is claimed the brass contracted more than the iron balls, consequently toppled the pile and thereby giving rise to the aforementioned phrase. If you determined veracity only by the predominance of opinion (i.e. the vocal majority), that explanation is undeniable. The only problem is that it is not true and none of these thousand "authorities" bothered to verify that fact, which would have been very easy to do.

The differential linear coefficient of linear expansion between iron and brass is 0.000008 per degree centi- grade.  It means the "brass monkey" shrinks about 0.01 inch in the worst of weather - hardly enough to topple the balls.

There is also the additional problem - none of our authorities verified that the retainer for the cannon ball is called a monkey.

Nevertheles, we can not comment on the etymology of the phase.  Even though the explanation is definitely wrong, we still can't be sure some misguided sailor didn't mumbled it as he chased cannon balls rolling around an ice covered deck. But, we can be sure some creative soul gave up with a colorful story and thousands have referenced it without verification.

Why should it be that whenever men have looked for something on which to found their lives they have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but myths of immemorial imagination.               - Joseph Campbell, 1992