To Memory

       Why did my Celtic ancestors not write anything down? This was a question I would often ask my thought processes as I climbed through my ancestor's branches. My American education tried to teach me that this was the "Dark Ages", and no one here could find a light switch. These folks just stumbled around in this darkness and could never figure-out how to write since it was pretty dark. Now, one who was there [Julius Caesar] wrote down his own observations regarding this observation:

      "They are said there to learn by heart a great number of verses, accordingly some remain in the course of training twenty years. Nor do they regard it lawful to commit these to writing, though in almost all other matters, in their public and private transactions, they use Greek characters. That practice they seem to me to have adopted for two reasons; because they neither desire their doctrines to be divulged among the mass of the peoples, nor those who learn, to devote themselves the less to the efforts of memory, relying on writing, since it generally occurs to most men, that, in their dependence on writing, they relax their diligence in learning thoroughly, and their employment of the memory".

Book VI 11-28 where Caesar provides a brief ethnographic essay on the religion, customs and political structures of the peoples of Gaul and Germany. [p. 141 of Mellor: presented post of April 30th]

      To memory it is.