Robert's Raves

A Matter of Time
by Robert Rodriquez

hen Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy, the four Pevensey children, first entered Narnia through the mysterious Wardrobe in the old professor's house, they little realized that an unusual temporal dilation would be set into motion; they would remain in Narnia for many years, eventually becoming its high kings and queens, and then, one day while pursuing a strange stag, they would once again re-emerge through the Wardrobe, into their own world, once more becoming children, with no actual time having elapsed from their own lives. In subsequent visits to Narnia by the Pevenseys and their relatives and friends, this unusual temporal dilation would work in strange ways; a year in this would could result in no time elapsing in Narnia, or else a thousand years having gone by, but in all cases, when they return to this world, no time would have elapsed in terms of real time.

The device of the unusual temporal dilation has not only been used with great effect and success in original literature from both the fantasy and science fiction genres, but the very central element of time is, and has been a central theme in a good number of traditional folktales and related stories from world folk tradition, from the Celtic narratives of ancient Ireland to traditional stories from Japan and adjacent areas of the Far East.

Everyone knows what happened to poor Rip van Winkle when he encountered the ghosts of Henry Hudson's crew; he drank with them, and after drinking a good amount of strange cider, he went to sleep for twenty years, and when he finally awoke and returned to his small village, he found that twenty actual years had elapsed, and that, in his absence, the British had gone and an independent country was now in existence. In the case of futuristic hero Buck Rogers, his nirvana-gas induced sleep would last five hundred years, and he would emerge into a world dominated by technological warlords and a gangsters where his heroics would become legendary. But in the realm of traditional folktales, the temporal device usually becomes more complicated and may take several different courses.

One general category of time stories usually goes under the theme of the "night in elf hill," and is a tale type known from the British Isles all the way to the remote steppes of Central Asia and the islands of the Pacific, including Japan, the Philippines, and such Pacific outposts as Yap, Easter Island, and Papua New Guinea. Stories of this type are known in Scotland, Hungary, Serbia, Finland, and a score of other global locales, and while the mysterious locations may vary, the general circumstances always follow a somewhat predictable course of action: An individual is lured, either by design or accident, into entering a strange realm, either beneath a hill, under a mountain, or even under the sea, either by a strange being, often a dwarf or other bizarre entity, or a mysterious and beautiful lady, or else an animal messenger of a strange other-world monarch, and this individual is persuaded to remain for a short while. It may be anywhere from one night to several years, but when he has returned to the world of mortals, decades, often centuries, have gone by, and the individual often succumbs, through grief, anguish, or the breaking of some taboo, to old age. They may literally wither on the spot, often becoming dust within several moments. In one very tragic tale from Scotland, a Traveler, lured by the Faerie folk, is induced to enter their realm in order to pipe for their dancing. His wife searches for him for twenty years, eventually finds him one Samhain eve, and manages to extricate him from the Faerie clutches. But tragically she discovers that, while she has aged two decades, his time among the Faerie host has not aged him one bit. When she identifies herself to him, he scorns her as an old woman and violently abandons her by the side of the road to her own tragic fate and lonely destiny.

In the classic ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, True Thomas spent what he thought was but a year in Faerie-land, but when he emerged into the normal world, he found that seven years had really elapsed, and what's more, he found he had been given the gift of always telling the truth and the gift of prophecy. He would eventually return to the Faerie realm, this time for good.

There is an old Hungarian tale in which a shepherd lad named Laslo is invited to the wedding of a strange little man a year after his own wedding at which the dwarf was present. The wedding is held in a remote cavern under a hill, and when Laslo awakens the next morning, he feels strangely disoriented. When he returns to his home village, everything is strangely different, and eventually, Laslo discovers to his sorrow that three centuries have passed him by. In the presence of an old priest, he begins to wither with age rather rapidly, and just as he is given the last rites, he crumbles into dust before the horrified cleric's eyes. One of the best known tales in this type is the Irish story of Oisin's sojourn in Tir-nan-Og, the land of youth, to which he has been lured by a beautiful Faerie princess who has fallen in love with him. He remains with her for several years, but upon his return to Ireland, he disobeys her injunction not to dismount from his Faerie steed. In attempting to help a group of what he perceives to be rather puny men lift a giant rock, he steps foot an Irish soil. When he dismounts, his steed vanishes over the waves, and Oisin is now stranded three centuries from where he began. He finds Ireland is now a Christian land, with Saint Patrick in charge, and Oisin, along with the other members of the Fiana, are now reduced to legends told by kitchen fires. In some versions of the tale, Oisin refuses conversion, a staunch Fiana defended to the last.

There is an intriguing variant of this general tale in which a mortal is taken, not to an underwater realm or a subterranean cavern, but to a realm that resembles heaven or some related post-terrestrial paradise, for the space of one night, but when returning to earth, the individual discovers that many years, often centuries, has passed by. The tale is especially popular as a religious legend. In Latin America, for example, versions are known from Mexico and the southwest United States, to Argentina and Chile at the southern tip of South America. A typical version comes from the Mexican state of Guerrero, in which a poor peasant named Diego is offered one night in Paradise by the Blessed Virgin because of his kindness to a strange old hermit. She warns him, however, that sorrow will came from this, but she grants him his wish anyway; when he returns to the mortal world, he discovers that centuries have elapsed, and when Diego realizes that all he has known is forever taken from him, he succumbs to overwhelming grief. Old age overwhelms him, and as a local priest watches in awe, Diego crumbles into dust within moments. Variants of this tale also seem to exist in other religious traditions as well, including those of both Jewish and Islamic traditions, as well as a few versions from places such as Russia, Armenia, and Greece, where local Orthodox religious traditions hold sway.

Even royalty does not seem to be immune from this tale's consequences, as evidenced by the legend of Hurla, an ancient British king. One of the guests at his wedding was a strange little man, who then invited Hurla to attend his own wedding in turn. Within one year, Hurla, with his train of followers and attendants, went to the wee man's nuptials and celebrated the night away. When he came back to reality the next morning, Hurla discovered that two centuries had elapsed. He and his followers were doomed to ride across the land, never to rest, akin to the demonic "wild hunt," of northern mythology, until, it is said, a mysterious raging flood swept men, horses, and hounds away during the reign of Henry the Second, never to be seen again.

Much rarer in story and legend is the temporal reverse of the "night in elf hill," but there are stories in which the reverse occurs, very similar to the concept employed by C. S. Lewis in his Narnia chronicles. An individual, through unknown circumstances, may wind up spending many years in an other-worldly environment, but when he returns to the normal world, he discovers that little, if any, actual time has elapsed in his own life. Versions of this tale can be found in traditions as diverse as Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist, and are often told as teaching tales in which a holy man or elderly teacher, wishing to impart wisdom to a younger, less experienced acolyte, orchestrates the pupil's strange life-spanning adventure in order to teach him a valuable lesson of life and its strange consequences.

Perhaps the best known version of this story is the classic Irish tale involving the man who had no story to tell. The tale usually involves a young man attending a ceilidh or some other local get-together. When the host discovers that the young man does not even have a story to tell, rather annoyed, he orders the young man to fetch water from a nearby well. In so doing, he is swept into a series of fantastic adventures and escapades, among which he may accompany a Faerie host into a raid on a local land-owner's wine cellar, a corpse on a series of nocturnal wanderings through several graveyards, or an enigmatic sorcerer through several realms of magic and illusion, but when all is finished, the young man finds himself back at the well, bucket in hand, but with a grand story to tell. No matter where he goes from that day forward, at every ceilidh, he always has this grand story to tell. It seems more than appropriate that the hero of this tale is himself to become a future storyteller, and, frankly, why not? In a Chinese variant of the story, a traveler, stopping at an inn, asks for a pot of millet to be prepared for him. The next thing he knows, a carriage arrives, invites him to the palace, and he eventually becomes the husband of the emperor's daughter. He lives a full and happy life. As he is about to die, he feels a tap an his shoulder, and a servant informs him that his millet is now ready to be eaten.

There is a Buddhist story from ancient India which tells how a young man, once in the service of the Buddha, was instructed to bring back water from a nearby stream. The young man slips, falls into the stream, and suddenly emerges into another realm, where he eventually reaches a distant city. After a series of strange adventures, he saves the life of the local ruler, marries the king's only daughter, and eventually becomes king himself. He rules wisely and benevolently for many years, eventually grows old, and while traveling to a distant city, he becomes thirsty, sees a nearby stream, reaches out to take a drink of water, and suddenly finds himself facing the Buddha with a bucket in his hand. That, says the Buddha to him, is what life is all about. An intriguing North American version of the tale comes from the Inuit of Alaska, Greenland, and Canada. While away from his village an a hunt, a young boy is mysteriously taken to a hidden realm where a tribe of bear-people reside. The chief's daughter becomes his wife, they raise a family, with many children and grand-children, and they live happily for many years. When he realizes that death is approaching, he leaves his family to meet death alone out on the ice. As he succumbs to unconsciousness, he suddenly finds himself at the outskirts of his own village, as a young boy once again, and he realizes what has actually occurred. In a Yupik tale from eastern Siberia, it is a young girl who suffers the same adventure. She is captured by a shape-shifting shaman, taken to a realm beneath a mountain, where she eventually marries into a clan of folks who can become wolves at will, She lives with them for many years, but eventually manages to escape, only to find herself outside her own village, a young girl once again,

Whether in traditional folktales and legends, or original science fiction and fantasy literature, the very concepts and application of time and its strange manifestations have always provided very nice and intriguing grist for the mills of storytellers down the centuries and around the world. The names do not matter: Oisin, Laslo, Hurla, the Pevensey Quartet, Dr. Who, the enigmatic Time Lord of Gallifray, or the mutant temporal super-villain known as Apocalypse. Their legendary deeds and adventures have become the very fabric and stuff of both folklore and contemporary popular culture. Perhaps the best way to sum this all up is in the form of a proverb yours truly first heard from the late great storyteller, Marshall Dodge, an aphorism first uttered by his classic character, Burt, from one of the Burt and I stories: if it wasn't far time, we'd have to do everything all at once.

—posted February 2002

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